Thank you, committee members.
I want to specifically talk about the aftermath of the #EndSARS movement and protests.
After the protest, we saw a large number of people arrested by the Nigerian government. A lot of them haven't been processed, but I will now specifically bring attention to what is happening in Oyigbo in Rivers State.
This is a fallout from the #EndSARS protest. Many police stations were burned, throughout southern Nigeria mostly, in most of the states. Youth had reacted to what witnesses have described to us as high-handedness by the SARS group and other military groups and security agencies: extrajudicial killings, torture and all kinds of atrocities that are made against people.
The governor of Rivers State imposed a curfew and made a declaration that Indigenous People of Biafra—and I represent the organization of the Biafrans who live here in Canada—had committed crimes of killing police or army people or burning police stations. Because of that, he placed a curfew on four communities: Oyigbo, Ikokwu, Mile 1 and Old Mill. I want to point out that these particular communities are inhabited by Biafrans and Igbo especially.
We know the ethnic composition of Nigeria. So many times Nigerians are blinded by ethnicity. They do not see themselves as one country, so the government uses that. It brings one community up against another, and that again kills the nationalistic philosophy of the nation.
Let me state here that the reason I'm saying that is that while we look at what happened before, my attention is focused on what is happening right now. The people on the ground who speak have told us that at least 300 young men have lost their lives since the government imposed this curfew. What it did is that it left people in their houses without proper food or medication for three weeks now. If you come out because you run out of food or medication, and you're a young man between 18 and 30 years of age, you are shot or you are arrested and brutalized. There are all kinds of pictures and videos that are watched on social media.
I have spoken to the person we have on the ground, their pastor, and the kinds of things he narrated and the number of people who are dying, who are being killed or shot or arrested.... In one specific incident, an ambulance had come to carry a corpse. The military men torched the ambulance and set the ambulance on fire with people inside it.
I got the information yesterday to speak to you today on a short notice. I have spoken to a few people on the ground, and I intend to have names, times and all the things we can document so that after this meeting, I will make available to this committee the names of the people who were killed, the impact on their families and what happened.
One of the striking things they told me is that when they do this, the first thing they do is to make sure nobody gets a picture of them, so if you were using a cellphone to capture this incident, they would come down with a sniper.
The federal government sends at least 3,000 soldiers to each state of South East and South South Nigeria. My appeal is to stop the killing going on right now before we can get to other things, because people are falling. They are human beings, and their lives matter just like the lives of every single individual matter.
There are all kinds of things taking place as I speak to you now. I will send in documents, videos and audio, so if this committee can send someone down to verify the veracity of this information, that would be very helpful.