S/East: Army Plotting Another Python Dance –ASETU, ADF 1
South East

S/East: Army Plotting Another Python Dance –ASETU, ADF

More outrage, yesterday, continued to trail the threat by the army to declare state of emergency in the southeast states jf their governors allowed further attack on security forces.

Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU) and the Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) have described the statement credited to the Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai, as a reckless talk taken too far.

The two grassroots-based organisations like Ohanaeze Ndigbo in its recent statement, insisted that the army chief lacked the constitutional powers to suspend democratic institutions and declare emergency rule, adding that the statement had further fuelled their apprehension of a conspiracy to wipe Igbo people out of Nigeria.

ASETU’s National President, Chief Emeka Diwe and National Secretary, Gideon Adikwuru in a statement accused the military of plotting another inglorious exercise in the mould of “Operation Python Dance I and II” which claimed lives of several innocent Igbo youths.

“By harbouring 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 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.

“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,” ASETU stated.

The town unions, therefore, called on President Muhammadu 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.”

Kindly Leave a Comment