Photo: Abdul-Azeez Suleiman

The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has urged the National Assembly to suspend the ongoing constitution review to enable Government organise a referendum on actualisation of a Biafra Republic.

It also urged the National Assembly to invoke the doctrine of necessity to organise a Biafra referendum as the final step towards the separation of the Igbo from the rest of Nigeria.

The CNG Spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, who made the call while addressing journalists, yesterday, in Abuja, said that the unrelenting disturbances created by certain interest groups in the South-East, in the form of the agitation for a separate State of Biafra, had turned violent.

It appealed to the government to invite the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to initiate the process of self-determination that will mandate the Biafrans out of the Nigerian union by leveraging the several relevant international treaties and conventions to which Nigeria is a signatory.

He said: “We demand the immediate suspension of the ongoing exercise for the review of the 1999 Constitution and to concentrate on the first priority of determining who and what actually constitutes Nigeria as a nation in the present circumstance in which the Igbo have foreclosed every hope for the rest of us to continue co-existing as one nation.

“In order to achieve the final separation of the Igbo from the rest of Nigeria, we urge the National Assembly to organise a referendum by seeking the cover of the same doctrine of necessity invoked by Nigeria’s Federal Parliament that paved way for former President Goodluck Jonathan’s take-over by declaring the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua unfit.

“We ask the National Assembly to prevail on the Federal Government to invite the United Nations, as well as the African Union and ECOWAS to initiate the process of self-determination to mandate the Biafrans out of the Nigerian union by leveraging the several relevant international treaties and conventions to which Nigeria is a signatory.”

Suleiman said that the group took the decision to prevent another civil war sequel to the spate of killings and destruction of public infrastructure in the South East region.

He added that the North had continued to bear the brunt of the violent agitations for secession with equanimity, stoical calm and resignation.

He, therefore, urged the North to “remain the bulwark of respect, integrity, dignity, decorum, tradition, decency, morality, civilisation, etiquette, good behaviour, politeness, accommodation and all other positive traits with the assurance that the good will ultimately prevail over evil.”

Source: The Guardian Nigeria