Fasehun lambasts Fashola, urges him to apologise, retract deportees

Chairman of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Dr. Frederick Fasehun, has urged Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, to immediately disband extra-judicial and illegal detention cells in Lagos State and release all detainees. This was even as he advised Fashola to retract the eviction of the 70 ‘deportees’ and provide transport for readmitting them into the state.

Addressing journalists yesterday at Okota, Lagos State, Fasehun said: “Legally speaking, within these boundaries, Igbo people, like everyone else, remain Nigerians. Nigeria, as a country, has one and only one citizenship. Nigeria has only one passport. Whoever is born within the Nigerian space, with any of his parents or grandparents indigenous to Nigeria, automatically qualifies as a citizen of this country, according to Section 25 of the Constitution.

“Igbo people are Nigerians, whether rich or poor, affluent or destitute. In Nigeria today, the Igbo stock represents one of the most enterprising tribes in this country. They are part and parcel of the enviable socio-economic cum socio-political advancement of Lagos State. As big-time businesses and petty traders, our Igbo brothers and sisters contribute substantially to the Internally-Generated Revenue that has made Lagos the most illustrious state in the Federation, outside petroleum funds from the Federal allocation.

“We protest the inhuman treatment dispensed to these our fellow Nigerians. Evidently, these poor deportees were hounded, manhandled, maltreated and dumped like garbage.”

He said that the deportation not only violated all known international conventions and Human Rights charters, it also assaults the “Right to Freedom of Movement” enshrined in Sections 41-42 of the Nigerian Constitution.

He added that the hue and cry this inhumane treatment generated could only be compared to the outcry that greeted the mass killing of, and mass exodus of South-Easterners from, the North in the 1960s, events that sparked the Nigerian Civil War.

He explained that universally, government’s primary duty is the protection of the weak. Thus the deportation of disadvantaged Nigerians by ACN regime in Lagos State amounted to the abdication of a moral, legal and constitutional responsibility it owes to Nigerian citizens naturally.

“Such an action runs against the spirit of the social contract between the government and the governed. The extradition of our Igbo brothers and sisters from Lagos is reckless, despotic, provocative and unconstitutional. It is a flagrant display of Executive lawlessness. It is descent into Apartheid. And it sends dangerous signals through the Nigerian Federation.

“It holds grave implications for the unity and concord existing amongst Nigerians. Already, Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State has threatened collateral reciprocity, and understandably too.

“But the deportation raises questions: Why should a Nigerian not feel free to live anywhere in Nigeria? And then, what actually is the worth of a Nigerian life?”

While urging Lagos State government to seek the forgiveness of Governor Peter Obi and other Easterners and make conciliatory gestures, Fasehun opined that in Lagos today, impunity is the watchword. He said that laws are made without a human face, adding that agencies and agents of the government, from state through the local governments, dehumanise citizens.

He further said: “Many cases of impunity abound in the ACN-run Lagos State; some predate the regime of Governor Raji Fashola. Our investigation shows that, beginning with the last regime, the Lagos State Government has a high tally of Human Rights violations. Agencies like KAI, LASTMA and the Task Force on Environmental Offences routinely arrest and throw people into illegal detention centres operated by the administration. Victims are held in sub-human conditions, where they lack access to food, toilet, sleeping space or legal representation.

“Such victims languish in detention cells located at Alausa, Kirikiri Prisons, Potoki Prisons in Badagry and Ikorodu Prisons. In all these places, people are in confinement for menial reasons like driving offences, for crossing the highway, for any of the ubiquitous environmental related offences, including urinating in a public drain, for street trading, for riding commercial motorcycles, and so on. In UPN, we shall continue to work for the unity of Nigeria. This commitment has been enshrined in our Constitution, Manifesto and our slogan.”

He argued that what the Lagos State government did was not a Yoruba agenda as speculated by some people, but rather, a lone decision by the state government in question.