A civil society organisation, Alliance for Change, has asked former President Olusegun Obasanjo to apologise to the people of Odi over the massacre of indigenes of the Bayelsa community in 1999.
It also urged President Goodluck Jonathan to strengthen the nation’s security agencies in order to unmask Boko Haram sponsors and stressed that the country must not engage in “extra judicial killings in the guise of ridding Nigeria of Boko Haram fundamentalists.”
Faulting the deployment of soldiers in the Ijaw community by Obasanjo, the group maintained that Obasanjo must apologise to the Odi people in particular and Nigerians in general.
The group also faulted the recommendation of Odi military treatment for curbing Boko Haram insurgency, stressing that military invasion of Odi was not the solution to militancy in the Niger Delta.
Coordinator of the group, Mr Oyegoke Atitebi, and secretary, Mr. John Adaramodu, said in a statement, on Sunday in Osogbo that it was “unfortunate that thousands of lives were needlessly lost in the Odi massacre.”
Recalling that Obasanjo did not apply the Odi treatment to the outbreak of religious riots in northern parts of the country during the advent of Sharia, the group said Obasanjo had no moral right to complain about militancy in the country.
The statement said, “It appeared curious that a man, who looked the other way while non Moslems were being slaughtered in the North, and he described the situation as a phenomenon that would pass away, had suddenly found his voice.
“The Odi massacre was a clear case of genocide which portrayed Nigeria in bad light before the international community and for which the former President should be sober rather than urge President Jonathan to do same in other parts of Nigeria.
“We do not want to believe that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as Nigerian president did that because the people involved were from the ethnic group just as he ceded out Bakassi to neighbouring Cameroon without considering the feelings of the minority.”
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What is the difference btw Odi Massacre and what BK is doing now .
ReplyDeleteI think we all agree that Federal government can kill BK members .
Stop all these nonsense .
He who kill by sword must surely die by sword .
Odi people will never try such a nonsense again
bcos they have big lesson from Baba Iyabo.
Apology my foot.
I am appalled by this people who prefer to always want to pull back the country backward ... what the government of Obasanjo did in Oddi in 1999-2000 was to set it straight that his government will not take nonsense from the state terrorist at that time who killed policemen and soldiers who were sent to keep the peace, fortunately for the militantsin Oddi they were not being supported or hidden by the people as BKM is now, where they can easily hide among the people who has already succumbed or coarsed to the religious bigotry being preached by these wicked terrorists, it is very hard to apply the Oddi experience ... I just hope that the so called National Assembly will work with the executive to find a lasting solution to this menace eating away into the political and economical fiber of our nationhood and more quickly as well.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I feel the national assembly are not really doing much or anything to get the executive moving in the right direction root out the BKM unlike they always do when they wanted to appropriate their own budget and they would be shouting 'we will impeach the president if he did not approve' ... where are all these voices now about BKM?
Furthermore, Honestly I think Nigeria is wasting money on this type of our democracy where we have two tier national assembly instead of one tier. I don't see anything wrong in having just the house of representative which should be called 'National Assembly', while a form of control can be set in place to counter check whatever the so called National assembly will be doing such as an 'independent monitoring committee' ...and then we can also peg a certain salary amount not more than 125% of the Salary of a minister or head of service of the federation ... independent budget committee to manage the way their budget is being spent and everything should be publish in a website accessible to all...I just hope anti-corruption and rule of law can be integrated more into every fiber of our country as quickly as possible.
Lastly, Right now we have no vision where our country should be in the future, money is just being generated and spend dis-jointly, individual states are only working on their own so are the government parastatals including their agencies and ministries. They are not driving towards a vision or bodies of visions ...I pray for our leaders to wake up and stop wasting our resources any longer because our children yet un-born will curse these leaders who are wasting their opportunities to change things now when their time come in the future!
Long Live Nigeria and God bless Nigeria.