Ebubeagu: Ebonyi indigenes condemn Umahi’s threat to arrest opposition leaders

Following the recent viral audio clip of Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State where he threatened to arrest some leaders of the opposition party over insecurity, some indigenes under the aegis of Association of Ebonyi State Indigenes in Diaspora (AESID) has condemned the move.

Governor Umahi in the said audio clip was said to have threatened to use Ebubeagu security outfit to arrest and deal with members of the National Assembly and other leaders of the opposition in the state.

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The governor was quoted to have made the statement during a courtesy visit to him on May 19, 2021, by the Assistant Inspector General of Police, Etem Ene Okon and other CPs and officers under the Zone 9 Command.

But in a statement made available to newsmen Friday in Abuja, the AESID President, Amb Paschal Oluchukwu, said the governor should be held responsible if any evil befell any of the opposition leaders in the state.

Among those the governor mentioned in the audio clip were; Dr Sam Egwu, Linus Abaa Okorie, Ali Odefa, Chidiebere Egwu, Silas Onu, Amos Ogbonnaya, Fred Udeogu and Anyi Pius Anyim.

The AESID said: “To this end, we call on the security agencies to hold Umahi accountable should any evil or attack befall the listed and unlisted PDP stakeholders whom he has vowed to deal with using the supposed Ebubeagu outfit which ordinarily should be a regional security platform that would have been more concerned about manning the porous Ebonyi borders.

“While we condemn in strongest terms these imminent threats on the lives of Ebonyi opposition leaders, we wish to once again appeal to Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba to immediately redeploy both the State’s Commissioner of Police, Garba Aliyu and the said AIG, Zone 9, Etem Ene Okon as we believe that the both have already become very willing tools in the hands of the Governor.

“The ‘live and let live, stay in your party and let others remain in theirs’ sermon that AESID have been preaching to the Governor appears to have utterly fallen on deaf ears.”

While expressing shock over the statements credited to the governor, the group condemned the result to name-calling by governor Umahi.

“Again, we condemn this baseless resort to name-callings and onslaughts against elders of the PDP for the simple reason that they saw very cogent reasons to remain in the PDP when the Governor embarked on his rather solitary sojourn to the ruling APC.

“Whereas as a group we, just like the rest of Ebonyians, may have no problems with his decision to dump the party that gave him its all since his political journey, we are irked by his unfortunate lies and desperation to play politics with everything in the state including security issues as represented in his claim in the said audio clip.”