In what motorists and other road users have described as 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.
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, told Vanguard in a phone interview 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, told Vanguard that 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.
Vanguard gathered that the armed-to-the-teeth security operatives 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.
However, Vanguard gathered from an eye-witness that 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.
Meanwhile, at the time of filing this report, it was not certain if the irate youths took their protests to other parts of the country.
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