UPN wants Lagos officials to be investigated, prosecuted over deportation of Igbos

The Unity Party of Nigeria has called on the police and federal authorities and Non Governmental Organisations to investigate and prosecute Lagos State Government officials for several human rights violations, including illegally detaining and “deporting” bonafide Nigerians without trial.
In addition, the UPN demanded that Lagos State must put together a package of public apology, compensation and rehabilitation for all the victims.
This was coming in the wake of Lagos State’s recent “deportation” of South-Easterners to the Onitsha Bridgehead in Anambra State.
According to a statement signed by its National Chairman of the party, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, the UPN said the deportation not only violates all known international conventions and human rights charters, it assaulted the “right to freedom of movement” enshrined in Section 41 of the Nigerian Constitution.
The section stipulates: “Every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof, and no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereby or exit therefrom.”
Fasehun further stated: “This shows clearly that the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, in Lagos State governs with abundant arrogance and impunity. If Governor Babatunde Fashola cannot be sued for this illegality because he enjoys Immunity, his commissioners and heads of the concerned agencies, who contrived this criminality, must be made to feel the full weight of the law. Lagosians are literarily under siege from Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), the Kick against Indiscipline (KAI) Brigade and the Task Force on Environmental Offences, all of whom have turned themselves into terrors on the streets.
“No Nigerian citizen can be deported even by the Nigerian state, let alone a state government. That has been pretty well laid to rest in the 1980 case of Alhaji Abdulrahman Shugaba, for whose illegal deportation even the Supreme Court approved a compensation of N350,000, currently about $350,000.”
The UPN wants the Federal Government to investigate Lagos State agencies, which it accused of daily capturing people and throwing them into “Black Maria” vans for illegal detention.
The statement claimed that thousands of such victims languish in illegal detention in several areas of Lagos, including, Alausa, Kirikiri Prisons, Potoki Prisons in Badagry and Ikorodu Prisons.
The statement added: “At these detention centres, these illegally detained citizens suffer the most dehumanising conditions. Some victims have been locked up for up to six months without the knowledge of their families or their lawyers and without their being brought before any law court.”
Fasehun insisted that the way and manner the deportation to Onitsha was undertaken abridged several rights’ guaranteed the Nigerian citizen, including the Right to Life, Right to Dignity of Human Persons, Right to Personal Liberty, Right to Fair Hearing, Right to Freedom from Discrimination, Right to Freedom of Movement and Right to Private and Family Life.
Fasehun said further in the statement: “How can you ban somebody from his own country? What Lagos State has done can create very hostile relationships for the Yoruba in the East and all over Nigeria. Even though we run a federation that guarantees a measure of independence to federating units, clearly, no state is a country unto itself.”
Commenting on the controversy between Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, who derided his Anambra State counterpart, Governor Peter Obi, for reporting the matter to President Goodluck Jonathan, the UPN pointed out that Lagos State had itself failed to carry along South East governors before deporting their indigenes.
The party noted that pictures in newspapers and the internet showed the victims looked gaunt and emaciated, which he said was unmistakable evidence that they had suffered long detention under inhuman conditions.