In a press statement made available to journalists in Awka yesterday, the governors denied the report, saying that such meeting did not take place.

The statement signed by the duo of the Director-General and Director, Media and Communication of the forum, Prof. Simon Ortuanya and Michael Ike Udah, said that the publication was intended to undermine the milestone already recorded in the circumstance.

The statement reads: “The attention of the South-East Governors’ Forum has been drawn to false and unfounded news published online by igberetvnews.com to the effect that the South- East Governors did send a strong warning to the Federal Government of Nigeria, urging it to “stop killing IPOB members”.

“According to that report, all Five South-East Governors purportedly met in Abakaliki on Wednesday, September 6, 2017. The story added that His Excellency, Engr. Nweze Dave Umahi, the Chairman of the Forum addressed the press after the meeting, “calling on the Federal Government to put to a stop the incessant killings, brutal torture and unlawful imprisonment of innocent IPOB members by the military in our region”.

“The report further falsely credited His Excellency, Engr. Dave Umahi, with the claim that ‘the Federal Government is maltreating the region’, while the military and indeed the Chief of Army Staff have rebuffed all the letters which the South-East Governors had written, requesting that the situation be redressed.

“In order to put the record straight, the South-East Governors’ Forum hereby states as follows: There is no iota of truth in every material particular in the said publication. His Excellency, Engr. Nweze Dave Umahi, Governor of Ebonyi State and Chairman of South-East Governors’ Forum, is currently out of the Country and was not even in Ebonyi State on the said Wednesday, September 6, 2017 when the alleged emergency meeting of South-East Governors purportedly took place.

“No South East Governor (or their Deputies) attended any meeting, emergency or regular, in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State on the said Wednesday 6lh September, 2017.

“Accordingly the South East Governors condemn in the strongest terms this deliberate falsehood intended to undermine the milestone already recorded in their engagement with IPOB leader, Prince Nnamdi Kanu and the entire leadership of IPOB.

“South East Governors5 Forum reaffirms its belief in the amicable resolution of all issues especially as it relates to agitations by IPOB.

“Since no such meeting ever held, it follows that the South East Governors never at any point in time issued warning to the Federal Government of Nigeria or its agencies; neither did it write any of its military Commands or formations.

“South East Governors’ Forum therefore urges the Federal Government, its Military commands and formations and indeed the general public to disregard in its entirety and totality the said report as it is untrue and unfounded”.

“By the time the peddlers of such rumour were circulating the story, the chairman of the forum, under whose auspices such meeting could be convened was outside the country.

“The story was not only fabricated, but false in its totality and a pigment of the imagination of its writer.