One Shot Dead As Pro-Biafran Protesters Ground Onitsha, Demand Release Of Separatist Leader, Nnamdi Kanu

 

In a mother of all protests, supporters of the Director of Radio Biafra and leader of the indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, on Friday, grounded commercial and vehicular activities in Onitsha, the commercial nerve centre of Anambra State, in a bid to call for the immediate release of their leader, who is still reportedly being detained by the Department of State Services, DSS.

 

Vanguard reports that motorists and commuters who were said to be leaving and entering the south-east, through the River Niger Bridge, in Onitsha, this morning, were held to standstill for over six hours, as members of IPOB in their thousands, barricaded the entry and exit routes of the Head Bridge.

 

An eye witness, Mr. Kelechi Amaeze, who was travelling from the south-east to Lagos on Friday, according to Vanguard confirmed that thousands of travellers, including himself, were held to standstill at the Onitsha head-bridge owing to the protest, which members of IPOB had tagged, “One Million Match.”

 

Another eye-witness, who pleaded not to be named, said the IPOB protesters where already taking their demonstration into Asaba, the Delta State capital, but where stopped by security operatives in the state, who had already re-mobilised on getting a tip-off of the protest.

 

 

Armed-to-the-teeth security operatives were reported to have barricaded the exit point of the Head Bridge into Asaba with an Armoured Personnel Carrier, APC, to stop the irate protesters from gaining entry into the south-south region.

 

Unfortunately the protest which also reached the Ochanja area of Onitsha, saw one of the protesters allegedly shot dead by an accidental discharge from the shots of a soldier, in a bid to quell the raging protest.