Igbo Women Elders Wade into Security Crisis, Sue For Peace

The Igbo Women Elders Council, an affiliate of Ohaneze Ndigbo, has called on all residents of South East to give peace a chance in the region, the women also issued a 90 days ultimatum to South East governors to pass and sign into law, an Anti-open grazing bill in their respective states.

The group, comprising women above 60 years from Igbo speaking communities across the country, also called on the federal government to restructure the country to ensure true federalism or conduct a referendum for the South East residents to vote to remain in the country or not.

 They stated these at an international press conference at Awka, Anambra State capital on Tuesday,which was addressed by Chief Mrs. Chika Ibeneme.

 While rejecting the recent asylum offered by the British government to south easterners, the women urged Britain to rather pressurise the federal government of Nigeria to restructure the country to give all citizens a level playing ground and a sense of belonging. They also called for the posting of indigenous security officers back to their states.

“As an immediate remedial measure before the situation gets out of hand, the Federal Government must, without further delay, demilitarize the South East Region and its key outposts, including its named gateway neighbours by ending the current military and police siege in the region. We therefore demand immediate withdrawal of all the deployed military and police personnel on our roads, boundaries and other strategic locations in the entire South East.

 We call on the federal government to immediately end the policy of flooding our land and its outposts with compromised Muslim military and police commanders. This must be reversed while all the top officers we have identified above must be transferred out of the South East States and its boundaries. To ensure effective policing in any region, the percentage of non-indigenous Military and Policing officers, including senior officers, must be drastically reduced to 30% so as to allow indigenous officers to fill the remaining 70% of the total slots or positions and give the indigenous citizens of the region a true sense of security and safety.”

All killer herdsmen, clandestinely aided and protected by federal security forces who have now permanently settled in farmlands, bushes and forests in our land and our key neighbouring states must be moved out and relocated back to wherever they were brought from. Most of these killer herdsmen are foreigners, which President Muhammadu Buhari once confirmed that they are not Nigerians. If they are not Nigerians, why is the federal government’s armed forces protecting and guarding these killers? We therefore demand that the federal government must immediately begin repatriating these non-Nigerians to enable our farmers go back to their farms.

The  elderly mother and grandmothers also called on the Federal Government to discontinue the clandestine policy of turning Southern and Middle Belt Nigeria into Sharia or Caliphate colony and respect the country’s secular status as enshrined in Nigerian constitution.  All armed forces must therefore vacate their security cordons in all parts of Igbo land because we have discovered that the cordons by security agencies are part of the clandestine oppressive strategy to keep Igbo land occupied to ease penetration by some Jihadists elements to permanently occupy the land and a source of dishonest enrichment for security personnel manning these extortionist cordons.

“The Federal government must ensure that the constitutional rights of citizens to freedom of residency and movement, as well as ownership of property in any part of the country, is no longer misconstrued and misinterpreted as these guaranteed rights are only practicable in strict conformity with the country’s Criminal laws and procedures. The exercise of such rights must conform to Chapter four of 1999 Constitution and the ratified and domesticated African Charter on Human and People’s Rights Act of 2004, including rights of citizens of the country to peacefully and nonviolently reside in urban residential areas anywhere in Nigeria and to own moveable and immoveable properties. The Constitution does not guarantee any citizen right to live violently in another’s farmland or bush or forest and settle in same with small arms and light weapons and engage in terrorism and gang rapping of the residents.

The Nigerian Government must immediately begin reversal of the top security appointment imbalances and return to Constitutional Sections 10, 14 (3), 42 and 217 (3) in balancing the appointments and postings” the women added.