A group, Igbo Ekunie Initiative, which prides itself as a coalition of professionals from Igboland in Nigeria and the Diaspora, has called for the immediate release of some women arrested by policemen in Imo State last week for protesting against the continued disappearance of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of IPOB.
The group, in a press statement made available to DAILY POST in Awka and signed by the duo of its president and secretary, Messrs Tochukwu Ezeoke and Lawrence Nwobu, said the women did not act beyond their rights, and as such should not have been arrested for any reason.
They described the arrest of the women as cowardly, primitive and illegal, saying the innocent and unarmed women were within their rights under the Nigerian constitution, to engage in a peaceful demonstration and protest over the continued disappearance of Nnamdi Kanu.
Part of the release reads, “We strongly and unequivocally condemn the arrest and detention of these women by the Nigerian security forces in Owerri led by the Imo State commissioner of Police, Dasuki and hereby call for their immediate and unconditional release.
“We are supposed to be in a practicing democracy and we cannot understand why the magistrate Mrs S.K. Durumba before whom the arrested women were charged in Owerri would refuse to discharge and acquit the women or at least grant them bail as prescribed under the law especially as she made it clear in her ruling that her court had no jurisdiction to entertain the suit brought before her.”
The group further described the arrest as “The brazen parochialism of the Nigerian security forces”, who it said were ever eager to arrest and detain innocent people from the South-East part of Nigeria but allegedly opt to protect, aid and abet terrorist herdsmen from the Northern part of the country.
It said the arrest by security forces was not only a fundamental breach of constitutional responsibility but also capable of igniting an existential crisis of unfathomable consequences in an already fragile nation under the current APC administration.
“We find it strange that an organization that goes to sleep when hundreds and even thousands are massacred across Nigeria by Fulani herdsmen can hurriedly embark on arresting and assaulting harmless and unarmed Igbo mothers that are protesting peacefully in Owerri, Imo state.
“We are persuaded to believe that the Nigerian security organizations comprising of the Police and the Armed forces have become sectarian organizations that serve the interests of the feudal Fulani in Buhari’s historically sectional administration,” the group said.
Comments