We have no hands in gruesome murder of Muslim cleric – IPOB

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has denied allegations that its members murdered an Igbo Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ibrahim Iyiorji, in Ebonyi State in last week.

In a statement on Sunday by its Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, the group insisted that none of its members would do such a thing as alleged media reports.

Powerful stated that the Biafran agitators do not kill its known enemies let alone kill an Igbo man who is not in any way a threat to it

“IPOB does not engage in such barbaric killings and cannot be part of such heinous crimes against humanity. IPOB does not kill flies, not to talk of human beings and an Igbo man for that matter, irrespective of his religious belief.

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“Is the alleged killed Igbo cleric a threat to the Biafra movement? How many of our known enemies have we killed, let alone killing our own, an Igbo man?

“We are aware that some unscrupulous elements and petty thieves are constantly being stage-managed by security agents to lie against IPOB members and ESN operatives.

“We also understood that the government and its compromised security agencies sometime in the recent past arranged some condemned and hardened criminals from prisons and tutored them to claim that they were members of IPOB and ESN.

“A young man was also told to claim to be both IPOB, ESN and member of an unknown gunmen gang that killed many security agents and burnt down their police stations in the southeastern region, all in an attempt to lie and demonize IPOB.

“We won’t accept stage-managing criminals to tarnish the image of IPOB/ESN, not today and not ever. IPOB and ESN have never killed any army officer, police officer, or DSS operative despite all provocations in the name of unknown gunmen.

“We have never killed anybody since we started the pursuit for Biafra freedom, and we will not change to become killers, we abhor shedding innocent blood,” the group said.