HURIWA has also called on President Goodluck Jonathan to practically introduce federal government projects in the South-east in the spirit of equity and social justice just as the group lamented that the acclaimed revolutionary achievements reportedly made in the agriculture sector had not impacted on the lives of the farmers in the South-east particularly with the over concentration of multibillion dollar projects of the agriculture and water resources ministries such as dams in the Northern parts of Nigeria with total lack of any major agriculture and water resources project in the South-east.
The group said the state governments in the South-east have failed spectacularly to effectively partner the agriculture and water resources ministries to attract major projects to the South-east even as HURIWA warned that the region might face the challenge of food insecurity in no distant time if emergency measures were not activated to ameliorate the systemic neglect.
The rights group warned that the widespread apathy and less- than- impressive passive interest by the people of the South-east in the affairs of their states in their region is responsible for the widespread poverty and the collapse of strategic infrastructure in these states even as the body demanded that the state governments in the South-east must utilise the enormous resources derived from the federation account and the internally generated revenue outlets within the region to pragmatically and comprehensively rebuild the declining state of primary health care and roads infrastructure
In a statement signed jointly by the group National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said its findings from a three-day on the spot assessment of state of facilities in the five south-east states of Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Anambra and Abia showed that contrary to the position by some international bodies such as the United Nations agencies operating from Abuja.
On the heightened state of insecurity in the South-eastern states, HURIWA asserted that men and officers of the Nigerian Police Force working in most parts of the South-east states have abandoned their constitutional and traditional roles of protecting lives and property of the citizenry and the enforcement of the rule of law and have now embraced the setting up of multiple bribes collecting checkpoints on all the major roads, harassing the citizenry.
