A foremost Civil Society Organisation (CSO), Oriental Lawyers for Justice (OLJ), has accused Governor Peter Mbah of doing everything to punish the people of Enugu State, saying that “Enugu will not go down with you.”
The Oriental Lawyers for Justice (OLJ) said in a statement that Governor Mbah “knows he will certainly be removed from office the very day the Enugu State Governorship Petitions Tribunal delivers judgment on the petition against his declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the winner of the March 25 Gubernatorial in the State.
“Mbah has declared a war against not just civil servants and businesses but the entire state for voting for the Labour Party rather than himself in the election.”
OLJ declared in a statement on Thursday and signed by the President of the CSO, John Bosco Aninwede, and Spokesperson, Mrs Ifeoma Ejike, that “by closing down the Ogbete Market, the biggest market in the state from where thousands of families earn their daily living, this regime has demonstrated it is anti-man through and through.
“The market was shut down on Tuesday when the traders were protesting against the closure of many market stalls for not opening the previous day for fear of vicious violent attack by members of the banned Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) whose members have declared every Monday a day for sit-at-home in protest against the Federal Government’s detention of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, since 2021.
“One hundred and twenty (120) businesses, including departmental stores and branches of two commercial banks, were also closed down by the state government for the same reason.
“The CSO added: “It is unbelievable that any government can wilfully choose to starve thousands of families in these critical times, and when they engaged in a peaceful protest, their government decided to call not just police officers but also soldiers to shoot at them, with at least two dead on the spot.
“Not even during the days of military rule did any regime behave this way to our people. The blood of these people is on Mbah’s head.”
Accusing the government of sadism and megalomania, the OLJ wonders how Governor Mbah expects the people to go to work on any Monday without providing them with security forces to give them a sense of comfort on a day IPOB members usually parade the roads and streets with dangerous paraphernalia and kill innocent people with reckless abandon for merely coming out of their homes.
“Our people”, it notes, “are highly industrious, and so do not like to stay at home on a work day like Monday, but are forced to stay indoors by blood-thirsty IPOB operatives.
“How can women who feed their families with what they eat daily from hawking cooked food or selling water or akara or fried plantain and yam be happy when their children are starving?”
The Eastern Nigerian lawyers observe that Mbah is frustrated because every effort made by the governor to convince the election petitions tribunal that he is qualified to run for the governorship has failed, just like every attempt to prove that he won the election.
“The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) leadership stated orally and in writing that the so-called NYSC discharge certificate A808297 which Mbah submitted to INEC as his is false and forged”, the organisation states, noting that he will go down as Mrs Kemi Adeosu, Buhari’s first Minister of Finance who resigned from office because she submitted a forged NYSC discharge certificate”.
The same fate befell Salusi Buhari, the first Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Fourth Republic when it was discovered that the University of Toronto degree certificate he presented to INEC was fake.
The Bayelsa State Deputy Governor-elect, Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, was prevented by the Supreme Court in February 2020 from being sworn in, together with the governor-elect, David Lyon, on the ground that at least one of his university certificates presented to INEC is forged.
“INEC, which declared Mbah victorious in the Governorship election, could not produce even one witness during the two days the election petitions tribunal gave it to defend its declaration”, the OLJ recalls, “demonstrating how deeply corrupt and unintelligent some INEC officials are.
“Mbah is going as our so-called Governor, but he cannot be allowed to go down with our beloved State”.