Date Published: 05/06/09

HURIWA wants Onoh imortalized

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, (HURIWA), a democracy inclined Non-Governmental Organization has on Wednesday described the death of the second Republic Executive Governor of Old Anambra Sate Chief Christian Chukwuemeka Onoh as a monumental loss of Nigeria’s greatest political activist and called on the Federal Anambra and Enugu State Governments to immortalize this great statesman by providing good governance to Nigerians and citizens of the two South East states.

The Rights group also advised the President Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua to grant the late Chief Onoh a post humous national honour because of the ideals of electoral reforms, anti-corruption and good governance that the late politician epitomized during his life time.

HURIWA also called on both the state administrations in Anambra and Enugu to name two giant edifices or educational institutions like the Institute for management and Technology Enugu (IMT) after the memory of chief Onoh.

Specifically, the former helmsman of old Anambra State between September to December 1983 whose four year democratic tenure was truncated by the military, died on Tuesday May 5 th 2009 at the age of 82.

HURIWA in a media release by its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, advised the Federal Ministry of Information and Communication to introduce television documentaries to celebrate the lives and times of great statesmen like chief Onoh as a way of radically transforming the orientation of the Nigerian citizens to once more embrace honesty, forthrightness, political tolerance and constructive dialogues as the hallmarks of good democracy.

According to HURIWA; “We followed closely the teachings and practical examples of the late Chief Christian Chukwuemeka Onoh while he was alive and as Human Rights practitioners, we can attest without any shadow of doubts that Chief Onoh was a great statesman who even at the risk of his life protested the electoral robbery that characterized the 2003 and 2007 elections. He was physically brutalized by soldiers but he never gave up his teachings and ideals of transparent free and fair elections in Nigeria. Chief Christian Onoh as the name depicted, lived a fruitful christian life of truth, social Justice, and progress”