The family of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has declared that the police planted the lethal weapons it allegedly recovered during a raid on its compound at Afara Ukwu on October 8.
THEWILL recalls that the Abia State Commissioner of Police, Anthony Ogbizi, had claimed at a press briefing in Umuahia, last Thursday, that lethal weapons including petrol bombs and one double-barrel gun were recovered during the raid at Kanu’s compound carried out with soldiers from 14 Brigade, Ohafia.
But the spokesman of the family, Prince Emmanuel Kanu, younger brother to Nnamdi, in a telephone chat with journalists denied the family had any gun in the house accusing the police of fabricating the story to justify what he described as illegal raiding of the compound.
He revealed that the police was unaware that a CCTV camera had been recording what the military and police had been doing in the premises alleging that the police later returned to remove the cameras in the compound.
“This new CP was the same man who came to our house two days after the September 14 invasion with two Hilux vans and his Prado SUV and pulled down the car porch and destroyed the vehicles parked outside,” he said.
“This same CP hurriedly after the invasion on the October 8 issued a press release telling the whole world that they discovered bombs in my house. The army, on the other hand, denied that there was no invasion and that they never went to my house, what a contradiction.
“A house that does not have any person inside except our guard who we asked to look after the house, all of a sudden they invaded the house and came back to say they found a den gun, double barrel gun and petrol bomb. Who manufactured them? Who kept them there? That is the question to ask.
“The policemen came to our house and ransacked the entire compound including my mum and my father’s rooms, removing my mum’s boxes, our TV and generator sets, bags of rice and many personal belongings without knowing that we had a CCTV recording their activities in the house.
“But when they got clue about the CCTV and to concoct whatever that they would present to the public to label our family bad, they came back and removed the CCTV from where they were hung.
“Nobody can tag IPOB a terrorist organisation. We don’t carry arms and arms never solved any dispute. They should engage IPOB leadership genuinely. We are not violent. We don’t give life and we can’t take one. They have rubbished the name of the country called Nigeria, that’s why we are called Biafrans.”