CSO Demands Restructuring Of Military, Police High Commands In South East Over Killings

A civil society organisation, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), has called for a massive transfer of senior military and police officers out of the South East of Nigeria.

It also demanded restructuring of the composition of the high command cadres in military and police deployments in the South East, saying there must be 60 percent eastern indigenous composition of military and police officers in the region.

The group in a statement in Abuja yesterday said its recent investigations had revealed that the East was under the siege of state actor security to the extent that it was being offered corrupted and biased securitisation.

The statement jointly signed by its board chairman,    Emeka Umeagbalasi, head of civil liberties and rule of law, Obianuju Joy Igboeli and head of campaign and publicity department, Chidinma Udegbunam, said it had also observed that the deployed security forces and their commanders in the East had earned notoriety in using corrupted, concocted and biased intelligence on insecurity in the region.

According to the statement, these are in addition to ethnic profiling, false labeling, class criminalisation and stigmatisation of defenseless easterners and turning blind eye to genocides and atrocious of others such as jihadist Fulani herdsmen and others.

“Consequently, as part of finding a concrete solution to the rising insecurity bedeviling the East, particularly the South-East ahead of Nigeria’s all-important presidential poll, there must be congregated and aggregated groups and other stakeholders’ pressure on the country’s military and police high commands and the presidency for massive transfer out of the East of the below listed serving senior military and police officers and others.

“There must be 60 percent Eastern indigenous composition of the high command cadre in military and police deployments in the East; 20 percent non-Eastern Christians/non-Muslims and 20% non-Eastern Muslims. The overhauls must be done as a matter of uttermost immediacy and be extended to headships of spy police formations in the 11 states of the east as well as principal officers of the Army, Navy, and Air Force bases, artilleries, battalions and engineering regiments in Warri, Ogoja, Abakiliki, Enugu, Elele, Ogbaru, Owerre-Nta, Asa and Aba.

The organisation also called for the dismantling of 1,500 military and 4,000 police roadblocks in the East, saying part of the recent forensic findings by Intersociety was the needlessness of the existing not less than 1,500 military and 4,000 police roadblocks on Eastern roads and bypasses.

“In our recent study of 81 Igbo communities playing host to military and policing patrols or roadblocks or occupation, the areas were found to have recorded the highest concentration of the criminalities and their perpetrators highlighted above. Therefore, there must be an immediate dismantling of the existing 1,500 militaries and 4000 police roadblocks in the Eastern States of Edo, Delta, Anambra, Imo, Enugu, Abia, Ebonyi, Cross River, Rivers, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom,” they stated.