Ezekwesili wrestles Aso Rock security to deliver hard-hitting protest letter at Villa gate

BBOG convener Oby Ezekwesili carried out a lone protest to the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Tuesday over the killings of over 100 people in Barkin-Ladi and Riyom in Plateau State by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

A few members of the #BringBackOurGirls coalition accompanied her as she walked from the Eagle Square to the first gate of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where she was stopped by armed security men.

Truckloads of operatives in the Villa, including over 20 policemen, 15 soldiers and a number of Department of State Services officers blocked the access road to Aso Villa, preventing her from taking her message to President Muhammadu Buhari.

Journalists covering the protest had to flee when the security men attempted to impound their gadgets.

A senior DSS operative,however, intervened and allowed Ezekwesili to read her address at the Villa gate.

She was also permitted to tie her banner to the gate.

The inscriptions on the banner read: “#End the killings; #End the blood flow; Help, Where are the killers?”

In her 18-point demand, the former minister decried the alleged ambivalence of the President to the killings, saying that he had failed to show empathy for the victims of the bloodshed.

She alleged Buhari is ” normalising endless blood flow of our innocent children now; it is an aberration.”

She said, “Mr President, share the credible strategy and solutions of your administration to the daily killings of Nigerians; reveal the identities of all the perpetrators of all the killings that have happened under your administration in Plateau, Benue, Taraba, Kaduna, Zamfara, Adamawa, Nasarawa, Kogi and other states.”

Ezekwesili also mentioned the incompetence of the security agencies, and urged the president to stop rewarding their leadership,” noting that about 1,196 Nigerians had died in the past five and a half months.
“Mr President, your bias in handling the killings and abductions of a certain segment of Nigerians is all too obvious and unbecoming of a leader of a diverse nation like Nigeria; all Nigerian lives matter,” she added.