The Igbo socio-cultural and political organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, said the nationwide youth protest against police brutality as mirrored by Special Armed Robbery Squad (SARS) is about injustice and political imbalance in the country.
President General of the organisation, Chief John Nnia Nwodo, in a statement, noted that the fact that the protest continued after the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, disbanded the notorious police outfit, showed that the problem is fundamental and should be intellectualised from that perspective.
“It has shown that the surface scratching by the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, in dissolving SARS and raising SWAT, goes far away from addressing the deep rooted problems of policing in the country,” Nwodo stated.
He added that menace of SARS is a challenge to the country’s elite and government over prolonged neglect of that critical arm.
According to him, the only enduring solution to the current situation is for government to harken to the clarion call of majority of Nigerians to redesign the country in such a way that could address the prevailing injustice.
Nwodo said that a problem like this was bound to come up when the country continually lived in denial as operating a federal structure while in truth running a confederation in such multi-cultural and divergent nation.
He called for total overhaul of the nation’s security’s architecture, adding that the government should as a matter of urgency initiate the process of restructuring the country to holistic ally tackle the basic problems on ground.
Nwodo regretted that property or businesses of Ndigbo were always target of attacks, particularly in Abuja and other parts of the north, by hoodlums pretending to be countering the genuine protest.
He called on the government to not only protect lives and property of every citizen but compensate for such mindless destructions.
Nwodo however advised the protesting youths to exercise their fundamental rights in the most peaceful manner devoid of violence.