….As AVID visits Capitol Hill to lobby for Kanu’s release
By Steve Oko
THE United States of America has been urged to re-designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, CPC, and subsequently place her on the US watchlist over the rising spate of killings by bandits and criminal herdsmen.
The call was made by a delegation of American Veterans of Igbo Descent, AVID; and Rising Sun & Ambassadors for Self Defense; during its recent visit to Capitol Hill, Washington DC, where it met with some US congress members to lobby for the release of the incarcerated leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
Recall that US President Donald Trump, in his first term, had designated Nigeria as a CPC nation, but his successor, Joe Biden removed Nigeria from the watchlist when he assumed power.
Addressing the press after the Capitol Hill engagement, the President of AVID, Dr. Sylvester Onyia, said they also sensitised the congress on the rising violation of human rights, calculated ethnic cleansing, and religious atrocities perpetrated in Nigeria by those bent on dispossessing the indigenous people of their ancestral lands.
Onyia, in a viral video clip of the press interview monitored by Vanguard, decried the barbaric activities of the killer herdsmen and bandits slaughtering indigenous Nigerians, mostly Christians “while the government has failed to protect the hapless people”.
The AVID President also recalled the killing of 27 unarmed Biafra agitators celebrating the inauguration of President Trump, in 2017′, by the Nigerian security operatives in Port Harcourt Rivers State, and demanded US action.
He further said the delegation was at Capitol Hill to sensitise the US Congress on the plight of the IPOB Leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who has been in solitary confinement since his abduction in Kenya and extraordinary rendition to Nigeria in 2021.
AVID and its allied group, renewed their demand for the immediate and unconditional release of Kanu, who they insisted, “is not Nigeria’s problem but part of its solution”.
“We are here to bring our concerns to the American folks that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu needs to be released now. He is unjustly incarcerated. We have told President Ahmed Tinubu, just as we told President Buhari who arrested him, to release him because he didn’t do anything to anybody.
“We also came to remind the world about what happened on January 20, 2017, when President Donald Trump was being inaugurated for his first tenure. The Nigerian security forces shot at and killed 27 youths of Igbo descent celebrating Trump’s inauguration in Port Harcourt. The innocent victims did nothing other than cheer a US President.
“This happened and nobody has been brought to account. So, we are asking the US Government, now under President Trump, to look into the matter because it was democracy that was being celebrated, and those innocent youths were slaughtered by the Nigerian security personnel as chicken.”
A member of the delegation, Rev. Father Augustine Odinmegwu, accused Britain of complicity in Kanu’s continued incarceration, wondering why the British Government had not demanded his release despite being her citizen.
“Why are they still holding Mazi Nnamdi Kanu? We believe that as a British citizen, the British Government has a hand in it. Kanu was discussing the atrocities being committed in Nigeria. Those holding Nigeria down do not want any development in the country. Jihadists and Fulani herders are busy killing and displacing innocent indigenous Nigerians and grabbing their lands, and the world is watching.
The delegation argued that if no urgent action were taken to stall the advancement of the rampaging bandits and criminal herdsmen into the South East, they would soon seize crude oil in the region, and challenge the US and Western interests.
“We want the world, more especially the US Government, to look into it. If nothing is done now, these jihadists will get hold of the South East and the Christians they are trying to exterminate, then get hold of the sweet crude. Once this happens, the next thing will be to challenge the US and even Britain.”
Rev. Odimegwa expressed shock and worry over the recent advice by the Director General of the Department of State Security, Adeola Ajayi, for Nigerians to take measures to defend themselves against bandits, saying that such advice coming from a high-profile intelligence chief, suggested that “Nigeria is either becoming or is already a failed state “.
” The DG of DSS, who in the US, we can equate to the Director of Homeland Security, is privy to top-secret intelligence. For him to publicly tell Nigerians to arm themselves and defend themselves, means that the country is incapacitated. It means that the people are now on their own. The primary responsibility of every government is the protection of lives and property. Is the Nigerian Government abdicating its responsibility?
Describing the atrocities of bandits and Fulani herdsmen as genocidal, Odimegwa called for urgent US action to avoid further mayhem displacements, and emigrations.
” What is happening in Nigeria is that a group of bandits and terrorists has taken it upon themselves to be massacring people at will. They carry arms and are all over the place unchecked. They are decimating ethnic nationalities in the name of a herdsmen/farmers’ clash which is a ruse. There is a hidden agenda because they are rather carrying out ethnic cleansing and religious atrocities.
The delegation, therefore, urged South East Governors to prioritize the defense of their people by ensuring the establishment of vigilante groups in every community; and to get rid of every stranger inhabiting forests in South East.
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