PBA ReporterEnugu-based civil society organisation, Oriental Lawyers for Justice (OLJ) has condemned the latest action of the Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah, regarding the sit-at-home enforced by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
Recall that the governor had immediately after his swearing in, banned the Mondays’ sit-at-home enforced by a notorious splinter group of IPOB in the state. He subsequently issued directive mandating all residents in the state to resume their normal businesses on Mondays, but people were reportedly, afraid of coming out to avoid being attacked by the hoodlums who parade the city on Mondays with dangerous weapons.
To enforce the directive, the state government on Monday sealed shops of people in parts of the capital city, who did not open on Monday due to sit-at-home enforced by Simon Ekpa. This led to protest by traders at Ogbete Market which ended on a tragic note as stray bullets shot by anti riot police squad deployed to forcefully stop them allegedly kill three persons.
Reacting to the incident, the OLJ which comprises only attorneys from Enugu State accused Governor Mbah of being insensitive and indirectly punishing the people because he feels they do not support his government due to his controversial emergence as winner of the March 18 gubernatorial election.
According to the group, Mbah knows he will certainly be removed from office the very day the Enugu State Governorship Petitions Tribunal delivers judgment on the petition against his declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the winner of the gubernatorial election.
“Mbah has declared a war against not just civil servants and businesses but the entire state for voting for the Labour Party rather than himself in the election”, OLJ declared in a statement released on Thursday, in Enugu and signed by the president of the group, John Bosco Aninwede, and the publicity scribe, Mrs Ifeoma Ejike.
“By closing down the Ogbete Market, the biggest market in the state from where thousands of families earn their daily living, this regime has demonstrated it is anti-man through and through.”
The market was shut down on Tuesday, when the traders were protesting against the closure of many market stalls for not opening the previous day for fear of vicious violent attack by IPOB whose members have declared every Monday a day for sit-at-home in protest against the continued detention of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu by the Federal Government since 2021.
One hundred and twenty businesses, including departmental stores and branches of two commercial banks, were also closed down by the state government for the same reason.
“It is unbelievable that any government can wilfully choose to starve thousands of families in these critical times, and when they engaged in a peaceful protest, their government decided to call not just police officers but also soldiers to shoot at them, with at least two dead on the spot.
“Not even during the days of military rule did any regime behave this way to our people. The blood of these people is on Mbah’s head,” the CSO added.
The group wonders how Governor Mbah expects the people to go to work on any Monday without providing them with security forces to give them a sense of safety on a day IPOB members usually parade the roads and streets with dangerous weapons and kill innocent people with reckless abandon for merely coming out of their homes.
“Our people are highly industrious, and so do not like to stay at home on a work day like Monday, but are forced to stay indoors by blood-thirsty IPOB operatives.
“How can women who feed their families with what they get daily from hawking cooked food or selling water or akara or fried plantain and yam be happy when their children are starving?”
“The Eastern Nigerian lawyers observe that Mbah is frustrated because every effort made by the governor to convince the election petitions tribunal that he is qualified to run for the governorship has failed, just like every attempt to prove that he won the election.
“The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) leadership stated orally and in writing that the so-called NYSC discharge certificate A808297 which Mbah submitted to INEC as his is false and forged the organisation states, noting that he will go down as Mrs Kemi Adeosu, Buhari’s first Minister of Finance who resigned from office because she submitted a forged NYSC discharge certificate.”
The same fate befell Salusi Buhari, the first Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Fourth Republic when it was discovered that the University of Toronto degree certificate he presented to INEC was fake.
The Bayelsa State deputy governor-elect, Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, was prevented by the Supreme Court in February 2020 from being sworn in, together with the governor-elect, David Lyon, on the ground that at least one of his university certificates presented to INEC is forged.
“INEC, which declared Mbah victorious in the governorship election, could not produce even one witness during the two days the election petitions tribunal gave it to defend its declaration,” the OLJ recalls, “demonstrating how deeply corrupt and unintelligent some INEC officials are.
“Mbah is going as our so-called governor, but he cannot be allowed to go down with our beloved state”, group stated.
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