•Advocates posting of Igbo officers to head security agencies in South East

A civil rights advocacy group-Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has condemned the reported mass abductions on a continuous basis for about three days now of several returning students of the University of Nigeria Nsukka in Enugu State.

The rights group said it was worried by news reports showing that there was an uneasy calm along Ugwuogo Nike-Nsukka Express Road, Enugu East Local Government Area of Enugu State, following the alleged abduction of an unspecified number of road users, including students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), who were returning to school after the eight months strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

HURIWA said media report has it that “some lucky commuters, who managed to escape, said the kidnappers attacked at least six commercial buses, riddled them with bullets and diverted the occupants to nearby bushes. “It was gathered that the kidnappers are already contacting the families of victims, demanding N30 million ransom,” the report said, adding that the mass kidnap took place on Sunday.

HURIWA quoted a source as disclosing that a woman from Aku in Igbo-Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu State and his son were among the victims of the kidnap incident, adding that while the son has been released, the woman is still in captivity. The source equally said that a medical doctor, who had regained his freedom, paid an undisclosed ransom to be set free.

Sources said that the road has about six security checkpoints between Nike and Opi Junction in Nsukka Local Government Area yet such criminal activities were still taking place on the road.

“We in HURIWA like our numerous patriotic Comrades in the organised civil rights movements are disturbed that the General Officer Commanding 82 division can sit in his air-conditioned office in Enugu and make unsubstantiated and highly unverified and unscientific, unscrupulous allegations of accusing members of the now proscribed Indigenous peoples of Biafra as the perpetrators of all crimes in the South East".

“This is a pure case of IGBO PHOBIA taken too far to conclude that a certain Ethnicity are the criminals tormenting their own people when there have been over 100 cases of terror-related kidnappings attributed to Fulani speaking terrorists by the victims who managed to survive their ordeals in the hands of these dare-devil kidnappers in the many forests of South East of Nigeria including the Prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria who had to cough out #100 million cash to the Fulani terrorists before they freed him in a forest near Okigwe in Imo State.

“It is also sad that the entire security architecture in Enugu has failed thereby turningthe road where this incident took place to a flashpoint for kidnapping and all sorts of criminalities and this road is now inhabited by armed Fulani terrorists whilst the soldiers do nothing to dislodge them. In September 2022, the kidnappers blocked the said road around the Ekwegbe axis and abducted an unspecified number of road users with police claiming that two of the victims were later rescued.”

HURIWA is accusing who the group referred to as Fulani terrorists of being behind the mass abduction on the said road.

It also blamed the high rate of criminality in the entire South East on the deployment security chiefs from outside the region, who HURIWA accused of being Igbo phobic and were in the habit of “always attributing all crimes and acts of terrorism, even the kidnappings carried out by armed Fulani herdsmen, to the members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB).

“Because most of the security heads reach hasty conclusions on who they perceive as the criminals in the South East, they have failed to pin down with forensic precision and eliminate the threats posed to Igbos by the invading armed Fulani terrorists who share same ethnicity and religion with the majority of the Army Commanders in the South East,” HURIWA said.

“It is disconcerting that virtually all heads of the federally-controlled security institutions in the entire South East of Nigeria are from outside region,” adding: “the Commissioners of Police in the South East are as follows: Abia - CP Janet Agbede; Anambra - CP Echeng Echeng; Ebonyi - CP Garba Aliyu; Enugu - CP Ahmed Ammani and Imo State Commissioner of Police isMohammed Ahmed Barde.”

HURIWA also lamented that “the entire military formations in the South East are headed by persons from outside of South East, unlike other geopolitical zones whereby persons from those zones are heading the hierarchies of some of the security forces.”

The rights group expressed consternation that despite increased kidnappings and other crimes in the South East, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 82 Division of Nigerian Army, Enugu, Major-General Umar Musa, few days back said that the insecurity situation in the region is not as bad as being portrayed by the media.

HURIWA quoted the GOC wrongly as reportedly that the insecurity in the region is more of criminality, whereby, gunmen terrorising residents hid under the cloak of Biafra agitation to commit crimes.

The rights group recalled that the GOC spoke when he received the leadership of the Nigerian Union of Journalists in Enugu few days ago, and has therefore tasked the GOC to go after the Armed Fulani terrorists terrorising the people of Nsukka town and eliminate the threats posed to the lives and property of the citizenry.

“We urge the armed forces to be deliberate and decisive to go after terrorists no matter the ethnicity and to stop playing politics of ethnicity in the discharge of their functions,” HURIWA said.