Call For DSS DG's Sack Aimed To Shield IPOB Members - Group
Following an ultimatum issued by Campaign For Democracy (CD) to President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the Director of Department of State Services (DSS), Lawal Musa Daura, The New Initiative for Credible Leadership (NICL) has rejected the ultimatum, saying it is unwarranted.
A statement issued by New Initiative for Credible Leadership on Sunday described the call for Daura’s sack as uncalled for, ill-timed and meant to shield members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) who know that the time of reckoning has come for them to stand trial for crimes against the state and against humanity.
The statement by the organisation’s Executive Secretary, Rev Steven Onwu further described CD’s call as “laughable because it was issued in favour of a separatist group whose members had repeatedly stressed they do not recognise Nigeria and the Federal Government in addition to persistently calling the nation a ‘zoo’ and its citizens ‘animals’.
“One is therefore at a loss as to why CD or IPOB has any interest in what happens to the “animals in a zoo. On a serious note, CD’s call for Daura’s sack was made to detract from the severity of the atrocities that the DSS uncovered in the forest in Abia state where the bodies of Nigerians killed in yet to be explained circumstances were found in shallow graves.
“If those citizens were killed by kidnappers as claimed in the CD statement, why were the federal law enforcement agencies not brought in to investigate?
IPOB could be shielding the kidnappers or were the kidnappers. It is also a confirmation of what IPOB has always claimed that it does not recognised the Federal Government of Nigeria and its agencies hence its members took the law into their own hands. But overall, the starting point is for those arrested by DSS to explain their roles in the killings since that is the information available to law enforcement.” The statement demanded.
It urged the leadership of the DSS not to be daunted by the empty threats and blackmail, which are actually an upside for the government’s desire to end the activities of the separatists since the real sponsors of IPOB are now coming out as proven by their statement.
The New Initiative for Credible Leadership appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to demand fast track action on getting to the root of the killings in Abia state and the mass graves found in the forest as a first step to ensuring that Nigerians are not being killed secretly.
It said “President Buhari must order similar action on other incidents involving the loss of Nigerian life in other states of the federation as it is essential to reaffirm the sanctity of life in the country in line with globally prevalent norms.”
According to the group, “DSS should be commended for daring to go into that evil forest without which Nigerians wouldn’t have known the magnitude of horror being committed by IPOB while the families of the victims would have assumed that their loved ones were only missing.”