The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has filed charges in the United States, requesting that further Super Tucano fighter jets be blocked from being sent to Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari.
In court filings obtained by Peoples Gazette, Mr Buhari and disgraced police commissioner Abba Kyari were accused of a laundry list of heinous human rights violations and genocidal charges, with IPOB’s Washington lawyer Bruce Fein warning that 70 million Igbo Christians in Nigeria’s south-east are at risk of being massacred and subjugated by Messrs Buhari and Kyari and their genocidal Muslim Fulani allies.
“President Buhari’s intends to use the Super Tucano advanced weapons to kill and maim Biafrans and destroy their property in his ongoing genocide conducted by Fulani controlled security forces guilty of atrocious human rights violations,” IPOB said in a complaint filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on July 31, 2021.
The action named Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as defendants, although no judge had been assigned as of the time of posting this story.
Mr Buhari has ordered 12 A-29 Super Tucano fighter jets to battle Boko Haram in the continuing conflict. Six planes were delivered in July 2021, with six more scheduled for delivery in 2022 as part of a $600 million contract approved by former President Donald Trump. Mr Kyari was forced to resign last weekend after a grand jury indicted him on wire fraud and money laundering allegations stemming from a cross-border investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The deal, however, violates the 2008 Leahy Amendment, which restricts the sale of firearms to countries with a poor human rights record, according to IPOB’s lawyers.
The Buhari dictatorship has a reputation for being cruel, divisive, and corrupt, all of which IPOB claims Mr Trump overlooked because he was more concerned with improving the US economy through the sale than with ostracizing the Nigerian regime for its misdeeds.
“At present, President Buhari is conducting a genocide of Biafrans that is under investigation by the International Criminal Court through use of his Fulani controlled security forces, including the Nigerian Air Force,” according to the complaint.
The court filings also mentioned Nnamdi Kanu’s kidnapping and deportation to Nigeria from Kenya in June 2020 as a competent display of Mr Buhari’s brutal leadership.
The lawyers outlined multiple extrajudicial killings and illegal arrests carried out by Mr Kyari and his colleagues in the South-East in recent months, and named ten IPOB members from across the region who would testify about the dangers of Mr Buhari’s Super Tucano sale to the Nigerian Air Force.
The Nigerian Air Force told The Gazette it had ‘no comment’. Mr Buhari’s spokesman did not immediately respond to The Gazette’s requests for comment on the court filings.
