PRESS STATEMENT

HUMAN Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) hereby condemns  the recent alleged harassment and intimidation of the immediate past interior minister Captain Emmanuel Ihenacho by Nigerian Maritime And Safety Agency (NIMASA) over alleged storage of “stolen crude oil” (AGO CARGO) in the tank farm associated with the former minister of interior. The manner of the arrest of the former minister to us is a total violation of the Fundamental Human Rights of a Nigerian citizen. We are aware of the widely circulated defence put up by the former minister whereby he cleared himself and company of involvement in the storage of the alleged stolen petroleum products.

The firm run by the former minister had claimed thus; “On Thursday the 13th September 2012, our management was surprised by the incidence of the vicious invasion of our Tank Farm facility at Ibafon by a group of uniformed armed men, numbering about thirty and purporting themselves to be acting on the orders and instructions of the D.G. NIMASA and of Mr. Tompolo, MD, of a private company GVWSL.”

The immediate past minister had also contrary to the allegation that his company was in breach of the law in storing the said petroleum products claimed thus; “In the course of the invasion, the intruders ransacked the entire tank farm complex, arresting and violently manhandling the workers at the complex, laying them flat on the floor, seizing their handsets. At the end of the day, five members of the staff of the company were allegedly abducted and taken to NIMASA for interrogation and have since been transferred to the SSS at Shangisha where they were held incommunicado.”

The former minister had also claimed that the assault on the company’s business has since continued with a renewed invasion of the company’s Corporate Headquarters occurring at other Marine Road offices on Friday, September 14th, 2012.

As a human rights organization, we recognize the sanctity of fundamental human rights as enshrined in section 36 of the constitution of Nigeria of 1999 as amended. A Citizen alleged to be in breach of the law is innocent in the eye of the law until proven guilty by a competent court of law and must not be subjected to undue harassment through the instrumentality of Government controlled power of coercion.

We are also against the media trial that was carried out against the former minister who we believe served this country creditably. If Government believes that his firm has indeed breached any extant law, Government is obliged to follow the due process of the law and not to use crude means that is akin to abduction of a citizen.

HURIWA is of the conviction that Nigeria must not return to the dark days of military brute force or crude application of the law. The past interior minister had alleged that he was allegedly abducted by armed men suspected to be working with a privately-run security outfit linked to a former militant leader. This allegation is serious and must be investigated by President Jonathan.

These serious allegations must be probed more so when report shows that the said petroleum products were validly cleared by all relevant authorities including the necessary inwards clearance documentation, issued by The Nigerian Navy, the Department of Petroleum Resources DPR, the Nigerian Port Authority and surprisingly, NIMASA.

HURIWA is aware that the former minister had clearly stated in the media that the controversial AGO cargo was borne to their tank farm on a vessel the MT Grace, owned by Messrs Akoto Ventures/Danyomile Marine Services Ltd.

In the defense put up by the company of the former minister stated thus; “The controversial Ago cargo which the NIMASA and Messrs GWVS claim to have been stolen, transported and is stored in our tanks, was lifted to our tank farm on the MT Grace, passed through NPA channels and facilities en-route to our jetty, was cleared for discharge at our jetty by both the DPR and the Nigerian Navy. The cargo is not owned by Integrated Oil and Gas as we were never the official receivers of the cargo. The cargo was officially consigned to Messrs PDR/Capital Oil Plc”.

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA hereby appeals to President Goodluck Jonathan to set up an investigative panel to probe the allegation made by the former minister of interior that someone high up there is after his legitimate business. The President should speak out and clear his administration of alleged collusion to destroy the businesses of certain persons including but not limited to the immediate past minister of interior.

As a democracy, when any citizen is accused of breaching any law, he/she must be appropriately made to face the full weight of the law but not subjected to psychological or physical torture.

We believe that; “Human rights are the most fundamental rights of human beings. They define relationships between individuals and power structures, especially the State. Human rights delimit State power and, at the same time, require States to take positive measures ensuring an environment that enables all people to enjoy their human rights”. History in the last 250years has been shaped by the struggle to create such an environment. Starting with the French and American revolutions in the late eighteenth century, the idea of human rights has driven many a revolutionary movement for empowerment and for control over the wielders of power, Governments in particular.”

–

Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko,

National Coordinator/Executive Director on behalf of the coalition of human rights and civil society community.

Today another set of unelected imposters were sworn in to occupy space in the 21 Local Governments Areas in Anambra State.

Anambra Citizens have since come to terms with the fact that their state is yet to catch up with the rest of the country in terms of democracy because when it comes to the executive arm of government at all levels, the officers that currently occupy office ,without exception are unelected. Hence it is unlikely that those at the helm of affairs would like those operating below them to be elected for that will confer superior mandate and deny the former their ill-gotten loyalty.

Therefore, everything we have seen so far in terms of attitude of governance has been founded on this situation which has created three categories in the Anambra people:

· 1- There are those who feel that they should continue to say the truth of this situation and to make themselves heard.

· 2-There is a second category that feels that the current despotic APGA government should be left to their designs while looking at the calendar for the exit of their OPPRESSORS IN GOVERNMENT, and the arrival of a properly elected government.

· 3-There are yet others, in the elite and business class who ,like they collaborated with Military governments of the past ,feel that they should take advantage of the current distortion for their personal gains, while it lasts.Tis is largely peopled by APGA members who are the main beneficiaries of this anomaly.

Driven by the need to guard the polity called Anambra State, minimise the risk to it and the damages likely to be incurred in the interim, until such a time when a proper government that respects the democratic aspirations Ndi Anambra, to elect, be consulted and form part of the consensus of government actions is in place in Anambra State, ACN proudly associates with the first of these three categories.

ACN once again condemns in its entirety, the idea of having unelected governments in place at any levels of governance in Anambra,et alone the 21 local governments of the state ,which helps to deny Ndi Anambra , at least 25,000 jobs, while pretending to create other jobs through undesired graft.

We note with satisfaction that the ACN stand coincides with the legacy –of philosophy bequeathed to the entire Ndi Igbo by Dim Chukwuemeka, Odumegu-Ojukwu in his evergreen and memorable words : “As a committed democrat, every singe day under an un-elected government hurts me. The citizens of this county are mature enough to make their own choices, just as they have the right to make their own mistakes” DIM CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU-OJUKWU (1933-2011)

We however note that the executive misgovernance of the state is largely unchecked by the Anambra State House of Assembly which is yet to rise to the responsibilities conferred on them by the constitution and the legitimacy placed on their shoulders by the aspirations of the constituencies that make of the house.

But the common parasite running through the Anambra executive misgovernance and the COLLABORATIVE WEAKNESS of Anambra State House of Assembly is the destructive, controlling influence of APGA.

Hence our position is the same as that of Ojukwu, which unfortunately is different from that of today’s APGA, which only applied and applies Ojukwu’s name to selfish exploits.

We condemn the appointment and swearing in of yet another set of transitional governments, to destroy structures without buiding, to beat up journalists who take photographs in the line of their duty ,coluude with state officers to fritter away local government funds, collude with elements of the state House of Assembly to legitimise iniquity at the councils and bequeath us the wrong values as a people.

We condemn another bold step in Anambra’s transition to nothing!!!

We
however urge Ndi Anambra to take solace in the fact that March 2014 is in sight and that the change they require is in their hands.

For: ACTION CONGRESS OF NIGERIA, ANAMBRA STATE CHAPTER

Okelo Madukaife

State Publicity Secretary

PRESS STATEMENT

The All Nigeria Peoples Party [ANPP] received with interest the news on Monday of the denial by the National Bureau of Statistics [NBS] the report credited to it that, according to an opinion poll it carried out, 75percent Nigerians opposed the introduction of N5000 notes. The curious rejoinder signed by the NBS management stated that they introduced some interactive tools on their website and data portal, one of which is an opinion poll, and that the opinion poll is used simply ‘‘as a social interactive tool to engage users of our statistical data’’; it also insisted that ‘‘its is not an official statistical tool because it is not based on any statistical methodologies or systems that formulate the basis on which all of the NBS’ surveys are developed’’. The odd official rebuttal ended by asserting that ‘‘those polls are not official and cannot be considered to be scientific in any way’’.

For starters, it is patently naïve at best, and deceptive at worst, for an agency as supposedly scientific and well-informed as the NBS to go public with a ham’s act of a rebuttal which tried to discredit one of its own most authentic and effective ways of gauging the heartbeat of the people, just in a bid to play to the gallery. To refresh our memory, last week a survey by the NBS, revealed that 75.1 percent of Nigerians are opposed to the currency restructuring by the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN] which will lead to the introduction of the 5000 note as the country’s highest currency denomination and the conversion of lesser bills to coins. According to the poll, only 16.1percent of the Nigerian populace is in strong support of the CBN policy while4.04 and 4.62 percent are partially in support and against the currency restructuring, respectively.

Our great party believes that the above statistics is a manifest signpost of the wishes of the Nigerian people. But soon as the NBS had laid bare the truth in accordance with its constitutional mandate to always put up in facts and figures all issues affecting the lives of Nigerian citizens, it did a 360 degrees somersault by coming out again to unconvincingly deny its own statistics. We must not therefore hesitate to bring to the notice of NBS and the good people of this great nation the larger implication of such an attempted denial. The most important is that the Bureau has given Nigerians cause to doubt the validity of its often-criticized national economic growth statistics. In fact, it gives us shivers to consider that the latest of such statistics, which stated that the country’s economy grew by 6.28 percent in the second quarter of the year, from 6.17 percent in the first quarter, might be another hogwash to boost the ego of the current PDP government, just as the dismal rebuttal was actually intended to erase the vote of no confidence of the people on this present government and its anti-people policies.

The ANPP therefore calls on the National Assembly to summon the Statistician General of the Federation for him to explain the sources and methodologies of his statistical processes, as the denial of opinion poll calls to question his competence as a statistician serving a nation of more than one hundred and fifty million multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-creed peoples. In other developed democracies, opinion polls and random sampling, handled by professionals worth their salt, are veritable tools of accurately gauging the pulse of the citizens at any given time.

Signed:

Hon Emma Eneukwu

National Publicity Secretary

ANPP

18-09-12