By Seun Opejobi The Special Counsel to Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Aloy Ejimakor, has given reason...
By Seun Opejobi
The Special Counsel to Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous
People of Biafra, IPOB, Aloy Ejimakor, has given reasons for the persistent
insecurity in the southeast.
Ejimakor said the perceived injustice meted on the southeast
is responsible for the persistent insecurity in the region.
He lamented that people of the southeast are being blamed
for insecurity incidents.
Ejimakor disclosed this in a statement he signed and issued
on Monday.
According to Ejimakor: “Before post-colonial Nigeria lapsed
into its current unitary state, while still passing off as a federation,
regional security was largely within the purview of the respective regions, not
the federal government. And it worked pretty well.
“This basic arrangement was not by chance but by
well-considered design. Despite their many failings, Nigeria’s indigenous
founding fathers and the departing British colonists knew too well that you
cannot secure a people within their region without their participation. Even
the mighty British empire knew that it couldn’t secure colonial Nigeria without
the participation of Nigerians in vast numbers.
“In a diverse federation of equals (or even near-equals or
unequal), Northern Nigerians shouldn’t be the ones exclusively or dominantly
securing Western or Eastern Nigeria, and vice versa. When you do that, it
becomes counter-intuitive to security and begins to look like belligerent
occupation or conquest. It also destroys the neutrality of the security
personnel, and engenders ethnic profiling and extrajudicial killings.
“Truth be told, massacres won’t happen if there’s no
premeditation, driven by sectarian impulses and lack of compatriot empathy
customarily exhibited by some security personnel when it comes to law
enforcement outside their regions, even when the targets of such law
enforcement are unarmed and amenable to arrest.
“The inherent dangers of an imbalanced security leadership
and formations is the main reason the framers of the 1999 Constitution enacted
Section 217(3) of the Constitution, which roughly states that ‘the composition
of the officer corps and other ranks of the Armed Forces of the Federation
shall reflect the federal character of Nigeria’.
“In plain terms, it means that no region or tribe shall be
markedly excluded from securing Nigeria or any part thereof, especially its own
part. But today, the opposite is the case as Southeast officers and ranks are
significantly redlined from all critical security formations, particularly the
ones based in the Southeast. It makes no sense and it is unconstitutional to
boot.
“Still, for the same reason of sectional balance, Section
14(3) of the same 1999 Constitution provides that, ‘the composition of the
Government of the Federation or any of its agencies shall ensure that there
shall be no predominance of persons from a few States or from a few ethnic or
other sectional groups in that Government or any of its agencies’.
“This means that the Southeast shall be equal partakers in
the opportunities of the Nigerian enterprise. But it is not and uniquely so. To
be sure, there’s no better contradiction to the oneness of Nigeria than this
profound injustice that appears to have become the norm and has persisted since
2015.
“And this: Southeast being continually absent from the table
partly explains why each time the witch cries at night in the Southeast and the
baby dies in the morning, the authorities jump to conclusions that it’s the
witch that killed the baby.
“In other words, almost every incidence of insecurity,
including by State actors and others, ends up being blamed on the people of the
Southeast, such that they are now left with no other option than rampant
resentment, widespread alienation and popular agitation.”
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