Uneasiness currently pervades the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) over a rumour about an alleged plot to assassinate the group’s founder and leader, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike. The Indian-trained lawyer-turned-Biafra-agitator has lately been facing a challenge to his leadership by aggrieved lieutenants and a struggle for the control of MASSOB’s headquarters in Uwazuruike’s Okwe village in Imo State claimed four lives last week.

Seeking to douse the tension, MASSOB’s National Director of Information, Uchenna Madu, said in a statement he issued during the weekend in Abakaliki, capital of Ebonyi State: “The rumour making the rounds within MASSOB members that the national security men will assassinate our leader, Uwazuruike, is false and deceiving.

“There is no such plan. Chief Ralph Uwazuruike is still MASSOB leader and any attempt to kill him will be resisted. I vow to die in his defence.”

Madu, who himself has been having running battles with Uwazuruike after he was suspended for granting an interview saying that MASSOB would not support President Goodluck jonatha’s re-election bid, regretted that his recent appeal to Ohanaeze and Igbo leaders to intervene in MASSOB’s crisis was ignored.

Lamenting his own ordeal, he said: “Even for the alarm I raised because of Uwazuruike’s insensitivity, I have received series of threatening calls from some members.

“I am being trailed, my family is in danger but I am not deterred. This is Igbo cause. I have suffered to protect, project and vowed to actualise the dream of Ndigbo.”

On the fate of the Biafra struggle, he said: “Our members are losing confidence in the possibility of Biafra’s actualisation.” He blamed the crisis on unnamed zonal administrators “who are always deceiving our leader with falsehood against fellow officials as, sycophants, cowards and parasites in MASSOB.”

Madu appealed for peace in MASSOB so as not to waste the gains made by the group since its formation in September 1999.

•Photo shows MASSOB Leader Uwazuruike.