The President-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief (Dr.) Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, has distanced himself and the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, from the killing of soldiers in some parts of the South-East.

He described the incident as saddening, adding that Kanu was not behind the order for the sit-at-home.

Iwuanyanwu appealed to President Bola Tinubu to use his political powers to free Kanu so as to end the intractable security crises in the zone.

He was speaking shortly after he visited the detained leader in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) on Thursday. 

He also called for the restructuring of the country.

Last week, IPOB declared May 30 as a sit-at-home in the south-east to honour “our heroes and heroines” who died in the civil war between 1967 and 1970.

The “Biafran Heroes Day” sit-at-home declared by the outlawed group paralysed commercial and economic activities in parts of Anambra, Enugu, Imo, Abia and Ebonyi States as banks, schools, markets, motor parks, and fuel stations and other public places were shut on Thursday.

Nigerian government often blame attacks in the South-East on the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra movement (IPOB) and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN).

IPOB has repeatedly denied responsibility for the violence.

The group’s leader Nnamdi Kanu is in government custody and faces trial for treason after being arrested in Lenya and renditioned back to Nigeria.

Separatism is a sensitive issue in Nigeria, where a declaration of an independent Biafra Republic by Igbo army officers in the southeast in 1967 triggered a three-year civil war that left more than one million dead.

Violence in the zone is just one of the many issues facing security forces with the military also battling a 14-year-old jihadist insurgency in the northeast, gangs who kidnap and kill in the northwest and central states and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.