The prominent Civil Rights Advocacy Group; Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has frowned at the attempt by the President to explain away the killings by armed Fulani herdsmen of villagers in Southern Kaduna State as reprisals, while describing it as the most reprehensible and primitive approach to a grave threat to our national security.
HURIWA, noted this while reacting to the statement by the Presidency explaining the incessant killings in Southern Kaduna and also carpeted the International Criminal Court in the Hague Netherlands for failing to act on the numerous petitions on these killings sent to the body over the past five years.
In a statement signed by the Rights Advocacy Group’s National Coordinator; Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and National Media Affairs Director; Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA further stressed that the problem of the widening rate of Armed Fulani attacks on innocent citizens is that of massive and irresponsible governance, and the fact that Governor Nasir El’Rufai in particular, who is the Chief Security Officer of the State and the Federal Government at large have failed to address the crisis in an even-handed manner.
“Government should go back and study the Section 33, sub section 1 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which states that the right to life and safety is paramount and remains the reason of all other rights.
“Given the intense insecurity in southern Kaduna, preventive measures are urgently needed. Affected communities in Southern Kaduna and other parts of the country currently grappling with this high wave of herdsmen attack must be made to feel like their lives and the monumental impact of the crisis matters. Ending impunity also means reducing the chances of violence and punishing offenders as international scholars have affirmed”, HURIWA averred
Nonetheless, as expressed by HURIWA, the media office of the President has become the official media spin doctors of these killer herders who kill at will and are never arrested neither has the central government done the needful to Declare the Armed Fulani Herdsmen as A Terrorist Group but that the same government was too quick to wrongly declare the unarmed civilians under the auspices of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria as terrorists groups only because they are demanding self-determination and freedom for their unjustly incarcerated national leader Sheikh Elzakzacky.
Describing it as a shameful show of hypocrisy and indeed the most inexplicable political hypocrisy of the 21st century World, HURIWA urged the President to declare a state of emergency in Kaduna State so that soldiers and armed security forces can continuously comb the forest and the hill to decimate and degrade the armed Fulani Herdsmen camping in those places, while adding that the Attorney General of the Federation who is the number one law officer of the country has failed together with the Inspector General of Police, who is the number one law enforcement officer of the country to bring the perpetrators to Justice which leaves a question mark on their abilities to occupy such offices.
