*Nigeria Army is to blame for killings in Enugu and Rivers- IPOB
A Civil Society and political advocacy group, the IGN SPEAKERS has called for the immediate removal of soldiers from the Igbo-Eze North local government area of Enugu state.
The group said there would be reduced tension and a check on the possible breakdown of Law and Order in the area if the state governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, the General Officer Commanding 82 Division of the Nigerian Army, Enugu, Major-General Umar Musa, and other relevant political stakeholders would take “immediate and decisive steps” towards ensuring that soldiers leave the area.
In a statement jointly signed by the group's spokespersons, Chief Emeka Mamah and Mr. Felix Oguejiofor Abugu, and entitled, ‘Let Soldiers Remove Their Knees That Our Women May Breathe’,
THE SPEAKERS also urged the Local Council Chairman, Prince Ejike Itodo; member representing Igbo-Eze North/Udenu Federal Constituency in the National Assembly, Simon Atigwe, and all other political and traditional leaders in the area to work together to ensure that the area is secure “as much from further attacks by hoodlums as from rampant deadly attacks by security agents turned molesters of the local population.”
THE SPEAKERS insisted that there is no good reason for the continued stay of the soldiers in the council, “as their presence no longer provides any assurance of safety for communities in the local government, “there is no tenable reason any more to keep soldiers and other malevolent security agents in IGN.”
“In truth, of what use are the soldiers in the security arrangement in Igbo-Eze North? Rather than the solution, soldiers, indeed practically all the security forces, have become the main source of insecurity in Igbo-Eze North.
"Today, the hoodlums they were invited ostensibly to protect our people from are no longer our problem but soldiers and the rest of the security agents who have turned their inexplicable anger–and their weapons – against the very people they were supposed to protect.
“Soldiers now torture (as evident in the viral video) and extort the local people, sometimes watching in feigned helplessness as masked ‘security’ agents kill, maim and rob our people with impunity.”
“We believe that the security challenges facing Igbo-Eze North do not need the high-handedness and escalation that government security forces have brought to bear on the management of the situation, to resolve.
"What they need is a more reconciliatory approach by the relevant authorities, with the Local Government Chairman leading the charge.
“We believe that the local Government Chairman, as the Chief Security Officer of the local government, working in tandem with the Governor and the political leader of Igbo-Eze North/Udenu, in the person of Hon. (Engr.) Simon Atigwe should be able to dialogue, not shoot us out of our current security mess.
“Let, therefore, the soldiers who came in peace go back in peace to where they came from,” THE SPEAKERS insisted.
Following an attack by gunmen in which two police officers were killed, soldiers and other security agents were deployed to Igbo-Eze North Local Council in August, this year.
However, locals have since then accused the deployed government security agents of being responsible for many extrajudicial killings across several communities in the local government area.
Recently, some women from different villages in the council gathered at the council headquarters, Ogrute, and protested the insecurity in the area, calling for the withdrawal of soldiers from the area, and alleging that insecurity had worsened since the soldiers were deployed to the area.
Soldiers from 82 Division Enugu, who were angered by the protest, alleged that it was done without police permission and came down hard on the women, arresting and torturing some of them as was captured in a video clip that later went viral on social media on Friday,
November 25, 2022.
Reacting to the video, THE SPEAKERS lamented that Nigerian soldiers “who have mothers, sisters and daughters” could descend so low as to torture unarmed local women whose only offense was protesting against insecurity and other social ills in their communities, urging leaders of the local council “to do something about the ugly situation.
Image:Theeagleonline
The group said: “It is difficult to explain the rationale behind the high-handedness with which the soldiers handled the women’s protest by the women of Igbo-Eze North. Is it that the women had no right to protest or that the governments in Igbo-Eze North and Enugu cannot be protested against by aggrieved citizens?
"Exactly what security threat did unarmed women all clad in black and marching against insecurity in Igbo-Eze North pose to a detachment of Nigerian soldiers on assignment in the area?
“Pray, all that brutality against women was to make exactly what point? For us, the action came as another low for the Nigerian Army, indeed, another degrading outing in peacetime Nigeria by an otherwise well-trained and professional army, under the watchful eyes of civilian authorities.”
The group called for an inquiry into the soldiers' assault on the protesting women, demanding that women of the area should be free to organize peaceful protests as it is their constitutional right to do so.
“We demand an investigation to know who ordered the onslaught on the women,” THE SPEAKERS stressed, adding: “We believe that that will help to stop such impunity from the forces on rural people.”
"In addition to investigating the incidents, THE SPEAKERS further demanded that going forward, Igbo-Eze North women/citizens, if they so choose, must be allowed to engage in peaceful demonstrations as guaranteed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and their right of free expression and assembly.
“We also demand that the Enugu State Government, in particular, Igbo-Eze North Local Council issue a public apology and compensation to the women who have been harassed, detained, and violated,” THE SPEAKERS stressed.
According to an eyewitness, the protesting women who wore black clothes demonstrated peacefully and trekked from Imufu-Ogrute Junction to the local government headquarters at Ogrute where they were joined by other women from neighboring communities.
They chanted solidarity songs in Igbo, demanding an end to the extra-judicial killing of their sons who are often branded IPOB sympathizers or members and then killed, The Guardian reports.
Army Commanders should go- IPOB
Image:Vanguard
Meanwhile, the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB has demanded the removal of the Commanders of the 82 Division Enugu and 6 Division Port Harcourt of the Nigerian Army, saying that the killings in Enugu and Rivers states by terrorist herdsmen will not stop until the officers are transferred out.
IPOB alleged that the two Army officers were deployed to the military formations in Enugu and Port Harcourt for sinister reasons.
In a statement by IPOB Media and Publicity Secretary, Comrade Emma Powerful, the group alleged that the commanders "were sent to spread Fulani and Boko Haram terror in the South East and South-South and to prepare the ground for the Fulani cabal to rig the forthcoming election.”
The statement read: “We, the global movement of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, under the leadership of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, wish to inform the general public particularly, Biafrans as well as the international community that the 82 Division Enugu and 6 Division Port Harcourt and their Commanders are the people behind the deployment of Fulani terrorist herdsmen who have escalated the recent killings and kidnappings that are going on in the two states of Enugu and Rivers States.
“The two Commanders were instructed to ensure Fulani herdsmen take over South East and Rivers States. They were assigned to the Nigerian Army’s 82 Division Enugu and 6 Division Port Harcourt Rivers States for two sinister objectives: firstly to spread Fulani and Boko Haram terror in Biafraland and secondly, to prepare the ground for the Fulani cabal to use them and the Army in rigging the forthcoming Nigerian selection process called an election,” IPOB said.
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