A leading pro-democracy and civil Rights advocacy group – HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has told the Inspector General of police Alhaji Mohammed Adamu that he will go down in history as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer who for pedestrian regional and religious underpinnings chose to ‘wine and dine’ with armed bandits rather than wield the big stick against the lawless mass murders in the North West of Nigeria.
The Rights group has therefore condemned the decision by some northern governors of Katsina, Zamfara and Sokoto to go into negotiations with armed Fulani bandits responsible for hundreds of deaths and the destructions of properties of both the individuals and the states worth several billions as against enforcement of relevant laws against murders and criminality.
In a media statement, HURIWA through the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss. Zainab Yusuf condemned the Inspector General of police for virtually branding armed bandits in the North as freedom fighters. HURIWA said the interview in which the police chief supported the ongoing unconstitutional unholy communiond between Northern State governors and armed bandits will go down in the history of what would be left of Nigeria as the darkest period of the Nation state because it is inconceivable that an officer of the law would boldly defecate on top of the sacred laws of the Country.
HURIWA stated: “Let it be known to the current IGP Mohammed Adamu that his latest statement equating criminal armed mass killers as same as the Niger Delta agitators is not only disingenuous, pedestrian, spurious, puerile and myopic, but it is a direct affront to the constitution of Nigeria”.
HURIWA said that it was absolutely wrong to have compared the Niger Delta agitators who took up arms to compel the multinational crude oil producing entities to stop polluting and destroying the ecosystem and the overall environments with pure brigands and armed bandits in the North West who have no cause for their odious, atrocious and totally unlawful actions of killing children, women and old people all in the name of seeking to obtain the unlawful opportunities of dialoguing with politicians for financial benefits. It is so wrong that the IGP is being allowed to defecate on the constitution. This trend of thought is similar to a victim of rape championing the cause of the rapists.
HURIWA stated that it is totally incorrect to compare Niger Delta agitators with armed bandits of North West unless the political class in the North alongside their allies in the security forces are now accepting the responsibility for setting up the bandits in their bid to win big compensations for the criminals.
“The Niger Delta agitators fought for a just cause and were never known to have killed civilians. Niger Delta is the region that has provided 98% of the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy by way of crude oil resources. The environment was devastated and the people whose livelihoods were devastated by the activities of crude oil explorations demanded for justice. Why will the IGP compare these freedom fighters that killed no civilians to armed bandits of North West who killed hundreds of their own people?”
HURIWA has therefore demanded the sacking of the IGP Mohammed Adamu for playing the role of the advocate for Northern armed bandits in direct contradiction with the constitutional provision which necessitated the creation of the police as an institution of law enforcement”.
“Those who have embraced criminality of armed banditry in any part of Nigeria must be arrested and dealt with in accordance with the law of the land. Section 33(1) of the constitution clearly spells out that illegal killing of citizens must absolutely never be tolerated. Section 215(1) (2) and (3) are clear that IGP must carry out only lawful directions and it states: “(1) There shall be – (a) an Inspector-General of Police who, subject to section 216(2) of this Constitution shall be appointed by the President on the advice of the Nigeria Police Council from among serving members of the Nigeria Police Force; (b) a Commissioner of Police for each state of the Federation who shall be appointed by the Police Service Commission.
(2) The Nigeria Police Force shall be under the command of the Inspector-General of Police and contingents of the Nigeria Police Force stationed in a state shall, subject to the authority of the Inspector-General of Police, be under the command of the Commissioner of Police of that state.
(3) The President or such other Minister of the Government of the Federation as he may authorize in that behalf may give to the Inspector-General of Police such lawful directions with respect to the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order as he may consider necessary, and the Inspector-General of Police shall comply with those direction or cause them to be compiled with”.
Similarly, the budget of N100 billion been proposed for the implementation of the National Livestock Transformation Plan has been described by HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA ) as the attempt by the central government to grant compensation package to members of the armed Fulani herdsmen who are nothing but terrorists that ought to be prosecuted and locked up for killings and destruction of farmlands and farmers including Catholic priests in all parts of Nogeria.
HURIWA recalled that the proposal submitted on Thursday to the National Economic Council by its Sub-Committee on Farmers/Herders’ crisis is a direct affront to constitutionalism because the central government plans to bribe aggressors whereas the victims of the terror attacks by armed Fulani herdsmen are left to their fate and to wallow in poverty and want.
” HURIWA is of The opinion that the NEC meeting presided over by a severely incapacitated and weakened Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja is simply an efforts to smuggle from the backdoor the RUGA SETTLEMENT PROGRAMME for Fulanis which most Nigerians in the South and parts of Northern States especially in the North Central states rejected. We read that the Chairman of the sub-committee and Governor of Ebonyi State, Mr Dave Umahi, made the presentation to NEC. Also disingenuously, Mr. Umahi explained that contrary to the widely held belief, the NLTP was not about cows alone but had three planks, including care for persons displaced by farmers/herders’ crisis and education programmes. He also repeated the propaganda lines of the Presidency thst states are free to use any animals of their choice in implementing the programme. It’s a big shame that the governor said the committee proposed that the Federal Government would bear 80 per cent of the N100bn, while participating states would support with the balance of N20bn and land for the programme and added that the programme remained voluntary and would accommodate only states that expressed participation interest”.
HURIWA has therefore called for a discontinuation of the discriminatory policy of rewarding armed Fulani herdsmen for their criminal activities of killings of farmers and destruction of communities all across Nigeria.
