IgweochaCable Editor South More outrage, yesterday, continued to trail the threat by the army to declare state of emergency in the s...
IgweochaCable Editor South
More outrage, yesterday, continued to trail the threat by
the army to declare state of emergency in the southeast states jf their
governors allowed further attack on security forces.
Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU) and the
Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) have described the statement credited to
the Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai, as a reckless talk taken too
far.
The two grassroots-based organisations like Ohanaeze Ndigbo
in its recent statement, insisted that the army chief lacked the constitutional
powers to suspend democratic institutions and declare emergency rule, adding
that the statement had further fuelled their apprehension of a conspiracy to
wipe Igbo people out of Nigeria.
ASETU’s National President, Chief Emeka Diwe and National
Secretary, Gideon Adikwuru in a statement accused the military of plotting
another inglorious exercise in the mould of “Operation Python Dance I and II”
which claimed lives of several innocent Igbo youths.
“By harbouring a sinister intention to let loose state
apparatus and state-sanctioned violence on an innocent people who have endured
many years of agony; political marginalization, unjustifiable brutal killings
and economic deprivation, Buratai has presented himself as morally and
professionally unfit to continue to head the military establishment of Nigeria.
“What this plan to declare a state of emergency in the South
East means is a deliberate move to stoke a conflagration of insecurity in our
land using national security, so as to depopulate the region and finally hand
over our land to Fulani herdsmen.
“Our fears and suspicion that the silence of the security
agencies over the wanton killings across our land by Fulani herdsmen is a
calculated attempt at ethnic cleansing has been confirmed by Buratai, and we
wish to once again draw the attention of the international community to the
fact that the Igbo in Nigeria have become sorely an endangered ethnic
nationality.
“Nigeria is today a country at war with itself. Bloodletting
has become a norm, and human lives carry no value anymore.
“Much of the North is today under terrorist occupation, and
the military, which first duty is to ensure the territorial integrity of the
country by warding off external aggression and quelling internal insurrection,
has appeared confused and at a loss with the situation.
“Yet, the leadership of the Army has found it pleasing to
lay siege and militarize the civil spaces in the relatively peaceful South East
region through various reprehensible phases of Operation Python Dance. This
latest effort to find a pretext to justify a state of emergency in our region
is just a facet in the unfolding continuum to annihilate us,” ASETU stated.
The town unions, therefore, called on President Muhammadu
Buhari to quickly sack Gen. Buratai in the interest of peace and national
cohesion, and most importantly, “to prove to our people that his series of
glaring and undisguised hate actions against us; do not have the seal of state
authority.”
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