AGITATION FOR THE RIGHT TO SELF DETERMINATION IS LAWFUL & PROTEST AGAINST ENSLAVEMENT

AGITATION FOR THE RIGHT TO SELF DETERMINATION IS LAWFUL & PROTEST AGAINST ENSLAVEMENT

Sub-Theme:This nation cannot survive half slave and half free - Abraham Lincoln.

Separatism or the advocacy or practice of separation of a certain group of people from a larger body on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or gender is in both Nigerian and international law inherent and inalienable right of the peoples of Nigeria.

Self Determination Provisions in the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (UN ICCPR)
The United Nations General Assembly on 16th Dec. 1966,  in a bid to minimize the abridgment of minority rights by over-bearing majorities in member states , adopted the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which came into force on 23rd March 1976. Nigeria ratified this Covenant on 29th July, 1993.
The first article of ICCPR emphasizes the premium the UN places on peoples’ right to self determination in unions in member states.
Part I, Article 1 provides that “All peoples have the right of self-determination.” And “By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” Part II, Article 2 (1) binds “Each State party to the Covenant to undertake to respect and ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights 
recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind . . . .“ Article 2 (2) further binds
all parties to the Covenant, to domesticate the provisions of the Covenant into their national laws and
“adopt such laws or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to the rights recognized in this
Covenant.” Article 2 (3) compels each state party to undertaking to ensure remedy for its citizens
whose rights under this Covenant have been violated or denied.”

Self Determination Provisions in the African Charter on Human and Political Rights (ACHPR)
Finding the UN ICCPR as a very critical document for stabilizing unions in Federations, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU), on 27th June 1981, in its Summit meeting in Banjul, Gambia, adopted its on charter to regulate civil and political rights in the African continent. This is what is now known as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) (also called Banjul Charter). Article 20 of the Charter is centered on the Right to Self Determination of constituents of member states.
 (1)”All peoples shall have the right to existence. They shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination. They shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their 
economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen.”
(2)”Colonized or oppressed peoples shall have the right to free themselves from the bonds of 

domination by resorting to any means recognized by the international community.”
(3)”All peoples shall have the right to the assistance of the State Parties to the present Charter in their liberation struggle against foreign domination, be it political, economic or cultural.”
The ACHR came into effect in all AU member nations on 21st October 1986 when over 50% of AU member states had ratified it. Nigeria signed the charter on 31st August 1982, ratified it on 22nd June 1983 and deposited it with the African Commission on Human Rights on 22nd July 1983. The African Human Rights Commission headquartered in Banjul, Gambia, regulates the ACHR and serves as a court on violations of its provisions by member States.

Domestication of ACHPR by Nigeria:
Nigeria further domesticated ACHR as its own municipal law by its enactment of the African Charter on Human and peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act 1983 (now Cap. 10 Laws of the
Federation of Nigeria, 1990).
Separatism or aspiration for separation from a Nigeria is therefore within the laws of UN, AU
and Nigeria.

Salutary Effect of Provision for the Right to Self-Determination:
The essence of entrenching the right to self-determination in the laws of federations is not necessarily to cause disintegration. The provision at the end of the day, helps in fostering more genuine unity and strengthens longer lasting and peaceful polity than unity forced on an entity by laws which pay no regard to the feelings and reactions of the divergent peoples of a federation.
Entrenching the right to self determination in the laws of any federation and the option of its assertion, therefore helps to curb the excessive arrogance of the majority (like the oligarchy in Nigeria) by ensuring equality of all before the Law.  It thus ensures that minority rights are protected.
Equality and mutual respect between the peoples comprising it, are two inherent principles of
federation, in the absence of which there is acrimony and alienation, as is prevalent in 201 Nigeria.
Assertion of the right to self determination therefore compels mutual respect in federations between
minorities and the majority groups. The absence of that right results in enslavement of minorities and
consequent alienation.
The resolution of two Separatist agitations in Canada and UK, confirm that the exercise of the right to self determination, does not necessarily lead to secession.
 It is this right that entitled the French Roman Catholic Canadians of Quebec province who constitute only 23.07% (8.10 million) of Canada’s 35.1 million (2014) to twice freely test in referenda (1980 & 1995) their wish to separate or remain with the rest of English-speaking CanadianProtestant Pentecostals. By  Official Languages Act (1969), Canada adopted English and French as official languages of Canada.  The 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights was the country's first federal law to protect human rights and fundamental freedom. Considered groundbreaking at the time, it was eventually superseded by the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These Acts among other things,
further helped to reassure protection for minorities' rights.  It is worthy of note that Mr. Joseph
Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, a Quebecer and  the 15th Prime Minister of Canada  (1968
-1979 & 1980-1984) and 5th of eleven  Quebecers who have been Prime ministers, was in office
during the 1980 referendum.  Quebecers found no reason to leave Canada and therefore chose to remain. Rejection of secession was again repeated in the 1995 referendum.

The Scottish Independence referendum of Sept. 18, 2014 for the Scots, who make up only 8.32% of the UK population, is one of the most patent demonstrations of a liberal world’s assertion that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” (United Nations Declaration of Human Rights - UDHR Article 1) and of UK's compliance with Article1 of United Nations International Convention on Civil and Political Rights ( UN ICCPR): “All People have the right of Self Determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status . . .”
The British Prime Minister took time after the vote to explain that Britain had no legal framework for
 the referendum but on account of the human rights implications of the Scottish agitation, he had to
introduce an Order-in-Council which was supported by all political parties, and that enabled the
referendum.  London and Scottish Parliaments ratified the Order-in-Council, thereby setting up the
vote. The government of United Kingdom set up an all-party committee and ensured that most Scottish grounds for separation were ameliorated or removed. On September 18, 2014, the Scottish Nation Party, the promoters of Scottish separatism, consequently lost the vote.

IPOB and MASSOB Agitation is Lawful 
IPOB and  MASSOB are therefore breaking no laws by agitating for separation. Indeed, they are following international and Nigerian laws by peacefully expressing their dissatisfaction with failing Nigeria and their separatist wish. IPOB and MASSOB are doing what regional politicians did in
Quebec and Scotland, and what Catalonian politicians are presently doing in Spain. Most Nigerian
politicians, perhaps, out of fear of exclusion from dipping in the honey pot, invariably do not openly
identify with their people's aspiration. Besides, Nigerian electoral Act forbids registration of regional
parties whose sole purpose, like in Scotland, Quebec in Canada and Catalonia of Spain, would be
regional autonomy  or separation.

Rightful Reaction of the Federal Government of Nigeria to Separatist Agitation:
It is therefore the binding duty of the National  Assembly to enact a Bill authorizing Referendum in any area that might wish to exercise its right to self determination. Such enactment must provide that it is a vote in the State Assembly/Assemblies covering the area under separatist agitation that would
activate a referendum; and not the National Assembly any more.  A specified percentage majority vote in such State Assembly/Assemblies of the separatist area/areas   Must be required to activate
referendum. If the bill passes the area's legislative houses, then referendum must be conducted to
ascertain the people's definite preference.

Shooting Separatist Agitators is an International Crime Against Humanity:
Shooting agitators for separatism whilst demonstrating peacefully or praying for their aspiration, is therefore an international crime against humanity for which the Federal Government of Nigeria must
be held accountable to the International Criminal Court, and to other UN Commissions/Committees under protocols of other UN charters/ covenants; to the African Commission on Human Rights; and courts of various UN members under varying protocols of their municipal laws.
Nigeria's Indivisibility Bogey
Nigeria cannot claim indivisibility after allowing Bakassi to be excised from it and awarded to
Cameroon for the the assistance it gave to Nigeria during the war. Not even governments are allowed
in international law to approbate and reprobate. "Quod approbo non reprobo" (that which I approve, I
cannot disapprove).

The Supreme Courtof Nigeria Ruling on ACHPR (Ratification and Enforcement) Act 1983
(now Cap. 10 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990).
The Supreme Court of Nigeria put to rest the issue of superiority of international treaties ratified by
Nigeria over national/municipal laws. In Appeal no. 44/1997, between General Sani Abacha,
Attorney-General of the Federation, State Security, Inspector-General of Police (appellants) versus
late indomitable Civl Rights Crusader, Chief Gani Fawehinmi (respondents) determined on Friday, 28th April 2000, in the lead judgement delivered by Hon. Justice Michael Ekundayo Ogundare. J.S.C, that ACHPR being a multi-lateral treaty, and having been enacted into law by the National Assembly, and incorporated into Nigeria's municipal (i.e. domestic) law by the African Charter on
Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act 1983, now Cap. 10 Laws of the
Federation of Nigeria 1990, became binding and our Courts are bound to give effect to it like all other
laws falling within the Judicial power of the Courts. By Cap. 10, the African Charter is therefore part
of the laws of Nigeria and like all other laws, the Courts must uphold it. The Charter gives to citizens
of member states of the Organisation of African Unity rights and obligations, which rights and
obligations are to be enforced by our Courts. The Supreme Court further determined that Cap. 10 being a statute with international flavour that whenever there is a conflict between it and another
statute, its provisions will prevail over those of that of other statute for the reason that it is presumed
that the legislature does not intend to breach an international obligation and that to this extent the Charter possesses "a greater vigour and strength" than any other domestic statute except the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which is Nigeria's grand nun.

President Buhari's Declaration that he will not Tolerate Biafran Agitators:
The reaction of President Muhammad Buhari on issues of Self Determination underlines the
enslavement of our people in Nigeria.
Late in February 2016 in Qatar in answer to a question by a well-informed Martine Dennis in Al
Jazeera television studios on why Nigerian troops were massacring Biafran agitators for self
determination, President Buhari did not bother to deny the massacre of unarmed protesters, but appeared to have justified the killings.
"At least two millions Nigerians were killed in the Biafra war. And for somebody to wake up maybe they weren’t born. Looking for Biafra after two millions people were killed, they are joking with the 
security and Nigeria won’t tolerate Biafra,” declared President Buhari who appeared very angry that he had to answer questions on Biafrans being slaughtered  by his security agencies.
The ordinary dictionary definition of the word "tolerate" is  "allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference."
For example "a regime unwilling to tolerate dissent" as expressed by President Buhari. Common
synonyms of the word "tolerate": allow, permit, condone, accept, swallow, countenance.
By uttering those words in the circumstance, the President of Nigeria outrightly asserted Nigeria's denial of Biafran agitators' fundamental rights to life, dignity of human person, personal liberty,
freedom of thought, of conscience, of expression, of peaceful assembly and association, of
movement; and from discrimination, all of which are guaranteed in Chapter IV of the Nigerian
Constitution; and further guaranteed by provisions in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN UDHR), the UN International  Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (UN ICCPR) and  the African Charter on Human and Political Rights (ACHPR), all of which are ratified and domesticated
by Nigeria. Any human denied all of the above rights is no more a normal human, but a slave.

President Buhari Declares Support for Western Sahara and Palestine Rights to Self 
Determination:
President Buhari seemed to have rubbed in the enslavement  of Nigerians to the oligarchy, when  the
same time he denied Nigerians' right to Self Determination and appeared to have endorsed the
massacre of self determination agitators by Nigerian security agencies, he openly declared support for
the right to Self Determination of two Arab Moslem  self determination agitators of Western Sahara and of Palestine. What is good for the goose is perhaps not good for the gander, because perhaps, the gander is sub-human.

Self Determination Agitation is the only Meaningful Peaceful Way out of Enslavement:
IPOB and MASSOB self determination agitation,  might at the end of the day be the only meaningful challenge to the arrogance of the oligarchy that has enslaved both Yoruba, Igbo Ijaw, Efik, the Middle Belt and all other minorities, north or south of Nigeria. Equality and mutual respect emerges from
separatist advocacy if well and systematically engineered.
  As Rev.Martin Luther King learnt in the U.S. Civil rights agitation  and expressed in his biography:
 "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it 
must be demanded by the oppressed."
And Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of the founding thinkers of USA, author, publisher,
inventor, scientist who in one of famous quotes prepared the ground for Rev. King's premise for liberation.
Rebellion against tyranny is obedience to God.

IPOB and MASSOB are demanding freedom for all enslaved people of Nigeria. Some may argue that we are not enslaved! The answers to and opinions on following everyday incidents in Nigeria would resolve the issue whether Nigeria is a free nation under the Rule of Law or, as it obvious, crawling
into medieval feudalism in slavery and enslavement.

Evidences of Enslavement:
Cattle Fulani Herdsmen Militancy:
 Over 400 killed and 7000 driven out of their ancestral homes into unkept refugee camps recently in Agatu in Benue State? Agatu Local Government Area is barely 40 kilometers from South-East northern most border, Obollo Afor, in Nsukka area. What about recent killings at Abbi Community, Nsukka, Enugu State among other killings and rapes all over the South-East,  Anioma in Delta State, the rest of South-South and South-West zones. Plateau, Nassarawa, Taraba, Kwara and Kogi States and Southern Kaduna are occupied territories and have lost their voices of protest in subjugation.

 Nigeria is not a major Cattle breeding nation of the world and that  according to 1990/92 Nigerian
Livestock Resources (RIM) Survey estimates, Nigeria had less than 13.90 million cattle  whereas
major cattle breeding countries of the world, by 2009 figures have as high as 285 million cattle in India; 187,087,000 in Brazil; China 139,721,000; U.S.A. 96,669,000; EU 87,650,000,Argentina
51,062,000; Pakistan 38,300,000; Australia 29,202,000; Mexico  26,489,000.
In all of the above countries, laws prohibit wandering of cattle which are restricted to ranches in the interest of public safety, health and economics of cattle breeding.
Nigeria is one of the very few countries in the world where cattle and herdsmen contest freedom of movement and property ownership with citizens under Fulani culture of  Pastorialism which is not only primitive, outmoded & uncivilized but also uneconomic; and has been long discarded by the civilized and productive world! A recent announcement by the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Audu Ogbeh, that killings, abductions, rapes and sacking of communities by Fulani herdsmen would have to wait until the Federal government has imported grass seeds from Brazil and grown enough
enhanced grass for cattle. Dr. Ogbeh need be reminded that Section 14-((2)(b) of the Constitution of
Nigeria clearly states that  "the security and welfare of the people (not cattle) shall be the primary 
purpose of government;" and that it is armed Fulani militants masquerading under cover as herdsmen
who commit the havoc and need to be separated f  from the kafirs (unbelievers, in the own opinion)  who they wantonly attack.                                            

Kidnap, Rape, Confinement and Forced religious conversion of under-age Girls and Women:
 What about Ese Oruru's abduction from Bayelsa State to Kano State and forceful conversion to a religious faith she and neither of her parents have ever identified with? It is now known that the kidnap and forceful conversion of girls-children  and even adult women, is a common phenomenon  in the twelve Northern Sharia States of Nigeria. The Nigerian Police in those northern States has confessed  helplessness and loss of all the powers conferred on it by the Constitution and the Police Act. It is  instead subordinated to the assumed influence/powers (not conferred on them by the
Constitution of Nigeria)  of the Emirs and the Sharia/Emirate Councils/Hisbah Religious Police, who
invariably boast to the parents of kidnapped victims that their kidnap and forceful conversion/marriage of victims are irreversible by any State authority under The Nigerian Constitution, except them, the usurpers of citizens' rights. Victims have been kept incommunicado from families in some cases for several years before forced marriages. One needs imagine that the victim is one's daughter, grand-daughter or relative to appreciate the trauma affected Nigerian citizens are commonly subjected in these affected states of the North.
What syndrome compels such inhumanity against minors, and even adults, can be best explained by the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity!
Does anyone think that if that process is reversed and there is a kidnap and forceful conversion from Kano to Yenegoa, that this country would be as cool as it is for two weeks, not to think of  months and years, in some respects. The reaction of triumphalism by the feudal overlords of these Sharia
States to kidnap and forceful conversion/ marriage of femal minors puts a serious question mark to
the seriousness of fundamentalist Islam-dominated Federal bureaucracy in finding the Chibok girls.
Perhaps as the nation mourns its humiliation in the  Chibok saga, Nigeria's feudalist overlords celebrate their triumph behind porous veils. The  Bring-Back-our-Girls frenzy engendered by the outrage of the 279 girls abducted from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State on 6th May 2014, might as well be comic melodrama.

 What about Miss Charity (Aisha) Uzoechina, 24-year-old daughter of Pastor Uzoechina of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, who in 2013 was kidnapped from Federal Polytechnic, Bida, Niger State, and today is one of the harem women of the Etsu Nupe, in Niger State, having under influence, renounced her family and faith?

Conspiracy of Silence:
What gives the Hausa-Fulani, a right to roam Nigeria, killing indigenes of the Middle Belt and Southern Nigeria in their ancestral homes, and boldly take over ancestral lands, the same time the Hausa-Fulani drive other Nigerians away from their Northwest and North-East home lands with religious intolerance, oral and physical violence, which acts of impunity are now common place, since the Federal Government Security Agencies, by acts of omission and commission, openly endorse these above-the-Law privileges?
If Nigeria is not a slave camp for people outside the oligarchy, can someone explain why State Governors and Houses of Assemblies of the States ravaged by Cattle Fulani militants are unable to prohibit movement of cattle on hoof; and limit their movement to rail and/or motorized transportation by enactment of State Laws since the Nigerian Constitution empowers States to regulate markets and
livestock movement under Commerce and Agriculture?
The National Assembly (NASS) is also complicit by its uncommon silence over this notorious saga.
Representatives of the enslaved in the National Assembly, have abandoned their constituents and kept mum, perhaps in the interest of the Slavers. NASS is also complicit  by its deafening silence on cattle Fulani herds men's indiscriminate violations of citizen's fundamental rights.
Prisoners have rights regulated by Law but Slaves have no rights except as arbitrarily granted by their masters.

Conclusion:
The Igbo have a saying. Oru full ka eji mbazu eni ibe ya malu na etua ka ogadi mbosi nke ya (Literally meaning - a slave who witnesses the burial of a slave with  traditionally forbidden spear, must note that his own burial, whenever it will be, will take the same forbidden pattern.

"This nation cannot survive half slave and half free,"  declared Abraham Lincoln years before he went to war as U.S. 16th President (1861-65) to liberate all Slaves in the United States.

May God Help us!

Emeka Onyesoh

President, Forum for National Ethos and Values, Enugu.
17th March 2016.