Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), has chided Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed over comment credited to him that Nigeria’s insecurity is no longer severe.
In a statement signed by its Executive Director, Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA challenged the Minister to travel the length and breadth of the country by road to see things for himself.
“Once more, we in the human rights community representing the voiceless and oppressed citizens of Nigeria are inviting the cabinet level minister of information to travel by road with no security cover from Abuja to Zamfara to Katsina, Borno and then back to Abuja through the Lokoja/Kwali Abuja dreaded federal highway after stopping over at the Okene highway near Ajaokuta in Kogi state.
“If the minister is able to embark on this journey which should be televised live on NTA, Trust television and AIT, then may be his statement about improved security may be listened to by right thinking human beings that are rational.
“We find it completely insensitive, reckless and unacceptable that in the face of the heightened security challenges confronting Nigerians including the 28 bus passengers in Ondo that were just kidnapped into the Ondo forests by suspected armed Fulani herdsmen, the holder of the office of information minister will continue to assault our sensibilities and spread fake news, ” HURIWA said.
It added that there is a chance that the information minister lives in a very distant planet from the earth “for him not to be aware that in some parts of Katsina state, the home state of president Muhammadu Buhari, terrorists have started carrying out policing jobs and reportedly arresting petty thieves and handing them over to the police. In parts of Kaduna and Zamfara states, farmer now pay taxes to terrorists even as a terrorist kingpin was recently inaugurated a traditional title holder in Zamfara, thus depicting a failed state.”
HURIWA also recalled that few days ago, elders of rural communities in Katsina state lamented that men in their villages now work as slaves on farms ‘owned’ by bandits, even as the hoodlums have developed a taste for constantly raping married women and teenage girls.
Onwubiko further noted that against the backdrop of failure to protect lives and property, Nigerians would be at liberty to provide themselves self defense to take steps to provide self defense “because the right to life is guaranteed by the 1999 constitution in section 33(1).” This is even as it called on the international community to rise up and save Nigerians from the violent campaigns of murderous terrorists.
