The United States of America has been asked to redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) and subsequently place it on the US watchlist over the rising spate of killings by bandits and herdsmen.
The call was made by a delegation of American Veterans of Igbo Descent (AVID) and Rising Sun & Ambassadors for Self Defense during its recent visit to Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. The delegation met with some US congress members to lobby for the release of the incarcerated leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
It will be recalled that US President Donald Trump, in his first term, designated Nigeria as a CPC nation, but his successor, Joe Biden, removed Nigeria from the watchlist when he assumed power.
Addressing the press after the Capitol Hill engagement, the President of AVID, Dr Sylvester Onyia, said they also sensitised the congress on the rising violation of human rights, calculated ethnic cleansing and religious atrocities perpetrated in Nigeria by those bent on dispossessing the indigenous people of their ancestral lands.
He decried the barbaric activities of the killer herdsmen and bandits slaughtering Nigerians, mostly Christians, “while the Government has failed to protect the hapless people”.
The AVID president, who also recalled the killing of 27 unarmed Biafra agitators
celebrating the inauguration of President Trump in 2017 by the Nigerian security operatives in Port Harcourt Rivers State demanded US action.
He further said the delegation was at Capitol Hill to sensitise the US Congress on the plight of the IPOB Leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who has been in solitary confinement since his abduction in Kenya and extraordinary rendition to Nigeria in 2021.
AVID and its allied group renewed their demand for Kanu’s immediate and unconditional release. They insisted that Kanu “is not Nigeria’s problem but part of its solution.”
“We are here to express our concern to the American people that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu needs to be released now.
“He is unjustly incarcerated. We have told President Ahmed Tinubu, just as we told President Buhari, who arrested him, to release him because he didn’t do anything to anybody.
“We also came to remind the world about what happened on January 20, 2017, when President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his first tenure.
“The Nigerian security forces shot at, and killed 27 youths of Igbo descent celebrating Trump’s inauguration in Port Harcourt. The innocent victims did nothing other than cheer a US President.
” This happened, and nobody has been brought to account. So, we are asking the US Government, now under President Trump, to look into the matter because it was democracy that was being celebrated, and those innocent youths were slaughtered by the Nigerian security personnel as if they were chickens.”
A member of the delegation, Rev. Father Augustine Odinmegwa, accused Britain of complicity in Kanu’s continued incarceration, wondering why the British Government has not demanded his release despite being a British citizen.
“Why are they still holding Mazi Nnamdi Kanu? We believe that as a British citizen, the British Government has a hand in it. Kanu was discussing the atrocities being committed in Nigeria.
“Those holding Nigeria down do not want any development in the country. Jihadists and Fulani herders are busy killing and displacing innocent indigenous Nigerians and grabbing their lands, and the world is watching.”
The delegation argued that if no urgent action were taken to stall the advancement of the rampaging bandits and criminal herdsmen into the South East, they would soon seize crude oil in the region, and challenge the US and Western interests.
“We want the world, especially the US Government, to look into it. If nothing is done now, these jihadists will get hold of the South East and the Christians that they are trying to exterminate, then get hold of the sweet crude. Once this happens, the next thing will be to challenge the US and Britain.”
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