BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) has fingered South East Governors, members of the National Assembly from the region and other top public office holders of being behind insecurity in the zone in order to stop the victory of the presidential candidates from the zone from emerging victorious at the general elections.
The group also said some serving ministers from the region and those described as “troublesome billionaires” of sponsoring killings and destruction of properties to sabotage the chances of Peter Obi of the Labour Party and others who are contesting the presidency in the February 25 election.
In a statement issued by the chairman of Intersociety board, Emeka Umeagbalasi, the group expressed concerns that the alleged sabotage would force youths to revolt against those it described as “political bootlickers.”
“Intersociety is deeply fearful that the South East political bootlickers are by their nefarious and immoral conducts breeding ‘youth uprising’ against themselves especially if the 2023 presidency of the South-East is scuttled and truncated in connivance with their external sponsors and collaborators.
“They, as a matter of fact, are spearheading the shrinking of democratic civil space against leading presidential candidates of South East origin. Recent findings by Intersociety have identified political bootlickers in the South East to include sitting Governors of most, if not all the five South East states, some serving ministers and federal legislators as well as some former governors, ministers and federal legislators and troublesome billionaires from the Region.
“These sets of persons are ‘South East political bootlickers’ who engage in brazen acts of sabotage against the collective interest of the people of the South East fundamentally as they concern their socio-political well-being and security and safety. They are also notorious when it comes to supporting external and internal authoritarianism and tyranny against their own people and landscapes.
“A typical case in point is their being fingered in ongoing egregious and grisly acts of sabotage at stopping their region from popularly and credibly producing Nigeria’s next president in 2023.
They are also vicariously, if directly fingered in insecurity and other unsafe conditions bedeviling the Region in connivance with ethno-religious enemies of the Region leading to unchecked wanton destruction of defenseless lives and properties of the citizens of the Region,” the statement read.
Meanwhile, the group passed a vote of confidence on the presidential candidates of the South East extraction including Umeadi Peter Nnanna of All Progressives Grand Alliance, Nnamdi Charles Osita of Action Peoples Party, Obi Peter Gregory of Labor Party and Daniel Nwanyanwu Deberechukwu of Zenith Labor Party, saying they should be commended and supported for making the South East geopolitical region proud ahead of the February 25, 2023 Presidential Poll.
“It is rather sadder and disheartening that instead of the South East political bootlickers turning over a new leaf, they have continued to sabotage and work against their own people, to the extent of mortgaging and endangering their region and people’s ethnic, religious, political and economic identities and freedoms by encouraging and supporting external enemies of the region to perpetually conquer and enslave the region or any of its part thereof.
“Instead of emulating the bold steps taken by the four South East presidential candidates, the South East political bootlickers are stopping at nothing to ensure that the greatest opportunity of the South East in the history of Nigeria to produce the next president in 2023 is scuttled and truncated.
“The South East political bootlickers have also been found to be maddeningly and futuristically dangerously going about engaging in indiscriminate defacing and destruction of South East presidential candidates’ billboards and undermining the presidential aspirations of candidates of South East extraction including those fielded by political parties they openly associated with or funded by the South East political bootlickers holding elective public offices in trust for the people of the region.