PRINCE CHUKWUEMEKA ONYESOH: 2017

KEYNOTE ADDRESS TO 2017 ASA- USA NATIONAL CONVENTION IN LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, Saturday, 21st Oct, 2017

By OkpalaEzeNri Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh, (Writer, Author and Civil Rights Activist)

CURRENT SOCIOLOGICAL TENSIONS IN THE NIGERIA

Protocols

NIGERIA’S CURRENT FAILED STATE STATUS

1.1. Introduction
Nigeria’s current status in the world is that of a failed State. Worse still, by its structure and configuration, it is incapable of electing competent persons to manage the affairs of its over 180 million people with conflicting values, bunched together. The country needs to be broken into smaller units to match the level of supine political management available in some of the zones. Being the biggest country in Africa, which in a period of over 50 years, is unable to add value to human development of its peoples despite unlimited resources, is not a feat. It is rather a curse to humanity. It thus becomes important to understand Nigeria’s failure by world failure markers.

1.2. Failure Markers
Using world’s best practice, CAST (Conflict Assessment Systems Tool) methodology, developed by Washington-based NGO, Fund for Peace (FFP), which works towards sustainable security and developments in the fragile states of the world by focusing on conflict assessment and early warning, transnational threats, peace-keeping, security and human rights, Nigeria scored very low in the 12 primary Social, Economic and Political indicators of fragility, otherwise state failure.
I consider it very relevant to quickly review the 12 markers to enable you to understand the present desperate situation in Nigeria, which Nigerian leaders do not wish to accept; or if they do, pretend does not matter.

1.2.1. Social Indicators. (i). Demographic pressures: This includes pressures and measures related to natural disaster, disease, environment including open defecation (WHO - Nigeria is one of the world’s five worst; 66 million involved), food scarcity, malnutrition, water scarcity, unregulated population growth, youth bulge and mortality - Life expectancy 53 against world average of 71.
ii. Refugees and IDPs: pressures associated with massive movements of refugees and internally displaced persons strains public services and have the potential to pose threat to security. For example, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that as at September 2017 there are 1.7 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states in North-East of Nigeria. All of the above are from the activities of Boko Haram insurgency, resulting in agricultural displacements and consequent food scarcity and starvation. Cattle Fulani herdsmen Islamic militants displace non-Moslem communities all over, even though on more temporary basis, particularly in the Middle Belt of Nigeria – Southern Kaduna, Benue and Plateau states.

iii.Group Vengeance - legacy of vengeance-seeking groups - when tension and violence exist between groups, the state’s ability to provide security is undermined and fear and further violence may ensue. This includes pressures from powerlessness (Boko Haram (2014 World deadliest terrorist organization) in the North East and Cattle Fulani herdsmen Islamic militants (world's 4th deadliest terror organ) who now spread terror all over Non-Moslem areas of Nigeria; and the Islamic zealots lone/group killers all over the North including Abuja; discrimination, arising in the form of ethnic, communal, sectarian and religious violence,. The recent Quit Notice (apparently state-sponsored) to over 11.5million Igbos in the North which amounts to threat to commit genocide.

iv. Chronic and sustained human flight: When there is little opportunity for better life, people migrate, leaving a vacuum of human capital. Overt bigotry and non-inclusiveness in President Buhari’s Administration seems to have accelerated the pace of human flight in Nigeria.
.
1.2.2. Economic Indicators: (v).Uneven economic development along group lines: When there are ethnic, religious, or regional disparities, the governed tend to be uneven in their commitment to the social contract. South of Nigeria is more developed, more peaceful and much less poor than the North, where most of the extremely poor are living. Unfortunately all of the negatives of these factors are now spreading and effervescing all over the South.
vi. Poverty and sharp and/or severe economic decline: Poverty and economic decline strain the ability of the State to provide for its citizens when, as it is normal, some are unable to provide for themselves. Invariably this creates friction between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Such pressures are as a result of economic deficit, unemployment, youth unemployment, lack of purchasing power and inflation, giving rise to a surge in violent crimes like killings, kidnapping for money and armed robbery.
1.2.3. Political and Military Indicators:
(vii). State Legitimacy: Endemic corruption, impunity and lack of representation in the government, directly undermine the social contract between state and citizens. This includes pressures and measures related to corruption, government effectiveness, political participation and inclusiveness, electoral process, level of democracy, illicit economy, drug trade, protests and demonstrations and power struggles. Governance has taken flight from Nigeria. The politicians are in government to help themselves, their relatives, friends and groups. Nigeria is like a communal goat in tethers, starving to death because no one has responsibility for fetching it fodder. The electoral system is rigged. Corruption has overrun the country and there is no sincere effort to fight it. The letter from the Minister of State for Petroleum to President Buhari on the award of contracts valued at over $25Billion by the Managing Director not the NNPC without due process tells it all about the anti-corruption deception of the present regime. Transparency International (TI), the world’s foremost anti-corruption non-governmental organization in its 2015 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), ranked Nigeria 136th out of 168 countries surveyed, Nigeria having scored a dismal 26 out of possible 100 for clean countries.
viii. Public Services: Progressive deterioration of public services. This includes pressures and measures related to policing, criminality, education provision, literacy, water and sanitation, infrastructure, quality health care, telephony, internet access, energy reliability and the roads/rails. The security agencies are as corrupt as any other Nigerian service. Nigeria is the 2nd biggest importer of power generators in Africa which spends an average of $8billion a year running the generators; Nigeria needs 237,000 medical doctors but has only 39,000 for estimated 170million people. No city in Nigeria provides or has capacity to provide continuously running water in homes, offices, factories and farms.

ix. Human Rights and the Rule of Law: Widespread violation of human rights – when human rights are violated or unevenly protected, the state is failing in its ultimate responsibility. This includes pressures and measures related to press freedom, civil liberties, political freedom, human trafficking, modern day slavery like abduction, forced religious conversion and marriage of under-aged girls and adult women; political prisoners, incarceration, religious persecution, ignoring of court orders by the government, torture, extra-judicial killings, secret trial and corrupt arraignment/detention/imprisonment of dissidents and separatist agitators on trumped up charges of terrorism. Illegal deployment of soldiers who massacre citizens as if they are rodents and cover up such atrocities by abducting bodies of those they killed, spraying them with acid in a bid to disfigure them for identification before burying them in mass graves - dehumanization.

x. Security apparatus: The security apparatus of a state ideally should monopolize the use of legitimate coercive force. The social contract is weakened where this is affected by competing groups who now constitute themselves as “states within a state.” Boko Haram, Niger-Delta militants, Cattle Fulani herdsmen Islamic militants, kidnappers, armed robbers etc. United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament (UNRCPD) in Abuja in August 2016 disclosed that there are more than 350 million Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) circulating in Nigeria (70% of 500 million in West Africa). As outlandish as the figure looks, it gives an idea as to how much the government of Nigeria has lost control of security over its territory - a key factor in nationhood.

xi. The rise of factionalized elites: When local and national leaders engage in deadlock and brinkmanship for political gains, this undermines the social contract. This includes pressures and measures related to power struggles, defectors, flawed elections and political competition. The manner in which the Northern Elders’ Forum and the AREWA Consultative Forum (both socio-political groups that fiercely defend the northern oligarchy's viewpoints) insist on no change in the fraudulent Constitution of Nigeria; Quit notice on 11.50 million Igbo people living in the North (by UN Genocide Convention, amounts to threat to commit genocide) on account of legitimate demand for the Right to Self Determination by IPOB and Igbo people, as if Ndigbo people are North’s vassals; the Federal Govt. overt complicity to threat of genocide and consequent invasion of Abia in the name of Army Oppression Python dance; unleashing terrorism by the Nigerian Army and massacre of hundreds at Aba and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s residence in Afara-ukwu, Umuahia, in the unholy hours of 3.00am on15th Sept. and the reckless proclamation of IPOB as a terrorist organization; and branding of anyone who engages in agitation for the right to self determination of Ndigbo as terrorist. The same Federal Government which is massacring unarmed agitators for lawful rights, openly refuses to arrest, detain and arraign AREWA youths who threatened to commit Genocide (crime against humanity); failed to arrest and charge Cattle Fulani Herdsmen Islamic militants who have between 2015 killed over 5,000, raped and maimed thousands, displaced hundreds of thousands into refugee camps; and abnegated its duty to take up arms against the 12 states of the North for open revolt against the Republic of Nigeria by declaring themselves Islamic Republics under Sharia Law in violation of Section 10 of the Nigerian Constitution; in contra-distinction to the war it waged against Biafra for similar revolt.

(xii). Intervention of other states or external factors – When a state fails to meet its international or domestic obligations, external actors may intervene to provide services or to manipulate internal affairs. This includes foreign assistance, presence of peace-keepers and UN Missions, foreign military intervention, sanctions and credit rating. Nigeria indeed solicited external help against Boko Haram; and has also pleaded helplessness to what the government prefers to disingenuously brand invasion by Cattle Fulani herdsmen militants from outside Nigeria.

1.3. The Consequence of Failure of Nigeria

Introduction: In 2005, a US think-tank, National Intelligence Council (NIC), a non-governmental organization (NGO) of military scholars (retired military officers), predicted that Nigeria might disintegrate in 2015. Food-is-ready Nigerian leadership, in their typical boisterous but misguided manner, castigated the American government (even though NIC was a private American citizens' initiative) for meddling in Nigerian affairs and disregarded what serious-minded leaders should have accepted as a good advice; and therefore mended their ways. They chose to carry on as if nothing was happening.
In 2011, five serving U.S. Air-Force officers of U.S. Centre for Strategy and Technology, Air War College, Air University, Alabama, published their research findings in the College Occasional Paper No. 67 titled “Failed State 2030: Nigeria - A case Study” which validated the 2005 NIC prediction but spread the timeline between 2015 and 2030. The 2011 prediction was by a US government agency and based largely on FFP CAST methodology detailed above.
As if to add salt to injury or petrol to fire, in 2015, Nigerians manipulated their ways and enthroned the most divisive, bigoted, devil-may-care and lawless civil leadership the country has ever known. Although the crash of the price of crude oil, the main stay of Nigerian foreign earnings had commenced before 2014, the de-marketing of Nigeria; the first 6 months’ hiatus in economic and political leadership; the regimentation of government revenue banking plus outright inept management and overt bigotry in the management of the affairs of the central government, contributed very immensely in quickly tipping the economy over to depression; and partly contributing to Nigerians rising, one group against the other.
The result was acceleration of the failure in human development, including longevity, Corruption, poverty, hunger, risk of social unrest and unemployment levels, human rights violations, Islamization and Slavery.

1.3.1.Human Development: The United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement of countries in key dimensions of human development including a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living. The placing of Nigeria in world's HDI confirms that even though Nigeria is big with all the natural endowments, yet, it is at the bottom of the ladder of human development - 152nd out of 188 countries in the world surveyed, scoring 0.527 out of possible 1. Nigeria therefore was in 2016 HDI classified in the world’s Low Human Development (LHD) category where it has always belonged since it was brought into the index in 2005. In Nigeria for example, life expectancy at birth averages 53 years whereas the world average is 71 years (68.5 years for males and 73.5 years for female). Nigeria’s poor northern neighbor in the Sahara desert, Chad, has 61.8 years (WHO List).

1.3.2. Poverty: “Nigeria is one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the world, with over 80 million or 64% of her population living below poverty line. The situation has not changed over the decades, but is worsening. Poverty and hunger have remained high in rural areas, remote communities and among female–headed households; and these cut across the six geo-political zones, with prevalence ranging from approximately 46.9 percent in the South West to 74.3 percent in North West and North East. In Nigeria, 37% of children under five years old were stunted, 18 percent wasted, 29% underweight; and overall, only 10% of children aged 6-23 months are fed appropriately based on recommended infant and young children feeding practices.
A United Nations, report on Nigeria’s Common Country Analysis, CCA, made public during a consultative meeting on the formulation of the UN Development Assistance Framework IV (UNDAF IV) for the South East geo-political zone in Awka revealed that the country was deeply divided on the basis of plurality of ethnic, religious and regional identities. (Seon Opejobi: ‘Nigeria one of the poorest countries in the world, over 80m living below poverty line – UN report”, DAILY POST, a Nigerian 0n-line news medium, Sept. 5, 2016).

1.3.3. Starvation in the Land - Global Hunger Index: According to International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in 2015 Global Hunger Index (GHI) calculated for 117 developing countries and countries - in-transition, 80 of which are with alarming and/or serious hunger levels, Nigeria ranked 91st with an abysmal score of 32.8 (out of possible 100) and classified as a country with serious hunger situation (GHI between 34.9 and 20), a precipitate decline from its 2005, 31st position with a score of 35.2. The GHI ranks countries on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best score (no hunger) and 100 being the worst, even though neither of these extremes is reached in practice. Values less than 10.00 reflect low hunger; 10.0 to 19.9 – moderate hunger; 20.0 to 34.9 - serious hunger; 35.0 – 49.9 – alarming hunger; and alarming values of 50.0 or more, as extremely alarming hunger level.
(The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI is a research center of Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) a worldwide partnership engaged in agricultural research for development.

1.3.4. Youth Unemployment: The same UN report referred to above put Youth unemployment at the very high rate of 42% in 2016. That creates very fertile ground for increasing poverty, helplessness, despair and easy target for crime and terrorism. This follows a pattern the Central Bank of Nigeria had confirmed as a very dangerous trend as far back as June 6, 2014 when Dr. Aisha Mahmood, CBN Special Assistant on Sustainable Banking Principle, affirmed in the World Environment Day program organized by the Federal Ministry of Environment, Abuja that 80% of Nigerian youths are unemployed or underemployed (www.informationng.org). The National Bureau of Statistic (NBS) as lately as this September 2017, made a very unpleasant disclosure on the Nigerian economy and jobs:
Given a recession, and a cumulative negative growth of Gross Domestic Product (the totality of goods and services produced in the economy of Nigeria) so far this year, in a population growing at about 3%, with no foreseeable indication of any change in the direction of GDP growth, Nigeria in the next ten years or so could become a boiling cauldron of poverty, induced not just by poor economic management, but most certainly by inability to provide jobs for the rising population; and worst of all with no skill training or education and therefore unemployable. In 2016 over 10 million children of school age were out of schools with no knowledge and skills. With a population of over 175 million, Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and the seventh most populous in the world and by 2019 will approximately grow to 200 million and over 400 million by 2050, becoming one of the top five populous countries in the world. (Our Worsening Poverty Outlook, Vanguard News, 26th Sept. 2017).

1.3.5. Risk of Social Unrest: Social or political unrest is defined as developments that pose a serious threat to governments or the existing political order. Countries are therefore categorized into five, depending on the level of such threats – Very Low Risk, Low Risk, Medium Risk, High Risk and Very High Risk. 2014 predictions were released by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on 23rd December 2013. EIU is an independent business within “The Economist Group” which since 1946 provides forecasting and advisory services to assist entrepreneurs, financiers and governments. The Economist is an-English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by the Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in its offices in London dating from September 1843.
Nigeria is ranked 125th out of 133 countries ranked ((13 worst) countries, scoring 43.31% in 2015 and therefore classified in the group of Very High Risk.
1.3.6. Corruption: President Buhari came into office trumpeting anti-corruption. Transparency International (TI) defines “corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain which eventually hurts everyone who depends on the integrity of people in a position of authority.” Corruption, as is obvious in most highly corrupt countries like Nigeria, diverts development funds for building hospitals, schools, electricity, roads, rails and other infrastructure; for social services like school and health supplies and for providing social security safety net; into private pockets, thereby increasing poverty, illiteracy whilst also reducing life expectancy - avoidable early death for many who would have been saved by affordable and good medical care; gainful employment, education, improved environment and other things that make life worth living by many.
TI categorized corruption into petty, grand (stealing including looting in large scale) and political corruption. In year 2009 Nigeria was ranked 130th out of 180 countries surveyed by TI, having scored a mere 25 out of possible 100; and thus IS one of the most corrupt countries of the globe. In 2013, Nigeria had slipped in TI CPI to 144th out of 177 countries, scoring the same 25/100. The slip in ranking showed that as other countries improved by reducing corruption, Nigeria retained the same level and therefore was overtaken in ranking by countries that had improved on their scores. Nigeria’s ranking seemed to have marginally improved in 2014, to 136th with a score of 27 which still left it in the club of very highly corrupt countries of the world. In 2016 Nigeria retained its 2014 136th position with a score of 28/100; thus retaining its ranking as one of the most highly corrupt countries in the globe. Despite the de-marketing of Nigeria as very corrupt by President Buhari, excluding himself, his regime has been as guilty, (if not more than) previous regimes, of political corruption. His appointee as Group Managing Director of the nation’s life wire, National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was in a letter dated 30th August 2017 reported by the supervising Minister of State and Chairman of the board of the NNPC to have unlawfully awarded contracts worth over $25 Billion. Over a month after report, the accused was still on his job and the only reaction from the Presidency is that the dirty linen of the government was being washed in the public. Then followed the amazing hare-brained splitting of hair by President Osibanjo, a Professor of Law, between "Crude Term Contract," "Direct Sale", "Direct Purchase (DSDP) agreements" and "joint venture financing arrangements" which ones are contracts. Yet Dr. Ibe Kachukwu, the Minister of State for Petroleum Mr. Ibe Kachikwu came to his job as Minister from very strong academic background in Law - 1st Class honors LLB and best graduating students oh his year at UNN and the Nigerian Law School; and thereafter obtained a Masters and Doctorate Degree in Law from the prestigious Harvard University Law School with distinctions. He was group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC before he was appointed Minister of Sate for Petroleum. Mr. Kachikwu served as Executive Vice-Chairman of Exxon-Mobil Africa before his appointment as GMD of NNPC. Dr. Kachukwu therefore has enough academic and experience qualifications particularly in the oil industry to distinguish between a contract and non- contract.
President Buhari' regime is very strong on political corruption which TI defines as “the manipulation of policies, institutions and rules of procedure in the allocation of resources and financing by political decision makers, who abuse their position to sustain their power, status and wealth.”
President Buhari therefore indulged in political corruption by failing to disarm the Cattle Fulani herdsmen militants just because they belong to his ethnic group who had overwhelmingly voted for him the four times he contested for the presidency and whom he would again rely on should he decide to contest in 2019 for a second term. The herdsmen have cost Nigeria thousands of lives they slaughter regularly; thousands of women they dehumanize and defile and trillions of Naira lost in farms ravaged and abandoned by farmers for fear of attacks by herdsmen. The Presidency has also been involved in the highest level corruption of oil block awards; duty and tax concessions and waivers of astronomical values, not competitively bided for (Sept. 2017 ten-year tax waiver for road construction in Lagos for an indeterminate contract value; corrupt foreign currency allocation to the President’s tribal groups of business men and pilgrims etc.; the appointments and promotions of highly incompetent hands to highest of offices of state which impair performance and national cohesion. His regime has attained a record never before known in Nigeria’s history in bigotry at huge expense to the national economy and peace, in utter breach of the Constitution and his oath of office/allegiance.

1.3.7. Human Rights: FREEDOM HOUSE, a USA (Boston)-based non-governmental organization conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights, publishes annual report, ‘Freedom in the World’, on the degree of democratic freedoms in nations and significant disputed territories around the world, by which it seeks to assess the current state of civil and political rights on a scale from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free).
Each country is assigned a numerical rating from 1 to 7 for both political rights and civil liberties. - Free (1.0 to 2.5), Partly Free (3.0 to 5.0), Not Free (5.5 to 7.0). In 2006, Nigeria scored 4 and was rated as partly free.
With President Buhari who seems pay scant regards for court orders and his penchant for unlawful deployment of brute military force and the massacre of unarmed demonstrators for lawful rights; branding rights’ unarmed agitators terrorists and, at his best, hanging on them in courts across the land, spurious charges of terrorism and or treasonable felony; labeling and proscribing rights agitating organizations as terrorist organizations. With the move to curb free speech by labeling some as “hate speech” and put a lid on communications in the social media plus his bid to regiment and regulate not-for-profit non-governmental organizations, Nigeria is tottering to and is almost in the Freedom House's ranking of “Not Free”. Apparently to avoid accountability to appropriate UN Human Rights institutions, President Buhari’s government has on 27th September 2017 announced plans to exit Nigeria from 90 out of 310 world organizations. The relief is that despite this ploy to evade accountability, various multi-lateral treaties of the UN, AU and ECOWAS would still hold down Nigeria to account for violations of citizens’ fundamental rights until the group's vote to permit Nigeria’s exit.
Unfortunately only organized people of Nigeria can benefit from the checks and balances these treaties impose on Nigeria. The Igbo nation is yet one of the most unorganized nations in Nigeria. It is still everyone to hiis or herself among Ndigbo. Even in the so-called apex socio-cultural groups, (in Nigeria and in Diaspora), it is rare to find leaders like late Chief Z C Obi or Prof. Ben Nwabueze or Dr. Dozie Ikedife, who led the Igbo solely in the best interest of the Igbo.

The decimation of identities of dead victims by soaking their bodies in acid before mass burial by soldiers illegally deployed to extra-judicially massacre unarmed rights agitators, is yet another climax in the regime’s grisly record.

1.4. Islamization and Enslavement

1.4.1.Introduction: The existing religious state of Nigeria is a muddle and like all muddles, is a confused mess. Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution prescribes no State religion at federal or state level. Twelve Islamic fundamentalist states, otherwise Islamic Republics, declared state Islam as religion of the extremist type and Nigeria thinks it can muddle on. No! That is not possible in nation-building. It is either the religious extremists go their own separate way or the rest of Nigeria joins them in fundamentalist religious extremism. And that is the tug drawing Nigeria into OIC, D8, IMAFT, Arabic as parallel official language, as shown in100 to 1,000 Naira Notes and the Nigerian Army Coat of Arms, without any authorization whatsoever in law; Boko Haram and Cattle Fulani herdsmen Islamic insurgency, indiscriminate killing of non-Moslems in the North including FCT, Abuja once Islamic zealots yell and chorus Allahu Akbar (Allah is [the] greatest {more than any person, other religion and government}); abduction, rape, forced conversion to Islam and marriage without parental consent of under-aged girls and even adult women and many other major troublesome Nigerian issues. Nigeria today is over 60% Islamized. Shall Nigeria allow itself to get 100% Islamized?

Gullible Nigerians would say it is not possible. Such credulous Nigerians should find reasons why Nigeria, and indeed the world, worries about ocean or desert encroachment. It is because if such encroachment is unchecked, it would overwhelm the entity. Encroachment on the fundamental rights of other Nigerians by Islamic fundamentalists is real! Only the mentally blind would miss it, or perhaps see it, but lack the courage to acknowledge and address it.

Perhaps the audacity and bigotry displayed by the Islamic fundamentalists in the Federal Ministry of Education in the Christian Religious Knowledge versus Islamic Religious Knowledge syllabus controversy would rouse the most docile non-Moslems of Nigeria, including their most high (Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals) from their inexplicable inaction. Sharia is the major factor that has led to most of national controversies in Nigeria. It is therefore important to understand it.

1.4.2. Sharia Law Defined: Wikipedia defines Sharia as “the moral code and religious law of Islam which guides all aspects of Muslim life including daily routines, familial and religious obligations and financial dealings. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, every day etiquette and fasting. Sharia Law is derived primarily from precepts set forth in the Quranic verses (ayahs) and the examples set by the Islamic prophet in the Sunnah (Hadith – the sayings, practices, and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad).”
The introduction of Sharia is the long-standing goal for Islamic movements globally and attempts to impose it, particularly in supposedly secular polities like Nigeria, have been accompanied by controversy, violence, and even warfare.”
The concept of crime, judicial process, justice and punishment embodied in the Sharia is different from that of secular law. The differences between Sharia and Secular Laws have led to on-going controversy as to whether Sharia is compatible with secular democracy, freedom of thought, and women’s rights. Indeed it is not.
Sharia Law, [deriving from fundamentalist religious laws, quite often imprecise and leaving a lot of discretions to ulamas who are quite often not so well grounded in Civil and Common Law (or if they are, put Quranic injunctions over any other Law)], is antithetical to Civil and Common Law and therefore inconsistent with secular democracy. In most secular democracies of the world, Sharia has proved unmanageable with Common Law. Controversies in managing the two have resulted in Muslims being involved in over 90% of all the wars/violence in the world. Gullible Nigerian non-Moslem political elite, either out of ignorance or for political expediency, think they can wish away the impact of Sharia on the Nigerian polity by merely repeating a concept known through the ages by commonsense reasoning that Sharia is political and therefore will die with time. Need I inform such views that, but for the Crusades, Sharia Law had over-taken most of Europe and is still very much alive and spreading.
Speech is a mirror of the mind and northern Nigerian political leaders through the ages to present have always been open with their interest in Nigeria as can be gleaned from pronouncements and declarations of northern leaders as far back as 1947.

1.4.3. Dominion Pronouncements by North’s Moslem Leaders:
1.4.3. (i)Concluding his address to the first session of the Nigerian Legislative Council in Lagos in March 1947, Mallam Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (as he then was), who later became Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister, had declared:
“We shall demand our rights when the time is ripe. If the British quitted Nigeria now at this stage, the northern people would continue their uninterrupted conquest to the sea.” (Ref:Trevor Clark: A Right Honourable Gentleman, Hudhuda Publishing Co., Zaria, 1991, p.99).
1.4.3.(ii)Sir Abubakar’s boss, party leader, and premier of the North, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, summarized Northern leaders’ ambition to enslave all non-Moslems of Nigeria in his declaration which was published in the Lagos-based newspaper, now extinct, The Parrot of 12th October 1960.
“The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate from our great grand- father, Othman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use the minorities in the North as willing tools, and the South as conquered territories and never allow them to have control of their future.”
1.4.3.(iii) In an article in year 2000 published in www.gamji.com titled “The Fulani in History: A Response to Critics” written by Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now Emir of Kano – Muhammadu Sanusi II (second or 3rd in ranking in the Caliphate, to the Sultan), took of the veil of all pretenses to the contrary in the North’s ambition to Islamize Nigeria in his concluding paragraph:
“The Fulbe (Fulanis) are present-day zealots, not for the “modernization”, but for the “Islamization” of Nigeria and West Africa. The question is not if History will repeat itself in the future. It is rather if History is already repeating itself as we live.”
1.4.3.(iv) Present Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari summarized the real view of the northern political, religious and traditional elite in a seminar organized by the Supreme Council for Sharia in Kaduna, August 2001: “I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria . . . God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of the Sharia in the country."
“It is the legal responsibility which God has given us, within the concept of one Nigeria, to continue to uphold the practice of Sharia whole heartedly, and to educate non-Muslims that they have nothing to fear, . . . What remains for Muslims in Nigeria is for them to redouble their efforts, educate Muslims on the need to promote the full implementation of Sharia law.”

General Buhari seems to concede to all Nigerians the right to agitate for Sharia which violates the Nigeria Constitution but would sent troops to massacre young unarmed demonstrators for independence which is lawful, just because he would " not tolerate" them.

1.4.4. Violating the Secularity of the Nigeria State: having defined Sharia, I have and argued that its introduction in parts of multi-religious secular states is recipe for crisis and riots. In year 2000 when it was proclaim northern Nigeria, Sharia riots consumed over 5,000 Nigerians, mainly non- Moslems, including hundreds, if not thousands of Igbo Christians, in Kaduna and Zamfara. And yet up till date, northern Nigerian leaders, including the President, are stealthily leading Nigeria towards Sharia all over Nigeria.
Section10 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution clearly states the intended secularity of the Nigerian state in these unambiguous words:

“The Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State religion.”

Against the background of the above section of the Nigerian Constitution, twelve states of the North flagrantly revolted against a fundamental aspect of Nigeria’s multi- religious federation. The Section of the Constitution under reference demands that Nigeria is a secular state. And the concept of secularism, demands that a secular state or country, purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion, supporting neither religion nor irreligion; and also claims to treat all its citizens equally, regardless of religion; and to avoid preferential treatment for a citizen from a particular religion/non-religion over other religions/non-religions. Consequently, introduction of Sharia Law in any State of the Federation violates that Section 10 of the Constitution; and thus constitutes an overthrow of Secular Democracy in place of Religious Democracy.

In effect, there is no difference between what those twelve Sharia states of the North did and they have been allowed to continue doing, and what Eastern Nigeria, was driven to do by the insecurity of lives of Easterners, on 30th May 1966, by proclaiming the Eastern Region, as the Republic of Biafra. The difference is only in the reaction of the Federal Government of Nigeria. In the case of Biafra, whose declaration has been found to have been provoked by the central government but in that case rallied and crushed the rebellion with a brutal war; whereas in the case of the Sharia revolt, Presidents Obasanjo, Yardua, Jonathan and now Buhari, for reasons of personal political convenience, abnegated their duty, by refusing to uphold the Constitution they swore oaths to. Either the revolt tallied with their personal wish as Moslems; or being non-Moslems, they were afraid of losing Moslem votes in their re-election bids. And that is pure political corruption. Whichever way, a heinous crime of gross misconduct, has been committed against the Federation of Nigeria.
And the National Assembly, which is supposed to rein in an erring executive branch, by not doing so, is also guilty of abdication of its responsibility to the people of Nigeria. Both the executive and Legislative branches have therefore indulged in grave acts of abuse of office and political corruption, amounting to obvert subversion of the Republic of Nigeria.

Islamic fundamentalism, as already shown, is antithetical to federalism in all religiously plural states. It is intolerant of secularity of any kind in such federal state and is therefore mutually exclusive. Wherever they mix, there is constant friction resulting in violence. Insistence on religious fundamentalism in any religiously plural federation digs the grave for such entity. It never sustains. It is doomed to fail, no matter how long it may take. Truth, equity and justice are the only factors that sustain a union. The contrary is recipe for death, no matter how long it takes. Unfortunately since 1945, Igbo lives are being wantonly spent on this unworkable experiment. The Igbo being inherently freedom fighters, ready to even self-immolate for liberty like ten of their enslaved forebears did in 1803 at Dunbar Creek, St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, USA, have the quest for liberty ingrained in their DNA.

1.4.5. Jihad Defined: It is important to understand the doctrinaire roots of violence wherever Sharia Law is proclaimed, in order to appreciate the predicaments of Nigeria. Islam, from the very beginning in the 7th Century AD till date, is spread by force – compelling non-Moslems to convert or face instant execution. That process of conversion by force is what Jihad is in Islam. It is a central driving force in Islamic territorial drives and expansion.
Wikipedia defines Jihad as “a war or struggle, fought against un-believers to defend or spread Islamic faith.” Jihad against unbelievers for their subjugation and forcible conversion to Islam and world domination is however not one of the Five Pillars of Islam but Hadith, Al Bukhari, Vol.1, no 25, revealed that the Holy Prophet, in one of his teachings, ranked Jihad above all other pillars of Islam, except Pillar One: “Belief in Allah and His Apostle (Holy Prophet Mohammed).” In other words, Jihad is the second most important thing in Islam. According to scholars who have studied Jihad in Islam, it is not only Jihad of the sword as is generally seen, but has eight forms. Dr. Peter Hammond, author and South African Missionary in the 2008 2nd edition his book, "Slavery, Terrorism and Islam,"classified Jihad into 8 forms:
“(i) Jihad of Words - oratory to inspire followers;(ii) Jihad of Deception - to confuse the enemy and sometimes, gain popularity with followers; (iii) Jihad of the Sword - to kill the enemy with all forms of physical violence including looting his possessions, taking hostages for ransom and enslavement; (iv) Jihad of Taxation & Financial Reward - to punish the unbeliever or reward the faithful; (v) Slavery – real enslavement of subject people as in Nigeria; (vi) Jihad of Sharia Law - as in Nigeria, in order to the dominate political space; (vii) Jihad of Polygamy - with the ambition to overwhelm a country or the world, with Moslem population; and (viii) Jihad of Spirits - quite often used to mystify Moslem leaders.”
Jihad of Sharia law is so important to all fundamentalist Moslems that full blown Sharia is their ultimate wish and prayer. Most northern Nigerian leaders, essentially fundamentalist Moslems, where or whenever they find themselves in power/authority, since the 1950s, have used government machinery, in various surreptitious manners (Jihad of Deception), to drive Nigeria into Sharia Law and/or Islamic world – OIC and D8, and recently, IMAFT for example.

1.4.6. Doctrinaire Roots of Violence in Islam: In the Holy Quran, there are over 109 verses that command Moslems to undertake Jihad (holy war) against unbelievers ((Kafirs). A few verses below illustrate the injunctions that drive Islamic fundamentalists to violence against unbelievers and Moslem half-believers.
Surah (Quran Chapter) 9:5: “. . . fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait (ambush) for them in every stratagem (of war. . .)”
Surah 8:39: “And fight with them until there is no more fitna (disorder, unbelief) and religion should only be for Allah.”
“O you who believe! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness.” Surah 9: 123.
Surah 2: 191-193: “And kill them (the unbeliever) wherever you find them and turn them out from where they have turned you out.”
A Muslim should not be killed for killing a non-Muslim: “No Muslim should be killed for killing a kafir.” (Hadith Vol. 9:50).
In fundamentalist Islamic states, a Moslem who, for example, converts to another faith must face capital punishment for what is branded apostasy.
“Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him.” (Hadith: Vol. 9:50).
Bukhari 52:260 - “. . . The Prophet says, ‘If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, then kill him.’”

In the light of the above teachings in the Quran and Sunna, it would surprise nobody that from 1948 to 2010, the 21 Arab countries which constitute the citadel of Islam, have suffered over 30 wars, 63 successful revolutions, at least 75 unsuccessful revolutions and the murder of 36 heads of State. USA is shoring up Saudi Arabia whereas the Arab springs have added Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iraq to the list of successful revolutions. Syria is on the boil and has generated such monumental refugee problems, rare in recent world history.

All the Jihadist injunctions referred to above obviously are inconsistent with the Rule of Law, UN Universal Declarations on Human Rights and most of UN’s multi-lateral treaties on human rights. Liberal and/or moderate Moslems, like liberal/moderate Christians, know where to draw the line between the Rule of Law/ Human Rights and the injunctions in these Holy Books, written hundreds of centuries ago. In the case of the Bible, the Old Testament was written about 3,500 years ago, whereas that of the New Testament was about 2,000 years ago. In Islam, the Quran is known to be Allah’s revelations to Prophet Mohammed who is also known to have been born 570 AD and to have died 632 AD. It is however confirmed that he started preaching his revelations in 613 AD, putting the age of the Quran at about 1,405 years by 2017.
It is therefore no surprise that among Moslem Hausa/Fulani, killing others, and even themselves, is a routine of resolving disputes and that, if the victim happens to be a kafir (an unbeliever), award awaits the killer in paradise.
Unfortunately among the Igbo, mainly Christians; and even in Igbo traditional worship, extremely very high value is placed on life, regardless of circumstances. The exploits of Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s, “Things Fall Apart” depicts the extent to which the Igbo would go even in the event of accidental killing, to appease God and man for eliminating one of God’s creations. The Biblical injunction - “Thou shalt not kill” in the Sixth of the Ten Commandments in the Holy Bible (Exodus 20: 13), says it all for the Christian’s viewpoint.

1.4.7. Enslavement: Jihad of Slavery is one of Dr. Hammond’s forms of Jihad. In the first Jihad against the Quraysh of Mecca, early in the history of Islam in the 7th Century AD, slaves were taken with the success of the Jihad. Enslavement therefore follows dominion as a reward for conquest. In 2016 Global Slavery Index (GSI), Nigeria is known to have a total of 875,500 people in some form of enslavement (including child marriage) which amounts to 0.48% of its population estimated at 182.2 million. Nigeria is ranked 23rd out of 167 countries surveyed in the Slavery Index. World estimate of population of people who are in some form of slavery in 167 countries by 31st May 2016 is 45.8 million. These are people who are entrapped in one form of enslavement or the other, through human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation. Global Slavery Index is compiled by a Western Australia-based global organization, the Walk Free Foundation, with a mission to end modern slavery in present generation by mobilizing a global activist movement, generating the highest quality research, enlisting businesses, and raising unprecedented levels of capital to drive change in those countries and industries bearing the greatest responsibility for modern slavery today.
The abduction, forced conversion, marriage, rape and pregnancy of under-aged girls, like Ese Oruru (14) of Delta State in Yenegoa and Ifesinachi Ani (14) of Enugu State in Abuja and others like them, and the controversial reversal of a Senate ruling on 16th July 2013 over minimum age of adulthood/marriage, led by Senator Alhaji Ahmed Yerima Sani, are obvious manifestations of a pervasive and persistent trend of enslavement of under-aged girls in the northern Sharia States of Nigeria. Most worrisome is that, encouraged by the take-over of Nigerian security agencies by fundamentalist-inclined leadership, this monstrosity is beginning to be extended southwards; and scarcely is anyone caught, charged for this grievous violation of children who are scarcely old enough to make decisions for themselves. Finally, what would one brand a situation in which Igbo people are killed regularly all over Nigeria by security agencies and other religious bigots and no one is held by the State to account? In my own opinion, only when one is a slave does that happen! QED et QEI (Quod erat demonstradum et Quad erat inveniendum), meaning ‘that was the thing to be proved and that was the thing to be found. It is proven and found.’

1.5. Current Leadership of Nigeria

Nigeria’s change of leadership, since 29th May, 2015 was indeed a change to assertive and confident leadership, but it was like a hurricane which brought in its trail over-flooding, bringing down homes, power lines and all forms of infrastructure. Aso Rock leadership is not only analogue but is incapacitated by ability to govern a big entity like Nigeria. Worst of all, the leadership is proud of its lack of capacity, and thus has taken on the extra duty of management of Nigeria’s only source of foreign exchange – the Petroleum Ministry. The letter from Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, the Petroleum Minister of State, to the President on the insubordination of the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru and the arbitrary award of over $25 billion in contracts without reference to the NNPC board and due process, seem similar to what the Consultants to the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), under the chairmanship of General Buhari, did with PTF funds. This seems to have uncovered the anti-corruption drive of the regime for what it really is; thus bringing back memories of the the disappearance in 1978 of $2.8 Billion from a Midland Bank, London account of the oil firm, NNPC, whilst Gen. Buhari was Oil minister and Chairman of the NNPC. The missing fund was later reported by an audit to have reappeared 6 months later in the NNPC account, from an off-shore personal fixed account in the same bank, without the due interest payment which was around 17%.

Furthermore, Nigeria has since 2015, gone back to a military dictatorship in which nepotism, bigotry, parochialism, lawlessness, reign of bullets in place of dialogue and, worst of all, religious fundamentalism have driven pluralism, inclusiveness and rule of law out through the door. The Armed Forces are now illegally deployed to internal security operations during which they torture and massacre citizens anyhow and no questions asked. They have even invented a bizarre cove-up mechanism by which they kill, collect the dead, pour acid on bodies of victims to cover up their crime before throwing them into mass graves.
Orders from the Courts and the Legislative branch (National Assembly) are indiscriminately ignored. The legislature has been reduced to a pet cat of the executive branch.
Respect for human rights has taken flight and Nigeria is precipitously sliding into EIU's Very High Risk of Social Unrest categorization.

2. NEWS UPDATE FROM ANAMBRA AND BIAFRA

2.1. Background:
The above background summarizes the tragedy of the Igbo in Nigeria. It is sad. It is pathetic. It would appear that Igbo pathfinders of the 1940s and 1950s did not understand the North; perhaps overwhelmed by the pan-Africanist dreams and aspirations driving most enlightened Blacks of the world to bond together for the Black voice to be heard, they forgot to take note of the threat religious fundamentalism posed to human development and fundamental freedoms.
In 1947 Igbo leaders, perhaps, failed to note the implications of the massacre of over 1 million Indians and its many prodigious collateral human sufferings brought about by the Islamists' fundamentalists’ insistence on being separated from the Hindus of India into East and West Pakistan (now Pakistan and Bangladesh) before Indian independence. The implications of the 1945 Jos and 1953 Kano riots in which Igbo numbering 200 and 150 respectively, were slaughtered for no cause and nobody held to account, as early warnings of incompatibility of values, were also lost on Igbo leadership. The Igbo nation seems to have open-eyed walked into a trap which from independence to date has cost the Igbo millions of lives and trillions of USDollar value in property destroyed, apparently sacrificed on the altar of Nigeria unity.
It is natural that one unpunished act of impunity breeds many. Consequently other massacres of the Igbo followed in the interminable sequence of riots in northern Nigeria and the the civil war:

1966 May riots (3,000 Igbo dead); Sept/Oct. 1966 (27,939 Igbo deaths); Sept. /Oct. 1967 Asaba Massacre (4,665 deaths); 1967-70 Genocide branded Civil War (3.5 million dead, including 2 million children, women, the old and infirm, tortured to death by starvation); and multiplicities of riots in Kano 1980 and 1982; Buluta, Maiduguri 1982; Yola 1984; Gombe 1985; Kaduna March 1987; Zaru, May 1988; Ahmadu Bello University, 1988; Bauchi, 1992; June 12, 1993 crisis; 1994, Kano Beheading of Gideon Akaluka; 1999, Katsina Riots; 2000, Sharia riots in Kaduna and Zamfara (2,000 to 5,000 deaths); 2001, 7th to 17th September, Jos riots (500 to 5,000 deaths); 2002, November 22 Miss World Riots, Kaduna (approximate deaths 200; 2004 Feb. to May - Massacre in Yelwa, Shandam and Kano massacres (approximate deaths – 975); 2005, June 8, Apo Six Killing of 5 Igbo boys and their Bini girl friend by highly placed Hausa/Fulani Police officers; 2006, 18th February, Danish Cartoon Crisis in Maiduguri (over 50 deaths); 2008, November 28 to29, Jos Local Government election riots (500 deaths, [120 Igbo deaths]); 2009 July, Boko Haram Uprising in Maiduguri, Bauchi, Potiskum and Wudi (over 1,000 deaths); 2010 Jos massacre (over 992 deaths mainly Christians including the Igbo); 2011 December Mandalla bombing of a Catholic Church ( 41dead and 73 injured); 2012, Jan. 20, Kano – Boko Haram attacks of Churches and Christian businesses – over 185 dead.

From 2015 to date, a civil war dimension has reappeared of bringing the killings back to Igbo land as if another civil war had erupted. Shooting of unarmed pro-Biafra Agitators for the Right to Self-Determination (including September invasion of Nnamdi Kanu’s home in Afaraukwu, Umuahia - over 370 dead and over 450 terminally wounded and thousands arrested and detained indefinitely in undisclosed locations without charge from); and 2015 to date several hundred killed, women raped, farms and homes overrun and/or violated in Igbo ancestral homeland in the South- East in which property worth millions of US Dollars were destroyed; 25th April, 2016 -Ukpabi, Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani, killing of over 13 and wounding several by Fulani herdsmen Islamic militants: Kano - the gruesome murder of Mrs. Janet Agbahime and the decline of prosecution by Kano State Governor, and eventual discharge of the five accused; plus various indiscriminate killings of Igbo people even in the nation’s capital, Abuja.

In addition to Mallam Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s 1947 threat that the North would continue its “uninterrupted conquest to the sea”; Alhaji Ahmadu Bello’s October 1960’s warning that the North would use Southern Nigeria as “conquered territories and never allow them to have control of their future”; and the 2001 General Buhari’s avowal that God willing, he and other Moslems of Nigeria will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of the Sharia in the country; General Buhari, President of Nigeria since 29th May, 2015 in his October 1, 2017, 57th independence broadcast, renewed his declaration that, he as President of Nigeria, cannot allow oppressed Igbo to even voice their rejection of Nigeria which kills and excludes them.

In his own words: "Recent calls on re-structuring, quite proper in a legitimate debate, has let in highly irresponsible groups to call for dismemberment of the country. We cannot and we will not allow such advocacy.
. . . I am very disappointed that responsible leaders of these communities do not warn their hot-headed youths what the country went through. Those who were there should tell those who were not there, the consequences of such folly."

By "what Nigeria went through" he meant to refer to the genocide, which Nigeria committed during the 1967-70 civil war and which unfortunately, the Igbo have failed to challenge in the appropriate UN’s forum - the Security Council.
President Buhari thus, merely repeated the slave-master’ assertions he had earlier made in Al Jazeera studios in Qatar in February 2016. 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 obviously justified the massacre of the unarmed protesters by blurting out his infamous reaction:

"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. . .”

"Tolerate" means to "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.
By uttering those words in the circumstance in 2016 and repeating same as a threat in his October 1, 2017 broadcast, the President Buhari out rightly confirmed his involvement in the 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; 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 ACHPR domesticated, by Nigeria.
The atrocities committed by Nigeria’s security agencies under the President as Commander-in-Chief against pro-Biafra unarmed agitators from May 29, 2015 when he took office to date seems to tally in every detail his brutal words, “Nigeria won’t tolerate Biafra,”
Any group of humans denied all of the above rights are not longer free citizens of any society. They are indeed mere chattels, permanently in chains!
The President obviously confirmed that the federation of Nigeria is indeed a vacuous concept fraught with deadly ironies, when the same time his troops commit above atrocities against the Igbo agitating for the right to Self Determination, he openly appealed for world support for the right to Self Determination of two Arab Moslem agitators of Western Sahara and of Palestine. Could that be because the two are fundamentalist Moslems as he is and that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander, perhaps because the gander is a slave?

2.2. Report of most Recent Upheavals in the South-East

I have nothing to add to the report of the Onitsha-based foremost Civil and Human Rights NGO east of the Niger, the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (commonly referred to as Inter-society), as approved by 15 South-East-based Civil Rights NGOs. At this juncture I consider it important to note that but for Intersociety’s meticulous documentation and publicizing of these regime atrocities on the Igbo, the world might have learnt, of the on-going genocide in Igbo land, perhaps after over 80% of Igbo population might have been wiped out by the present blood-thirsty regime in Nigeria. Could we acknowledge Intersociety with hand claps whilst momentarily standing up.

Excerpts from of 24th Sept. 2017 report titled:
“INTERSOCIETY ON IPOB Vindictive Proscription of Indigenous People of Biafra As Terror Race: Buhari/Osinbajo Administration Has Crossed the Red-lines Of Nation Building With Generational Enmity And Unhealable Wounds.”
“Illegalities of the Military and Nigerian Government in the Past Two Weeks:

• 12th September 2017: The Nigerian Military as directed by the President and the COAS invaded Abia State particularly Aba and Isialangwa civilian populations and opened fire; killing dozens of defenseless members of the two populations. The military operation; without any form of armed resistance or combatant attacks on military personnel and installations from the populations also included late night house raiding of same date; during which scores were killed and others forced to abandon their sleep and run for cover in nearby bushes. These included nursing mothers, pregnant women, children and the aged. Dozens of supporters of Nnamdi Kanu were also barricaded at Isialangwa and tortured on the same date.
• 14th September 2017, the Nigerian Military led by soldiers of the Nigerian Army invaded Nnamdi Kanu’s house at Afara-Ukwu in Umuahia and opened fire, killing dozens including domestic livestock. The Palace of Nnamdi Kanu’s father was also shattered with mortar bullets. Days later, scores of dead bodies were still being recovered from the nearby bushes while those who died on the spot were taken away by soldiers. The whereabouts of the Royal Father and his son-Nnamdi Kanu remain unknown till date.
• 15th September 2015, the Military began official cover-up of its 12th and 14th September atrocities by retroactively and punishably declaring “IPOB” a “terrorist organization”. On the account of swift reaction of the Senate President; declaring the Military’s action illegal and unconstitutional, the Aso Rock Legal Lepers (two profs of law, a professor of criminology and a doctor of criminology), pressed the President to perform his official duty on legally forbidden work date/hours on Sunday (17th September) - an unlawful working day in Nigeria; by issuing a hasty and hurried proclamation, proscribing the Indigenous People of Biafra/Igbo Race as a terror race. The Legal Lepers had before then dusted an outdated Apex Court verdict and fast-forwarded it to the Military to use to back up its unconstitutional declaration of 15th September.
• 20th September 2015, the unlearned AGF of the Federation rushed to his Hausa-Fulani brother and unlearned colleague in the Bench, who is struggling to be confirmed as the substantive CJ-FHC to issue a declaratory order in his bedroom without hearing from legal representatives of the Race so labeled. The said Judge issued a declaratory order proscribing the Indigenous People of Biafra/Igbo Race and designated them as a “terror race.”
• 21st September 2017, government propaganda and sponsored blackmails against the Igbo Race let loose. The blackmails later crossed international borders and the likes of France, UK, USA, Spain, Hong Kong, Germany, etc became labeled “IPOB backers and sponsors”. Even when the said proscription is yet to be gazetted, the Nigeria Police Force have already lost control; threatening fire and brimstone; including instant death, shoot-at-sight and rotting in jail of any member of Igbo Race found gathering or assembling. These violent agents of the State were also too impatient to allow fourteen days right of appeal or reply for the “proscribed” to elapse or the processes to be completed before embarking on another of massacre operation.
Analysis: All the actions of the Government of Buhari/Osinbajo and its Military as above highlighted are nothing short of compound-illegality. There is no law in Nigeria or any part of the world that allows a Government to unleash State terror and violence on defenseless population. Criminal laws all over the world do not allow mere suspicion as basis for punishment. This was also clearly stated in the recent judgment of Hon Justice Binta Nyako, delivered on 28th February 2017 in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CR/383/15 (Federal Republic of Nigeria v Nnamdi Kanu & 2 ors). For an offense or crime to be called one, it must be actionated and intended (actus reus and mens rea). Intent can only be subjected to investigation for the purpose of establishing it and link it to act or failure to establish same. Intent must never be punished. Terrorism is no offense until it becomes “acts” or “offense of terrorism”. Burning of a police station or killing of police officer(s) or burning of a Mosque or killing of non indigenes in the South-south is acutely insufficient to proscribe the entire race and declare same a “terror organization.” Apart from being isolated case and lacking widespread and conventional terrorism linkage; if truly all or any of the above took place as officially alleged; it remains a truism that there is no police investigation report till date showing that “it is IPOB people”. The Government even phrased it “suspected IPOB members”. The question as per: who are the IPOB People is yet to be provided by the Police or SSS. It is also possible that the Government in its desperation masterminded the acts; if they truly took place. It is also possible that aggrieved citizens or angry mob could do same to register their anger against renewed massacre of members of defenseless and unprotected Igbo Population in the country.
Constitutionally, the said presidential proclamation and court ex-parte proscription so referenced are totally an affront to Section 36 of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution (fair hearing) as well as two core foundations of the Law of Natural Justice/ Rule of Law: always hear the other side and do not be a judge in your own case. By Nigeria’s Supreme Court Act of 1960, trial by ordeal or jungle justice is prohibited. By Section 36(8) of the Constitution: nobody shall be held guilty of a criminal offense on account of any act or omission that did not, at the time it took place, constitute such an offense, and no penalty shall be imposed for any criminal offense heavier than the penalty in force at the time the offense was committed. That is to say that retroactive criminal legislation and punishment are unambiguously prohibited in Nigeria or any part thereof.
Section 36(12) further prohibits conviction of any citizen of a criminal offense in Nigeria unless the offense is clearly defined with its penalty prescribed in a written law. Nigerians and members of the international community are therefore invited to compare and contrast the referenced recent actions of the central Government of Buhari/Osinbajo against the Igbo Race; with respect to their compliance or otherwise with the Constitution and other extant laws of the Federation.
The court ex-parte order proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Igbo); even though contained in Section 2 of the Terrorism Prevention Act of 2011; is totally in conflict and incoherent with Section 36 of the Constitution (fair hearing) and by simple reading of Section 1 (3) of the Constitution, it is null and void. Section 1 (3) clearly provides: If any other law is inconsistent with the provisions of this Constitution (1999), and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void. Sections 6 and 13 of the Constitution command the Courts in Nigeria including the Federal High Courts through their Judges to uphold and protect the Constitution and its provisions at all times.
Grandly and strikingly, Nigerians and members of the international community are further invited to assess and read the subsisting (criminal) judgment of the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, delivered on 28th February 2017, in Suit No: FHC/ABJ/CR/383/15: FRN v Nnamdi Kanu & 2 ors; delivered by Hon Justice Binta F.M.. Nyako. The Judge had in her ruling as per whether: (1) IPOB should be tried as proscribed or unlawful society; and whether defendant Chidiebere Onwudiwe should be tried for offense of terrorism based on allegation of being caught harboring intentions (not acts) on how to manufacture improvised explosive devices (IEDs); not only struck out same, but further ruled that “mere intentions are not triable and punishable under the law”. The Judge further ruled that “for the fact that IPOB was not registered in Nigeria does not make it unlawful or a proscribed society…” Till date, the Federal Government has not appealed the ruling or set it aside at appellate Court. The criminal proceedings of the named defendants are already billed to resume on 17th October 2017. Yet the same Federal Government has taken laws into its hands and assumed the duties of the “police, court and executioner;” it has found Nnamdi Kanu “guilty” with “extra judicial death penalty!”
Intersociety’s 31st January 2017 report, titled “Welcome to Bleeding Republic of Nigeria – A land Flowing with Blood and Tears” illustrates in graphic details the extremely wicked and barbaric activities of Nigerian security agencies on pro-Biafra agitators and even Shiite movements, North of Nigeria. The full report and Intersociety’s other reports are available on the web @ www.intersociety-.org. Their on –the-spot in-depth investigations and incisive reports are generally relied upon by governments across the globe and international NGOs in evaluating Nigeria on human rights. May we at this point honour the young man from Ezinifite, Aguata LGA, Anambra State, Emeka Umeagbalasi, the board chairman of Intersociety , who is the brain behind the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law?

2.3.Punishment to the Igbo Nation for the 30th May 2017 Successful Sit-at-Home Order:

Those who understand the slave-master mentality of the oligarchy realized that the total shut-down of South-Eastern states of Nigeria and parts of the South-South, by the sit-at-home order of the leader of the Indigenous people of Biafra and other leaders of pro-Biafra groups in commemoration of 50 years of the proclamation of the Republic of Biafra really irked the oligarchy and so much enraged them against the Igbo people whom they still regard as their subject people. In their own thinking, that the Igbo still had the audacity to openly vote for freedom (Biafra) from their apparent enslavement in Nigeria, required urgent reminder to the Igbo that they are still in bondage.
A number of AREWA reactions, followed by federal government maneuvers were therefore contrived and executed sequentially:

On June 6, 2017, AREWA, the face of the oligarchy through AREWA Youths Front, issued a three months’ Quit Notice to the 11.5 million Igbo living in the North to get ready to leave the North by 1st October 2017; failing which they must be prepared to get physically bundled out of the North, dead or alive, with their property confiscated. Despite UN human rights experts and Nigerian human rights lawyers correct interpretation and declaration of the quit notice as threat of genocide and thus called on the Federal Government (FG) to arrest and prosecute the issuers of the threat, the FG did not. The FG even ignored two suits in a Federal High Court and ECOWAS Court in Abuja whose substance is to remind the FG that failure to arrest and prosecute the issuers of that threat, condemns FG to Complicity in Genocide under Article 3(e) of 1951 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Nigeria acceded to the Genocide Convention on 27th July 2009 and is therefore bound by it.
L
Consistent with regime lawlessness, the reaction of FG was to massacre more Igbos at Afaraukwu (the home of IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu) and Aba and proceed to declare an unarmed IPOB as a terrorist organization; and in the process got an omnibus Court Order that illegally roped in all agitations for self determination including this kind of discuss we are holding here, anywhere in Nigeria as terrorist act.

2.4. Unarmed Agitation for Independence is Lawful in Nigerian & International Laws:

Agitation or demonstration for separation from Nigeria or creation of an independent state out of Nigeria is lawful in both Nigerian and international laws. The 1999 Nigerian Constitution guarantees in Section 39 - the right to freedom of expression and in Section 40 - the right to peaceful assembly and association. Both rights are also guaranteed by United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights backed by various multilateral treaties to which Nigeria is signatory. To declare that one wishes to be or is indeed, President of Nigeria cannot amount to an act to overthrow the President of Nigeria. Only acts leading to realization of such overthrow can unlawful. Besides, Nigeria is a subscriber to both UN and African Union multi-lateral treaties which guarantee the right to self determination of groups that make up nation states; and therefore to agitate for such right cannot by any stretch of imagination, amount to declaration of war. It is only in the warped mentality of Jihadists and other incredulous Nigerians, perhaps suffering from Igbophobia, does such agitation become a declaration of war, simply to justify further execution of genocide on the Igbo. UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Article 1, clearly states that:
“All People have the right of Self Determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status . . .”
Nigeria ratified this covenant in 1993 and is therefore bound by it. So also is Nigeria bound by Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which repeats exactly the same details on self determination as in UN ICCPR above; and was again ratified by Nigeria in 1993.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) (also called Banjul Charter), in its Article 20, again asserted 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.”

Nigeria not only ratified the ACHPR but also domesticated it as its national law, now referred to as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act 1983, now Cap. 10, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990.

2.5. Illegality of Deployment of the Armed Forces for Internal Security Operations

The illegality in the President, who is the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, deploying any arm of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, has since 1999 been repeatedly pronounced illegal and unconstitutional by various Federal High Courts; and have been confirmed by not less than three Appeal Courts rulings across the land.
In three such Federal High Court rulings in the cases of Odi in Rivers State, Zaki Ibiam in Benue State and Gbaramatu in Delta State, huge general and punitive damages were awarded by the Courts and in two of the instances, Courts in London had to be involved to compel the Federal Government to settle the claims. None of the claims awards was appealed and in addition, none of the Appeal Court rulings in the other cases that were appealed, were ever referred to the Supreme Court. All the rulings therefore stand today, unchallenged, as law of the land.

From extracts of a speech delivered at the new Legal Year Ceremony at Awka, Anambra State on the 25th of Sept. 2017, Prof. Ilochi A. Okafor (SAN), Professor of Law and former Attorney General of old and new Anambra State, summarily dismissed the issue of deploying the Armed Forces in internal security operations as unconstitutional and illegal in following unambiguous terms:

“(i) In January 2015 Justice R.M. Aikawa of the Federal High Court Sokoto invalidated President Jonathan's unilateral deployment of soldiers for the June 2014 Ekiti State gubernatorial election. The judgment restrained Jonathan “from engaging the service of the Nigerian Armed Forces in the security supervision of elections in any manner whatsoever in any part of Nigeria, without an Act of the National Assembly.”
(ii) On appeal, the Court of Appeal, per Justice Abdul Aboki, in a judgment delivered in February 2015, held that “the President of Nigeria has no powers to call on the Nigerian Armed Forces and to unleash them on peaceful citizens".
The court maintained that 'Section 215 of the 1999 Constitution makes the maintenance of internal security, including law and order the exclusive responsibility of the police'.
(iii) Then in March 2015 - the Federal High Court (in Gbajabiamila v. President Jonathan, et al) vide Hon. Justice Buba ruled that deployment of soldiers to civil duties such as elections was a contravention of Section 217(2) (c) of the Constitution and section 1 of the Armed Forces Act, noting particularly that the 'military was not needed for civil duties'. The judge said that 'the law does not make provision for the military to be involved in civil activities'. He also said that 'the appellate court directly interpreted the Constitution when it held that Sections 215 and 217 jointly limit the president’s power to deploy soldiers to the suppression of insurrection and to aid the police to restore order when it has broken down'.

Ten years previously, the Court of Appeal in Yussuf v Obasanjo (2005) 18 NWLR (PT 956) 96, held that “It is up to the police to protect our nascent democracy and not the military, otherwise democracy might be wittingly or unwittingly militarized. This is not what the citizenry bargained for in wrestling power from the military in 1999. Conscious step or steps should be taken to civilianize the polity to ensure the survival and sustenance of democracy.”
In Buhari v Obasanjo (2005) 2 NWLR (Pt. 910) 24, at 520 – 521, this was the judicial wisdom of Nsofor, JCA.
“I believe in spite of the non tolerant nature and behavior of our political class in this country, we should by all means try to keep armed personnel of whatever status or nature from being part and parcel of our electoral processes. The civilian authorities should be left to conduct and carry out fully the electoral processes at all levels”.
1.7. Let it be clear therefore, that if the Courts did not find, as in the foregoing precedents, that ‘electoral violence’ is sufficient cause to deploy soldiers to Police/civil duties, unarmed agitation cannot, in any sane clime pass for a situation where the deployment of the army is necessary and/or justifiable.”

The present regime in Nigeria obviously has no regard for the Courts whose orders it picks and chooses which one to obey or not. Soldiers and policemen go on rampage killing and maiming unarmed rights agitators in the South East and South-South probably relying on the weaknesses of the Nigerian system – the Police under the Executive is unlikely to impartially document a crime gains tax the Executive branch and the Attorney General, a prominent executive branch member, is also unlikely to prosecute any Executive branch or its Security Commanders for any of the various extra-judicial killings and torture they dish out to the civil populace, as it pleases them. Even for civil claims, after the midnight raid of homes of Judges of Superior Courts of Record, including two Supreme Court Judges; and their detention by the Secret Service under the Presidency, it became doubtful whether even ordinary claims suits against the Security Agencies in Buhari’s regime, could be worth their while.

2.6. Washington DC Claims Suits on IPOB Killings -Tukur Yusuf Buratai et al v. Survivor and Families of Victims of IPOB Killings
In reaction to above circumstances and the brutal shooting, killing and torture of unarmed pro-Biafra agitators for the right to self-determination during demonstrations, meetings or prayers by Nigerian Security Agencies, lawyers to an Igbo irredentist group based in Chicago, Ekwenche Organisation, in association with the Forum for the Promotion of National Ethos and Values, an Enugu-based NGO and the International Society for Civil Liberty and Rule of Law, initiated a Claims suit under the United States Alien Tort Claims Statute of 1789 and Torture Victims Protection Act of 1991, in the United States District Court in Washington, District of Columbia, for the killing and torture of some of the victims. The suit was registered on 30th May 2017 and assigned to District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle, who on 2nd June 2017 authorized the ten (10) IPOB plaintiffs to sue the sixteen (16) Nigerian defendants for complicity in the 2015/2016 torture and extra-judicial killings of victims under the color of Nigerian law, thus committing crimes against humanity, in retaliation for peaceful Biafran protests against ethnic or religious oppression. On seeing the brutality and inhumanity displayed to the victims by the defendants, in the video clips lodged with the court, the judge also granted an order for non-disclosure of the identities of the claimants and victims, for fear that the defendants might kill or brutalize the claimants the same way they did to the victims. The case name is therefore John Doe, et al v. Tukur Yusuf Buratai et al, Civil Action No. 1:17-cv-01033. Bruce Fein (70), the highly experienced US attorney representing the claimants, former Associate Attorney General of US under President Reagan, specializes in constitutional and international law and is also active on civil liberty issues.

The Defendants in the Claims suit are (i) Lt. General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, Chief of Staff, Nigerian Army; (ii) Lawal Musa Daura, Director General of the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS); (iii) Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, General Officer Commanding, 82 Division of Nigerian Army, Enugu; (iv) Major I. Ibrahim, Commander, Nigerian Army Military Police, Onitsha and Abia State; (v) Lt. Col. Kasim Umar Sidi, Commanding Officer, 144th Battalion Nigerian Army, Asa, Ukwa West, Abia State; (vi) Col. Issah Maigari Abdullahi, Commanding Officer, Onitsha Military Cantonment, Nigerian Army, Anambra State; (vii) Solomon Arase, former Inspector General of the Nigerian Police; (viii) Ibrahim Kpotun Idris, Inspector General of the Nigerian Police; (ix) Okezie Victor Ikpeazu, Governor of Abia State; (x) Willie Obiano, Governor of Anambra State; (xi) Habila Hosea, Commissioner of Nigerian Police, Abia State, and Commander of SARS; (xii) Peter Nwagbara, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Abia State and Area Commander, Abia State Police Command and SARS Area Commander; (xiii) James Oshim Nwafor, Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) and Officer-in-Charge of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of Anambra State Police Command; (xiv) Hassan Karma, Commissioner of Nigeria Police, Anambra State; (xv) Bassey Abang, Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) and Officer-in-Charge SARS or O/C SARS, Anambra State; and (xvi) Johnson Babatunde Kokomo, Deputy Commissioner of Police, in charge of Operations, Anambra State.
The families of nine dead victims and a lone torture survivor are claiming several millions of US Dollars for cognizable and punitive damages against the defendants.
This is only a first step, since it has become obvious that the Nigerian security Forces will not stop the wanton killing of civilians until government leaders and Commanders are tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and sentenced to jail terms. Our attorneys, FEIN & DELVALLE PLLC have completed investigations, awaiting resources, which is not yet available, to proceed to prosecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Igbo political and business elite, including most of you, are so frightened of being involved that they are so afraid to lend financial support to these suits. But Igbos have no other choice than pursue this course of action, which is the only game in town and pathway to liberation. The alternative is to remain enslaved in perpetuity. The Courts are legitimate and peaceful avenues in social engineering. Only peace-loving law-abiding citizens assert their rights through the Courts. It might be tenuous and time/resource-consuming but are sure pathways to rights.

2.6.1. HE Chief Willie Obiano Has Serious Questions to Answer to the ICC for Pro- Biafra Genocidal Killings in Anambra State

Governor Willie Obiano, is one of the 16 defendants in the civil claims suit on IPOB killings - John Doe, et al v. Tukur Yusuf Buratai et al, Civil Action No. 1:17-cv-01033 before a Washington DC Court. But the more worrisome is the Governor's alleged complicity in acts of genocide on the very people he was elected to provide for their security and welfare; and whose mandate he is seeking to renew on 18th November 2017, Anambra State gubernatorial elections.

Article 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, defines the crimes that can be punished under the convention and specifically in 3(e) includes complicity in genocide. As already stated, Nigeria acceded to the Genocide Convention on 27th July 2009 and is therefore bound by its provisions.

The record of genocide committed by the Nigerian Army, Police and Navy in Anambra State is as follows:
30th August 2015 - 4 demonstrators killed in Awka;
2nd December 2015 - 13 killed in Onitsha;
17th December 2015 - 15 killed in Onitsha;
29th & 30th May, 2016 - above 140 killed at Nkpor, Onitsha and Asaba during the Biafra Heroes Anniversary of those who were killed fighting the 1967-70 Biafra war. Court papers show that the Anambra State Governor presided over the State Security Council meeting which authorized the Security Agencies to stop the Biafra Anniversary celebrations; and that he funded the operations. Over 370 were also reported have been mortally incapacitated with gunshot wounds.

In spite of the condemnations of the Governor's unfortunate role in that massacre of unarmed demonstrators; and even after the Civil Claims suit had been filed in Washington DC, and served on him, Chief Obiano's only reaction to his complicity in genocide is what he termed "unreserved apology" to IPOB members, which he announced on Wednesday, 9th August 2017 in his official residence at Amawbia; and in the absence of families of dead victims or survivors!
Unreserved apology is light years below what a Governor or head of Government is ordinarily supposed to do in the circumstances of such horrible Massacre of his subjects.
He is supposed to make a broadcast regretting and/or condemning the killings;
State law requires that the Governor should set up a judicial commission of enquiry into the killings, to determine the cause and find ways and means of avoiding a repeat; and
In such circumstances as his, where the Governor is alleged as complicit, he is supposed to pay condolence visits to all the families of victims and atone for the atrocities by making very substantial payments in reparations to the families of dead victims and/or survivors.

Let us look at what other heads of governments in Nigeria have done in circumstances where they were not even party to this extra-judicial killings, otherwise, crime against humanity:

In the 2005, June 5, "Apo Six" extra-judicial killing of 5 young Igbo traders and their Bini girl friend by Police Officers, President Olusegun on 25th of the same June 2005 promptly appointed Justice O.O. Goodluck judicial panel. The judicial commission report came out in August 2005 and President Obasanjo promptly apologized to the families of the "Apo Six" killings, after paying 3million Naira to each family for funeral expenses.

In December 12-14, 2015, the convoy of Nigeria's Army Chief of Staff, Lt. General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, reportedly shot and killed over 1,045 Shiite Moslems in a religious procession in Zaria.
In Jan. 2017, Governor Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, although a sympathizer of the Sunni Moslem onslaught against the Shiites, promptly appointed a judicial commission of enquiry made up of impartial lawyers, jurists, scholars of Religion, human rights activists, security experts and media practitioners who by August 2016 returned a verdict in its report which indicted the Army of use of excessive force that led to at least 348 deaths. That report assisted in no small measure in a court ruling against the Federal Government on the Shiite killings.

Again in June 6, 2017, AREWA youths 'Quit Notice' saga, Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, reacted as a Governor should, when, from wherever he was outside Nigeria, he ordered the arrest of givers of that obviously genocidal order, in spite of his apparent involvement in most Caliphate conspiracy.

Governor Obiano, apart from failing in the discharge of his oath of office, also came very short in meeting minimal standards of reparation in Igbo traditional liability in even, even accidental killing (Remember the Okonkwo episode in Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"):

The party responsible for the cause of death would relocate from the community for at least one lunar year;
On return, he is required to perform ablution (ikpu alu) - cleansing the earth of the abominable act of taking live only God gives; and finally
Reparations to the family of victims.

In the case of the families of not less than 150 Anambra dead victims and close to 300 torture survivors, not a condolence visit nor a word/reparation came from Governor Obiano.

What is more, I am informed from the law firm handling the Civil Claims suit in DC that since June 2017, the suit was filed and the Governor was subsequently served, HE has not considered it worth his while to seek to settle this matter of his alleged complicity in extra-judicial killing of Anambra citizens before asking Anambra citizens for a renewal of his mandate in the Nov. 18, 2017 gubernatorial elections.

I consider it material that Anambra people should assess what values people in government attach to lives no one except God can give, before casting their votes in the next election.

Besides, the genocidal killing of Igbo youths is moving from civil proceedings in a Washington Court to criminal investigations in Geneva and possible prosecution in the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Not even Heads of State have immunity before ICC!

2.7. Justification for Biafra’s Agitation for Separation
Experts in International Law have determined four grounds that justify secession in modern International Law which if the Igbo will shed their docility and fund international law experts, lobbyists (diplomats) and publicists can build the national and international pressure that would ensure release of Igbo sovereignty by Nigeria in peaceful and orderly manner without jeopardizing the same property and investments for which most Igbo political, business and professional elite today are ready to trade their fundamental human rights and bind future Igbo to permanent bondage.
The four Grounds:
2.7.1. People who are denied representation by a UN member State’s government or are systematically disenfranchised by the government of the state they live in - minimizing and/or excluding the Igbo in representation from 1970 to date can be justified as denial of representation.
2.7.2. People who have suffered certain injustices, for which secession is the appropriate remedy of last resort – “Remedial Rights Only Theory.” No group in Nigeria has suffered as much genocide and humiliations as the Igbo and unfortunately will continue to suffer in massacres even in the proposed restructured Nigeria bandied by Ohanaeze Ndigbo, South-East Governors and the rest of Igbo political/business elite.
2.7.3. People or group of individuals who unanimously choose a separate state; and
2.7.4. Beran’s democratic theory against majority rule justifies session if the existing political entity has allowed secession of any other group within its territory - the Bakassi Peninsular excision and 12 Islamic Republics in the North allowed by Nigeria in otherwise Secular Democratic Nigeria.

It is remarkable that in defining “peoples,” prevailing understanding in international law does not recognize ethnic and other minorities as separate people; and therefore does not qualify mere ethnicity or being a minority alone, as justifiable factor for a right to secede. Thus, the issue of every one of the 378 ethnic nationalities of Nigeria aspiring for secession, merely on ground that they are ethnic nationalities, is held not justifiable in current international law understanding.

2.8. The Restructuring Noise-Making
Nigerian political elite are out of this world. They will always wish to invent their so-called home-grown untested solutions to problems that have been repeatedly solved across the globe with accepted formulas.
Armed struggle or agitation for independence by disaffected minority or even majority in any polity has, most times been known to be the vehicles that trigger restructuring of such polity - South Africa, Ireland, Canada, Scotland, you name it. Yet politicians from Southern and North Central Nigeria, areas choking under the yoke of draconian enslavement ordinance (the 1999 Nigerian Constitution) enacted in the interest of the Upper North by Army Generals from same zone, think that by playing good boys and avowing solidarity to the oneness of Nigeria, the privileged oligarchy will be merciful enough to restructure Nigeria meaningfully and let go of the privileges they presently enjoy. It is an accepted fact of history that groups are more immoral than individuals and would never let go of such privileges unless they are forced to.
But even if they accept to meaningfully restructure by going back to the 1963 Constitution template, as clamored for, the following questions arise from my grave reservations that restructuring as proposed by gullible Nigerian elite, will restore equality, equity, justice and, most importantly, guarantee the safety of lives and property of the Igbo People of Nigeria in the hands of the violence-prone Hausa-Fulani, who habitually, from as far back as 1947 to date, have massacred Igbos like rodents and destroyed their property with no questions asked by the State:

"Enslavement of the Igbo by the Nigerian oligarchy - killing, raping and defiling Igbo women anywhere, anyhow; cattle Fulani herdsmen Islamic militants menace even in Igbo ancestral homes; illegal deployment of troops in Igbo homeland and harassment/killings by these Security agents; indiscriminate massacre of the Igbo all over the North and even in Abuja - the Federal Capital; abduction, rape, forced conversion to Islam, marriage, pregnancy of under-aged girls without parental consent and in violation of constitutional provisions (adult women sometimes included). What about holding no one to account for all these atrocities? It is common knowledge that one act of impunity unaccounted for, yields many. We have all witnessed how the "Quit Notice,"apparently inspired by the oligarchy and the Federal Government, condoned by Igbo leadership, which preferred to nurse "hate speech" protection, whilst keeping mom over threats over crimes against humanity . "Threat to commit Genocide" on 11.5million Igbo in the North, metamorphosed into open declaration by the Nigerian State authorities of all Igbo who might ordinarily mouth rejection of present Enslavement and Exclusion of the Igbo by Nigeria, as "Terrorist act" in its IPOB ProhibitionTerrorist Order.
How does restructuring, restructure the mindset that has restructured Nigeria by over 60% into an Islamic Republic? What about the 12 Islamic Republics in the North fully under Sharia Law? What about the drive to Islamize Nigeria? Sharia is widely known to be antithetical to fundamental human rights, National Constitutions, Common Law and Modern Civilization. How can Igbos in the North live there as free citizens, except as slaves (which is their present status); whereas Northerners live in Igbo homelands as over-lords? What about the activities of Hisbah Police in the North? What about two levels of citizenship rights all over Nigeria?

Can any form of restructuring answer any of the above questions?

Experience of over 56 years has confirmed that the size of Nigeria is beyond the competence of any average African political elite to manage from one central point. It is worsened in present circumstances when the leader can be analogue and therefore constrained by his limited experiences of human science and management particularly in a democratic setting.

Nigeria therefore not only needs to go back to more manageable parliamentary democracy as it is in the 1963 Constitution, but should also be broken up into autonomous confederal units, on account of its present unmanageable size; and the absence of any national unifying identity or value, particularly in the most fundamental of values – the sanctity of life.

It might be necessary, at this juncture, to draw the attention of all South-Easterners that but for remittances of Diaspora Igbo people in Northern and Western Nigeria and world-wide, Igbo land, would have been wallowing from the worst form of poverty. Due to infrastructure deficits deliberately inflicted on the zone by the Federal Government (no roads, rails, river or sea ports, no refineries even though the zone produces crude, excision of oil-rich areas of SE and their award to neighboring zones, and other forms of deliberate punishments), most enterprises in the zone are mainly distribution of goods imported from other Zones or from abroad. That way, even the remittances are mopped back to the advantaged zones of the Federation.
It therefore does not surprise me that a recent survey this year, revealed that 11.5 million Igbos live in the North, as against roughly 18 million 2006 Census population at home in the South-East.

3. CONCLUSION
Confederation - the Swiss Model OR SEPARATION: The Swiss model of confederal arrangement should therefore be built into the Nigerian governance structure so as to accommodate and reassure the different values and the sharp cleavages of the peoples that make up Nigeria and the total absence of trust among them. That is the kind of governance structure that is likely to endure - allowing each unit to develop according to its own pace and giving each unit or groups of units, full responsibility for its security, which no group has in the history of Nigeria, been able to reassure.

The alternative is separation. It might be painful but is time-bound unless something meaningful, as proposed, is done. Unity of a man-made structure cannot be held sacrosanct in an obviously failed Union in which the parties are destroying lives they cannot give.

AND TO YOU MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN USA, I CALL ON YOU TO UNITE IN SUPPORT OF EKWENCHE INITIATIVE THROUGH ATTORNEYS, FEIN & DELVALLE PLLC AND OTHER EXPERTS IN LAW, LOBBY (DIPLOMACY) AND PUBLICITY AS IT MIGHT BE DEEMED NECESSARY. LAW IS A POTENT INSTRUMENT OF SOCIAL ENGINEERING WHICH WE MUST USE TO EXTRICATE OURSELVES FROM PRESENT OVER-BEARING AND HEARTLESS TYRANNY!
THROUGH THE COURTS & OPINION OF THE WORLD, USING INTERNATIONAL LITIGATION, LOBBY AND PUBLICITY, WE CAN SECURE IGBO LIVES & THE DIGNITY OF THE IGBO PERSON IN NIGERIA, BY COMPELLING MEANINGFUL RESTRUCTURING THAT CAN GUARANTEE IGBO LIVES AND PROPERTY, FAILING WHICH NIGERIA IS COMPELLED TO PEACEFULLY ALLOW IGBO EXIT TO AN IGBO SOVEREIGN STATE.

THE IGBO CANNOT CLAIM TO BE FREE PEOPLE IN NIGERIA WHEN NO IGBO IS A MEANINGFUL MEMBER OF THE NIGERIA NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL & WHEN EVERY GOVERNOR IN IGBO LAND IS NOT FREE BUT LIMITED BY NON-IGBO PERSONNEL OF POLICE, STATE SECURITY, ARMY, NAVY, AIR FORCE, CIVIL DEFENSE, IMMIGRATION, NDLEA, EFCC, CUSTOMS ETC, (THOSE ALONE BEING THE ONLY ONES ALLOWED TO OFFICIALLY BEAR ARMS UNDER THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTROL) AND INVARIABLY INTIMIDATE THEM TO LOYAL VASSALS OF IGBO TRADUCERS.

THE IGBO CANNOT FIGHT ANY PHYSICAL WAR. IT WILL BE SHARE MADNESS FOR THE UNARMED TO CHALLENGE A MAN WITH A GUN!
BUT GOD HAS SO GENEROUSLY ENDOWED THE IGBO WITH INTELLECT WHICH THE IGBO PRESENTLY HAVE FAILED TO USE AND WHICH WILL NOW WITH YOUR SUPPORT BE DEPLOYED TO RESCUE OUR DEAR IGBO PEOPLE FROM THE PRESENT ABYSS OF HUMILIATION AND DEGRADATION. .
YOU NEED NOT BE REMINDED THAT YOU, THE IGBOS IN THE USA, ARE THE LAST FRONTIER OF THE IGBO NATION ON EARTH.

I LEAVE YOU AND MAKE ONE REQUEST:

LET US BEGIN TODAY TO TEAR DOWN ALL THOSE TENDENCIES THAT DIVIDE THE IGBO IN USA AND ORGANIZE ONE PLATFORM FOR ALL IGBOS HERE SO THAT WHEN NEXT I AM OFFERED TO SPEAK, IT WILL BE A DELEGATE CONVENTION OF IGBO PEOPLES IN USA.
YOU CAN DO IT. OUR PEOPLE SAY: ADIGHI ILI EME NGENE.

(THIS SCRIPT IS DERIVED LARGELY FROM SUMMARIES OF MY 628-PAGE WORK, TITLED “TO THE RESQUE – The Right to Self Determination, the Pathway to a Genuine Federation of Peoples with no Shared Values” WHICH CAME OUT FROM PRINT ON 9th Oct. 2017 and I AM GLAD I CAME WITH FEW COPIES. EFFORT IS ON TO PUBLISH IT IN USA).

Posted in my blog: emekaonyesoh.blogspot.com.ng

OkpalaEzeNri Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh
Los Angeles, USA.

21st Oct. 2017.

PRINCE CHUKWUEMEKA ONYESOH

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Saturday, October 21, 2017