Intersociety Says: Southeast Gone From Bad To Worse In The Recent Appointment Of Zonal AIGs & State CPs …raises serious concerns over Tukur Buratai’s continued stay in the Army

(Chima Ubani Center, Onitsha Nigeria: 8^th
February 2019)-Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law
(Intersociety) has critically studied the recent lopsided
appointment, promotion and posting of the Zonal Assistant
Inspectors Gen of Police (AIGs) and State Commissioners of Police
(CPs) and concluded that the case of Southeast and by extension,
the South-south has gone from bad to worse, if not worst.

In the area of the 37 newly appointed State CPs, no fewer than
22 are found to be Muslims, out of which 21 are Hausa-Fulani
Muslims. Out of the same 37 newly appointed State CPs, only two
were appointed from the Southeast Region, while the Southwest Zone
got 10 State CPs; leaving the South-south and Northern Christian
areas with four, out of which three are from the South-south.

In the area of the newly appointed AIGs in charge of the
country’s 12 Police Zonal Commands, no fewer than eight are
Northern Muslims/Christians; involving AIGs in charge of Zones 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. The remaining three Zonal AIGs are split
among the Southeast, South-south and Southwest Zones, out of which
Southeast Zone was given one slot. Four Northern Muslim AIGs are
also appointed to take charge of Force Investment, Intelligence
Bureau, Maritime and AIG FCID positions.

As a further confirmation of the case of Southeast gone from bad
to worse, if not worst, CP Damian Agba Chukwu (CP Borno) will
retire from the Force on 19^th March 2019 or in 40 days
from today. The second Igbo State CP, Celestine Okoye (CP Zamfara)
has relatively longer period to stay in the Force and will be due
for retirement on 22^nd December 2020. The two are only
Igbo/Southeast CPs in the list of the 37 newly appointed State
CPs.

Revealing, too, is the fact that the only Igbo AIG, Chris Okey
Ezike, (AIG Zone 4, Makurdi) will retire on Tuesday,
30^th April 2019 or in 81 days from today. Also the only
Igbo/Southeast DIG, Godwin C. Nwobodo (DIG Information and
Communication Technology-ICT) will retire from the NPF on
12^th August 2019 or in six months and twenty days from
today.

Totality of the foregoing is, therefore, a strong indication
that the dilemma of the Southeast in the Nigeria Police Force has
further worsened and entrenched. The newly appointed Acting IGP,
Muhammad Adamu has also been critically mirrored, studied and
analyzed and found to be “a status quo IGP”; with no meaningful
changes expected to take place under his leadership.

The gross lopsidedness and scheming out of the Southeast Region,
a home with sedentary and pastoral Judeo-Christian population of no
fewer than 50m; from the country’s defense and security positions
and the inaction and puppetry antics of the Region’s top political
appointees particularly the Southeast Governors have, again,
 called for serious concerns.

This conversely reminds Intersociety of what
happened in 2013 when we raised similar concerns; forcing a former
Anambra Governor to take the next available flight to Abuja to meet
with then Chairman of the Police Service Commission. The meeting
yielded fruit and resulted to the promotion of retired DIG Chintua
Amajor-Onu to AIG. Retired DIG Chintua Onu had before then remained
as a CP for several years.  AIG Chris Ezike immediately after
our raised concerns and the former Anambra Governor’s intervention
got promoted to CP having managed to get promoted to DCP on
1^st August 2012; six months after his course mate, now
Retired DIG Peter Yisa Gana (former DIG FCID) was promoted to DIG
on 22^nd February 2012.

We make bold to say that the structural and cultural
violence above highlighted are too dangerous a policy or
practice and are dangerously threatening the survival of the Igbo
Nation in particular and Nigeria in general. They also fuel
separatist sentiments with capacity to breed and escalate group
radicalism in whole or in part. They are further a confirmation of
existence and entrenchment of ethnic cleansing in Nigeria’s
security, defense and policing establishments. These annihilative
policies and conducts must stop and be discontinued before it is
too late or rise to irreversible point or proportion.

Serious Concerns Over Tukur Buratai’s Continued Stay In
The Army

3^rd January 2019 marks 38 yrs of service-membership
of the Nigerian Army by COAS, Lt Gen Tukur Yusuf Buratai.  Lt
Gen Tukur Yusuf hails from Buratai Community in Biu Local
Government Area of Borno State, Northeast Nigeria. He is a member
of Course 29 of the Nigerian Defense Academy, having joined the
Nigerian Army on 3^rd January 1981 at the age of 21 as a
member of 29 Regular Combatant Course (29 RC). He was also
reported to have been born on 24^th November 1960 and
commissioned Second Lieutenant on 17^th December
1983.  The COAS was statutorily due for retirement since
3^rd January 2016 having attained 35yrs in service, but
have refused to leave the Army since then.

Further, it is on record that the COAS joined the Nigerian
Defense Academy-NDA when it was still a military training college
issuing National Certificate in Education (NCE), thereby making the
COAS as one of its NCE recipients. The NDA changed to degree
certificates or degree awarding institution from its Course 36;
making its recipients to be entitled to or covered by the
Harmonized Terms and Condition of Services Officers (HTACOS), 2012
(Revised). HTACOS was intended to make retirement age (i.e. 35yrs
in service) in the military (army, navy and air force) different
from other personnel or public servants of the Federal Government
covered by the Civil Service Rules of the Federation.

However, the HTACOS was designed to start with the 36th Course
(C36) and their equivalents and above. The Course 36 members were
the first set to start full degree programs at the Nigerian Defense
Academy (NDA). Before then, those in Courses 1 to 35 (including Lt
Gen Buratai’s Course 29) studied and graduated with the National
Certificate in Education (NCE) from the NDA. This means that while
Course 36 and above will benefit from all the provisions of the
HTACOS, their seniors, Courses 1 to 35, will not have the same and
full benefits. The Presidency had in its attempts to defend the
COAS and his overstay in NA in June 2017 admitted that the COAS is
a member of the Course 29 of NDA. See more details here: https://northeaststaronline.com/?p=3040^[1].

It is likely that the COAS is presently haunted by innumerable
conduct atrocities that greeted and still
greet and darkened and still darken his era as Nigeria’s Chief of
Army Staff since 13^th July 2015. Apart from serious
allegations of war crimes under his leadership of NA in its
counterinsurgency operations in the Northeast, he also bodily and
facially watched and did nothing or refused not to consent to the
broad day massacre of no fewer than 700 Shiites on 12^th
December 2015. The massacre started on 12^th and ended on
14^th December 2015, leaving hundreds of death tolls and
hundreds of others with battered injuries.

The Government of Kaduna State later mangled the death figures
and admitted that “347 citizens were killed” and buried in criminal
mass graves. Subsequent killing of Shiites by the NA also led to
hundreds of death including in 2018 when no fewer than 60 were
killed, bringing the total to no fewer than 1200 since
12^th December 2015. Under Buratai’s watch, too, leader
of IMN, Mallam Zaky el-Zaky and his wife were shot and battered
before being handed over, half dead, to SSS for solitary and
indefinite detention till date.

As if that was not enough, in less than three days, too, no
fewer than 180 unarmed and defenseless citizens were shot and
mass-murdered by the Nigerian Army under the COAS operational
watch, directive and supervision; with over 130 others shot and
critically injured. The massacre occurred on 12^th,
13^th and 14^th September 2017 in Abia State
part of Eastern Nigeria. The massacre had occurred in addition to
earlier killing by the military and police in the same Eastern
Nigeria of no fewer than 300 defenseless citizens and injuring of
over 370 others in mass killings described by Amnesty
Int’l on 24^th November 2016 as “killings
perpetrated under repressive raining of bullets
everywhere”.

Today, especially following the release of our special report
(Military Massacre Operations In Eastern Nigeria: August
2015-September 2017), another round of image laundering has been
let loose, so as to mechanically shore or patch up the drowning
image and blood stained integrity of the perpetrators. One of such
“awards-on-the-blood-of-the-innocent” was recently christened
“accountability and transparency award”.  Issuance of human
rights reports in today’s Nigeria has become a “bloody diamond and
gold” to some persons and groups masquerading as “rights groups” or
“CSOs”.

Those vividly described by erudite Prof Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as
“Nigerian fraudulent anti corruption/rights NGOs” are at it again
this time around; encouraging the butcheries and emboldening the
butchers. It is so sad that even in the NPF, the largest recipients
of “Nigerian based human rights awards/certificates” are the chief
custodial killers and torturers of legally presumed innocent
detainees and other spuriously accused or innocent citizens.

Recently in Anambra State, for instance, a chief custodial
killer/torturer and  former Anambra State Police SARS
commander whose conduct atrocities have been catalogued in several
Amnesty Int’l reports and other researched works
bordering on gross rights abuses and violations; is presently
listed as one of the largest recipients of “human rights
awards/certificates” in Nigeria. “Human Rights awards/certificates”
in his custody, cited by independent sources, are reportedly in
hundreds.

Finally, Intersociety makes bold to say that
not even 1000 innocent blood-soaked “human rights” or
“accountability and transparency” awards awarded to such atrocity
crimes perpetrators to cover up their vicarious and direct
involvement in the massacre of thousands of innocent Nigerians can
change anything or deter men and women of good conscience all over
the world from doing the needful when the time is ripe or
appropriate.

These we morally and conscientiously say or benevolently assert
in accordance with spiritual guidance and angelical tasks tasked
upon us by the restless spirits of the murdered or the butchered
who loiter restlessly in cosmic world demanding for justice to be
done to facilitate their restfulness and cleansing of their
formerly earthly paths now desecrated and flooded with their own
innocent blood and tears.

In the words of erudite Prof Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala during her
October 2017 immortal and advisory speech to international
development institutions including WB and IMF, “international
institutions must be careful with fraudulent NGOs in Nigeria. You
need to ensure you are working with the right CSOs and NGOs. The
people you are fighting are also very smart. They are not just
sitting back. They also develop their own NGOs to serve as a front
for them; people who can certify them that they are very
accountable in what they are doing”

“So, you have to be careful. You have to be able to identify
those who are the proper people. And we have many NGOs in Nigeria
and in the African continent who are (corruptly and immorally)
fighting really hard than to make their governments
accountable”. http://nationaljournal.ng/index.php/2017/10/16/okonjo-iweala-warns-imf-of-nigerias-fraudulent-anti-corruption-civil-society-groups/^[2]

Signed

For: Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of
Law

• Emeka Umeagbalasi (B.Sc. (Hons) CSS, M.Sc.
  PCR)

Principal Official/Board Chair

• Obianuju Joy Igboeli, Esq. (LLB, BL)

Head, Civil Liberties & Rule of Law Program

• Chinwe Umeche, Esq. (LLB, BL)

Head, Democracy & Good Governance Program

• Chidimma Evan Udegbunam, Esq. (LLB, BL)

Head, Campaign & Publicity Department

Mobile Line: +2348182411462, +2348174090052

Email: info@intersociety-ng.org^[3]

Website: www.intersociety-ng.org^[4]