A prominent civil Rights organization and Non- Governmental group- HUMAN
RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has warned that the
President Muhammadu Buhari’s handling like family affairs of the grave
threats that the incessant violent attacks by armed Fulani herdsmen poses
to Nigeria’s national security has adverse consequences to the continuous
existence of Nigeris as a constitutional democracy.
The Rights group lamented that the current government is pampering mass
murderers by setting up committees at the Federal Executive Council to
resolve what it calls farmers/Herders clashes even when what is at stake
are cases of well organised and clinically executed mass killings by armed
Fulani herdsmen similar to pogroms and genocides which selectively targets
farming communities in the areas of the Country dominated by indigenous
Christian citizens of Nigeria.
“The softlanding being packaged for suspected mass murderers by the
current administration will in the long run result in revenge killings one
day when the table will turn against the current tide whereby the
President carefully selected only Fulani as heads of strategic security
forces.
“Buhari must realise that he will soonr rather than later quit public
office and will be subjected to go through the rudiments of international
justice system similar to the experience of former President Charles
Taylor of Liberia for the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by his
kinsmen whilst he looks the other way and stops the armed forces from
protecting the victims of armed Fulani attacks and failing to invoke
relevant legal and military authorities against the perpetrators”.
HURIWA expressed disappointment with the way President Muhammadu Buhari is
pushing through the illegal plot to establish cattle colonies in all parts
of Nigeria by deploying fund raised mostly from the sale of crude oil
resources derived from crude oil bearing communities in the Niger Delta
areas which are grossly underdeveloped and the environments gravely
degraded to set up cattle colonies to be handed over to private owners of
cows in Nigeria.
HURIWA accused the President of abuse of power and favouritism even as the
group has tasked Southerners who are mostly traders and artesans to demand
from President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to set up TRADERS
COLONIES in all parts of Nigeria whereby the Bank of Industry and the
Central Bank of Nigeria could be tasked through fastracked legislations to
be rapidly passed and signed into law so as to also assist the millions of
distressed traders and small scale enterpreneurs whose businesses have
suffered adversely due to unfair economic policies and the recently ended
economic recession. The Rights group said anything short of providing
similar Federal Government’s funded non-repayable credit schemes for
traders of Southern origin amounts to discrimination which is totally
unconstitutional and illegal and the cattle colonies must be stopped.
HURIWA in statement jointly endorsed by the National Coordinator Comrade
Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab
Yusuf said rather than the Federal government to embark on shadow chasing
and the deceitful charade and manipulative plots to set up cattle colonies
in Nigeria using public fund for the exclusive benefits of a tiny section
of the populace whose qualifications for benefiting from the illegality of
setting up the cattle colonies is because they are of the same
Ethno-Religious beliefs system with the President himself and whose
members have reportedly armed some militias and have repeatedly executed
dastardly criminal acts of terror attacks of farming communities resulting
in the gruesome mass murders of over 10, 000 innocent women, Children, the
youth and the elderly.
HURIWA said the extant criminal law books of Nigeria are littered with
sufficient and tough legal frameworks on dealing with murderers such as
the armed members of the armed Fulani killer herdsmen responsible for
some of the most heinous atrocities that the World has ever seen, but the
Rights group lamented that Presidency of Muhammadu Buhari has failed to
arrest, prosecute and punish the members of the armed killer gangs of
Fulani herdsmen but the government is not only treating the mass killers
with kid’s gloves but has begun series of measures meant to reward them
for their criminal acts of terrorism by seeking to seize lands from
communities whose indigenous people share no cultural and/or Ethno
Religious attributes with the Fulani herdsmen to hand over ancestral lands
to strange Fulani herdsmen in the guise of setting up the cattle colonies.
“Cattle colonies will definitely be a reward for the cocktails of blood
cuddling attacks by armed Fulani herdsmen. This is an unfathomable
illegality and is similar to government officials actually been the unseen
suppliers of the sophisticated weapons of mass destruction which are
deployed by armed killer Fulani herdsmen in their murderous rampage. ”
HURIWA asked communities opposed to this indirect plots to take over their
lands and impose foreign religion and way of life by force of arms to
their communities to file petitions before the competent courts of law
locally and if the Courts prove to be less independent because of the
intimidation and subtle threats the judges are facing from the hatchet men
heading the different segments of the armed security forces of President
Muhammadu Buhari such as the Department of State Services (DSS) and the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC), then these communities
facing imminent extinction as a result of the illegal cattle colonies in
their ancestral lands, can take their matters to the international
Criminal court in The Hague Netherlands and approach World leaders and
global organizations to ask for redress.
HURIWA accused President Muhammadu Buhari of Ethnic and Religious bias by
appointing an all Moslem and largely Fulani/Hausa heads of straregic
national security agencies and for letting the armed Fulani herdsmen to
continue to carry out their well planned genocides against christian
farming communities.
HURIWA also accused the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations
Mrs. Amina Mohammed a Fulani moslem from Gombe State of conspiratorial
silence in the face of the vicious bombardments of Christian farming
communities in Nigeria by armed Fulani herdsmen even as the group tasked
the UN secretary General the former Portuguese Prime minister Antonio
Guiteres to call for a security council meeting over the armed Fulani
killings in Nigeria because of the potential of an ourbreak of civil war
and the consequential grave refugee crisis that any civil war in Nigeria
can generate which inevitably will constitute a grave threat to World
peace and international security.