In a statement sent to multiple award winning journalist, Ahaoma Kanu petitioned ICC’s Chief Prosecutor in the Hagues, Fatou Bensouda and copied the Information and Evidence Unit against unlawful deployment of soldiers by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to the South-East region.
In the petition dated September 24, 2017 and titled “PETITION AGAINST THE DEPLOYMENT OF MILITARY PERSONNEL TO THE SOUTH-EAST OF NIGERIA, TORTURE, KILLINGS, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES PERPETRATED BY THE NIGERIA ARMY, THE CHIEF OF ARMY STAFF, MAJOR-GENERAL TUKUR BURATAI AND THE QUIT NOTICE GIVEN TO IGBOS IN THE NORTHERN STATES BY THE AREWA YOUTH CONSULTATIVE FORUM BACKED BY THE SPOKESPERSON OF THE NORTHERN ELDERS FORUM, PROF. ANGO ABDULLAHI,” Kanu said:
“The Nigeria Army has a very cruel history of gross human rights abuses, torture, brutal killings of citizens of her country over the years; a condemnable characteristic which have escalated since the election of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he said.
“According to an investigation by the Amnesty International (AI) which analyzed 87 videos, 122 photographs and 146 eye witness accounts, members of the Nigeria security agencies comprising of the army and the police embarked on a chilling campaign of extrajudicial executions which resulted in the death of over 150 deaths of members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the South-East region of the country with 60 people shoot in a space of two days.
“In the report entitled “NIGERIA: ‘BULLETS WERE RAINING EVERYWHERE’: DEADLY REPRESSION OF PRO-BIAFRA ACTIVISTS, Amnesty Iinternational (AI) documents the killing orchestrated by members of the Nigeria security agencies. For instance, according to the report, pro-Biafra activists were killed on 30 May 2016, during events to mark the 49th anniversary of the declaration of the Republic of Biafra, when an estimated 1,000-plus IPOB members and supporters gathered for a rally in Onitsha, Anambra state. The night before the rally, a joint security force task force raided homes and a church where IPOB members were sleeping. Several members of the IPOB were shot in several locations, predominantly in Nkpor, the venue for the gathering, and in Asaba.
“There have been incidents of people from the South-South, South-East, and South-West being attacked by Fulani-herdsmen, identified in the Global Terrorism Index as the fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world after Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab. They move into communities unleashing mayhem with automatic rifles with which they sack communities but such criminals and killers are neither arrested nor prosecuted. The Federal Government does not deem it fit to deploy the army to confront these perennial terrorists neither has their activities being seriously checked because they are said to have people in the Buhari government giving them support. The Federal Government led by President Buhati pays little or no attention to this group of terror merchants who have killed over 2000 persons in the North Central, South East and South West of Nigeria.
“On the 19th of August 2017, President Buhari returned back from a 103 days medical trip and some few days later, the Arewa Youths withdrew the quit notice. We are hearing reports of plans to go on with the attack on the Igbos in Northern Nigeria come October 1. The Federal Government has not seriously done anything to adequately protect the Igbos in the North even as the deadline approaches.”
Attached with the petition was a memory stick containing “exclusive videos, pictures and documents” which Kanu availed the ICC for their examination.
The Whistle
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