The leader of Niger Delta Peoples Salvation Force (NDPSF), Mujahid Asari-Dokubo has asked Biafra agitators to stop claiming the name as it originated from the Ijaw entity.
The Ijaw are a tribe of people in Bayelsa, Delta, and other states in the South-South.
Asari-Dokubo stated that the embattled leader of the Indigenous people of Biafra, IPOB – Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was using a name he was not entitled to.
Dokubo reveled this in an interview in Yenagoa. He said Biafra could be traced to when where an Ijaw man known as Frank Opigo, adding that the Republic of Biafra adopted the name after it declared its independence in 1967.
According to him, “Ijaws are divided between the Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra. We are the owners of Biafra. Biafra is an Ijaw name. The territory identified as Ijaw is Biafra with parts of Ibiobio and Oron.”
“In 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly was convened in Enugu and then Frank Opigo, an Ijaw man, moved the motion that Biafra should be adopted as the name and it was accepted.
“Then on the 30th of May, the Republic of Biafra was declared which included the eastern region within our territory, so Biafra has nothing with Igbo.”
The ex-militant who had been in a stand-off with Nnamdi kanu said the history was conatined in a book by an Ijaw man, Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro.
Dokubo had threatened to deal with Kanu prior to his arrest.
