Ndigbo Expresses Worry Over Boko Haram’s Incursion Into Igboland

Ndigbo Lagos, the umbrella body of all Igbo organisations in Lagos, has expressed worry over the news that 486 Boko Haram suspects were arrested in Abia State by Nigerian soldiers.

Lamenting the development, the group, in a statement issued Tuesday by its Director of Communications and Strategy, Chief Chuma Igwe, and obtained by THEWILL, the group said even more condemnable about the incursion is the official information that amongst those arrested was a notorious and wanted Boko Haram kingpin.

“It is instructive that the apprehension of these 486 suspected Boko Haram members in 33 Toyota Hiace buses in Abia State, along Enugu-Port Harcourt road at about 2.00 am, occurred just a few days after the timely discovery of six time-bombs at the Port Harcourt Road branch of Winners Chapel Church, Owerri, a church that reportedly has over 10,000 worshippers on Sunday services,” the statement said.

Ndigbo Lagos said : “While we salute the gallantry and courage of the Nigerian Army for intercepting the suspects, and the vigilance of the worshippers in identifying the bombs, there are indications that these recent subtle but deliberate push by the terrorists into Igbo land has included the use of Fulani herdsmen to penetrate and infiltrate the underbelly of South Eastern part of Nigeria from the remote frontier villages of Enugu and Ebonyi States.”

“It is on record that, among many such complaints, in recent weeks the people of Ezeagu Local Government of Enugu State have cried out about infiltration of their villages by AK47 wielding ‘Fulani Herdsmen’. “According to the Vanguard Newspaper of June 10, 2014, Dr. Obiorah Ozobu, the President General of Ezeagu General Assembly was quoted as saying that in a neighbouring village “… a farmer was shot dead by these Fulani people and we have had three reported cases of rape of village women that went to their farm.”

The group stated further: “When these occurrences are juxtaposed against the statement by Major General Chris Olukolade, Director of Defense Information (Vanguard, April 23; Leadership, April 24; Nigerian Tribune, April 24) revealing that the identification of these marauding semi-nomadic as including elements of the Boko Haram terrorists was made in the course of interrogating the Fulani herdsmen who were arrested after a series of killings of hundreds of innocent babies, children and the aged in Taraba State, then it is a great cause for concern.

“Such rape, arson and murderous attacks have also been visited on many minority ethnic nationalities in Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, Kaduna and Plateau States among others.”

The group maintained further: “Cattle rearing are private commercial ventures and not a public infrastructure. This is the 21st Century and nomadic cattle grazing are outdated. In saner climes, livestock farmers acquire land, cultivate vegetation or buy feed, sink boreholes and pen their animals. And this affords them better security, veterinary services and market accessibility.

“The Igbo Nation had in the past suffered the most, through a reprehensible genocide and a Military/Political diarchic conspiracy that has left them with little or no Federal infrastructure presence in a country that has spent budgeted tens of trillion of Naira over the past 40 years. Paradoxically, Ndigbo, who dwell peacefully all over the country, have laboured to develop many Nigerian towns and cities more than any other nationality group in Nigeria can claim.

“There is presently no doubt about the intentions of Boko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen to plunge this nation into darkness, including the invasion of the South Eastern region. We call on the Nigerian Government to unequivocally deploy all its military might in crushing this vermin called Boko Haram before it consumes the Nation.

“We also use this medium to caution those politicians, religious leaders and regional irredentists in the North whose rhetoric and body language have in the past two years stoked the amber of terrorism.

“We call on the Sultan, Emirs and Political leaders of the North with conscience to completely demonstrate their relevance by leading this war against terrorism from the front without recourse to sophistry, if together we must avert the calamity that is now enveloping Nigeria- a country we have all laboured to build in the past hundred years. They need to rein them in.

We warn those who ride the tiger that they are bound to end in its belly, earlier than they imagine.”

Ndigbo Lagos therefore warned that an invasion of the South East portends very dangerous consequences for the Nigerian nation, even on a scale previously unimagined.

Maintaining that Ndigbo are peace-loving and industrious people blessed by God, the statement said: “We at the leadership of Ndigbo are ever willing and ready to promote the peace and prosperity of Nigeria. But we are concerned about the possible reaction of our youths who have endured loss of lives and property with the attendant psychological degradations over the years, even as many of them have been forced to relocate back home as the only secure place they can live in peace.

“Now, they have nowhere to run to anymore. We are putting the Federal Government, the cultural and Islamic religion leadership in the North, and indeed all patriotic Nigerians on notice.”

- See more at: http://thewillnigeria.com/news/ndigbo-expresses-worry-over-boko-harams-incursion-into-igboland/#sthash.Tq2uv85O.dpuf

Goodluck Jonathan's Slow Motion Response to an Appalling Crisis

Goodluck Jonathan's Slow Motion Response to an Appalling Crisis

By Stephen Hayes - Associated Press 

The kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls, followed by the announcement by the leader of Boko Haram – the terrorist group which has claimed responsibility for taking them – that the girls are to be either sold or forced into slavery is beyond appalling. It amounts to mass rape. It also does no honor to Islam. Although child marriage may be permitted under Islam, certainly kidnapping and rape is not. It is primitive and barbaric that deserves the strongest condemnation of the entire world.

According to news reports, more than 300 school teenage schoolgirls were kidnapped from their school in a remote section of northeastern Nigeria last April 15.
The mass kidnapping and the response by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's administration may determine the future of his tenure and who is to succeed him. So far, the political leadership has handled the situation poorly. The question that hangs over the whole matter is how could more than 300 girls be kidnapped en masse and no one seems to know where any of them are? The president of Nigeria has admitted publicly he has no idea where the girls are, and only now has he begun to ask for outside help in finding the girls.

The whole matter raises many other questions, including why few, if any, of the northern governors, most of them in opposition to the Jonathan administration, have publicly been of assistance. One hopes that some have been quietly working with helping in the search. Nigerian politics, like those of many countries, are especially complicated. The northern governors, nearly all of them Islamic, believe that Jonathan has twice broken a political understanding that the ruling People's Democratic Party has that the presidency rotate between the north (mostly Islamic) and south (mostly Christian). Jonathan is a southerner who assumed the presidency in 2010 when his northern predecessor fell ill and died. Some northern factions believed Jonathan violated the agreement by standing for election to a full term in 2011 and then did so again by announcing that he will seek re-election. There may be no sense of urgency by the governors of the north to help Jonathan out of this. That they seem to know as little as Jonathan about the girls also raises questions about the connection between the rulers and the ruled, as well as the threat from Boko Haram that some may feel.

The Nigerian Government has also been slow in reacting to the crisis because much of their focus on Boko Haram has been a defensive one, aimed at protecting those participating in the upcoming World Economic Forum, to be held in Abuja this week. Several hundred of Africa’s top business leaders, along with various other representatives of Western governments and businesses are planning to be in Abuja for the group's annual Africa Forum. The forum’s presence in Abuja was to be a major feather in Jonathan's cap, and a showpiece of Nigeria for global business. Ironically, now the forum finds itself in a very awkward position of doing business as usual in the face of one of the most serious political crises in Nigeria since the Biafran Civil War. Yet, it is almost impossible for the group to cancel the forum, given that this program is a major part of their overall master plan for Africa. To cancel the forum would also be an enormous vote of no confidence in Nigeria’s ability to manage its most serious problems. The fact that the bulk of Nigerian security has focused on this meeting of the economic elite and not on the search for the schoolgirls has not gone unnoticed in Nigeria and elsewhere, as is underscored by demonstrations in New York and Washington.

How the Nigerian government handles these next 10 days may be not only the most important to Jonathan but to those that follow him.

Source: https://www.causes.com/causes/298145-for-a-corruption-free-nigeria/updates/911463-goodluck-jonathans-slow-motion-response-to-an-appalling-crisis?utm_campaign=post_mailer%2Fcause_update.cb_50474&utm_medium=email&utm_source=causes&ctag=9a229f9453c00f0b2d3ff4b9245d18ba96&ctoken=i6I-mGH4jKHnp-fSBu9ri0VP9fACWFicf0MsaWd1ufNph5zQqHvLkor_CB2j4i3TT73QATCQbVQEML3o6blXpKqBybHLDltK&uid=91781643

BEYOND THE BOKO HARAM NEGOTIATION WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA

The Boko Haram crisis started on the heels of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential nomination processes of 2011. The wanton wastage of lives and property is strictly a political retaliation against the candidacy and eventual election of Goodluck Jonathan. The president confirmed this himself by saying that the Boko Haram has members in the present political ruling class including his cabinet. Recent revelations have indicted some of them but they are still free, with no meaningful investigation or prosecution. It appears that there is a high-powered conspiracy of the politically aggrieved to deal with the Jonathan presidency. It is rather unfortunate that the leadership of this same PDP have not engaged themselves on the fundamental issues troubling the party internally.

When the president came up with the idea of the single-term tenure, it was the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) that opposed it vehemently. The Northern leaders who felt cheated by the election of President Jonathan in 2011 would have supported the single-term tenure if it has scaled through the National Assembly. Attacks are launched whenever there is any comment or debate that puts Jonathan forward as the best candidate for the 2015 presidential election. Attacks are however suspended whenever there is an anti-Jonathan campaign at any level e.g. the Fuel Subsidy Removal Protest at the Freedom Park in Lagos.

The Boko Haram leadership has defended the sect as “fighting for God”. But this is far-fetched, knowing fully well the genesis of the crisis – the election of President Goodluck Jonathan. Members of the sect pretend as if the mass destruction of life in the North, and the comprehensive economic wreckage serves anyone any good. The ruling class thought that the presidency can put an end to insurrection in any region of the country.

There were once the militants in the Niger-Delta creeks that fought vehemently against perceived marginalization of its people leading to wanton wastage of lives and properties. The Igbos are still aggrieved that they have not had a democratically elected president in the presidential villa since Independence over 50 years ago. It has been said over and over again that no region has the monopoly of violence. Those who think destroying the once peaceful and serene environments in most parts of the North would meet their agitation should have a rethink.

The whole crisis as it stands now is beyond Goodluck Jonathan, and his presidency as of today. It requires all Nigerians’ attention and collective response. The ruling class should not play to the gallery when it comes to the issue of security. It is when we have internal security that we can boast of political stability and economic growth and development. The convocation of a National Conference is long overdue. Many issues still trail the political injustices across the length and breadth of Nigeria. The National assembly should, for once, climb down its high legislative horse, and accept that Nigeria needs to realign its political infrastructure to survive.

There cannot be a State of Emergency when there is an avenue that accommodates every citizen irrespective of their political inclination to sit at a roundtable. The best time to call for a National Conference is now.