•Sit-at-home victim’s family slams FG, govs over abandonment
From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
Palpable anxiety has gripped the entire South East region as the Supreme Court in Abuja, today, sets to deliver judgement on the appeal seeking to compel the Federal Government to release the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, from detention.
The Appeal Court in Abuja had, on October 13, 2022, delivered a judgement ordering Kanu’s release from detention.
The court ruled that the IPOB leader was abducted, ill-treated, and “illegally moved” from Kenya to Nigeria to face treason and terrorism charges. The Court of Appeal added that the federal government breached international laws and resorted to self-help in its failure to file an extradition application in Kenya instead of resorting to unlawful abduction and rendition.
The five-man panel of judges had dismissed the criminal case, but the Federal Government appealed the ruling and has continued to keep Kanu in detention against the court ruling.
Meanwhile, the family of Mr Henry Oko, a victim of December 14, 2022 sit-at-home attack at Nwakpu market in Ikwo Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, has chided the Federal Government and South East governors for abandoning them.
Spokesman of the family, Steve Oko, who chided the Federal Government and South East governors, while speaking in Umuahia, decried the plight of innocent victims of sit-at-home, some of whom he said have been incapacitated for life.
He stated that it is the height of deceit for South East governors and security agencies to coerce residents of the zone to ignore sit-at-home orders only to abandon them when they come under attack by the enforcers.
Narrating the family’s ordeal, Steve said his brother, Henry, a father of four, was at the Nwakpu market, Ikwo, when some masked gunmen, who claimed they were enforcing the five-day sit-at-home order, declared by a foreign-based Biafran agitator, invaded the market, shooting sporadically and setting vehicles ablaze.
“They set his vehicle on fire, gave him deadly axe cuts in the head and shoulder before shooting him in both thighs very close to his manhood. He was left in the pool of his blood, but was rescued by a combined team of the army and police that later stormed the scene.”
Steve explained that his brother had a near-death experience as his thigh bone was shattered by bullets, 17 of which were later extracted from his body. He said both the South East governors and the Federal Government in charge of the security agencies should be held responsible for the ordeals of the innocent victims.
“A situation where governors threaten residents with sanctions, and in some instances force them to flout sit-at-home orders only to leave them at the mercy of the enforcers is treacherous. The governors should be held accountable for exposing these innocent residents to danger”.
He regretted that some of them who were lucky to escape or were rescued alive from the scene of attack with life-threatening injuries, had been abandoned by both Federal and South East governments. He said some of the victims came under harm’s way for relying on ‘false assurances’ of protection by the security agencies and South East governors.
He called on the federal government to, as a matter of urgency, set up a special intervention fund for the treatment and rehabilitation of all victims of sit-at-home in the South East and parts of South South. Steve, who claimed his brother who sustained bullet wounds when enforcers of sit-at-home attacked people at Ebonyi market, “is still in critical condition at the hospital 12 months after.”
“Our family is financially exhausted because enormous fortunes have been sunk into efforts to save my brother’s life. He spent over four months at the National Orthopaedic Hospital Enugu before he was referred to another tertiary hospital, where he is currently being managed.
“No government has looked our way. There are other people like us in different parts of Igbo land. Families have lost their beloved ones and valuable property, including houses and vehicles. Time has come for the federal government to intervene and show empathy just as it did to victims of Boko Haram when it established the North East Development Commission. Similar commission or special intervention fund is urgently needed for victims of sit-at-home in the South East”.
He also called on Ohanaeze Ndigbo, civil society organisations, embassies and international bodies to step in. Spokesmen of the Oko family called for the immediate and unconditional release of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, “to end the current tension in the South East”.