A group, Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA) has asked Imo and Anambra States governors, Hope Uzodimma and Charles Soludo to resign forthwith since they have shown incapacity and unwillingness to end the bloody violence in their states.
The group said the governor’s poor performance had led to the killings of thousands of citizens of both Anambra and Imo State by sundry armed gunmen and the security forces.
HURIWA in a statement signed by the national coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko said the incessant attacks of soft targets by armed gunmen and the killings of Igbo youths represent dark spots in Igbo history and submitted that these are unacceptable.
According to him, the fact that the Anambra and Imo States ‘administrations apparently lacked the will power to appropriately respond to the expanding frontiers of violence and dastardly crimes of extra-judicial killing of the citizens and the destruction of strategic public institutions, means that the governors have failed in the discharge of their constitutionally guaranteed primary duty of government which is the protection of lives and property of the citizens.
In his reaction, the Imo State commissioner for information and strategy, Hon Declan Emelumba stressed that the state government is doing its best to curb insecurity and will continue to put measures in place, so as to arrest the situation.
The group said it is clear that politicians in those states are the director-general beneficiaries of the state of anarchy and heightened insecurity because they cart away billions of public fund under the guise of security votes which are not deployed appropriately to secure those states.
“Specifically, HURIWA recalled that it was a tragic day for residents of Ngor Okpala Local Government Area of Imo State as gunmen once again ambushed and killed two police officers on Saturday jyst as the Rights group said this is coming barely one month after the gunmen ambushed and killed five policemen and a couple at the same Okpala junction located on the Owerri-Aba Road.”
The group said it is also in the same Ngor Okpala LGA of the state, five officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps were attacked and slain in March.
It stressed that due to the tragedy that occurred on Saturday, many locals have deserted their homes and places of business.
“Many observers who spoke with the media claimed that seven officers were shot dead during the incident, even though the state’s police department had only acknowledged the deaths of two officers.
“HURIWA recalled that information obtained by the media showed that the gunmen initially opened fire on the policemen, killing two of them and one was injured, this morning at a checkpoint along Aba Road in Okpala.
When contacted, the police spokesman for the command, Henry Okoye, said only two policemen “paid the supreme prize. The police spokesman in a telephone conversation confirmed that the gunmen were engaged in a gun duel by “the vigilant policemen on duty. He added that the police had found the blood-stained car that the gunmen abandoned while traveling in one of their operating vehicles.
Okoye claimed the command’s operatives had seized control of the area to inspire confidence in the local populace and to locate the suspects”.
HURIWA said one of the members of staff of the US medical mission to Anambra State that were attacked viciously by armed freelance gunmen, who lives in Kubwa Abuja with his young family of two little kids and a heavily pregnant wife, has now died living behind his heavily pregnant full time wife and two young kids.
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