The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Monday, warned the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) to stay away from Ijaw territories.
IYC said the pro-Biafra groups should desist from including Ijaw territories in their map of Biafra insisting that the Ijaw ethnic nationality had no time agreed to be part of any Biafra.
The IYC in a statement signed by a spokesman, Daniel Dasimaka, said the Ijaw people had never been part of Biafra.
The Ijaw group explained that the old Eastern region was a political miscalculation that enslaved the Ijaw people.
Besides it said that the old Eastern region was formed by persons, who also designed “this miscarriage of a state called Nigeria”.
It said that the Ijaw was not against genuine aspirations of all peoples and groups including the MASSOB and IPOB, to attain self-determination or secession.
But the group insisted that persons agitating for secession should not drag the Ijaw ethnic nationality into their geographical expressions.
IYC said: “Ijaws are a distinct ethnic nation even before the 1914 amalgamation that has its own dreams, wishes and aspirations that should not be submerged as footnotes in any other peoples’ struggles.
“We Ijaw people are not Biafrans. Therefore, if or when any Ijaw person or group feel a sense of allegiance to Biafra and speak in its favour, let it be known that such statements are the personal opinions of such persons, which do not reflect the thoughts, views and wishes of the entire Ijaw nation and the Niger Delta people”.