By ONYEMA GODWIN, Port Harcourt

Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) has distanced itself from the Saturday’s explosion that rocked a church said to be owned by the father of Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, in Port Harcourt.

Youths were reported to have invaded Christain Universal Church International on 25 Azikiwe Street Mile, 3 Diobu, Port Harcourt and detonated the explosive suspected to be dynamite, on Saturday night.

Spokesman of the Rivers Command of the Nigeria Police, Nnamdi Omoni who confirmed the arrest of three of the youths later alleged that they are members of the proscribed IPOB.

But in a statement issued on Tuesday by the Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, IPOB said it should be counted out of the purported attack.

It maintained that members of the group did not indulge in explosive devices and were not contemplating doing so in the near future.

IPOB advised the Nigeria Police and Governor Wike to stop peddling outlandish lies against it, accusing the governor of deploying same tactics the Nigerian Government deployed to infuse violence into peaceful #EndSARS protests in Lagos and Abuja.

The statement read in part: “The attention of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), ably led by our great leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has been drawn to the fabricated and state-sponsored propaganda peddled by Nyesom Wike and his co-travellers that peaceful and innocent members of IPOB are responsible for an alleged attack on his father’s building on Saturday night.

“We want to state categorically and for record purposes that IPOB knows nothing about the said purported attack. We do not indulge in explosive devices and we do not have any intentions to do so in the near future.

“We have said it on numerous occasions that violence is not part of the agenda in our quest to restore Biafra. Any day we decide to take up arms against the state, which is not in our immediate contemplation, it won’t be done in secret.”

(Text, excluding headline, courtesy Nigerian Tribune)

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