Malami wants Tucano jets deployed to South-East – Ohanaeze raises alarm

Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo socio-cultural group, has warned the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami, against any plans to deploy the recently acquired Tucano planes to the South-East zone.

The warning came after Malami held a news conference in which he detailed purported security breaches by the Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB.

Ohanaeze has now labeled it as the latest attempt to explain the anticipated deployment of fighter planes to the South-East zone, where the IPOB is clamoring for independence.

This was contained in a statement by Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro, the Secretary-General of the Chidi Ibeh-led Ohanaeze Ndigbo.

In the statement, he stated, “Malami is laying the groundwork for the justification of the deployment of the acquired Tucano Fighter Jets to the southern portion of the country.”

“The Federal Government has concluded the strategies to use the Super Tucano Fighter Jets in the South-East.

“We raising this alarm because it appears that there is a concluded plan to invade the Sout-East in the name of fighting terrorism but they should reconsider the lives of innocent civilians who are at risk of these plans”.

The Ohanaeze scribe wondered about the Federal Government’s delay in declaring bandits and Fulani herdsmen as terrorists.

He added that “we are aware of the conditions attached to the acquisition of the Tucano Jets, which was limited to the Boko Haram terrorists in the North-East.

“What Malami is doing now is to convince the world that the IPOB is a terrorist organization and then unleash the jets on the South-East and totally annihilate the Igbos. This is totally unacceptable.

“We are calling on President Buhari not to deploy any Tucano Jets to the South-East. We believe that bandits that shot down Military Aircraft and shot at Abuja/ Kaduna Train should be declared terrorists before any deployment to the South-East.”

WITHIN NIGERIA gathered that part of the agreement between the Federal Government and the US before the purchase of the jets was that they would be deployed against the Boko Haram terrorists in the North-East part of the country.