Two Diaspora Igbo groups, American Veterans of Igbo Descent (AVID), and Rising Sun & Ambassadors for Self Defense (RSASD), have visited the Capitol Hill, Washington DC, where they met with some US congressmen to lobby for the release of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu.
President of AVID, Dr. Sylvester Onyia in a statement made available to Daily Sun said the groups used the occasion of the visit to also call on President Donald Trump to re-designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), and subsequently place her on US watchlist over the rising spate of killings by bandits and criminal herdsmen.
President Trump had during his first term, designated Nigeria as a CPC nation, but Joe Biden who succeeded him, removed Nigeria out of the watchlist when he assumed power.
After the Capitol Hill engagement, the President of AVID, Dr Onyia, said they used the opportunity of the visit to inform 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.
He decried the barbaric activities of the killer herdsmen and bandits slaughtering indigenous Nigerians, mostly Christians “while Government has failed to protect the hapless people”.
The AVID President, who also recalled the killing of 27 unarmed Biafra agitators
celebrating the inauguration of President Trump, in 2017′, by the Nigeria security operatives in Port Harcourt Rivers State, and demanded US action.
He further said the delegation was at the Capitol Hill to sensitize the US congress on the plight of the IPOB leader, 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.”
A member of the delegation, Rev. Father Augustine Odinmegwa, accused Britain of complicity in Kanu’s continued incarceration, wondering why the British Government has not demanded his release despite being her citizen.
The delegation argued that if no urgent action were taken to stall the advancement of the rampaging bandits and criminal herdsmen into South East, they would soon seize crude oil in the region, and challenge the US and Western interest.
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 “.
Describing the atrocities of bandits and Fulani herdsmen as genocidal, Odimegwa called for urgent US action to avoid further mayhems and displacements and indigenous people.
“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 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.
The groups equally urged Ndigbo in the diaspora to assist their various local communities to form and equip formidable local vigilante groups to help secure lives and property as government has failed in its primary responsibility.
Speaking, Kanu’s international lawyer, Bruce Fein who was in the delegation, said “Kanu is a victim of a crime perpetrated by the nation of Nigeria.”
He recalled how the IPOB leader was “in 2021, kidnapped and tortured in Kenya, then against international protocols, extraordinarily renditioned to Nigeria and subjected to solitary confinement ever since then”.
Mr Fein accused Nigeria of violating 16 human rights covenants by the continued incarceration of Kanu.
“The UN Working Group in Geneva, has very unambiguously, called for the immediate and unconditional release of Nnamdi Kanu. The Nigeria Government has violated 16 human rights covenants that are binding on all nations whether or not they accepted them. Nigeria has flouted this for three years Kanu is remanded in solidarity confinement.”
Another member of the delegation, John Gregg, an American who said he had spent 20 years in Southern Nigeria, warned that the failure of the US intervention could result into thousands of emigrants from the region seeking refuge in the US.
” In fact, if we (US) don’t do anything, that place (South East region), is going to implode, and more people will be coming here as emigrants. Over 90 per cent of the victims of these bandit/herdsmen attacks are Christians. A recent statistics said about 30,000 people , mostly Christians, were either killed or extremely violated; and another 10,000 displaced in the past nine years. Put together, we are talking of about 40,000 people.”
Dr Evans Nwankwo, also on the delegation, said the forces of darkness were on rampage to overtake Nigeria, and called on the US congress to take immediate action against the masterminds.
