Rights Group blames Yar'Adua for Bauchi riots

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, HURIWA, a development focused non-Governmental organization has on Sunday blamed the recent religious riots in Bauchi State which led to the killing of scores of people to the double standard approach adopted by President Umaru Musa Yar’adua as a consequence of the bloody politically motivated riots in Jos, Plateau State in November last year during which the Wife of the President reportedly paid a solidarity visit to only the Muslims affected by the riots even without visiting the Chief Executive of the State Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State nor the large majority of Christians from the Southern part of Nigeria who were mostly affected by the unprovoked and senseless killings.

The Rights Group also blamed the President for not taking drastic action to relieve his minister of Special Duties Ibrahim Kazaure of his job when he openly canvassed the removal of the Plateau State Governor thereby making himself totally partisan and unfit to hold the high office of the federal minister in a nation that is secular and section 10 of the 1999 constitution stated clearly that no religion SHALL be treated as a state religion.

A religious motivated unrest had at the Weekend erupted in Bauchi State, North East Nigeria leading to the gruesome murder of several citizens including the burning of places of worship even as tens of thousands of citizens who were reported to be mostly Christians have been rendered internally displaced persons as a consequence of the religious riots which started as a result of what reporters at the scene of the incident stated was a disagreement between two sects of Islamic Religion contesting the ownership of a Mosque during last Friday’s Jumat prayers.

HURIWA in a statement issued to Newsmen and endorsed by its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko stated that the impression created in the minds and hearts of most Nigerians who observed the handling of the last November riots in Jos Plateau State was that the President Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua kept undignified silence rather than reprimand his wife for the public show of shame by her taking clear position with only Muslim members of the Jos North Community affected by the Riots when her delegation visited the Plateau State Capital and distributed relief materials bought with taxpayers’ funds to only a section of the community in a city where several hundreds of southern Christians were gruesomely murdered in an unprovoked and dastardly killing spree.

The Rights Group also criticised the double standard currently been adopted by the President with the recent inauguration of a Presidential panel of inquiry to investigate the remote and immediate causes of the Jos Riots even when the Plateau State Government that has the jurisdiction to so inquire had earlier announced her decision to set up a probe panel. According to HURIWA ‘’Most people have the impression that the President is siding with his Muslim brothers and sisters by the ways and manners that he has so far handled the Jos Religious riots. It is not surprising therefore those miscreants who masquerade as Muslims will intermittently unleash a reign of terror on the innocent members of the public since they believe that their big God Father in Aso Rock will come to their aid each time there is trouble. The President must openly dispel this belief and impression in the minds of most people in Nigeria that since his wife has openly identified herself with Muslims which means that nothing will happen to any miscreant caught causing maximum chaos provided that such a hoodlum professes the Islamic faith. The President was elected by Nigerians of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds and is therefore not the President of Muslim Nigerians’’.

HURIWA advised the Federal Government not to continue treating agents of religious riots and national destabilization with kid gloves which is the reason why riots may continue in Nigeria if this attitude of the current leadership at the national level of Nigeria’s polity is not changed.