Mr. Jean-Claude Junker, the blunt, strong-willed and battle-tested
President of the European Commission blew hot about the precarious plight
of the Igbo people and the dangers faced by members of the Indegenous
People Of Biafra (IPOB) in Nigeria lastweek.
He said “it is the people’s right to agitate and make a request from their
government. Self-determination is a right enshrined in the United Nation
Charter.
The people of Biafra have every right to request for a referendum. They
have been in this struggle for a while now. They have never killed or shot
a bullet instead they are the victims of attacks and murder. The EU hereby
condemns the brutal attack on IPOB members and leadership under the
pretentious disguise of a military exercise (Operation Python Dance). The
Nigerian military is warned to adopt democratic tenets in handling
citizens. The EU will not sit by idly and watch things go undemocratic in
the largest economy of the West African region”.
This is an excellent assesment of the situation and it provides a timely
warning to the Buhari administration about their grave indiscretions and
obvious excesses.
Yet instead of addressing the deep concerns that the EU, Amnesty
International, the United Nations and many other notable players and
organisations on the world stage have about what is going on in Nigeria,
Mr. Lai Mohammed, President Buhari’s Minister of Information and a man who
told us just a few years ago that it was wrong and unlawful to ban Boko
Haram, had only the following to say:
“IPOB is a group sponsored by a coalition of political parties and looters
who are bent on derailing the fight on corruption embarked upon by
Buhari-APC led government.”
Such unadulterated poppycock and pernicious lies and such baseless
allegations and nonsensensical assertions, even when they come from a man
whose credibility is at best questionable, beggars belief.
Instead of attacking and insulting those of us that have condemned the
slaughter of Igbos and alleging that we are sponsoring IPOB the Buhari
government would do well to consider Jean Claude Junker’s words and what
the European Union have said about the barbaric killing of the Igbo and
the universal right of self-determination which is protected and
guaranteed by international law.
Since when has it been acceptable or the norm to unleash the dogs of war
against a group of innocent, unarmed and defenceless young people and
their colourful leader simply because they dared to ask for a referendum?
The fact of the matter is that whether anyone likes it or not, the attempt
to break, subjugate, demonise, belittle, villify and wipe out the Igbo
race through the auspices of intimidation, disinformation, manipulation of
the media, mass murder and ethnic cleansing by the Buhari administration
shall fail.
The truth is that this whole thing is not about IPOB but about the
consistent expression of an irrational, illogical and pathological hatred
of the Igbos by the maximum ruler of the Nigerian state.
And if he gets away with it and manages to achieve his sinister and
nefarious objective he will come after the Yoruba, the Ijaw, the Tiv and
everyone else in a matter of time!
That is why it is important to refuse to be intimidated, to stand firm, to
hold the line, to resist him with every fibre of our being and to insist
on the restructuring and the renegotiation of Nigeria.
Fifty years after our brutal and genocidal civil war we have learnt
nothing about the cataclysmic and devastating consequences and spiritual
implications of slaughtering innocent people in the name of keeping
Nigeria one.
Why do you think nothing works in our country and that our people are mostly
unfulfilled, poor, miserable, afflicted and deprived? Why do you think
there is so much suffering in our nation despite the fact that we have
been blessed with so many human and mineral resources? It is God’s
judgement.
Until we stop electing pyschopaths, sociopaths and cruel men of blood into
office and until our leaders stop killing innocent people whose only
“crime” is to express their desire to be free from slavery, bondage and
tyranny and to be allowed to determine their own future nothing will or
can change for the better in our beleaguered country.
As long as the ethnic cleansing and mass murder continues and as long as
our people cheer on our leaders as they commit these heinous crimes
against humanity Nigeria will continue to be a basket case of a nation
which is ruled by unrepentant and wicked tyrants, garrulous court jesters
and certified village idiots.
If we continue to condone and refuse to desist from state sponsored
repression and the mass murder of Igbos, northern Christians, Shiite
Muslims, Niger Deltans or any other group of people who are seen by our
collective oppressers as soft and easy targets our nation will continue to
be perceived as an abominable and accursed dwarf that crawls around like a
helpless, crippled and stunted child in the comity of nations.
Nigeria was once the hope of the black man but sadly in the last two years
she has become an embarrasment and burden to Africa and a reference point
for everything that is reprehensible and shameful in the world.
A nation where savage and insensitive beasts murder innocent men, women
and children in the sanctity of their homes whilst the people cheer them
on and embrace their murderous barbarity with joy and glad tidings.
A nation where political opponents can be locked up for years without any
recourse to the courts and without any form of due process.
A nation where opposition members and dissidents are villified and
subjected to every form of shame, malevolence and indignity simply because
they refuse to bow before the maximum ruler and worship him as a living
deity.
Can God’s prescence possibly be in such an arrangement and can God’s
blessing possibly be in such a place?
Chief Mike Ozekhome SAN, one of the true crusaders for justice and human
rights in Nigeria and a man of remarkable fortitude and immense courage
captured the mood and painted an accurate picture of the situation when he
said the following:
“The Fulani herdsmen who go on rampage daily, maiming, rapiing and killing
and those responsible for the Agatu massacre, Shiites massacre, Southern
Kaduna pogrom, indiscriminate killings, brazen quit notice givers across
Nigeria, etc, have never been arrested, prosecuted, let alone been
proscribed and stigmatised as terrorist organisations. We must surely have
and operate two sets of laws for two sets of people in Nigeria”.
How true this is! Yet even if the majority within the Nigerian political
class and media are not prepared or able to confront and expose this great
evil and speak truth to power, the international media, who are thoroughly
and understandably mortified and shocked by what is unfolding in our
country, are evidently ready to do so.
For example the Washington-based Newsweek International Magazine, in an
excellent article written by Mr. Connor Gaffey just last week, focused on
the fact that “many Biafran Christians” had been subjected to
“extra-judicial killings” by a northern Muslim-controlled and led army.
They condemned the activities of the Nigerian military in the east in very
strong terms, decried the dangerous situation that is unfolding in Nigeria
and echoed President Olusegun Obasanjo’s laudable call for dialogue
between the IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and Buhari.
In their own contribution to the debate the respected New York-based
Huffington Post published the following artice which was written by Mr.
Bruce Feinn, a highly celebrated and distinguished human rights lawyer and
a former Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan administration. He wrote:
“The United Nations will live in infamy for lending its megaphone on
Tuesday, September 19, 2017, to Nigeria’s elected military dictator
Muhammadu Buhari.
The Hausa-Fulani Muslim strongman is currently orchestrating genocide as
defined by the Genocide Convention against Nigeria’s 50 million Igbo
people because of their ethnicity and unwavering devotion to Christianity.
Buhari’s genocide marks the culmination of a long train of Biafran
subjugation by radical Hausa-Fulani Islamic terrorists. The dictator’s
power is anchored to an illegitimate constitution decreed by a military
dictator in 1999 to hold the Christian Biafran people in bondage to
Hausa-Fulani Muslims. Nigeria’s constitution has never been approved by
Nigerians.
Last June, Buhari tacitly endorsed a Hausa-Fulani threat to expel by force
and violence and to plunder 11 million Igbos in twelve northern Nigerian
states that have adopted Sharia as their legal codes if they did not
abandon their Igbo homes and businesses by October 1, 2017. During the
past few years in northern Nigeria, Hausa-Fulani terrorists have destroyed
thousands of churches and religious schools and displaced millions of
Christian Biafrans.
Hundreds of innocent civilians have died and more have been injured or
terrorized by Nigeria’s military acting under Buhari’s direction in the
last week alone. A courageous and influential Biafran leader, Nnamdi Kanu,
has had his home attacked and quarantined by Nigeria’s armed forces and
his followers killed. Grisly videos and photos taken at scenes of the
harrowing crimes are conclusive. What they prove amounts to state
terrorism—the systematic employment of violence to intimidate or coerce a
civilian population.
Instead of providing Buhari a megaphone, the United Nations should be
expelling Nigeria from membership under Article 6 of the United Nations
Charter. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should be referring
the dictator and his henchmen like Army Chief of Staff Lt. General Tukur
Yusuf Buratai to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court,
Fatou Bensouda, to investigate for complicity in genocide. The UNSC should
also be imposing an arms embargo on Nigeria under Chapter VII of the
United Nations Charter until the right of the Biafran people to
self-determination is secured through a free and fair referendum conducted
by the United Nations Electoral Unit. At present, dictator Buhari is
diverting arms purchased for ostensible use against Boko Haram, an
international terrorist organization, to the terrorizing of Biafran
Christians. Buhari has no interest in defeating Boko Haram because its
threat triggers military and financial assistance from the United States
in its global war on terrorism.
These sanctions against Nigeria would honor twin objectives of the United
Nations: (1) “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for
the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international
law can be maintained;” and, (2) “promoting and encouraging respect for
human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to
religion”.
The genocide of Biafrans is not a “domestic” matter within the exclusive
jurisdiction of Nigeria. Genocide is a crime against all of mankind which
concerns every country. Moreover, if dictator Buhari is permitted to kill
and enslave Christian Biafrans with impunity, Nigeria could degenerate
into a Hausa-Fulani Islamic theocracy and could become a state sponsor of
terrorism. Nigeria’s example would embolden the persecution of Christians
elsewhere.
Nigeria’s 190 million inhabitants make it the most populous nation in
Africa. It is a model not only in West Africa but throughout the
continent. It is too important for its fate to be left to the roll of the
dice.
The international community planted the seeds of contemporary Nigerian and
African strife by arbitrarily carving up the continent in favor of
colonial powers at the1884-1885 Berlin Conference. The United Nations is
saddled with a moral obligation to help remedy the dystopias spawned by
many of its key members.
While the suffering and persecution of Burma’s Muslim Rohingya have captured
headlines and the attention of the United Nations High Commissioner on
Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, Nigeria’s far worse oppression of
Biafrans has been largely ignored. It is difficult to resist the
conclusion that the international human rights community squints when
blacks kill blacks”.
He concluded by saying, “Chad had its Hissene Habre, Libya had its Muammar
Gaddafi and Nigerian President Buhari should learn from those examples
before continuing his genocidal murders and torture of Biafrans. Justice
will pursue Buhari as tenaciously as the Furies pursued Orestes. He would
tremble if he reflected that God is just, and that His justice will not
sleep forever”.
These are valid and legitimate observations and laudable assertions from a
respected
individual that has dedicated his entire life to the cause of protecting
human rights and a medium that prides itself on the highest standard of
literary excellence and investigative journalism.
Let us hope that President Muhammadu Buhari and his military commanders
are listening!