(L-R) Gov Babatunde Fashola, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite,
Gov Peter Obi And Mrs. Obi At The Funeral Rites
For Late Odumegwu Ojukwu At
Tafawa Balewa
Square, Lagos, February, 2012.
(Pix: The Guardian)
“Unconstitutional, Illegal And Forced Deportation of Nigerians to Anambra State From Lagos State”
I wish to respectfully bring to your due
attention a very disturbing development that has vast national security
and political implications. Last September and again on 24 July 2013,
the Lagos State Government contrived inexplicable reasons to round up
Nigerians, whom they alleged were Anambra indigenes (most of whom the
SSS report shows clearly are not fromAnambra state) and forcefully
deported them to Anambra state, dumping them as it were in the
commercial city of Onitsha (see attached SSS report).
This latest callous act, in which Lagos State did not even bother to consult with Anambra State authorities, before deporting 72 persons considered to be of Igbo extraction to Anambra State, is illegal, unconstitutional and a blatant violation of the human rights of these individuals and of the Nigerian Constitution.
Your Excellency, no amount of offense committed by these people, even if deemed extremely criminal, would justify or warrant such cruel action by a State authority and in a democracy. Even refugees are protected by the law. Furthermore, the extant provisions of the Nigerian Constitution states: “Every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part, thereof, and no citizen shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereby or exit therefrom”.
Gov Obi Interacting With School Children
Sir, forced deportation
such as this, which Lagos State seems to be making a norm in addressing
its domestic challenges are egregious, and calls into question the
validity of Nigeria and its federating components. Such acts violate
human decency, the rule of law and constitutionally ordered liberties.
Were Anambra and other States in the federation to resort to such
extreme measures, there would be total anarchy.
It would amount to complicity on the part of the states and the federal government, if this issue is not thoroughly investigated and some form of censure brought to bear on Lagos State. I suggest, Sir, that you direct the Attorney-General of the Federation to investigate these incidents.
Naturally, I have the obligation to protect the interest and
welfare of all Nigerians resident in Anambra State irrespective of
their States of origin and I would be left no option other than
reciprocity or reprisal. I will, however, put any such reaction in
abeyance until Your Excellency has had the opportunity to address our
concerns.
Please accept, Your Excellency, the renewed assurances of my highest regards.
Peter Obi, CON
Governor, Anambra State
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
Please accept, Your Excellency, the renewed assurances of my highest regards.
Peter Obi, CON
Governor, Anambra State
Whose Country Is It Anyway?
ReplyDeleteBy Adewale Maja-Pearce
Earlier this week the Lagos State Government packed 70 people into either a trailer or three buses (the stories differed) and drove them overnight under heavy police escort to Onitsha, where they dumped them. According to their own testimonies, they were arrested on the streets by officials of Kick Against Indiscipline ‘for alleged wandering and other minor offences’ and taken to a warehouse-like structure in Ikorodu Town, where they were initially held for a number of months. Some among them were said to be insane, unable to remember their names or where they originated from. The idea seems to be that they were all beggars although at least one among them claimed to be a petty trader and another an office worker. A terse statement by Lateef Ibirogba, the Lagos State Commissioner for Information, denied deporting anybody on the grounds that ‘everybody has the right to live in any part of the country’ while nevertheless ‘emphasizing that people must live within the law’, a non-sequitur if ever there was one and the reason why I choose to disbelieve him, especially since he is contradicted by, amongst others, the Red Cross officials who attended to the deportees.
Besides, this is not the first time the Lagos State government has shown its disdain for legal niceties, an irony given that it is headed by a SAN. It wasn’t so long ago that a different set of officials from Alausa descended on Epe and demolished over 200 houses while the matter was still pending in the courts. But we need not labour the point. This is the nature of the Nigerian ruling class with its disdain for the people from whom it derives its mandate - and never mind the claims of the party concerned. A ‘progressive’ in Nigerian politics must be measured in relative terms, which is why we are happy when a few roads are repaired and a few trees are planted, desirable though they are. It is one of the tragedies of Nigeria - perhaps the mother of them all, as it were - that our standards have fallen so low that we celebrate what others take for granted.
Nor need the story be literally true in order to resonate with so much that is wrong with Nigeria that it might as well be true, beginning with the vexed issue of who is and who is not an indigene, and whether any of it makes any sense. As the unforthcoming Lagos State commissioner acknowledged, any Nigerian citizen is free to live anywhere they like in Nigeria although bitter experience has shown otherwise; and it is hardly surprising that many of the comments in the few newspapers which carried the story should draw the obvious conclusion: ‘This is the beginning of sorrows, kill them in the North, deport them from Lagos...’ The only mitigating factor, perhaps, is that there is at least one Igbo representative in the upper echelons of the offending state but then he’s a ‘Lagos boy’ and a politician to boot, hence his silence, at least in public.
Then there is the matter of uniformed officials wandering about the streets arresting their fellow citizens under the pretext of a colonial relic we thought we had jettisoned but made worse in this case by the area-boy nature of the exercise. Since when did state officials usurp the powers of a police force which the state government itself has no authority over, much to its chagrin, and rightly so in a federal structure. And not only arrest but detain for months on end. This would amount to kidnapping in saner climes, and a capital offence in the US we pretend to model ourselves on, although given what the US itself gets up to, what with forcing down foreign presidential aircraft for wandering about the open skies, the lesson in hooliganism might have been learnt only too well...
FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE
http://majapearce.blogspot.com/2013/07/whos-country-is-it-anyway.html?spref=fb
What kind of country is this? So Nigerians can now be deported within Nigeria? And yet they talk about unity, peace and progress!
ReplyDeleteWhose Country Is It anyway?
ReplyDeleteBy Adewale Maja-Pearce
Earlier this week the Lagos State Government packed 70 people into either a trailer or three buses (the stories differed) and drove them overnight under heavy police escort to Onitsha, where they dumped them. According to their own testimonies, they were arrested on the streets by officials of Kick Against Indiscipline ‘for alleged wandering and other minor offences’ and taken to a warehouse-like structure in Ikorodu Town, where they were initially held for a number of months. Some among them were said to be insane, unable to remember their names or where they originated from. The idea seems to be that they were all beggars although at least one among them claimed to be a petty trader and another an office worker. A terse statement by Lateef Ibirogba, the Lagos State Commissioner for Information, denied deporting anybody on the grounds that ‘everybody has the right to live in any part of the country’ while nevertheless ‘emphasizing that people must live within the law’, a non-sequitur if ever there was one and the reason why I choose to disbelieve him, especially since he is contradicted by, amongst others, the Red Cross officials who attended to the deportees.
Besides, this is not the first time the Lagos State government has shown its disdain for legal niceties, an irony given that it is headed by a SAN. It wasn’t so long ago that a different set of officials from Alausa descended on Epe and demolished over 200 houses while the matter was still pending in the courts. But we need not labour the point. This is the nature of the Nigerian ruling class with its disdain for the people from whom it derives its mandate - and never mind the claims of the party concerned. A ‘progressive’ in Nigerian politics must be measured in relative terms, which is why we are happy when a few roads are repaired and a few trees are planted, desirable though they are. It is one of the tragedies of Nigeria - perhaps the mother of them all, as it were - that our standards have fallen so low that we celebrate what others take for granted.
Nor need the story be literally true in order to resonate with so much that is wrong with Nigeria that it might as well be true, beginning with the vexed issue of who is and who is not an indigene, and whether any of it makes any sense. As the unforthcoming Lagos State commissioner acknowledged, any Nigerian citizen is free to live anywhere they like in Nigeria although bitter experience has shown otherwise; and it is hardly surprising that many of the comments in the few newspapers which carried the story should draw the obvious conclusion: ‘This is the beginning of sorrows, kill them in the North, deport them from Lagos...’ The only mitigating factor, perhaps, is that there is at least one Igbo representative in the upper echelons of the offending state but then he’s a ‘Lagos boy’ and a politician to boot, hence his silence, at least in public.
Then there is the matter of uniformed officials wandering about the streets arresting their fellow citizens under the pretext of a colonial relic we thought we had jettisoned but made worse in this case by the area-boy nature of the exercise. Since when did state officials usurp the powers of a police force which the state government itself has no authority over, much to its chagrin, and rightly so in a federal structure. And not only arrest but detain for months on end. This would amount to kidnapping in saner climes, and a capital offence in the US we pretend to model ourselves on, although given what the US itself gets up to, what with forcing down foreign presidential aircraft for wandering about the open skies, the lesson in hooliganism might have been learnt only too well.
FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE
http://majapearce.blogspot.com/2013/07/whos-country-is-it-anyway.html?spref=fb
Like Peter Obi said:
ReplyDelete"forced deportation such as this, which Lagos State seems to be making a norm in addressing its domestic challenges are egregious, and calls into question the validity of Nigeria and its federating components. Such acts violate human decency, the rule of law and constitutionally ordered liberties. Were Anambra and other States in the federation to resort to such extreme measures, there would be total anarchy."
Nothing more add. And to think that this act of savagery is being perpetrated by a lawyer, a SAN?
Are we uniting this country or tearing it apart? Why needless provocation?
ReplyDeleteThis is terrible. Unbelievable
ReplyDeleteIt seems a pity that Governor Obi should issue a veiled - or not so veiled - threat to do the same, which completely undermines his moral authority.
ReplyDeleteAdewale Maja-Pearce
PLEASE MY BLACK BROTHER AND SISTER.S, WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?WHY SHOULD MONKEY'S BE FIGHTING MONKEY'S? PLEASE DON'T DO ANYTHING FOOLISH.YOU MAY DETONATE AN EXPLOSIVE MIND .
ReplyDelete