By Chibuike Nwabuko
ABUJA (Sundiata Post) – International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety) has called on the Federal Government, security agencies, Southeast/Southsouth leaders and Igbos resident in the northern Nigeria to take seriously the threat issued to Igbos by the Northern Youths.
Intersociety said the millions of Alamajiris in Northern Nigeria have for decades served as tools for group violence or ethno-religious militancy and used for perpetration and perpetuation of series of anti-Igbo pogroms in Northern Nigeria.
While calling on the Federal Government to be proactive in its actions to bring those who issued the threat to book, the group condemned what it described as manifest bias and inactions or deliberate omissions of security agencies to act on the recent incitement to genocide’s utterances of Northern youths.
Intersociety said this in an open letter on Wednesday signed by Emeka Umeagbalasi and four others to Acting President Yemi Osinabajo; Inspector General of Police; Ministers of Defense & Interior; Chiefs of Defense, Air, Naval & Army Staffs; National Security Adviser; Directors General of SSS & NIA; Executive Governors of the 19 Northern States; Executive Governors of the 11 Southeast & South-south States; Deputy President of Senate & Southeast/South-south Senators; House of Rep Members and All Igbo Citizens Resident in Northern Nigeria.
The Group which expressed shocked and disappointed that till date, the Federal Government of Nigeria and its security agencies have deliberately and woefully ignored the genocide prone early warning signals stemming from Northern youths and their elders’ incitement to genocide and carried on as if nothing has happened or will happen on or before 1st October 2017, called on Acting President Osinbajo to take necessary actions as a matter of conscientious impartiality, inexcusability and uttermost immediacy.
Intersociety said, “The manifest bias and inactions or deliberate omissions to act by Nigeria’s security agencies and their headships concerning the recent incitement to genocide’s utterances of Northern youths and elders are a clear repeat, if not worse than similar lame duck and lukewarm attitudes of the military leaders of the then Federal Military Government of Nigeria and their Northern Nigerian regional counterparts during the 1966 year-long anti Igbo pogroms; leading to death of 45,000-50,000 mostly Igbo defenseless citizens and generation of at least 1.62million Southern IDPs dominated by Igbo citizens”.
The Group frowned at what it described as lopsided and ethno-religious biased security agencies and headship; adding that it further makes the less protected Igbos most endangered.
According to the Group, “Today, in the so called pluralistic country of 386 tribes of about 174million people, 95% of the country’s heads of its security agencies are headed by the people of Hausa-Fulani Muslim stock with estimated 80% northern population dominated by Muslims having access to the country’s public policing and safety as against 30% for predominant Christian population of Igbo stock. The citizens of Igbo Ethnic Nationality are also the least protected and most endangered in Nigeria and their access to security protection and justice system in the country since 1970s or before then is nothing to write home about”.
“Despite being the most less troublesome citizens in Nigeria in the areas of political, terrorism, genocidal, group, ethno-religious and insurrectionist crimes, citizens of Igbo Ethnic Nationality are indiscriminately arrested, detained, framed up and shot, maimed or killed in hundreds by ethno-religiously lopsided or northern Muslim dominated security agencies and their headships; while citizens of the North particularly Muslims who engage in such crimes or turned themselves against the laws of the land with reckless abandon; are rarely apprehended and punished”.
“Heavens would have let loose if the said incitement to genocide utterances were made by youths and elders of the Igbo Ethnic Nationality. The authorities of the SSS, Nigerian Army and Police Force would have since run riot on them, dismembered their bodies with hundreds of live bullets and even razed their villages or family houses or properties”.
It maintained that “since 1945 past regimes have applied policies of structural, physical or direct violence against Igbo Ethnic Nationality to the extent that a good number of non-Igbo People of the South-south have lost 3.5million citizens and properties valued at over $50billion. Stressing that Igbo Ethnic Nationality had also from the same period lost huge portions of their ancestral lands and communities through criminal boundary adjustments and balkanization of their ancestral communities; leading to several Igbo communities criminally ceded to “non-Igbo States” of Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Edo, Delta, Rivers, Benue and Kogi. In Rivers and Delta States where the Igbo People are largest and second largest ethnic nationalities respectively, they are abominably referred as “non-Igbo States”, the open letter added.
Accusing the present government of criminalizing non-violent self-determination struggle of the Igbos while closing its eyes on Northern Youth’s genocidal threat the Group said, “nonviolent self-determination agitation by way of active or ghost street protests or processions; or open street or sit-at-home protests recognized and recommended by the UN and African Union Systems are wickedly criminalized and demonized by the present Federal Government and its security agencies whereas incitement to genocide outlawed and condemned by the same UN and AU is canonized by the same Administration.
While commenting on what it branded erroneous notion that All Igbo People must return home in exchange for Biafra agitation, Intersociety said “It is atrocious and abominable to force a population out of their occupational, cultural and political residency on account of their race, tribe, ethnicity, gender, language or religious and political affiliations or considerations”. Stating that in non-war or non-armed conflict situations, such actions amount to commission of crimes against humanity or incitement to genocide; and in armed conflict situations, they amount to war crimes and incitement to genocide; punishable under several international humanitarian and human rights treaties or statutes including the 1998 Rome Statute of the Int’l Criminal Court and the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
Intersociety informed that quest for political, cultural, economic or territorial self- determination through non-violence has nothing to do with or does not mandatorily require exodus of the citizens of the agitating ethnic group resident in particular part or other parts of the existing or mother political territory. Political, territorial or cultural self-determination using non-violence is fundamentally rested on assertion of rights for territorial, political and cultural identification or autonomy; as case may be; and does not mandatorily require the pastoral citizens of the agitating territory to leave their pastoral abodes and return and compulsorily live in their ancestral territory.
The Group said its earlier call on all Igbo citizens who are resident in Northern Nigeria to come back to their ancestral homes in Igbo Land before 1st October 2017 was an interim self-safety measure to save their lives first and avoid being trapped and get massacred as was the case in 1966. Exonerating itself from call for total or permanent relocation of all pastoral Igbo citizens from Northern Nigeria and cocooning them in Igbo Land, Intersociety observed that despite the fact that the State of Israel gained its Independence since 1948, yet 50% of its pastoral people and 90% of their investments are still located outside Israel.
Intersociety therefore called on Buhari/Osinbajo government to sit up and do what the constitution stipulated in concerning the actions of the Northern Youth or be held responsible should anything untoward or genocidal happens to any Igbo citizen resident in the Northern Nigeria.
“Where the Federal Government continues to fail woefully in its sacred and clearly spelt out constitutional duties, the Southeast and South-south public office holders should devise other constitutional and internationally legitimized means such as drawing the attention of international community including the UN, AU, ECOWAS, the Papacy and members of the G8 and permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as EU, over steady and thickening attempts or efforts by killer and genocidal elements in Nigeria to plunge the country into Rwandan-like genocide of 1994, Intersociety added.
Sundiata Post recalls that Northern Youths last week gave all Igbos resident in northern Nigeria three month to relocate back to the south east or face a repeat of what happened in 1966 should they fail to heed to the call and also advised all northern in the south east to return to their respective northern states before October 1, 27017.