The Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), yesterday, said Governor Hope Uzodimma had disappointed the Ndigbo for inviting the military to Orlu community in Imo State.
The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) in the South-East also chided the governor for the approval of military operations in Orlu, stressing that his action was a clear indication of a leader “who doesn’t feel the pulse of his people to know their feelings and needs.”
Uzodimma had on Tuesday in Abuja said that his decision to invite the military to quell the crisis in Orlu was to avert a repeat of the scenario that played out during the recent #ENDSARS protests.
But reacting to the admission of the governor over the military onslaught that led to loss of life and property, MASSOB said that the governor had joined the league of “Igbo political saboteurs and enemies.”
A statement by its National Director of Information, Samuel Edeson, said: “MASSOB is highly disappointed in Governor Hope Uzodimma’s utterances against his own people. It is very unfortunate that a sitting governor in Igboland will descend so lowly and inferior in defence of his people because of political allegiance to the Arewa Caliphate.”
The South-East CLO, in a statement by its Chairman, Aloysius Attah, while deploring the military operation, said: “The silence of the governors of the states in the South-East geo-political zone is not only condemnable but goes a long way to prove the disconnect between them and the people who actually hold the sovereignty of the offices they occupy and the legitimacy from which their government derives acceptability and powers to govern.
IN the same vein, a civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has berated Uzodimma over his feeble and illogical attempt to justify his unwise decision to invite the military to his Orlu Senatorial Zone on a matter that does not require military intervention unless the governor’s mandate is questionable.
In a statement signed by its National Co-ordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA, said: “Governor of Imo State, you are so wrong to have rushed to Abuja to ask the President to deploy armed soldiers and Air Force men to stage military actions in Orlu Senatorial Zone over the presence of some of your constituents who set up a platform to protect their lives and property from attacks by marauding and invading armed Fulani herdsmen.
“What you ought to have done if truly your mandate is from Imo voters is to look towards the Imo State House of Assembly to make relevant laws bringing into being, a standardised armed vigilante to work in partnership with relevant security institutions like the Army, the Police and the DSS.”
