Rights activist and President of the One Love Foundation, Chief Patrick Osagie Eholor, has disclosed that the international community would ban Nigerian law enforcements agents from entering Europe, Canada and the USA if they don’t retrace their steps and stop molesting civilians for flimsy excuses.
He was reacting to the recent face off between students of the University of Benin and military personnel at the University main campus in Ugbowo, Benin City.
“I have written to them(military authorities) today. I am sure that some lawyers have written to the Chief of Army Staff my signature is on it. I have also written and published a lot of articles today that if they don’t identify those soldiers who went to Uniben to abuse them and threaten them to cause this chaos.
“The students are being denied basic amenities. They are being denied bursary. They were denied education for eight months. They’re frustrated. How long can you push people. These are students. They’re supposed to be the future of tomorrow. How long can you push people? They’re not the cause of our problem. We are rather the cause of their problems because our generation is a wasted generation.
“We didn’t prepare for this time and that’s why we are facing what we’re facing. Added to that the children have no money to spend because there is no money in circulation. The money in circulation the corporate managers are selling the money at parties. But you, the ordinary citizens, won’t have the money to spend.
“We don’t concentrate our efforts to do what’s right. We concentrate our efforts to do what’s wrong. Why is it like that? I don’t know. I have written to them. If they don’t do it right I will write to Amnesty International and the United Nations. They will address it if they see that our right has been violated. Nigeria is already in problem financially.”
Going forth, Chief Eholor said: “I have lived in Canada for 36 years and I have never seen soldiers in the streets. What are soldiers doing in the streets? They have no business in the streets. They’re either in the barracks or the borders. The incident between civilians and soldiers would not even happen. But here in Nigeria you see soldiers abusing people because ‘he curse my oga wife’.
“Are you mad? He curse your Oga wife go to the appropriate place report to the police. It is a civil matter that you can report to the police. You don’t have the right as a soldier to take the law into your hands. To whip a civilian or tell a civilian to do a frog jump. But because we have educated illiterates among the Generals in the army who don’t know why they are there.
“The Geneva Convention states categorically that you can never abuse a civilian. Even in a war front you cannot do it. Every day here you see military men enter commercial vehicles. They don’t pay; they go to the gas station they want to be attended to before any other person; they go to a restaurant they eat and don’t pay.
“Sometimes some of them rape our women and nothing happens to them. They violate us every other day. Soldiers are just like me and you the difference is that we invested in buying them uniforms and guns. You cannot use the guns that we bought for you to threaten us.”
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