Bomb expert Bala Yakubu has urged the federal government to immediately evacuate or destroy about 1,600 deadly Biafran civil war ordnance items recovered from the old battlefields.

Mr Yakubu, who made the call on Monday, said that evacuating and destroying them would help avert disaster. According to him, the ordnance currently at the Mine Action Centre in Owerri, Imo, was recovered from the old Nigeria-Biafra battlefields since 2015.

”My company, Deminers Concept, was engaged by the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua government to eliminate threats of explosions in farmlands in the former war zone.

“The ordnance was cleared across South-East, South-South and parts of North-Central Nigeria, including areas in Anambra, Enugu, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, and Delta.

“However, after clearing them, we did not destroy them because there was no commitment from the government. This was in spite of our numerous letters drawing the attention of successive administrations after the late Yar’Adua’s to it,” he said.

The expert revealed that in 2022, one of the mortar bombs exploded, causing civilian casualties.

He said that, in view of this, the federal government urgently needs to take drastic action to end the suffering of residents in that area.

He also disclosed that Deminers Concept had so far cleared about 17,632 remnants of locally fabricated weapons, ‘Ogbunigwe’, ‘Ojukwu buckets’ and many others from the old battlefields across the country.

He added that 682 antipersonnel landmines and 143 anti-vehicle mines had also been cleared.

”Those landmines are rusty and old, but they are still lethal to date; that is why the UN insists that they must be cleared, based on the convention that Nigeria is a signatory to.

“For the people to be completely free, there are a few marked locations of less than 15 per cent within Imo that will be cleared if the government pays us. We have been pleading with them for more than ten years now.

“What remains to be done in the area is the removal of knocked-out armoured vehicles of the Nigerian Army and Biafran Red Devil tanks, which are supposed to be donated by the government to the Army Museum. We need to finish that to free the people from any danger,” he stated.

(NAN)