- RULAAC criticized the government’s strategy as counterproductive and driven by perceived bias against the South-East
The Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) presented a report titled “Unveiling the Roots of Insecurity, Healing the Wounds of Human Rights Violations in Southeast Nigeria.”
They asserted that while secessionist groups are a factor in the current insecurity in the region, the Nigerian government’s approach exacerbates the situation.
RULAAC criticized the government’s strategy as counterproductive and driven by perceived bias against the South-East. Comrade Okechukwu Nwanguma, the Executive Director of RULAAC, emphasized the report’s aim to provide an accurate portrayal of the insecurity’s nature, causes, and effects in the region, highlighting the government’s use of brute force as a contributing factor to the cycle of violence.
According to him “the federal government is simply not interested in listening to the voices of reason in or about anything that concerns the Southeast development and peace”.
“It is not paying attention to the plight of the people and not interested in sincerely addressing or solving the problems of the people of the zone,” he said.
He stated that rather than adopt a more open-minded approach, the federal government is driven by the mindset – as revealed by President Buhari during an interview in 2021- ‘’to speak to the people in the language that they understand,’’ adding that that was why the military would go into a community and burn it down because they are looking for secessionists, which in itself is not a crime.
Nwanguma further stated that while RULAAC acknowledges that pro-Biafra agitation and insurgency are significant contributors to insecurity in the South East, attributing the problem solely to these factors paints an incomplete picture.
He said, “RULAAC’s findings paint a bleak picture of public security policies in the region, heavily reliant on repressive police and military action, often with excessive force.
“The report documents instances where the police in the Southeast have acted in compliance with reckless directives such as the ‘’shoot on sight’’ order by President Buhari in 2021 and the Inspector General of Police’s subsequent order on them to go after IPOB, kill them and not worry about shouts of human rights violation.
“The police embarked on indiscriminate mass raids and arrests, incommunicado detention, torture, public parade and executions of accused, mostly innocent persons.
“Not a few people of conscience were shocked to receive the information that no less than 107 citizens were indiscriminately arrested from different locations in Owerri, Imo State, labelled IPOB members and arraigned, not in any court, but at the car park of the Shell Camp Police Division, Owerri and later shifted to the Conference Hall of the Commissioner of Police, Imo State with some magistrates presiding.
“They were charged with offences of treason, including plots to overthrow President Buhari and Governor Hope Uzodinma and remanded at the Owerri prisons.
“The sheer number of persons arrested and arraigned in one day by the police in Imo State for purportedly conspiring to overthrow President Buhari and Governor Hope Uzodinma was outlandish. Police did not show what weapons with which the people, including women and children, were going to carry out the overthrow.
‘That was nothing more than a malicious declaration of war against innocent and law-abiding residents of Imo State going about their legitimate businesses. It was a direct outcome of the Inspector General of Police’s directive to Police Officers to take the war to IPOB and not to bother about observing the rules of engagement or be deterred by the media shouts of human rights violation.”
The chairman of the occasion, Prof Okey Ibeanu, a professor of political science at University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), regretted that Southeast which used to be a bastion of peace had been turned into a theatre of war.
Dr. ChiChi Aniagolu, the Regional Director (West Africa) at Ford Foundation, which provided financial support for the report, called on Igbo leaders to take urgent step to begin to address the situation, adding that without peace there would be no development.