By The World Satellite.
The foremost Civil Rights Group; Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has urged the Chief of Air Staff to Step in and stop the abuses and professional misconduct of his officers who are disgracing their esteemed uniform and professional careers, which according to the group, goes against their constitutional mandates as clearly spelt out in sections 217 – 220 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 as amended.
In a statement sighted
by The World Satellite Magazine Website, the Group’s National Coordinator; Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, stated that HURIWA has been inundated with petitions from all over the country on the apparent professional misconduct of men and officers of some military outfits.
“We are been told that officers of the Air Force of Nigeria are been misused and deployed to chase land owners around Enugu because they (Air Force officers) were allegedly bribed by the Housing Ministry officials to take people’s lands to sell to land speculators”, Onwubiko explained.
Continuing, Mr. Onwubiko revealed that it is not the first time the Group is being alerted that the military are deviating into purely civil matters even when, according to him, there are grave threats to the nation.
“The situation was somewhat contained until Mr. Vitus Okechi was named the substantive Commissioner for Housing. He has, since then, sworn to annex all community lands to himself and a few cronies.
“Unsurprisingly, besides the many disappointing moves he has made thus far, he has recently gone as far as engaging the services of men of the Nigerian Air Force, whose focus and objective should have been on external and territorial incursions into the Nigerian Airspace.”
While expressing how it beats the imagination of the ordinary mind on how Mr. Okechi could manage to drag what he described as expected-to-be-highly-disciplined officers to the role of land grabbing, Mr. Onwubiko recalled the many instances of recent invasions of Nigerian Communities by Armed Fulani herdsmen and other forms of attacks on thousands of civilians.
He therefore stated that “the Nigerian Air Force and the military should be rightly deployed to stabilize these places and allow citizens have unfettered enjoyment of their constitutionally guaranteed fundamental freedoms and Rights as enunciated in chapter 4 of the 1999 Constitution but instead the Air Force of Nigeria is being deployed for illegality”
In addition to drawing the attention of the Heads of Security Agencies “to wit; the Chief of Air Staff, to this dangerous trend of men and officers of the security architecture, abandoning their core responsibility and becoming undertakers for land grabbers in Enugu”, HURIWA appealed to Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi to call his Commissioner of Housing; Vitus Okechi to order before hapless citizens resort to self-help and anarchy sets in.
