Ohanaeze seeks inquiry into extra judicial killings in the South East, South South

President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Chief Nnia Nwodo, has called for a high-powered judicial inquiry into the frequent killing of young men and women by trigger-happy security operatives posted to the southern part of the country.

Nwodo in a statement issued yesterday by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Chief Emeka Attamah, recalled that in the past few days, four vibrant young men were killed in cold blood by security agents in Aba and Onitsha, while another young man was brutally mowed down by a soldier in Warri.

The latter, according to him, led to the killing of a soldier in a reprisal that culminated in the killing of more people by soldiers.

He expressed great sadness at “the frequency and dastardly manner security personnel snuff out life in these otherwise promising young people in their prime.”

According to him, “it is only in the South that such mindless wastage of human capital takes place often and unabated without the heads of the army and police batting an eyelid.”

He challenged anybody to point out similar occurrences in any part of the North, especially during this period of Covid-19 lockdown.

Nwodo stated that the aggressive actions of security operatives were steadily pushing young men, especially in the Southeast, to the wall and could elicit reprisal violence from them, adding that any group not wanted in a union has the right to opt-out of it.

The President General also tasked the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, to explain the modalities used by her ministry to determine the distribution of the Covid-19 lockdown palliative.

He said the distribution has been shrouded in mystery, noting that from available information, there was a gross imbalance in the three geo-political zones in the North getting N245.2 billion from the fund for palliative, while three zones in the South got a meagre N52.8 billion.

Nwodo further said that in another clime, this manifest injustice was enough for her to vacate her office. He stated that was another glaring example of a lack of equity in the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

He averred that the distribution of the lockdown palliative was skewed in favour of the North by the declaration that those who have up to N5000 in their bank accounts will not benefit from it, arguing that ownership of that sum does not mitigate the pangs of the lockdown.

Nwodo further observed that it took Covid-19 to accentuate the duplicity in governance in the present administration in the country where the people in the North have been paid N5000 monthly for the five years of the administration to the exclusion of the neglected and second class citizens of the South.

He urged the Federal Government to take steps to redress this obvious injustice to give other parts of the country a sense of belonging.