HURIWA Deplores lack of collective actions by South East Governors against insecurity and kidnappings: Calls on FGN to Institute judicial panel on military onslaught, killings in South-East

ORU Leonard

Worried by the spate of well coordinated kidnappings by suspected armed Fulani herdsmen in Imo River Bridge neat Umuna Okigwe, Enugu/Lokpanta/Okigwe Roads and the many instances of kidnappings in Owerri and other urban centres of the Igbo speaking South East of Nigeria, a foremost  Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA) on Sunday, reiterated her advocacy on the urgent need for governors, political stakeholders and traditional institutions to collectively brainstorm and work out implementable measures to check the growing threats to security of South East of Nigeria by suspected armed Fulani terrorists. HURIWA said the continuous successes recorded by these terrorists demonstrates the failures of the armed security forces or are they deliberate acts by heads of the armed security agencies domiciled in the South East and controlled by the President to continue to do nothing whilst security, law and order take a turn for the Worst leading to the eventual economic collapse of the Igbo Stayes?

HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement, said from military exercises to other independent onslaughts, military men have allegedly committed extrajudicial killings in the South-East geopolitical zone, going by accounts of witnesses.

One of such horrific executions is that of about 14 youths at Awo Omamma in the Oru East Local Government Area of Imo State on July 17, 2022. Whilst members of the community and eyewitnesses said operatives of the state-owned Ebubeagu security outfit shot dead the victims identified as wedding guests, the Imo State Government alleged that the victims were “bandits” engaged in a gun duel with security agents.

The Department of State Services however erroneously labelled the victims as members of the Eastern Security Network of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra. Already, according to reports, more than 300 persons killed in 2021 in the zone alone.

Like the DSS, the Nigerian Army, the police, and other state actors have been accused by eyewitnesses and family members of the victims of executing their people.

HURIWA has also urged relevant human rights and judicial committees in both chambers of the National Assembly including the Senate and the House of Representatives to institute judicial panel of inquiry to probe the outrageous onslaught and alleged killings of civilians in the South-East geopolitical zone.