OZYA National President, Prince Izunna Obiefule. Photo Credit…. Tony Adibe
By Tony Adibe
Amnesty International and the Orlu Zulume Youth Assembly (OZYA) in the Orlu Senatorial District of Imo State have accused the Ebube Agu security outfit of “arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, and destruction of homes”, particularly in the Orlu areas of the state under Governor Hope Uzodinma-led administration.
NewsBits learnt that the Orlu Senatorial Zone consists of 12 Local Government Areas. In the speech tagged, “Nigeria: Authorities must investigate human rights violations in southeast region,” the Director Amnesty International Nigeria, Mr. Isa Sanusi, while launching their report entitled, “A Decade of Impunity: Attacks and Unlawful millings in Southeast Nigeria,” at The Platinum Hotel, Enugu, claimed that the state-backed Ebube Agu has been involved in a series of human rights violations.
Amnesty International said it has been documenting human rights violations by state, non-state, criminal gangs, and state-backed paramilitary outfits in the southeast since August 2015.
Sanusi explained that “this report builds” on the research published on 24 November 2016, detailing a brutal crackdown on pro-Biafra activists by Nigerian security forces. “Findings of this report were shared with the governors of Southeast States and Nigeria’s security agencies. No response was received,” Sanusi said.
Sanusi said that the report revealed “how the state-backed Ebube Agu paramilitary force, established by the SouthEast governors on 11 April 2021, has been used as a tool to harass and intimidate opponents and critics of the state governments”.
He was quick to add that the Ebube Agu “is also responsible for arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, and destruction of homes.”
He recalled that during military operations in the southeast, Nigerian security agencies, including the military and police, committed unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, enforced disappearances, and destruction of property.
Sanusi regretted that despite the scale of the atrocities against the people, justice and adequate reparations have eluded victims of the violence.
According to him, “No one knows exactly the number of people killed in the SouthEast since August 2015. Many people have been declared missing or forcibly disappeared. The number of high-profile killings and the consistent fear of possible attacks, anywhere and anytime, show how badly the authorities are failing to protect lives and property, and ensure law and order.”
He added that impunity for these human rights crimes continues to have a chilling effect on the enjoyment of other human rights.
Also, the National President of Orlu Zulume Youth Assembly (OZYA), Prince Izunna Obiefule, said that the current security situation in Orlu Senatorial Zone “is a very disturbing report from the various local governments in Orlu Zone, particularly Orlu West, Orlu East, incidentally where the governor comes from.”
Speaking in an interview with NewsBits during the Amnesty International event in Enugu, Prince Obiefule alleged that Orlu youths in their numbers “are being abused in the sense that they would be picked up for trumped up charges by the Ebube Agu militia” who would force them to pay as much as “N500,000 or N1,000,000 for bail in matters as minor as even mere family dispute or disagreements or internal family issues some people have.”
The youth leader said that sometimes, upon enquiry, the Ebube Agu agents would claim that they were working in conjunction with the Directorate of State Security (DSS) in Imo State, a claim, he said, the DSS vehemently refuted.
Describing the situation in Orlu as scary, Obiefule bemoaned the fact that “today, you see innocent youths being killed at will, and when we make enquiries, the tragic incident would be tagged, ‘unknown gunmen!’ I think this is not the way it should be”.
He urged the government to adopt modern security gadgets or devices to enable security forces to tackle insecurity professionally, rather than clamping down on innocent people who didn’t deserve the brutality meted out to them in the name of fighting criminal gangs.
Obiefule saluted the uncommon courage and audacity as well as thoroughness, displayed by the human rights crusader – Amnesty International in producing their comprehensive report on SouthEast. “In all of this, our interest is that the security agents should go against the criminals, bandits, kidnappers; they should go against the gangs perpetrating these crimes on our innocent people,” he said.
Speaking earlier at the panel after the public presentation of the report, the Executive Director of Rule of Law And Accountability (RULAAC), Comrade Okechukwu Nwanguma, recalled that the impunity and brutality of the security men on the people of SouthEast, began during the infamous Operation Python Dance by the military.
Nwanguma also recounted that the level of police brutality in the southeast zone peaked soon after the then Inspector General of Police, Mr. Usman Alkali, on one occasion at Okpara Square in Enugu, told police operatives to go house after house in search of the youths. “Go to their house and finish them out. Don’t wait for them to attack and kill your police officers. Instead, take the attacks to their doors. Finish them before they finish you. The petitions will end on my desk,” Nwanguma quoted Alkali as having declared in the presence of some Igbo governors, without anyone raising a voice on the apparent implication of such an order.
The RULAAC boss said such reckless utterance from the then police chief went a long way to embolden the security men to even unleash worse form of mayhem on innocent citizens in the zone.
