The youth wing of the pan-Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has flayed the reinstatement of the dismissed Commissioner of Police, Mr. Zakari Biu.
Biu was on Friday reinstated and statutorily retired by the Police Service Commission, nearly three years after he was summarily dismissed for allegedly aiding the escape of Boko Haram kingpin, Kabiru Sokoto, who was in detention.
Sokoto, who is now serving a jail term in Abuja, was convicted last week for the bombing of St. Theresa Catholic Church, Madalla, Niger State.
The bombing, which happened on the eve of Christmas in 2011, killed no fewer than 44 worshipers of the church while several others were injured.
Following Biu’s reinstatement, the Ohanaeze Youth Council accused the President Muhammadu Buhari- led Federal Government of pursuing a northern agenda.
It further said the action of the Police Service Commission had confirmed that “Buhari’s administration indeed belongs to the North and not to everybody” in reference to the popular phrase by the president in his inaugural address on May 29, 2015 that “I belong to everybody, and I belong to nobody”.
“The manner and impunity with which the Buhari administration is reversing some laudable actions and policies of his predecessor without minding the security implications calls for concern. The decision of the PSC is very worrisome and against all known norms and true justice”, a statement issued by the National President of the OYC, Okechukwu Isiguzoro, on Sunday, said.
The OYC said that by reinstating the dismissed police officer, President Buhari had demonstrated that he had no regard for the lives of the innocent worshipers who perished in the bomb blast masterminded by Sokoto.
The statement partly read, “Before now, we were shouting over the recent lopsided appointments made by the President, where the South-East was deliberately ignored, but the worst has come by rewarding a man who aided Kabiru Sokoto after he snuffed life out of over 44 Igbo indigenes and left over 70 others critically injured.
“Our questions are these: What effort has the present administration made to know the situation of the victims of that bomb blast? What effort has the government made to know the condition of the bereaved families, considering that most of the victims were their bread winners?
“It is obvious that Mr. President cares less about the Ndigbo in this country; we are saying that the current administration is dragging this country into ethnic chaos and it will not yield any good fruit”.