Group threatens to petition Vatican over Mbaka<em

THE Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA) has cautioned Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State to stop “frittering away public fund in the current distabilisation campaign” against the recent ruling by the Court of Appeal declaring Dr. Alex Otti of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) as winner of the April 11, 2015 governorship election in the state.

The group was reacting to recent demonstrations against the judgment, which it claimed were sponsored by government and its sympathisers.

“The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Abia State chapter must borrow a leaf from erstwhile President Goodluck Jonathan who exited voluntarily after conceding victory to former opposition All Progressives Congress presidential candidate and now President Muhammadu Buhari soon after the presidential election in March of last year.”

Asking the embattled governor to accept the decision in good faith, as a statesman that he has allegedly spent so much fund running elaborate media directorate to create, the rights group affirmed: “ The Appeal Court, Owerri division has exercised her constitutional powers to invalidate the erroneous inauguration of Ikpeazu as governor of Abia State and has returned Otti as the validly elected governor. It is criminal for the Ikpeazu to allegedly deploy state funds to prosecute streets’ warfare by paying to galvanise organised chaos in major towns of Abia State in artificially arranged protest against a subsisting and binding judgment.”

In a statement signed jointly by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and National Media affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, the group said in as much as it backs the constructive exercise of the fundamental freedoms of free and peaceful assembly and of speech guaranteed by the constitution, it, however, insisted that “these seemingly chaotic protests in Abia are procured by someone who has lost out in the court of competent jurisdiction and is fanatically determined to seat tight in the juicy office of governor and would rather than give up peacefully prefer to create an atmosphere of social chaos to make the environment ungovernable for his successor who indeed has been pronounced the winner of the majority of the votes cast in the April 2015 governorship.”

HURIWA challenged Ikpeazu to dissociate himself from the “thugs causing chaos now on the streets of Abia State in the guise of rejection of the Appeal Court’s verdict if he had nothing to do with these clearly financially heavily induced paid demonstrations.”

Meanwhile, the group has dismissed Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka’s prophecy alleging assassination attempt on President Muhammadu Buhari by corrupt politicians as “sensationalism and rumour peddling.”

It has, therefore, asked the Nigerian Catholic hierarchy to sanction the Enugu-based priest just as it threatened to drag the cleric before the Vatican if within 21 days, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of (CBCN) fails to reprimand him.

The group recalled that Mbaka, who is also Founder of Adoration Ministries Enugu, Nigeria (AMEN), had in his new year message urged the President to be cautious, prophesying that alleged “beneficiaries of massive corruption perpetrated during ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration would plot to kill him.”