Arrest service chiefs now; they have failed woefully, HURIWA tells Buhari

A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to order the immediate arrest and prosecution, for possible collusion and complicity, all relevant internal security heads located in the South East states following the high spate of insecurity in the region.

HURIWA said such a step would prove that the President has no hand in the growing insecurity in the South East which include attacks on strategic National security assets.

The rights group made the call following the reported attack by gunmen on an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Igboeze North Local Government Area of Enugu State last Wednesday

INEC Chairman, Information, Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, confirmed the development in a statement on Thursday, revealing that two voter registration machines were damaged by the assailants during the attack.

INEC, according to Okoye who endorsed the statement, disclosed that its officers were attacked conducting the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise at  Community Primary School, Umuopu in Umuozzi Ward 19, in IgboezeNorth.

Okoye said that the gunmen fired sporadically into the air to disperse registrants and registration officials and that in the ensuing stampede, one INEC staff sustained injuries and was receiving treatment in a hospital; while two voter registration machines and personal items of the staff such as mobile phones, were lost. The incident prompted INEC to suspend Ward level registration of voters in Igboeze North.

Reacting to the incident in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA specifically condemned what is described as “the deliberate and orchestrated dearth of capacity to crush the armed insurrectionists paid to destroy the economic and political life of Enugu and South Eastern States with a view to condemning the Igbo speaking States to the backyards of political progress towards 2023 elections.”

“The specific targeting of the offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Enugu is a symbolic agenda to demonstrate that the old Eastern regional capital is unstable and thereby the largest concentration of Igbo-speaking persons of voting age without the Permanent Voter Cards won’t be able to enlist to obtain the vital electoral document to enable the Igbos exercise their democratic and civic rights during the elections next year,” the group added.

The statement reads in part: “HURIWA predicted if no such radical steps are taken and the governors set up transparent and accountable vigilante involving all stakeholders in the South East, then these foreign forces destroying assets of Igbo states will up their game to deny Igbos of votes in 2023 and participation in the census which is programmed to favour a phantom high population in the North.

“HURIWA is convinced that the attackers and those funding the sophisticated attacks in Enugu and other South East states are members of the Deep State from the federal capital territory connected to Miyetti Allah Cattle Owners Association whose only aim is to destabilise the Igbo-speaking states even as the group said the inability of all the security institutions based in the South East and controlled from Abuja to arrest and end these vicious circles of attacks means that there is more to it than the ordinary eyes can see therefore necessitating that President Muhammadu Buhari should adopt a radical decision by arresting any Police Commissioner, Director of DSS, and the General Officer Commanding the 82 Division, Nigerian Army in Enugu, for alleged complicity since it is humanly impossible for such massive scales of criminality and crimes to last more than two years with no breakthrough on the side of the law enforcement agencies.”

HURIWA challenged the governors and political leaders of Igbo states to wake up and take measures to stamp out this well-coordinated political violence targeting Igbos.