Nigeria’s grossly lopsided central Government and its genocide actors in the military must put in place N900 billion (about $2.5 billion) worth of 3,000 new maximum security prisons and a daily feeding of N3 billion (N90B per month and N1.08t per year) for custodial keeping and feeding of 3million members of pro Biafra groups led by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB); labeled “militant terrorists” by the Nigerian Defense Headquarters. Once these are done or provided, the Federal Republic of Nigeria will instantly surpass the United States of America as the country with largest number of custodial inmates (including prisoners and awaiting trial inmates) in the world.

The above analysis is in response to and consequence of the tagging of IPOB (a civil and nonviolent mass movement of an indigenous people with over 3 million members) by the Nigerian Military as a “militant terrorist organisation”. The Buhari Administration and its genocidal military had, as a result, attracted to themselves “a complex humanitarian crisis of insoluble proportion”; a self-inflicted wound it must lick unaided. The violent central Administration must also disclose to all Nigerians and the international community the whereabouts or secret mass graves where it killed and buried 70% of over 2000 innocent and defenseless citizens it slaughtered since June 2015; including over 1,120 Shiite Muslims and not less than 270 pro Biafra agitators.

Further break down of the costs of the mandatorily required 3000 new maximum security prisons to keep 3million pro Biafra activists who have been unconstitutionally and illegally tagged “militant terrorists”; indicate that conservative estimate of N900B is required to build new 3,000 maximum security prisons; on average of N300M (including land acquisition/compensations) for each prison and its associated facilities using moderate market cost. The N3B daily feeding for 3m mass pro Biafra inmates is on average of N1,000 each/ per day and it excludes sanitary, clothing, toiletries and basic healthcare. The N3B daily feeding will further cost the Federal Government N90B monthly and N1.08 trillion yearly; totaling N1.9.0 trillion or $5.5B mandatorily required for new “IPOB militant terrorism prisons project” of the present central Government in Nigeria.

We have heard some shameless security chiefs and senior Government officials spitting fire, barking and banging on how “they will arrest all IPOB members in Nigeria and non IPOB members with Biafra insignias”; how “those arrested will be crushed or killed, detained and charged for murder, terrorism and treason”, etc. The embarrassment by these corruptive and empty headed policing chiefs including the newly posted Commissioner of Police for Abia State; of the Federal Republic and the People of Nigeria before the international community and outside world has gotten out of hand. Instead of being seriously concerned and agitated over the mindless usurpation of their constitutional policing duties by Nigeria’s democracy interlopers called the Nigerian Military; these police chiefs are busy abdicating and letting go their duties and powers.

Nigeria’s central Government and its State counterparts/collaborators must no longer be allowed to take laws into their hands especially going by rampancy of extra judicial executions, unlawful killings, torture and enforced disappearances raging and ravaging the present Administration. The Nigerian State’s national, regional and international lip services in matters of human rights are no longer hidden. Instead of softening and improving on its grossly poor human rights records, this central Government is hardening same, indulging and living with same; perpetrating them with reckless abandon.

Rather than decongesting its grossly inadequate and poor prisons’ facilities and improving its age long prisoners or inmates’ poor and inhumane conditions; the Nigerian Government and its prisons’ authorities now sickeningly and brazenly mangle the inmates’ figures or numbers; such as whereby a prison is made to look as if it is slightly congested whereas it is hyper congested.

The Nigerian Government and its security agencies also pretend to the international community and outside world that “it maintains a moratorium on death penalty”; but gravely and rampantly indulges in extra judicial executions, unlawful killings including secret executions and enforced disappearances. Since June 2015, cases of secret executions and enforced disappearances in Nigeria have quadrupled those of open scene extra judicial executions and unlawful killings. Apart from killing and taking the slain away militarily, the Nigerian Government backed Army also carries out countless secret raids, abductions, killings and secret burial of their abductees.

Statistically, it is on irrefutable and provable records that out of 1,120 defenseless Shiite Muslims killed by Lt Gen Tukur Buratai and his subordinates in the Nigerian Army on 12^th, 13^th and 15^th December 2015, only 347 bodies were admitted being buried in mass graves provided and supervised by the Government of Kaduna State. On 30^th August 2017, the authorities of the Shiite Muslims in Nigeria presented to Amnesty Int’l and the world pictures and other provable details of 783 of their defenseless members killed by the Army during the said December 2015 massacre without their bodies traced or befittingly interred till date.

Also out of not less than 270 defenseless pro Biafra activists killed by the Nigerian Army and its police collaborators since August 2015, over 80% of their bodies are still missing. Amnesty Int’l had similarly alleged that the Nigerian Army had in 2016 in its military Barracks in Borno State caused the mass death of 240 civilians including 29 children; aged between new born and five years. The identities and bodies of 236 IDPs bombed to death by the Nigerian Government and its quack Air Force on 17^th January 2017 in Borno State have remained unknown to Nigerian public, families of the slain and outside world till date. This is just to mention but few.

It is therefore the totality of the above that necessitated the issuance of this important public statement. Though Nigerian Government as presently constituted gravely and discretely prefers secret killings, torture and enforced disappearances in place of investigative and penal due processes; namely: arrest, lawful detention, skilful investigation, fair trial, conviction or acquittal; or sentencing; but it is totally and empirically impossible to extra judicially kill and disappear, undetected, 3m pro Biafra activists who the Defense Headquarters criminally labeled or over-criminalised as “militant terrorists”. These explain our referenced mandatory request for mandatory provision of new 3000 maximum security prisons of N900B and yearly feeding of N1.08 trillion.

Comparatively, once these negative demands of ours are negatively put in place, Nigeria will by far surpass USA with 3.5million prison inmates as against US’s present 2.3 million adults inmates presently housed in its 5,901 correction facilities including 1,719 State prisons, 102 federal prisons, 3,163 local jails, 76 Indian County jails, 901 juvenile correction facilities as well as other military prisons, immigration detention facilities and civil commitment centers. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, the United States presently houses 22% of world prison population with 2.3 million adults in its prisons and a total of 6,811,000 adults on correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail and prison). There are also 54,148 juveniles in juvenile detentions in USA as at 2013.

Back home, the number of prisons including satellite prisons and borstal homes in Nigeria are not only acutely inadequate to accommodate 3m pro Biafra activists who the Defense Headquarters criminally, illegally and unconstitutionally labeled “militant terrorists”; but are also shockingly outdated and overcrowded. As a matter of fact, they are deathtrap and theaters of death. Nigeria had since 1872 when it built the Broad Street Prisons as its first colonial conventional prison; struggled and built only 144 prisons including farm centers, 83 satellite prisons and two borstal homes; presently housing 68,259 prisoners and inmates. There are also 15,316 Nigerian prisoners presently serving in overseas. The Nigeria’s Controller General of Prisons, Ja’afaru Ahmed, had in March 2017 put the total number of Nigerians in the country’s prisons to 68,259 and further lamented “the dwindling population of prisoners and inmates in Nigeria”. In other words, he was asking for more citizens to be sent to prisons and be overcrowded without any form of “prison expansion policy and project”.

What Gen Buhari’s UN Address Must Include: The text of Gen Muhammadu Buhari’s address to the UN must include soliciting for another $5B to $6B annually in harsh loans from “World Bank”, “IMF”, “Paris Club”, “Islamic Dev Bank”, “African Dev Bank”, “Chinese-Exim Bank”, etc; or “repatriation of looted and stashed funds” to build more prisons and feed 3m pro Biafra activists tagged “militant terrorists” and the entire Igbo Race who are now massively tagged “collaborators and disgruntled treasury looter-sponsors of militant terrorists”. We beg the international community and holders of “looted and stashed funds” and lenders of harsh loans to treat the Gen’s request with uttermost dispatch; using favourable and harmless alternatives such as grants and releases of the “looted funds”; otherwise his violent Government may fall back deeper in extra judicial executions, unlawful killings, torture, secret executions and criminal burying or disposing of the slain.

•Text of a statement issued on Monday in Onitsha by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety). It was signed by the Board Chairman, Emeka Umeagbalasi; Head, Civil Liberties & Rule of Law Programme, Barr Obianuju Igboeli; and Head, Int’l Justice and Human Rights Programme, Barr Ndidiamaka Bernard.

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