The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has urged its members to disregard the factional leader of the group, Mr. Simon Ekpa, alleging that he is secretly working for the Department of State Services (DSS) to bring down the group.
The Publicity Secretary of the group, Mr. Emma Powerful, stated in a press release that Ekpa was trained by the DSS in 2016 and supplanted into IPOB as a spy.
Ekpa, the self-acclaimed Prime Minister of IPOB, with the incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu, has supposedly assumed leadership of the group.
Though based in Finland, he has been responsible for declaring civil disobedience orders, also known as sit-at-home days, in the South Eastern region.
His disciples, who enforce the sit-at-home orders, have been unleashing terror on those who do not obey the order.
In recent times, Nnamdi Kanu’s faction of IPOB has constantly dissociated itself from Ekpa’s violent activities, with Kanu himself, through his special counsel, Aloy Ejimofor, ordering him to stop all forms of sit-at-home exercises.
Ekpa, however, has insisted that his actions are geared towards ensuring the speedy release of Kanu.
Powerful’s press release partly reads: “Ekpa was prior to this period groomed by the Nigerian DSS to usurp the leadership of IPOB in 2016, but that evil plan failed woefully.
“Simon Ekpa was the same person as the faceless Okwudili that DSS created in 2016 as the new leader of IPOB when our leader was in detention in 2016. Prior to this time, Simon was a hater of Ndigbo and particularly IPOB in Finland. IPOB members in Finland will attest to this.
“Simon Ekpa is the exclusive project of the Nigerian DSS to create a situation of unrest and hostilities in the South East, with the end product being to destroy the image of IPOB.”
Powerful questioned why the federal government had not taken steps to arrest his activities in the zone if this was not the case.
He also raised concerns about the lack of effort by the Nigerian government to diplomatically engage the Finnish government regarding Ekpa’s visible hostilities.
Also, the IPOB publicity secretary claimed that Nigeria suppressed the legal investigation of Ekpa in Finland and his court cases in Nigeria.
Maintaining that Ekpa is an infiltrator, Powerful challenged him to attempt to give orders to IPOB members without using Kanu’s name, claiming that no one would listen to him.
