Opinion
By Steve Osuji
FROM Control Roundabout in Owerri to Mgbidi, a distance of about 15 kilometres, there are about 30 security checkpoints this morning.
The entire SOUTHEAST and SOUTH-SOUTH of Nigeria is under a vicious siege by the military and security establishments.
The targeting starts all the way from the Sagamu bypass in Ogun State all the way to Benin City to Asaba, Onitsha down to Owerri and Port Harcourt!
I wager there are more Policemen, soldiers and other paramilitary men on this stretch of road than in Borno and Kaduna States put together.
There must be no fewer than 200 checkpoints along route, with hundreds of armed personnel. The highways of the southeast appear like war zones! But there are hardly checkpoints in Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara, Borno, Benue, Plateau and Taraba. These places are the verisimilitudes of war zones!
The military and police establishments should be ashamed of themselves for this obscenity they display in the guise of security.
At these ugly checkpoints, they do everything but security. They make it seem like it has become a crime to ply the highways in the east and the southern most part of Nigeria
THEY EXTORT THE HELL OUT OF THE COMMUTERS ON THESE ROADS.
This aberrant situation has lingered for quite sometime. The victims of this vicious SIEGE have cried and cried but the Army and Police hierarchy have turned a deaf ear. Not even the NASS members from Igboland seems to care.
Apart from the apparent scorch-earth policy, it is said that checkpoints job to the southeast has become the most lucrative posting in the army and police today. So instead of the checkpoints reducing, they multiply everyday.
But this banality by the army and Police portends dire consequences. Apart from damaging professionalism in these forces, the youth of the southeast are being radicalised in ways that are dangerous to the very existence of the country.
Again, we warn that the relentless SIEGE ON SOUTHEAST PORTENDS DIRE AUGURIES!
A.
-March 27, 2024 @ 17:58 GMT|
Tags: Steve Osuji
