A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has renewed it call on President Muhammadu Buhari to order an end to the serial persecution of the detained and dehumanised leader of the now proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, to end insecurity in the South East.
Kanu is facing sundry charges that he is leading agitation for self-determination and calling for a referendum on self-government for the Indigenous People of Biafra also known as the South East of Nigeria.
HURIWA made the call in a statement on Sunday, endorsed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Kanu, saying if the President orders for an end to the unjust persecution of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu he, the President,would achieve a lasting end to the violence and needless killings of innocent Nigerians in the South East by persons pursuing different ideological interests, including the majority angered by the unjust incarceration of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
HURIWA, according to the statement, maintains that the otherwise very peaceful agitation for the convocation of a National Referendum by IPOB to determine which regions in Nigeria would opt for self-determination, in compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states in Article one the essence of self determination, does not amount to separatist tendencies.
The rights advocacy group faulted the charges framed against Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, including the allegation of terrorism because HURIWA believes that the leader of the proscribed IPOB, contrary to the wide spread innuendos and factually inaccurate charges that he is a rebel, is a citizen who has abiding faith in the integrity and functionality of the Nigerian judicial system and this is at variance with the accusations that he is a rebel who has no regards for the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 as amended.
HURIWA said Kanu has, so far, instituted up to half a dozen of litigations seeking various redress of the grave abuses of his constitutionally guaranteed civil, political and human rights as a citizen of both Nigeria and Great Britain, within the legal framework of Section 6 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
HURIWA recalled that the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu has recently, lodged fresh suit before the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, insisting that preventing him from wearing his native Igbo attire, Isi-Agu, for his ongoing trial, would amount to an infringement on his fundamental human rights.
“This is certainly not the character of a rebel who seeks the disintegration of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and so keeping him perpetually in the dungeons of the Department of State Services amounts to egregious and grave violations of his fundamental human rights, just as the Rights group has once more canvassed unconditional freedom for Nnamdi Kanu and thousands of other unjustly detained Igbo youths considered to be loyal IPOB,” HURIWA said, adding that the continuous uprising in the South East was being stoked by the continuous illegal detention of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and thousands of his loyalists in different detention facilities.
“HURIWA faulted the hypocritical claims by President Muhammadu Buhari of the so-called non-interference in the affairs of the judiciary, just as the group said legally speaking, the Federal Attorney-General can terminate an unjust persecution of a citizen such as the category of the active serial persecution of Citizen Nnamdi Kanu and thousands of detained innocent Igbo youths accused of being separatists,” the statement added.
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