Ohaneze Condemns Detention of Ekweremadu

Tobi Soniyi

Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohaneze Ndigbo, wednesday reacted to the continued detention of the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), saying that using state’s apparatus to terrorise citizens was not tolerable in a democracy.

In a statement by it’s publicity secretary, Uche Achi-Okpaga, Ohaneze said the presidency has “gone mad with power and turned the the anti-graft agency and security agencies into milliant wings of the All Progressive Congress”.
Ohaneze rejected what it called “the current ploy to coerce all and sundry into one political party” describing it as the height of political naivety.

Democracy has been deadly raped in Nigeria and this is part of reasons that we have insisted on restructuring the system. With the way things are turning upside down and inside out we are only been vindicated on our stand on restructuring.

Mr Achi-Okpaga said: “This government has gotten it wrong virtually in all fores. The social media is awash with criticisms of the recent idea of building a refinery in the President’s northern State of Katsina while the oil is in the South but it is in the South that you want to build cattle ranches when the cattle and the owners are in the North. This is so paradoxical as it is antithetic.”

Ohaneze said it had become imperative to state without equivocation that Nigeria’s democracy had been put under the custody of the APC adding that the Nigeria Police Force, the EFCC and other security agencies have been turned to militant wings of the APC.

The statement read: “We are not oblivious that there is a grand design to intimidate and cow every assumed adversary of the Government but we encourage Nigerians not to be undaunted in speaking against the totalitarian and fascist embellishments of the government.

“The arrest, intimidation and harassment of Senator Ike Ekweremadu lends credence to the fact that democracy is collapsing irretrievably.

“It is obvious that this action is a continuation of the ugly and uncivil events of last week where the once gallant Nigeria Police and the EFCC became lords unto themselves and moved to barricade the residences of the Senate President and his Deputy respectively.

“Having failed in that orchestrated attempt to prevent the Senate presiding officers from accessing the National Assembly the fateful day they decided to go for Ekweremadu’s jugular.

“The events of this week including the Police brigandage in the Benue State House of Assembly only depict that the Presidency has gone mad with presidential powers and l see it consuming them.”

The group’s spokesman said that President Muhammadu Buhari had shown that he had no answer to the socio-political quagmires facing the country.