Nine days
after Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State ordered the arrest and
prosecution of some Northern youths that gave Igbo in the North a three-month
ultimatum to leave the region, no arrest has been made by the police.
A coalition
of Northern groups, including the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, had on
Tuesday, June 6, 2017 given all Igbo in the 19 states of the North till October
1 to leave the region or be forced out.
The
ultimatum was handed down at a well attended press conference held at the Arewa
House, Kaduna, and el-Rufai had ordered the immediate arrest and prosecution of
all signatories to the statement the next day.
The
governor, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant-Media and Publicity,
Samuel Aruwan, ordered the immediate arrest of all signatories to the statement
issuing the ultimatum.
“We will not
tolerate such irresponsible statements and conduct in our state. The statement
issued by the “Northern youths” violates the laws of Kaduna State. Therefore,
the Kaduna State Government has directed that its Ministry of Justice should
prepare charges and prosecute the signatories and anyone complicit in arranging
this egregious assault on the rights of fellow citizens,” the governor’s
statement had read.
But on the
evening of Thursday, June 15, ASP M.D. Muhammad, the Acting Public Relations
Officer, Kaduna State Police Command, and also the Personal Assistant to the
state police commissioner, Agyole Abeh, confirmed that the youths had not yet
been arrested.
When asked
why the youth had not been arrested, Muhammad said “efforts are in top gear” to
make the arrests, but did not state why that was still the case after more than
a week.
When the
same question was put across to the Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh
Moshood, he said, “The Commissioner of Police in the Northern state has been
directed by the Inspector-General of Police (Ibrahim Idris) to make sure that
those threats are not actualised. The IG insists that Assistant
Inspector-General of Police and the Commissioner of Police in charge of the
zone and the command should ensure law and order are maintained and that the
ultimatum is not actualised.
“The police
will encourage people to live in peace. The protection of lives and property in
Nigeria is paramount to us.”
He, however,
refused to say more than that.
But a source
in the police later told Saturday PUNCH that they had not made any arrests
regarding the threats from the Northern youths and counter-threats from Niger
Delta militants and some other groups in the South for fear of escalating the
issue.
“The police
are trying to maintain peace and order and if we arrest one group now, it may
heighten the tension and escalate the issue and Nigerians might blame the
police if that happens,” the source said.
The National
Publicity Secretary, Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Yinka
Odumakin, said it was obvious that the Northern youths had the support of the
elite in the region before going ahead with the threat.
He said,
“Only the naive will not know that this is the hand of Jacob and the voice of
Esau. If those guys were not messengers for the real owners of the voice, why
is it difficult to arrest them? I said it from the beginning that for them to
have used the Arewa House in Kaduna to hold the press conference, and not a
dingy hotel or a street corner, those youths were sent by their establishment
to do what they did.
“Who opened
the Arewa House for them? Will someone want to host a press conference at the
Arewa House without the knowledge of the people at the highest level, even the
Kaduna State Government? So even if the police want to pretend about it, they
should have even invited them to make a statement, released them later and said
they had cautioned them.
“Some of
their leaders have backed them and even when the Arewa Consultative Forum
condemned them, it still said it identified with their frustrations. So, it is
only the dumb that cannot see through all this to know that the butterfly that
is dancing on the surface of the river has its drummers beneath the water.
“It is
clearly a conspiracy at the highest level of the conservative northern
establishment and that is why the police cannot touch them. It is just like the
case of Fulani herdsmen causing havoc on people’s farms and going about with
AK-47s. It is as if there is a group in Nigeria that has prepared something it
wants to test and is just trying to provoke a perfect storm for it to strike.”
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