“Until the super-structure of our sovereignty as a nation is properly restructured to ensure fairness, equity, equality, solidarity, justice for all and appropriate re-distribution of national wealth and location of national security assets are equitably implemented; Until all these imbalances are redressed and fundamentally addressed, Nigeria would continue to contend with heightened agitations for self-determination by forces opposed to systematic and systemic oppression by the ruling class who have always subjugated the South-East and treated the people with the short end of the stick,” the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has said.

In a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA also called on the Federal Government to set in motion, mechanisms for a negotiated restructuring of Nigeria and to address the gross marginalisation of the South East of Nigeria, if it ever hopes to successfully deflate the agitation for self-government by the indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).

The rights group is demanding that the South-East of Nigeria be carried along in the appointment of Service Chiefs and the National Defence Council in line with the third schedule, part 1, Article 25 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) and in compliance with the Federal Character principle of the Nigerian Constitution.

“A situation whereby the South East of Nigeria which is one of the tripod that constitute the clear majorities of the Nigerian population in the real sense of it alongside Hausa, Yoruba, is left behind in the appointments of defence Service Chiefs and all the military and Para-military forces does not augur well for lasting mutual harmony and national tranquillity because there’s a groundswell of suspicions that the people of the South East of Nigeria are no longer wanted in the sovereign state of Nigeria. These anomalies must be addressed if we ever think the agitation can be scaled down radically.”

HURIWA has also blamed the deliberate scheming out of the South East from beneficiaries in terms of construction of major national assets such as refineries and defence infrastructures for the rapid sympathy the agitation for self-determination has garnered in the South East of Nigeria.

“Why do we concentrate all the strategic military infrastructures in the North and a few elsewhere except in the South East of Nigeria? Where has the national government failed persistently to recognise Anambra as a crude oil producing state and refused to explore the rich crude oil resources discovered in commercial quantities therein by experts? Why does the South East of Nigeria not have one functional refinery even when the zone is rich in crude oil resources? Why are the children of the South East discriminated against in terms of having to pass through tougher entry qualification to Unity Colleges even when the same policy is not applied to the North? Why did the Department of State Services allocate fewer slots to the South East even when just Katsina State cornered the same number allocated to the entire states in the South East of Nigeria?”

Citing Section 14(3) of the constitution the Rights group condemned these discriminatory policies because that provision of the Supreme law of Nigeria states thus: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or any of its agencies.”

HURIWA also cautioned security forces against any harassment, maiming or killing of members of IPOB even as it has called on the international community and the International Criminal Court in The Hague Netherlands, to probe the extralegal executions of hundreds of members of the self determination group in the South East of Nigeria by security forces in the past two years.

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