Remains of Excellent Moses By Taiwo-Hassan Adebayo Like most brides-to-be, Queen Nwazuo, 30, was beside herself with anticipation. Her ...
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| Remains of Excellent Moses |
Like most brides-to-be, Queen Nwazuo, 30, was beside herself
with anticipation. Her wedding to her fiancé, Monday Bakor, was scheduled for
next February and the preparation for the event had long begun. But the rosy
future the student of Abia State Polytechnic looked forward to with her lover
was truncated by bullets from rampaging troops of the Nigerian Army, who were
on a reprisal mission in Oyigbo, Rivers State.
Ms Nwazuo, an orphan, was shot dead on Thursday, October 22,
as she and Mr Bakor were trying to lock the latter’s shop at 12B Ehi Street as
residents scurried to safety from soldiers who were shooting indiscriminately
at unarmed civilians in Oyigbo town. Oyigbo lies west of the Imo River, the
location of the oil wells that straddle Abia State and Rivers State in
Nigeria’s Niger Delta.
“They did not care,”
a distraught Mr Bakor told PREMIUM TIMES as he sobbed intermittently. “They
were directly shooting at people. It was not stray bullets. They were directly
shooting people. They killed people and they were using grammar to explain it.
“They came to the street where people were and I saw
everybody as they were locking their shops. I was rushing to lock mine when a
bullet pierced through the iron door of my shop. I saw particles all over me
but the bullet hit my fiancée and she fell.
“I did not even care if they would kill me. I carried her to
the hospital with the help of a person who brought a bike. It was at the
hospital, Divine Light, that she was confirmed dead. Nobody was confronting
anybody in that area. I am not IPOB. I don’t meet with anybody. You can only
see me at my house and church and that shop.
“I am angry. They killed innocent people and they are still
denying. They killed a woman I am about to marry next February. I opened this
shop for us to make some money to use for her return to school.”
Mr Bakor said he and his late lover had fled Oyigbo to Etche
on Wednesday, before they returned on Thursday, believing calm had returned. He
said he took the woman’s remains to a mortuary around Timber Road in Oyigbo, a
claim verified by PREMIUM TIMES. Informants at another mortuary at Imo River,
which a resident, Emmanuel Maduabuchi helped locate, said families were
bringing dead bodies to deposit amid the siege.
“It was divine grace that I was not also killed when I took
her to hospital and later to the mortuary. Everywhere was dry and there were
shootings everywhere,” he said.
Another victim, just like several others who were killed by
the troops, Excellent Moses was, on the evening that the fatal cockktail opened
in Oyigbo, standing hundred metres from the Mbano Camp Junction where an
armoured combat vehicle of Nigerian soldiers was stationed, powering gunfires
to different directions . He was hit by a bullet. Fallen and soaked in blood,
Mr. Moses, a young Christian minister, let out a loud painful screech, before
some low dying moans.
His friend by whose house he was standing, Willy Callistus
(surname not included over safety concern), hurtled towards him. Given a
fireman’s carry, Mr Moses was taken to a nearby hospital, Glorious Medical
Centre.
“By the time I got to
the hospital after his friends called me, my son was already dead,” Mr Moses’
mum, a civil servant, visited by PREMIUM TIMES, began, struggling to hold back
tears. “I saw two holes, one on his chest and the other by his side, meaning
the bullet pierced through the front and blew open his side. His shirt was also
perforated.”
Mr Moses, a pastor serving at the Living Faith Church,
Igwuruta, a Port Harcourt suburb, had travelled to his Oyigbo family home on
Tuesday, October 20, to get a carpenter and interior decorator for some work at
his Igwuruta apartment. It was a journey of no-return. He was shot dead by
soldiers, his family and two friends, who witnessed the fatal incident, said.
“They said soldiers did not kill anybody in Oyigbo but my
own first son was killed and those who witnessed the incident and carried him,
like these boys (pointing to Willy Callistus, and Emmanuel Maduabuchi, another
of Mr Moses’ friend) said the bullet was from the APC (armoured personnel
carrier) at the (Mbano Camp) Junction,” his mother, a civil servant, told
PREMIUM TIMES at her Ohita Street family home.
This reporter saw bullet holes on the houses close to the
spot where Mr Moses stood before he was killed.
The video in this tweet has been verified to that of a young
man called Justice, who was shot by Nigerian forces in Oyigbo. We showed the
video to a set of young men at a football field off the road that leads to the
Glorious Medical Centre. They identified him, as did Willy Callistus
separately.
A brutal reprisal
mission to Oyigbo
The killer soldiers launched out on a vengeful mission after
mobs, whom the authorities alleged were members of the Indigenous People of
Biafra (IPOB), an Igbo separatist group, killed some security personnel. As
fully-loaded military trucks rolled into the town, soldiers, armed to the
teeth, jumped down in combat fashion, then took strategic positions on the
streets of Oyigbo, also called Obigbo. The carnage soon began in earnest.
The official narrative provided by authorities was that the troops
were deployed to the town to fish out separatists who murdered soldiers and
police officers. Authorities also said the soldiers were there to recover
stolen arms.
But under what seemed a deliberate blackout, with a 24-hour
curfew in force, the Nigerian Army inflicted a cocktail of devastation and
bloodshed on the town, a PREMIUM TIMES investigation found, based on
on-the-ground reporting, interviews with multiple sources, including families
of victims, witnesses, military, mortuary attendants and hospital sources, and
a review of verified citizen-generated videos and photos.
The soldiers took vengeance on defenceless people in what
ranks among the cruellest use of excessive force against unarmed civilians in
the country’s history. The carnage at Oyigbo is comparable, in its execution,
to the massacres in Odi (1999) and Zaki Biam (2001), under former President
Olusegun Obasanjo; and Zaria(2015), under incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari.
Both leaders were military dictators before becoming democratically elected
presidents.
For several days between the last week of October and
November 3, soldiers, day and night, fired bullets around Oyigbo,
indiscriminately targeting unarmed civilians, several of whom were either
killed or injured, multiple witnesses, among them rescuers of victims, said.
They planted fears in the community and triggered forced displacements, with
residents fleeing westwards to Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, or
eastwards to neighbouring Imo and Abia States.
“My family was able to escape to Port Harcourt,” Christian
John told PREMIUM, adding that a friend, with whom he attended preparatory
lessons for the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examinations in
the past was killed during the shootings. He only identified the friend by his
first name, Olisa.
At Mbano Camp Junction, on the old road to Aba, the economic
nerve centre of Abia State, an armoured combat vehicle was stationed,
ferociously powering gunfires in different directions, according to multiple
witnesses, including residents and tricycle operators, who operate in the
vicinity. It was some hundred metres away from that spot that, Mr Moses, the
young Christian minister, was hit by a bullet.
Amid the siege on Oyigbo, gory pictures depicting man’s
inhumanity to man emerged on social media at the end of October and Rivers
State, once the main theatre of Niger Delta militancy, became Nigeria’s latest
epicentre of gross human rights abuses, competing with Lagos where soldiers
descended on peaceful protesters, killing yet an unknown number of them and
injuring several others.
As public concerns rose, #Oyigbo #Obigbo #Oyigbomassacre
trended on Twitter days after Mr Moses and several others, including at least
one child, whose case was verified by our reporter, were killed by the
soldiers. Many of the soldiers who executed the massacre were deployed from the
Operation Delta Safe camp protecting Imo River oil and gas installations,
sources familiar with the matter said.
The Terrible Things
of Oyigbo
“Terrible things happened in Oyigbo,” a worried Ifeanyi
Egesi said, as he drove this reporter towards the subdued community. On this
day, Mr Egesi was the only Port Harcourt airport cabman who agreed to take an
Oyigbo-bound passenger. Others were fear-stricken, aware of the grisly crimes
that had happened there and the possibility of being killed by soldiers.
Henry Shield, who told PREMIUM TIMES he had spoken with
people on the ground, including one person, Monday Bakor, whose fiancée, Queen
Nwazuo, was shot dead, said, “what happened in Oyigbo was total suspension of
people’s rights, like a declaration of martial law.”
Residents unable to flee the town complained that they were
left starving in their homes as they were unable to go to work or buy food to
eat for days because of the indiscriminate shootings by soldiers. They said
they only began to enjoy some reprieve after the 24-hour curfew was reviewed to
7 PM – 6 AM on November 3.
With a 24-hour curfew in force and with the Rivers State
Government and the army denying extra-judicial killings of innocent and
defenceless people and human rights abuses, a clear and factual picture of the
situation was slow to emerge.
During our week-long investigation in Oyigbo, we observed
that fears rang clear among the people and many of them had to clear their
telephones of pictures of victims or military in action over fear soldiers
could forcibly take their devices and punish them for having recorded abuses.
By interviewing several residents, many of them still
terrified, our reporting showed nearly every individual in Oyigbo is aware of
the abuses, having witnessed them happen, seen mourning families, or seen
fleeing residents and dead human beings abandoned by the roadside like the two
at Trailer Park.
We obtained disturbing pieces of evidence suggesting
war-grade violence by the military on unarmed people and challenged the claim
by the government and the army that the Oyigbo operation was only in search of
stolen arms and members of the separatist group, IPOB, accused of carnage.
Interviews with two senior military officers and a civilian
who works in a military barracks would later complement our on-the-ground
finding – the army deliberately went on a revenge offensive to “deal with” the
community for “harbouring” IPOB members., brushing aside any concern about
human rights violations.
Oyigbo Massacre
Victim — 14-year-old Victor Eme
Among multiple witnesses interviewed by PREMIUM TIMES, a
motorcyclist, who did not want his name mentioned, said he saw seven persons
die from gunshots fired by soldiers at three different locations.
He took our reporter, accompanied by Willy Callistus, to the
three locations. At one place, a right turn after the roundabout on Old Aba
Road, facing Imo River eastwards, three persons were said to have been killed
there. But the families refused to comment on the record, firmly rejecting
requests for details after confirming the fatalities only.
One family member said they were scared as soldiers were
stationed just across the Imo River bridge and that they remained suspicious
that the soldiers had planted informants among the civilian population.
Next was to Bernard Eme, who operates a restaurant on the
Old Aba Road, and had two of his brothers helping him. One of them, Victor, a
14-year old schoolboy, was hit by bullets during the siege of Oyigbo, Mr Eme
confirmed.
“We thought he (Victor) was in the shop during the shootings
but I was called that he was shot and lying on the ground. I said ‘no’ that he
was in the shop with my other brother but he left the shop when the other boy
had slept off,” Bernard said. He said neither he nor his brothers had any link
with IPOB.
He said Victor was taken to Heritage Hospital where he was
confirmed dead.
The third place the motorcyclist took PREMIUM TIMES to was
the market “by St. Paul Catholic Church” where three men were said to have been
shot dead. One person at Mr Eme’s restaurant corroborated this claim, apart
from traders, who also said their wares were destroyed.
Another Oyigbo
Massacre Victim — Francis Ejiogu
Francis Ejiogu, 28, described as a forklift operator and
phone businessman by his parents John and Stella Ejiogu, was hit by a flying
bullet on Thursday, October 22.
“He was not protesting, he was hit by stray bullets,” the
deceased’s friend, Victor Chidiebere, told PREMIUM TIMES. The late Francis,
also commonly called ‘Paapaa’, was described by his friends as a kind fellow.
He was with his grandmother on Location Road – which links
the Palace Road of the Oyigbo monarch, Mike Nwaji and Shell Road from Mbano
Camp Junction – when gunfire caught him, the father Mr Ejiogu, said. He was the
only son of his parents, who now have two surviving daughters.
“He was rushed to hospital by my in-laws at her maternal
grandmother’s place,” Mr Ejiogu said. But Francis died the following day, Friday,
October 23, at the Divine Light Hospital in Oyigbo.
Yet another Oyigbo
Massacre Victim — Emeka Onyeama
Emeka Onyeama lived with his younger sister in one of the houses
right of Mbano Camp Junction when one looks eastwards. Their house, visited by
PREMIUM TIMES, has a shop, which the sister uses for petty trade, and through
which their sleeping space is accessed.
He was a transport worker, helping the Junction’s tricycle
drivers solicit passengers, two of the drivers, Chidi (who wanted only his
first name published, concerned about his safety) and Emeka Chinemeram, said.
The two drivers took PREMIUM TIMES to the house Mr Onyeama
shared with her sister before his death. But the sister had left for their
village in Enugu State to report the killing of her brother to their parent,
neighbours said. The remains of Mr Onyeama were taken to the mortuary by his
sister, assisted by men using a motorcycle, neighbours and Mr Chidi said.
Mr Chinemeram said he had cleared his phone of photos of Mr
Onyeama’s remains and those of the two dead bodies at Trailer Park because he
was scared soldiers could seize his phone and find he had documented evidence
of their excesses.
“Six persons
confirmed dead at Glorious Hospital, Oyigbo”
For the days the soldiers besieged Oyigbo, six persons hit
by bullets were taken dead to Glorious Medical Centre, authoritative sources at
the private facility told PREMIUM TIMES. One of the six persons was Excellent
Moses whose grieving family PREMIUM TIMES visited.
“We confirmed six persons dead as they were brought
severally,” one person at the hospital said. “14 persons were admitted and we
referred some to the University of Port Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, UPTH.”
The hospital sources did not disclose the identities of those admitted and
transferred to the teaching hospital.
At the teaching hospital, Choba, in Port Harcourt, a front
desk nurse, identified as Mercy, confirmed victims from Oyigbo were referred to
the public facility. She declined to disclose details of patients, citing
hospital rules as reason.
But our reporter told another nurse that he was in search of
a friend who went missing in Oyigbo and believed to have been brought to the
teaching hospital.
The nurse checked the register for the fictitious name our
reporter provided. Of course, it was not found. However, the nurse disclosed
that there were Oyigbo victims admitted but that access to the wards would not
be granted since the fictitious name of the missing person our reporter
provided did not match any entry in the register.
But she said, “one person among those brought during the
incidents in Oyigbo is now dead, and was a Cameroonian, called Eriga. But there
was no serious person with him and he was on the bed there (pointing to one of
the beds in the hospital’s Accident and Emergency reception area) before he
died the following day.”
“Ambulance burnt with dead bodies inside”
The commercial motorcyclist, who said he witnessed how seven
persons were killed by soldiers, and led this reporter to the restaurant of Mr
Eme, whose 14-year old brother, Victor, was also killed, again took us to the
Market area to see and photograph a burnt ambulance in the middle of the road.
He said the ambulance was conveying dead bodies to the
mortuary around Imo River, just a few minutes’ drive from the market, when
soldiers blocked it and set it on fire.
One person, at Mr Eme’s restaurant, – who also corroborated
the motorcyclist’s claim of having witnessed fatal shootings of three persons at
the Market “by St. Paul Catholic Church” – confirmed the account on the burnt
ambulance with the dead bodies in it.
We saw and took photographs of buildings the motorcyclist
and residents said were razed by soldiers. One of such buildings, on Timber Road,
was used by IPOB members as a place of worship and they called it synagogue, we
were told. Another was razed by soldiers on suspicion it has links with IPOB
but residents said there was no link to the organisation.
Oyigbo suffered for
“harbouring” IPOB
We described our findings to the spokesperson of the Army’s
6th Division based in Port Harcourt, Charles Ekeocha, who asked if we had been
to Oyigbo, and then said “no comment”. Our letter of November 11 to the
Division’s General Officer Commanding (GOC) also detailed our findings. We did
not get a response by the time this story was published.
However, two senior officers and a barrack civilian worker
with knowledge of how the army mobilised for the Oyigbo operation, volunteered
some details, speaking anonymously.
They said the mood in the army high command after soldiers
were killed by suspected IPOB members was that of anger and inclination to
demonstrate strength and take vengeance.
That resonated with the soldiers whom our civilian source
said were told by a commander that order had come from “above to decimate all
IPOB elements.”
The army then decided to execute a brutal offensive against
the entire Oyigbo community because they accused the people of providing a
haven for IPOB, the sources said.
“All of them are accomplices,” one army source said, and
queried: “What were the village people, the traditional council, the local
government, the youth, the police, the SSS in Oyigbo doing when IPOB elements
were hoisting flags, like Boko Haram, painting building IPOB colour? They were
calling a place IPOB territory in our country and the people allowed that.
“Just the way Boko Haram declared territory, IPOB did that.
All people there are accomplices. So, everybody has to pay. There must be
consequences. They are now talking about human rights when action is being
taken against them.”
But the secretary to the Oyigbo Traditional Council,
Precious Enweruka, rejected the claim that the community harboured IPOB, saying
the proscribed group exists in other places and that the civilian community has
no security duty and capacity to block any association or people from
operating.
The army has no strong voice discouraging them against
rights abuses in Oyigbo, with the state governor, Mr Wike, saying the reprisal
operation was not targeted at innocent and defenceless people.
However, appearing to be referring to Mr Wike, our army
source said politicians should not be in a haste to call in the military for
internal law and order duties because we “are not trained to dialogue or
arrest. Soldiers are trained to kill.”
The spokesperson for the Rivers State Government, Paulinus
Nsirim, and his colleague, who is Mr Wike’s media aide, Kelvin Ebiri, declined
to comment for this report. We described our findings to Mr Nsirim and
mentioned that his principal’s claim on Oyigbo was false and misleading. Mr
Nsirim did not answer or return calls. He also did not respond to a text
message. Mr Ebiri asked to be called back after we told him our findings
contradict his principal’s claim. He did not answer repeated calls afterwards.
A lawyer and spokesperson for IPOB, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, did not
comment for this report even after repeated promises to do so.
IPOB
Led by fugitive, Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB is agitating for the
secession of the Igbo from Nigeria, decades after late Odumegwu Ojukwu first
mobilised the nationalist aspirations of the ethnic group to break away,
resulting in a 30-month civil war (1967-1970) that cost millions of lives.
With years of bad governance and government’s failure to
address the challenge of national integration, secessionist agitations were
reawakened by IPOB, leveraging people’s anger against the state.
In 2017, Nigeria proscribed IPOB and declared it a terrorist
organisation amid a major standoff with the army in Abia, the home state of Mr
Kanu.
The Imo River separates Mr Kanu’s native Abia State and
Oyigbo in Rivers State. This location, as well as being an indigenous Igbo
community, may have made Oyigbo the hotbed of IPOB activities in Rivers State,
which unlike Abia, is home to several other ethnic groups, including the Ogoni,
the Kalabari, the Okrika, and the Ikwerre, among others.
Despite its proscription, IPOB is becoming increasingly
radicalised, observers say, and its leader, Mr Kanu, continues to fire
incendiary remarks, usually against Abuja and the Muslim Hausa-Fulani north. In
Oyigbo, particularly, residents accuse the separatists of hoisting the Biafran
flag and of exhibiting violent tendencies.
Governor Wike has repeatedly denounced the group, insisting
the state subscribes to Nigeria’s corporate existence and indivisibility.
Oyigbo killings
triggered by Lekki Shooting, but more tragic
The shooting of peaceful #EndSARS protesters at Lekki Toll
Gate in Lagos on the night of Tuesday, October 20, immediately triggered a wave
of anarchic violence across parts of Nigeria, with mobs targeting police
stations and private and public assets.
The protests turned violent in Oyigbo too and mobs broke
into two police facilities, one on the expressway to Aba and the other at Afam,
stole arms and ammunition and set inmates free in the early hours of Wednesday,
October 21.
Residents said among the mobs were IPOB members, with whom
the police had endured a prolonged period of hostility. “It is hard to show
evidence that IPOB were the only ones that destroyed the stations and killed
the policemen but we, who know them, could identify them among the hoodlums,”
said one resident, Emmanuel Maduabuchi.
Four police officers were savagely hacked and burnt and
police stations were razed, the police and residents said. The spokesperson for
the police in Rivers State, Omoni Nnamdi, told PREMIUM TIMES that two of the
slain cops – Ona Amaechi and Sunday Dubol – were Inspectors, and the other two
– Swale Orlan and Umulla – were sergeants.
After it became clear the police had been overpowered,
soldiers intervened that morning, and one senior army officer said it was on
the invitation of Governor Wike. “As they saw soldiers arrive, they should have
withdrawn but they continued and murdered seven soldiers,” the army officer
said in Port Harcourt. “The soldiers were not killed. They were slaughtered by
IPOB.”
PREMIUM TIMES saw two burnt military vans at the market
before the Imo River bridge in Oyigbo.
The army did not grant requests by PREMIUM TIMES for the
names and ranks of the soldiers killed in Oyigbo. The requests were made to the
spokesperson of the 6 Division based in Port Harcourt, Mr Ekeocha, and via a
letter to the GOC for the Division.
“On Oyigbo, I have no comment,” said Mr Ekeocha, a Major. He
advised that a formal request for information be made – which we did – to the
GOC. The letter was not replied to after over a week. But two senior officers
spoke with PREMIUM TIMES, “frankly” detailing the motivation and actions of the
army in Oyigbo. They spoke with the understanding that they would not be named
because have no authority to speak to the press on the matter.
Residents said
soldiers withdrew in the morning of Wednesday.
“The shooting was too much,” Mr Maduabuchi said, referring
to the attacks he and other residents interviewed said were by people they
could identify as IPOB members. “They were using guns stolen from the police
stations and the soldiers had to leave that morning (Wednesday, October 21).”
Mr Wike declared a 24-hour curfew in a hurried effort to
contain the violence, which also saw Hausa and Igbo attack one another, and
sparked tension in the neighbouring community of Iriebe on Wednesday.
“But later in the evening the soldiers came back with
reinforcements and started attacking the whole community. That was when they
brought the APC (armoured personnel carrier),” Mr Maduabuchi said of the army’s
fatal reprisal.
It was on that evening that Excellent Moses, the minister,
was killed after being hit by bullets from the APC stationed at Mbano Camp
Junction, witnesses said.
Wike, army lied
Beginning from the evening of Wednesday, soldiers
re-mobilised and invaded Oyigbo. But with the media hardly gaining access, both
Mr Wike and the army continued to make official claims that the military
operation was aimed at arresting IPOB members and recovering stolen arms.
On Sunday, November 8, Igbo leaders and governors from the
Southeast zone visited Mr Wike in Port Harcourt on what they called a
fact-finding mission. During that visit, Mr Wike repeated the claim that the
military was in pursuit of IPOB whom he suggested were criminals. The visitors
accepted Mr Wike’s claim that defenceless residents, in the community majorly
occupied by the Igbo, were not targeted.
Particularly, Governors Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia and David
Umahi of Ebonyi said they had determined that what circulated on social media
as killings of unarmed civilians was fake news. Similarly, the President of the
Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Jim Nwodo, praised Mr Wike and rhetorically asked the audience
if there was any threat to them in Rivers State.
The visiting Igbo leaders were never in Oyigbo. But, perhaps
unknown to them, they were used to validate Mr Wike’s claim, a misleading
narrative aimed at covering up the army’s excessive use of force.
Mr Nwodo was twice contacted by phone but he said he could
not comment “for now” and he also did not reply a text message informing him
our findings showed his delegation was misled by Mr Wike. We could not get
through to the governors.
Our findings contradicted substantial parts of the claims by
the army and Mr Wike. While the soldiers indeed went after Oyigbo residents
suspected to be IPOB and suspected to have participated in the attacks on
security operatives and destroyed their buildings, they indiscriminately shot
at defenceless and innocent people, leaving many dead. They tortured residents
and several persons are missing in Oyigbo.
Samuel Mife, a resident, who runs a meat selling business
and also uses his motorcycle for business, said he saw people randomly arrested
and tortured by soldiers at Trailer Park area. He said he was later asked to
“hurriedly run” by a soldier whom he told his age and job.
“They continued to torture others before they released them
but five of them were taken away and have not returned since,” Mr Mife said of
an occurrence corroborated by two other persons at Trailer Park.
Mr Mife said he could go round the Trailer Park area, which
he called his area, to get details of other tortured and those missing. He
promised to facilitate access to those he said were tortured and the families
of those missing.
But when we tried to get through to him by telephone as he
advised, he did not answer after several attempts. Later his wife answered and
explained that her husband could no honour our “dangerous” request.
But an army source in Rivers State said “of course, we have
got some criminals” referring to Oyigbo people he called IPOB members and added
that “we have recovered one or two arms.”
And the police told PREMIUM TIMES they had “about 30”
people, suspected to have participated in attacks on security forces in Oyigbo,
in custody. The spokesperson Mr Nnamdi said the police recovered uniforms, TV
sets, and three arms, including two AK-47s and one pistol.
Our reporting did not yield an exact number of people killed
but tens may have died, according to accounts of multiple witnesses as well as
relatives, friends and hospital sources.
Mr Mife told PREMIUM TIMES of two dead bodies by the
roadside at Trailer Park. This was corroborated by Emeka Chinemeram, a tricycle
driver, and residents of Trailer Park area interviewed by PREMIUM TIMES. The
two bodies were removed shortly before PREMIUM TIMES got there to photograph.
Calls for independent
probe
Henry Shield, who has been using the social media to call
attention to the Oyigbo massacre, said he spoke with the governor, Mr Wike,
whom he said sounded “like he was in full support of what the army was doing.”
He said, “If crime was committed, nobody will support
killing anybody or security operatives but the normal, civilised response
should not be shooting at people on the streets, extra-judicially killing
people. You have to uphold the law as a government.
“But the pity is that there is no searchlight on what truly
happened in Oyigbo. But these are children of some people, parents of some
children killed. There has to be justice for these victims.”
Mr Shield then called for an independent probe, which he
said, “has to be a judicial panel because the government is complicit and the
panel has to consist of retired judges whose biases do not tilt towards any
side. We have to know what truly happened and all those, whether IPOB or
soldiers, that have murdered people, must be prosecuted.”
Similarly, the Oyigbo Traditional Council called for an
independent probe.
“There should be an independent body for truth and
reconciliation and determine what truly happened in Oyigbo,” the secretary to
the traditional council, Mr Enweruka said. “We have heard from the people that
the security agents were killing people. Our independent body is better placed
to ascertain what happened. People are injured and trust has to be rebuilt
between the people and the security operatives.”
Nigeria’s federal government has not acknowledged the
killings and other rights abuses in Oyigbo.
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