The invitation admittedly extended to the Army by the Enugu State Police Commissioner ahead of the deadly shooting at Emene was too prompt and bears stark evidence of premeditation for lethal violence against the Igbo element on the part of the Commissioner of Police.
This premeditation stems from the customary lack of
compatriot empathy often exhibited by some Northern Muslim security chiefs and
other ranks towards Igbos when it comes to law enforcement of this kind, even
when the target of such enforcement is, without regard to their numbers,
unarmed and nonviolent.
From similar occurrences in this era, it is becoming clear
that the only trigger required for security agents to unleash an assault of
this magnitude is the slightest sign of a Biafran or IPOB insignia. Even a
Biafran armband, bandana or a flag is considered enough.
This has always been the case from August 2015 when these
easy mass murders of Igbos, under the guise of demonizing them as IPOB, got
underway. That is why security agencies are too quick to rush to the media to
characterize or spin such incidents as “clash” between security agents and
IPOB. Simultaneously, they will tag along the hackneyed singsong that IPOB was
declared a “terrorist group”, as if that endows them with the absolute license
to kill at a whim.
So, as tribal considerations go, you can bet that the
opposite would have been the case if an Igbo, a Southern, or even a moderate
MiddleBelt officer was incharge, either at the theatre or locale of the assault
or amongst the high commands where the rules of engagement are determined.
A lot of people don’t know this, but in the unique reckoning
of Nigerian security operations, ‘shoot-to-kill’ instead of ‘shoot to maim’ is
the standard rule of engagement when it comes to containing terrorists. They
make no differentiation between a bomb-wielding Abubakar Shekau and an
idealistic Igbo youth who is catching his nationalistic swag with a Biafran
armband while correctly believing that he is exercising his constitutional
rights to freedom of assembly and expression in his country and within the
relative safety of his Igbo homeland. The only differentiation is that an
Abubakar Shekau is more likely to be pardoned and the Igbo killed once Nigeria
dubiously convinces itself that such Igbo is an IPOB member.
So, as an Igbo - especially the youth - you will be lucky to
be alive once someone fingers you as an IPOB member and points security agents
to your direction. Within the purview of Nigeria’s retrograde security
analysis, such ‘fingering’ will be promptly admitted as a ‘security report’
without more. So, chances are that you will be summarily executed in a
contrived “clash” without any option of surrender or even maiming. Little
wonder that the Enugu Police Commissioner unashamedly cited ‘security report’
as the core basis for the tremendous violence that was arrayed against those
innocent souls.
This Enugu massacre is one too many that have combined to
stoke the popular notion that the predominance of Northern Muslim (mostly
Fulani) officers and other ranks in security formations in Southeast is
deliberately geared to the greater oppression of the Igbo, not just the IPOB.
This is why the declaration of IPOB as a terrorist group was seen by many as an
ethnic-tinged maneuver to create a statutory plank to keeping the gutsy Igbo in
line.
The historical dangers of a tribally-imbalanced security
leadership for Nigeria terrified the framers of the 1999 Constitution to the
point that - pivoting on the Armed Forces as the exemplar - they enacted at
Section 217(3) that ‘the composition of the officer corps and other ranks of
the Armed Forces of the Federation shall reflect the federal character of
Nigeria’. In plain terms, it means that the Igbo or natives of Southeast shall
not be excluded. But the opposite is the case and it seems to sit well
Nigerians who desire the nation to be one. Incredible!
And at Section 14(3), the same Constitution provides that,
‘the composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies
shall ensure that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few States
or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or any of its
agencies’. Again, this means that the Igbo shall be equal partakers. But they
are not. Yet, Igbos are taunted with the 2023 Presidency of Nigeria. Pray, how
can you be President of a country you are not a partaker, or that disdains you
to the point of extrajudicial murder.
To be sure, all the security agencies - the Army, Airforce,
Navy, Police, DSS, NIA, etc - are all Federal and thus belonging to all
Nigerians, like it or not. So, it’s uncanny and somewhat sinister that - since
2015 - those that are ruling Nigeria have deliberately violated the
Constitution by notoriously excluding the Igbo from the security architecture
of Nigeria. This is beside the exclusion from the rest of what makes Nigeria
tick.
Under these circumstances, these killings of Ndigbo in their
homeland will surely continue until Ndigbo collectively resorts to
scotched-earth civil disobedience and other countervailing measures that will
compel the Nigerian State to do right by de-proscribing the IPOB and
balancing-out Nigeria’s Federal leadership (security and civilian, alike).
This is the only way because you cannot beg your
way out of oppression. Should such stern measures ultimately fail to encourage
Nigeria to see reason and abide by the clear letters of its Constitution (which
is very easy), then Ndigbo should - without further ado – start consulting with
Nnamdi Kanu. Enough said!
*Ejimakor, a Lawyer, a commentator on public issues (aejimakor@gmail.com
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