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Groups plan to take Buhari to ICC over alleged human rights violation in Igboland

By Lawrence Njoku, Enugu
11 June 2021   |   4:03 am
A group of elite organisations in Igboland, comprising the Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU) and others, yesterday, said they had perfected plans to petition the International Criminal Court....

The International Criminal Court in The Hague | File photo: Reuters

A group of elite organisations in Igboland, comprising the Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU) and others, yesterday, said they had perfected plans to petition the International Criminal Court (ICC) over President Muhammadu Buhari’s genocidal comments against Ndigbo and also to seek redress over abuses being perpetrated by security officials in the zone in the name of restoring security.

They vowed that the current human rights abuses, extra-judicial killings and genocide in the region would not go unreported.

In a communiqué issued at the end of a one-day emergency security meeting of ASETU and concerned Igbo stakeholders in Enugu, the groups alleged that apart from killing innocent youths in the South-East, “several cases abound where security operatives kill innocent Igbo youths and set their corpses and houses ablaze to obstruct traces of the act.”

In the communiqué read by National President of ASETU, Chief Emeka Diwe, the Igbo groups said that they had launched the Igbo Human Rights Violations Portal (IHRVP) to collate details of all victims of the killings by Fulani herdsmen and the Nigerian security agencies and use same to petition the ICC, insisting that Ndigbo had done nothing to deserve current onslaught.

“We will not allow these atrocities to be swept under the carpet. We will not allow them hang the matter in the Nigerian courts alone. Other relevant world bodies must hear the story. If the Federal Government under Buhari has decided to wipe out Ndigbo, it should go ahead and do so. Of course, it will not take him two hours to do so.

“There are several security agencies in Nigeria deployed to the South-East who are now committing all manner of atrocities in the name of security in Igboland. The insecurity in the South-East zone is not beyond those of other regions in Nigeria yet, the president did not act or speak in the manner he is speaking at the moment,” the communiqué stated.

The groups, which also urged President Buhari to tender an unreserved apology to Ndigbo and withdraw his “genocidal comment against Igbo,” described the genocidal comment as unfortunate, noting that by that statement, the President had shown his mindset against Igbo and tacit support of atrocities his “kinsmen were committing in Igboland.”

They also urged Igbo political leaders to rise and defend Alaigbo, her people and property from those they described as enemies ‘whose aims were to destroy what Igbo had built over the years with self-effort”

“The Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU), having widely consulted with and collated the views of the leaderships and the town unions, and working in concert with many other respected Igbo groups, totally condemn the continued attacks by killer-herdsmen in Igboland.

“The inability of the security operatives to track and bring these merchants of death to justice over the years has remained inexplicable and totally unacceptable to us. We acknowledge the efforts of the governors who have put machineries in motion for the enactment of the anti-open grazing laws,” the groups stated.

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