Southern leaders berate federal government for preventing them attending Middle Belt summit in Makurdi

SEVERAL leaders of community groups from across southern Nigeria have accused the federal government of preventing them from attending a Middle Belt conference on restructuring that recently took place in the Benue State capital Makurdi.

Over the weekend, the Middle Belt Forum organised the summit and had invited leaders of several groups like Ohaneze Ndigbo, Afenifere and the Pan Niger Delta Forum (Pandef) to participate. However, leaders of some of these associations have revealed that they were not allowed to fly to Makurdi because of security reasons even after securing a charter aircraft.

Ohaneze Ndigbo president Chief John Nwodo, said the elders spent about five hours at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, trying to obtain clearance to make the journey but were refused by the commandant of the Makurdi Airport whose name was given as Lt Commander A Audu. He said: “We arrived in time for our flight at 12 noon but the airport commandant disallowed us from flying and said we needed to go and get permission to land in Makurdi.

“We consider this fundamental infringement on our democratic rights of freedom of movement and freedom of association. There is nothing in our law precluding us from moving to wherever we like, from holding an opinion in so far as we do not breach any law in Nigeria.

“What has happened to us today expresses a lot of doom for fundamental human rights in our country, for the free exchange of ideas as unavoidable instruments of achieving growth and development of our polity. We deprecate the treatment that we were given today, which treatment prevented us from physical joining our brethren in the Middle Belt in a common view which we all hold, a very patriotic view, which we think will be the only way to guarantee the future of our country.”

Chief Nwodo, who joined other southern leaders to watch the live transmission of the conference at the residence of Chief Clark, the Pandef chairman, said that they wanted to show solidarity with the Middle Belt people who he said had been supportive. According to Chief Nwodo, the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is behaving like a military dictatorship

He added: “The teeming crowd that you saw on television in the Middle Belt are our brethren who showed us solidarity in other zonal summits and the fact that we were barred from showing them this solidarity is bound to hurt them. Through this press conference, we want to express our solidarity with them and we want them to know that we are one and the same in our views of the restructuring of the federation

“Secondly, to deprecate this new tendency, not too long ago, the president signed into law an executive order, which gives him the right to seize people’s assets. This is almost like a military government and we think that this is an intrusion into the principles of separation of powers in our country."

Afenifere publicity secretary. Yinka Odumakin, added: "The first jet that was to take us started this funny game of saying that there was a bad weather to Makurdi and that they could not fly. Until we got to other airlines and I asked what’s bad about the weather but they said they were ready to take us.

“As we were about to make payments, they now said there was landing permit issues. They called the commandant in Makurdi, who said they should send application."

He added that the chief of staff to the Benue State governor said they should fax the application to him and to the commandant. According to Mr Odumakin, eventually, the chief of staff had to contact the commandant in Makurdi and was told that the landing permit requested by the first airline was still on their table.