From Fred Itua, Abuja
Igbo social-political group, Nzuko Umuna, has said the country, especially the South East, is witnessing insecurity because of injustice, inequality and lack of good governance.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja, yesterday, Sam Amadi, chairman of the legal committee of the think tank, said the unfair and unequal treatment of citizens have compounded insecurity crisis in the country.
Amadi lamented that the South East which was the “safest region in Nigeria, has become a site of organised criminality.”
“Nzuko Umuna recognises that Nigeria has descended into a depth of insecurity, partly because of the failure of governance across the country, and particularly because of inequities and injustices of political leadership in Nigeria. We acknowledge that the perception of unfair and unequal treatment of citizens compounds the insecurity crisis,” the former chairman, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) said.
Amadi said the reported comments of Alkali Usman Baba, inspector-general of police (IGP), who allegedly told police officers to ignore human rights while dealing with insecurity in the South East would only escalate crisis in the region.
“We consider this statement horrifying, frightening and unutterable in a democracy with entrenched constitutional rights to life and due process. We are more surprised that the head of the Nigerian police will make such an outrageous statement authorising state violence in a region that, for long, has been seething with anger at police brutality and extortion and a region whose youths have been extra-judicially killed by security agents in large numbers. Statements like those of the IGP further deepens the sense of victimisation by the state and therefore escalates the crisis. We stand with the South East governors, Ohaneze Ndigbo and other civic organisations in Igbo to demand proper forensic audit of the hitherto unheard ‘Unknown Gunmen’ syndrome as it is strange to the customs and norms of people of the region. We know from data available in public domain that there has been escalation of killing of police officers across the country before the current wave of attacks in the South East.”