A pro-Biafra group, Biafra Nations League (BnL) has said suspected policemen raided the residence of its leader on Monday.

According to the group, the armed men suspected to be Nigeria Police Force personnel stormed the Owerri residence of its national leader, Princewill Richards.

Richards, in a statement on Tuesday, said the gunmen stormed his house at 11 pm “when he was already asleep”, during his two-day visit to Owerri, the Imo State capital.

He said he was awakened “by one of his boys who was sitting opposite the building, an upstairs”.

According to him, he was in Owerri to prepare for a meeting he would be hosting in Enugu State on Friday.

The statement reads, “Yesterday I don’t know the people that came to my house heavily armed.

“I came into Owerri yesterday evening, went inside, at 11pm my phone rang, I couldn’t pick because I was tired and I didn’t know the number, the call kept coming, and I picked. It was one of my boys.

“He told me to be observant that a bus with heavily armed men in black was in front of my house, (they were) looking at the building, that he was sitting somewhere when he sighted the bus.

“They slowed down when they got to my house, and passed, later reversed and came back and stopped, and were still inside the bus. He said they noticed him and came down, then he ran away. I opened my window from upstairs and discovered how they were looking in front of the building and looking up.

“I was watching (to see) if they wanted to climb up, by then I had decided on what to do, but still watching them.

“They stood for 15 minutes and drove back. This morning the boy said he suspected they were a special team of the Nigerian Police because their trousers look like that of the police, but (they were) putting on black tops.

“I said whoever they are, I don’t want to know, I have escaped so many gunmen attacks that came unexpectedly, especially the one that happened in Benue, and how I usually escape from their midst is unexplained, talkless of these ones I’m conscious of and observing from my window.

“Probably they came to visit me, and were observing how they could climb upstairs… but left in shame.”
 
The BnL is a separatist group that operates mainly in border towns between Cameroon and Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Bakassi Peninsula.

The leader of the BnL is said to have been arrested twice in Bakassi by the Nigerian Army and the police in 2016 and 2018.