The recent media report credited to the Chief of Army Staff, Major General Tukur Buratai, that he would declare a state of emergency in the entire South East for one reason or another has been described by the Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU) as a reckless talk taken too far.
In a press statement on Thursday September 16,2020 captured, “Buratai is both morally, and professionally unfit to continue in office which was signed by the National President, Chief Emeka Diwe and the National Secretary Hon. Gideon Aditewuru the union stated as follows, “Notwithstanding our awareness that Buratai, as the Chief of Army Staff, has no constitutional powers to suspend democratic institutions and declare emergency rule, the statement has further fuelled our apprehension that there is a conspiracy to wipe Igbo people out of Nigeria. By harbouring such a sinister intention to let loose state apparatus and state-sanctioned violence on an innocent people who have endured many years of agony, political marginalization, unjustifiable brutal killings and economic deprivation, Buratai has presented himself as morally and professionally unfit to continue to head the military establishment of Nigeria.
What this plan to declare a state of emergency in the South East means is a deliberate move to stoke a conflagration of insecurity in our land using national security, so as to depopulate the region and finally hand over our land to Fulani herdsmen.
Our fears and suspicion that the silence of the security agencies over the incessant wanton killings across our land by Fulani herdsmen is a calculated attempt at ethnic cleansing has been confirmed by Buratai, and we wish to once again draw the attention of the international community to the fact that the Igbo in Nigeria have become sorely an endangered ethnic nationality and spicies.
Nigeria is today a country at war with itself. Bloodletting has become a norm, and human lives carry no value anymore. Much of the North is today under terrorist occupation, and the military, which first duty is to ensure the territorial integrity of the country by warding off external aggression and quelling internal insurrection, has appeared confused and at a loss with the situation.
Yet, the leadership of the Army has found it pleasing to lay siege and militarize the civil spaces in the relatively peaceful South East region through various reprehensible phases of Operation Python Dance. This latest effort to find a pretext to justify a state of emergency in our region is just a facet in the unfolding continuum to annihilate us.
We therefore call on President Mohammadu Buhari to quickly sack Gen. Buratai in the interest of peace and national cohesion, and most importantly, to prove to our people that his series of glaring and undisguised hate actions against us do not have the seal of state authority.” It will be recalled that following recent clash between IPOB and security operatives at Enugu which turned bloody, the Army chief of staff Gen. Tuheur Buratai threatened to declare a state of emergency in the South East Geo political Region, a threat he has no constitutional impetus or authority to give, hence the ASETU reaction”.
