Andy Esiet, Calabar
Clash is imminent in the Bakassi Peninsula as Cameroonian forces have captured a pro-Biafra Commander in the area.
The Rapid d’intervention Battalion (BIR) of Cameroon was said to have apprehended the Operational Commander of Biafra Nations League (BnL), Henry Edet in connection with the Black Marine, a militant group which has killed scores of Cameroonian troops in the Peninsula.
Edet was said to have been apprehended in his residence in Atabong East, in the ceded Bakassi Peninsula side of the South West Region of Cameroon in the early hours of yesterday.
The Leader of the BnL, Princewill Richards in a telephone message Wednesday said, “we have confirmed the arrest to be true and we learnt they are accusing him of having links with the militant group that comes out to say they identify with us”.
Richards warned, “we are going to give them a little time to finish investigation, otherwise we will go after them” .
For quite sometime now the BnL has been having a running battle with the Cameroonian forces and Nigerian soldiers in the Peninsula as Richards and three others narrowly escaped death in November last year following heavy firing from security personnel suspected to be operatives of the Nigerian Navy, near Ibaka in Akwa Ibom State.
Recall that same separatist militants had in October last year clashed with Nigerian security operatives at Akpankanya in Akpabuyo LGA of Cross River State.
The BnL group has been agitating for the actualization of Biafra and the freedom of the leader of the indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
The group had warned that if Kanu was not released they will make the Peninsula and the entire Gulf of Guinea and the Niger Delta ungovernable and the government will be the ones to call for peace.
