Members of the group during the press conference
The Good Governance Advocacy Project, a Civil Society Organization has called on the United Nations (UN) and International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, prosecute and convict former President, Olusegun Obasanjo and one-time Minister of Defence, Lt-General Theophilus Danjuma (rtd) for alleged involvement in war crimes and other offenses against humanity various times between 1999 and 2007.
The group is calling on the international bodies to probe both for alleged their involvement in crimes against humanity and offences bordering on war crimes in Odi area of Bayelsa and Zaki Biam, Benue State.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja Tuesday, National President of the group, Patriot Danelson Momoh, recalled that it was Dajuma’s regime as Defence Minister under President Obasanjo that troops massacred innocent citizens of Zaki Biam community in Benue State.
Obasanjo
It, therefore, called on Obasanjo and Danjuma to hand themselves in to the ICC over the massacre of defenceless citizens in the communities.
He said the Project was concerned with recent trends where persons that have acted below par when they were in public office interfere with the running of government in ways that would not only jeopardize good governance but could trigger widespread ethno-religious hostilities.
According to him, instead of being elder statesmen as would be expected of them, they have resorted to heating up the polity and making demands of the current dispensation that they were never able to fulfil in their own times.
Danjuma
He noted that: “TY Danjuma purportedly issued a statement entitled ‘Choose your own Fulani with care’ in which he alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari is out to massacre the entire north central and southern parts of the so that he can repopulate the same areas with Fulani from other West African countries. While this irresponsible statement is condemnable in the strongest terms, the seeming saving grace is that Danjuma has eaten his words and distance himself from the dangerous utterance.”
Patriot Momoh said the organization wanted to place on record that it was not enough for Danjuma to distance himself from the offensive statement for several reasons noting that if he had not been in the business of making divisive utterances, mischief makers would not replicate his style of incitement to attempt doing damage to the country.
“We categorically state this because historically, it was Dajuma’s regime as Defence Minister under the then President Olusegun Obasanjo that troops were massacre innocent citizens of Zaki Biam community in Benue state. Much as the history of what happened in Zaki Biam is being re-written to obscure the actual drivers of that pogrom, TY Danjuma knows that the genocide that took place there was never about national security but was about protecting narrow interests that were not intended for the benefit of the larger population.”
Momoh explained that Danjuma and Obasanjo remains the architect of the genocide in Zaki Biam, which was not their only crime because they also jointly masterminded the scorched-earth pogrom at Odi. “These actions were the foundation that sowed the seeds of discord amongst the various ethnic groups in Nigeria,” he said.
