Some groups have presented their position on Nigeria as the 77th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) gets underway.
The coalition of socio-cultural and self-determination groups from the South and Middle-Belt declared that the country has been “hijacked by a cabal being backed by foreign terrorists”.
President Muhammadu Buhari addressed the 77th Session of UNGA in New York on Wednesday.
A statement by the Oodua Peoples’ Sovereign Movement (OPSOM), Igbo National Council (INC), Middle Belt Patriotic Front (MBPF), Freedom from Nigeria (FFN), and others alleged that governance has been grounded.
They said the nation’s economy was now bleeding and hemorrhaging under a unitary constitution in a supposed Federal State.
The groups lamented how insurgents maim, oppress and subjugate the majority of the ethnic nationalities in a bid to hijack their ancestral land.
The communique issued by the spokesperson Dr. Ibrahim Yusuf said the North and Middle-Belt has been captured via state-sponsored terrorism, while the South has been encircled by government-backed terrorists whose sole mission is land-grabbing.
It stressed that unemployment, hunger, poverty, insecurity, kidnapping for ransom and infrastructural decadence now pervade the face of Nigeria democracy.
The coalition insists that the 1999 constitution “is fraudulent, a haven of corruption and an enabler of injustice”.
“Unless it is disabled and the country is subjected to a referendum for the indigenous people to decide on their sovereignty, peace and development will continue to elude the common man in Nigeria.
“Despite its claim as the giant of Africa, the economy of the country is now hemorrhaging and bleeding. The economy of Nigeria has turned majority of our young ladies who are graduates to prostitutes.
“We also wish to let the world know that terrorists and their negotiators now enjoy governance patronage and immunity in Nigeria.
“Terrorists masquerading as bandits kidnap for billions of ransoms and move untouched despite the thousands of armed military personnel mounting our roads in the North,” the group said.
It said Nigeria was now a failed State and becoming the headquarters of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Africa with over five million displaced.
They pointed out that Benue alone has over one million people in 27 camps within the State and more in Borno, while perpetrators of the massacres “are roaming around the streets”
The statement rejected the continued integration of terrorists into the society, and demanded that aliens “brought into the country via RUGA be returned”.
It further called for a referendum to be conducted “so that the people who never voted to be called Nigerians could decide on their sovereignty or decide the system of government they want”.
