In addition, UPN demanded that
Lagos State must put together a package of public apology, compensation and
rehabilitation for all the victims.
This was coming in the wake of
Lagos State’s recent “deportation” of South-Easterners to the Onitsha Bridgehead
in Anambra State.
According to a statement signed by
its National Chairman, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, UPN said the deportation not only
violates all known international conventions and human rights charters, it
assaulted the “Right to freedom of movement” enshrined in Section 41
of the Nigerian Constitution.
The section stipulates that: “Every
citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside
in any part thereof, and no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria
or refused entry thereby or exit therefrom.”
Fasehun further states: “This
shows clearly that the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, in Lagos State governs
with abundant arrogance and impunity. If Governor Babatunde Fashola cannot be
sued for this illegality because he enjoys Immunity, his commissioners and
heads of the concerned agencies, who contrived this criminality, must be made
to feel the full weight of the law. Lagosians are literarily under siege from
Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), the Kick against
Indiscipline (KAI) Brigade and the Task Force on Environmental Offences, all of
whom have turned themselves into terrors on the streets.
“No Nigerian citizen can be
deported even by the Nigerian state, let alone a state government. That has
been pretty well laid to rest in the 1980 case of Alhaji Abdulrahman Shugaba,
for whose illegal deportation even the Supreme Court approved a compensation of
N350, 000, currently about $350, 000,” the statement said.
UPN wants the Federal Government to
investigate Lagos State agencies, which it accused of daily capturing people
and throwing them into “Black Maria” vans for illegal detention.
The statement claimed that thousands
of such victims languish in illegal detention in several areas of Lagos,
including, Alausa, Kirikiri Prisons, Potoki Prisons in Badagry and Ikorodu
Prisons.
“At these detention centres, these illegally
detained citizens suffer the most dehumanising conditions. Some victims have
been locked up for up to six months without the knowledge of their families or
their lawyers and without their being brought before any law court,” alleged
Fasehun.
He continued, insisting that the way
and manner the deportation to Onitsha was undertaken abridged several rights’
guaranteed the Nigerian citizen, including: Right to Life, Right to Dignity of
Human Persons, Right to Personal Liberty, Right to Fair Hearing, Right to
Freedom from Discrimination, Right to Freedom of Movement and Right to Private
and Family Life.
“How can you ban somebody from his
own country? What Lagos State has done can create very hostile relationships
for the Yoruba in the East and all over Nigeria. Even though we run a
federation that guarantees a measure of independence to federating units,
clearly, no state is a country unto itself,” Fasehun said in the statement.
Commenting on the controversy
between Governor Raji Fashola who derided his Anambra counterpart, Governor
Peter Obi, for reporting the matter to President Goodluck Jonathan, UPN pointed
out that Lagos State had itself failed to carry along South-East governors
before deporting their indigenes.
The party noted that pictures in
newspapers and the internet showed the victims looked gaunt and emaciated,
which he said was unmistakable evidence that they had suffered long detention
under inhuman conditions
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