Anthony Iwuoma
Governors of the five South-east states of the country yesterday pledged that the region will not secede while calling on the restive youths of the zone to sheathe their swords and stop destroying police facilities.
The governors urged the youths to give them six months to dialogue with the Federal Government over their agitations against marginalisation of the South-east region.
Speaking during the Presidential Ministerial Press Briefing by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Chairman of the South East Governors Forum, Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State, lamented that most of the police officers killed by the unknown gunmen hailed from South-east.
He blamed past governments for failing g to properly address the issue of marginalisation, which led to the emergence of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, and now Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB.
“Let me say that I am very delighted to be here, to interact with you on key burning national issues especially as they concern South-east and also my state (Ebonyi) in particular. Let me start with security at the level of South-east. The security situation in the South-east is a mixture of realities, fake news and war propaganda.
“But do we have insecurity in the South-east? Yes, we do. And when we look at the IPOB in total isolation, the issue of agitation started with Ralph Uwazuruike and, of course, even before Uwazuruike our late Odimegwu Ojukwu, war was fought in this regard and it was declared at the level of national governments of no victor, no vanquished,” Umahi said.
Going further down memory lane, the governor recalled: “I think after some years, Uwazuruike came up with MASSOB and started with a couple of agitations and the key background of this agitation, has always been marginalization of the South-east, which I had to say in specific terms are in the national civil service where the South-east people are not promoted like their counterparts from other regions; where development is not happening in South-east; where appointments are skewed against South-east. And it must be on record that Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB was a member of that MASSOB, I think he was the second in command.
“But let me place it on record, that MASSOB was there during the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and shortly before the end of the regime, Kanu pulled out and formed his own IPOB. IPOB was there during the time of former President Goodluck Jonathan. And then they expanded their demands.
“I had intervened by way of holding meeting personally with Kanu in my state and intervened by way of holding meeting with all the commanders and that was before the altercation they had with Kanu at Abia State and we were going to find solutions before things escalated.
“Now, the ESN is also a product of IPOB. You can see how these things are being multiplied but the point remains that from the onset of MASSOB, the then government did not address the matters properly because when your children cry for any reason, you have to find out what is the problem, what are the reasons and you fix it.
Umahi said the problem in the South-east region was not really created by the Buhari administration.
He added that pro-Biafra groups only emerged as a response to unaddressed grievances in the zone but regretted that they had been hijacked by criminal elements.
He said: “I think those people were so badly ignored and that shouldn’t have been. And so, what is happening today with regard to IPOB in the South-east is not a product of this government per se, but it is a product of national governments that didn’t address the matters from the outset.
“ESN is also a child of necessity. We have been living with herders for hundreds of years with minor misunderstandings, you spoil my farm you pay some compensation, I kill your cow, I pay compensation. Nobody was hearing all that, it was an in-house thing. But with the crisis in Libya and some other West African countries, foreign herders with AK 47 infiltrated the entire country and so, you begin to see the foreign herders killing our farmers, raping our women.
“And these foreign herders are in the forests, beyond the control of any state governments and security agencies. And suddenly, the IPOB said look, we have formed Eastern Security Network to protect the farmers. Unfortunately, their abode is in the forest; the abode of the herders is also in the forest, and so what do we expect? A very high level of insecurity within such locations.
“And so, the situation in the South-east right now is a situation in which non violent approach of IPOB at the beginning has been hijacked by bandits, by cultists, by criminals. Why do I say this? A lot of violence that happen in South-east now, the IPOB people will come and say we are not violent, we are not the people killing the security agents, if you get any of such you have to decisively deal with such people. So, it’s very confusing. Who and who are behind this insecurity in South-east?”
The South-east governors chair disagreed with the notion that the attacks in the South-east were perpetrated by outsiders, insisting they were carried out by the South-easterners themselves.
“What I will not deceive myself is to agree with anybody to say that foreign mercenaries have infiltrated South-east. It’s war propaganda. We are the ones killing ourselves; we are the ones burning down our police stations. And so, we don’t deceive ourselves if we want the problem to be solved,” he said.
“Are there rightful agitations? Yes? Has it turned violent? Yes, it’s been hijacked and that is the truth about the situation in the South East today. And so, the governors of South East appear to be unpopular with a very small section of the South-east. Why? Because we refused to toe their own way of doing things and their way of doing things is war and we don’t want to secede, we want to belong to Nigeria, a fair Nigeria where justice, equity and freedom are the platform upon which we exist as the people and for each of the regions.
“And so we don’t want the herders to be killed because we also have our people scattered in all the regions and we don’t want the herders to violate the cultural values and laws of the land. So, it is peace that the South East governors have been preaching. And Ebube Agu that is frightening some people especially politicians in South East is nothing but a translation of our vigilante which we have always had and which is backed up by law.
“But Ebube Agu is a kind of regional security cooperation; it is a change of name. In my state, we have signed our Ebube Agu into law and it has come to stay. And it is to protect the people. Once you are not a criminal, you are safe in my state but no matter what name you bear whether you are banned or unbanned and you are causing trouble in South East, Ebube Agu will address that together with security agencies.
“And so, I have offered along with governors to our youths to present your demands in prints and hand over to us. There’s no region in this country today, that does not have one thing or the other against the federal government. But we cannot sit down to discuss and that’s what we are demanding from our youth whether banned or unbanned so far you’re from southeast.
“Let us see your demands, let us see your grievances and give us six months to engage the federal government to address all these because we believe in dialogue. I believe that we can sit down as a people to discuss and find our differences and we can learn differences and also we can together discuss how we can strengthen our operation as a people.
“Let’s go back to our traditional method of relationship. We will no longer allow you to take your cattle from one local government to the other. And the implication is that these foreign herders also come as mobile herders with AK-47 and so, that is the source of conflicts.
“So, anyone that is saying that there should be no ban is on the other hand saying that these killings should continue and that is what has birthed the ESN.Whether we support it as governors or we don’t, the people tend to support it because of the foreign herders pretending that they are rearing cattle and they are killing people.
“In my village, a white man handling construction was kidnapped. So, what the southern governors are saying is, let’s return to our traditional kind of relationship. I don’t support cattle to move from one state to another. Let us encourage the Federal Government; let’s treat this cattle rearing as a business. Take money from federation account and develop ranches, there are designated ranches in the North.
“The northern governors are willing but are being frustrated. I know once you develop these ranches in the north, a lot of movement will stop in the south. We want to live in peace, we want to live as brothers and sisters. And if the right hand will cause you to sin, cut it off. It is the same thing as saying, let the cattle moving from one point to the other be stopped.
“Nobody is saying the herders should not be in the south-east but it should be treated as a business. When people go to other areas, they buy a land, they rent a shop, that is how business is done. You don’t enter people’s land without their knowledge. It is not done anywhere.
“I don’t think there is any South-east person that enters any region and sets up a business without proper permission. So, that is the truth about the open grazing thing. I think people misunderstand it. They don’t really understand what we mean.”
