CAN Flays Rights Abuse Charge Against Ihejirika

Northern Leaders have
been warned against provocative statements or plans to drag the former  Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. General Azubuike Ihejirika, to International Criminal Court of Justice (ICC), over alleged killings in Bornu State.
Briefing newsmen in Enugu, the South-East Chairman of Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN) and Bishop of Enugu Diocese, Anglican Communion, Rt. Rev. Dr. Emmanuel O. Chukwuma  frowned at the widely publicised decision of the Northern elders to drag Ihejirika to ICC soon after his retirement.
The decision, the clergy man noted, will heat-up the polity and breed ethnic disunity and crises in the country. Describing such move as an ill-wind that will blow no one any good, the Bishop advised them to drop the idea in the over- all interest of the country.
He stressed that Lt. Gen. Ihejirika (rtd) only carried out his statutory responsibility based on dictates of his job for the peace and unity of Nigeria.
“Northern elders should be warned or they will set up inter-tribal war in Nigeria. Is it because Ihejirika is an Igbo man? Any attempt to sue him or drag him before the ICC will be resisted by the Igbos. Let them know it that we are ready to defend our brother because he has done nothing to warrant anybody taking him to the Hague,” he said.
Bishop Chukwuma further said: “The North criticised Mr. President simply because the governor of Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was queried by the presidency over alleged missing $10billion of oil revenue”.
“The northern elders should be mindful of the positions they are taking otherwise they are calling for another tribal war. What did they do during the Odi massacre in the South-South, did they take anybody to the ICC? Chukwuma queried.
On the appointment of new Service Chiefs, the Anglican cleric expressed disappointment that no Igbo man made the list, explaining that President Goodluck Jonathan had by the appointment shut out Igbos from the nation’s Security Council.
He urged the National Assembly not to clear the appointees until the imbalance is addressed, insisting that the action of the president by not appointing an Igbo man to the Security Council inspite of the position of the South-East in the nation’s political arrangement amounted to selective negligence.
His  words: “The president must be very careful because these northerners that he is flocking around himself have their own agenda,” the man of God further warned.