Eastern Mandate Union - "Operation Python Dance, Declaration of War against Ndigbo"

                        

Eastern Mandate Union (EMU), led by elder statesman, Dr. Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo, has said that Operation Python Dance recently launched in the southeast was part of the ongoing plot by the government to “annihilate” Ndigbo.

Rising from their delegates’ conference, which held in Enugu yesterday, EMU, which reviewed the situation of Ndigbo in the present administration, declared, “this Operation Python Dance is nothing short of a declaration of war against the Igbo nation by the Nigerian government.”

But when contacted on the development, Deputy Director, Army Public Relations, 82 Division, Nigeria Army Enugu, Col. Sagir Musa, said the “Nigeria Army has clearly addressed such misplaced apprehension,” adding, “We still maintain that position.”

Acting Director of Defence Information, Brig Gen. Rabe Abubakar had earlier explained that Operation Python Dance was not targeted at anybody, stressing: “What we are doing is for the interest of the nation in general and southeast in particular, to curtail the activities of individuals and groups hiding under the banner of freedom of speech to create atmosphere of insecurity in the land.”

In a statement after their meeting signed by Nwankwo, EMU dismissed the reasons given by the Army as “naïve and pedantic,” explaining that there was more to it than meets the ordinary eye, as the code name was not only ominous, but had both spiritual and physical implications.

“It is indeed worrisome that since this government came to power in 2015, over 3,000 people of the southeast and south-south extraction have been murdered in cold blood for no other reason than peacefully demanding an independent state of Biafra or at least for a renegotiated and restructured Nigeria, where our people would have unfettered freedom to externalize their God-given faculties.

“The latest militarization of the southeast and south-south by the Military has once more demonstrated the naivety of the government and its penchant to shed the blood of our people. In truth, this Military assault code-named Operation Python Dance can best be described as criminal and a full declaration of war against our people,” the group said.

EMU maintained that “Ndigbo have largely borne the brunt of the contradictions of Nigeria,” adding, “the genocidal pogrom preceding the civil war, the atrocities committed against our people during the war, the use of starvation to annihilate our people and deliberate plot to shut Ndigbo out of economic relevance are not spontaneous developments but deliberate policies by past leaders to route us out of existence.”