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Leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, yesterday denied reports quoting him as saying that Otunba Gani Adams and Asari Dokubo of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF) respectively were offered money and substantial allocations of crude oil to abandon the struggle for the emancipation of their respective peoples.
Leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, yesterday denied reports quoting him as saying that Otunba Gani Adams and Asari Dokubo of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF) respectively were offered money and substantial allocations of crude oil to abandon the struggle for the emancipation of their respective peoples.
Uwazuruike had in an exclusive interview published in THE SPECTATOR newspaper of yesterday revealed how the Obasanjo government had attempted to use bribes to frustrate the agitations of three of the most prominent ethnic militia groups in the country by attempting to buy over their leaders who were clamped into detention by federal government on charges of treason, murder, gun-running, illegal possession of arms, among other things.
Uwazuruike told Saturday Sun that while it was true that he was offered money and an oil bloc by the Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo administration to abandon MASSOB (which he rejected), he never mentioned that similar offers were made to either Adams or Dokubo, or that they accepted any such inducements. All he gathered from his security network was that there was plan to also approach the two men.
According to him, ‘when such offers are made, they are usually made privately to the individuals concerned', and since he was detained separately from the two other ethnic warlords, he was not in a position to know whatever transpired between them and the government.
He said both Adams are Dokubo are men he holds in high esteem, as fellow comrades and compatriots in the struggle for equity, justice and the emancipation of Nigerian people from oppressive governments. He said the only difference is that while Asari Dokubo dwells a great deal on resource control and Gani Adams advocates true federalism, 'MASSOB is the only group that is clamouring for self-determination or independence"
Apart from the money and oil bloc dangled before him, the MASSOB leader said that Obasanjo government also promised to facilitate his relocation abroad where it was ready to fund the cost of he and his family living in any foreign country of his choice if he agreed to abandon the MASSOB agitation.
He was recently granted an uncommon ‘permanent bail' by the court, which accused the federal government and its agencies of not having any substantive evidence to prosecute him.