Renowned human rights lawyer and lead counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra, Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has urged residents of the South-East to reject any directive asking them to boycott the 2027 general elections, describing such a move as another “tragedy” that must not be allowed to happen in the region.
Recall that the leadership of IPOB, through its spokesman, Emma Powerful, had issued a 14-day ultimatum to the Federal Government, demanding the immediate listing and hearing of its detained leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s appeal, or face a boycott of the 2027 general election across the South-East and other parts of “Biafraland”.
The group issued the ultimatum in a press statement on Tuesday, adding that the development followed renewed concerns by Kanu’s family over the delay in hearing the appeal against the conviction and life sentence handed to the IPOB leader.
However, reacting to the development in a press statement issued on Thursday, Ejiofor insisted that any directive advocating an electoral boycott across the South-East, under whatever guise, must be unequivocally rejected, adding that the people must not permit the reopening of wounds that had taken enormous sacrifices to heal.
He urged residents of the region to reject, with every sense of responsibility, any attempt to turn electoral participation into an offence against the collective interest of the people.
The lawyer questioned the directive to boycott the election, insisting that the region could not continue to pursue political objectives through strategies whose collateral consequences were borne almost exclusively by the very people they claimed to defend.
The statement was titled, “Ala-Igbo at a crossroads: Jettisoning electoral boycott before it becomes another tragedy.”
It read: “There is an unsettling pattern in the rhetoric presently being introduced into our political space, rhetoric packaged initially as harmless directives, civil disobedience or principled protest, but carrying within it the unmistakable seeds of consequences far more devastating than the promoters may wish the people to contemplate.
“This intervention is therefore not about politics; it is about the preservation of Ala-Igbo and the protection of the lives, livelihoods and hard-earned peace of our people.
“Any directive advocating an electoral boycott, under whatever guise or euphemism it may be presented, must be unequivocally rejected. We must not permit the reopening of wounds that have taken enormous sacrifices to heal.
“We have witnessed, at great cost, what happens when political grievances are converted into rigid commands and when ordinary people are compelled to pay the ultimate price for decisions taken by those who are themselves safely removed from the consequences.
“We must therefore reject, with every sense of responsibility, any attempt to turn electoral participation into an offence against the collective interest of our people.
“Indeed, what greater irony could there be than to surrender our political voice in the name of defending our people, only to discover that the silence created by such surrender has become the very instrument through which our collective interests are diminished? Perhaps the ballot box is now being treated as the enemy, while political irrelevance is being advertised as victory.”
He urged the people to be wiser, advocating the use of legitimate constitutional, judicial, political and democratic channels through which grievances could be ventilated and remedies pursued.
Ejiofor said: “I therefore condemn, in its entirety, every directive calculated to induce electoral boycott in Ala-Igbo, particularly where such directives are issued without transparent accountability to the people who will ultimately bear the consequences.
“Those who are gathering the storm should understand that Ala-Igbo is no longer available for experimentation with destructive political theories. Our people have endured enough. Our communities have suffered enough. Our economy has paid enough.
“And our children deserve a future that is not perpetually held hostage by the political calculations of faceless actors. Ndị Igbo must reject every attempt to drag them backwards.
“A people do not preserve their homeland by rendering it ungovernable; they preserve it by protecting its peace, strengthening its institutions and relentlessly pursuing justice through every legitimate avenue available to them.”
According to him, the time had come to jettison every destructive ideal and directive that sought to make electoral boycott a measure of loyalty or patriotism.
He added, “Patriotism cannot mean deliberately weakening one’s own people. Resistance cannot mean destroying one’s own economic foundation. And political fidelity cannot require sacrificing the lives and livelihoods of an entire generation.
“We must never again take a route whose destination is devastation. Ala-Igbo has travelled too far, suffered too much and survived too many storms to become collateral damage in another experiment in political absolutism.
“Let those who genuinely love Ala-Igbo prove it by protecting her peace. Let those who genuinely speak for our people listen to the people.
“And let those gathering another storm be reminded that the Igbo nation has seen the consequences of fire; we should not be persuaded to strike another match merely to prove that we can withstand the flames. Ala-Igbo must not be sacrificed on the altar of political absolutism,” the statement concluded.
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