Fears as Ebonyi commences registration of IPOB members

There are palpable fears among some members of the recently proscribed and terrorist tagged Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in Ebonyi as the state has begun a move to identify them.

The state government has established a data capturing and registration of youths and members of the group, across its 13 local government areas whom it said were misled with the IPOB agitation for a state of Biafra.

The Commissioner for Economic Empowerment and Job Creation in the state, Uchenna Orji, on Wednesday made the revelation that the state has commenced data capturing and registration of youths misled by IPOB across the state’s 13 local government areas.

The commissioner disclosed this in Abakaliki when he briefed newsmen on the activities of the current administration in the area of youth empowerment.

He said, “The IPOB youths are being registered in the Department of Education and Social Welfare in the LGAs. After their capturing, the state government will create a programme to train and empower them in their chosen career.”

However, while the state had announced that the development was to identify members of the group in the state in order to empower them to be able to do better things with their lives, a good number of IPOB members in the state are suspicious of the move, it was learnt.

Fears expressed by some of the members of IPOB in the state, Ripples Nigeria learnt, was that the data capturing and registration may be a design by the Governor Dave Umahi-led government of the state to identify, and maybe prosecute members of the group.

This was even as some of them feel that, Umahi, who is the chairman of Eastern Governor’s Forum, which proscribed the activities of IPOB may be up to something else.

Also, following the tagging of IPOB as terrorists organisation by the Federal Government, a good number of the state IPOB members were said not to be ready to go to jail.

But the state government said that the empowerment programme goes beyond indigenes of Ebonyi resident in the state. The government said that it had extended schemes to Ebonyi youths in other states of the federation, including Sokoto, Kaduna, Anambra and Lagos, adding that over 3000 youths had so far been empowered in the state.

Orji further said that apart from pursuing the action plan of making the IPOB members economically independent, that the initiative would also help in reducing social vices and other forms of criminality currently plaguing the society.

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