HURIWA challenges Gov Umahi to give details of identity of unknown gunmen terrorizing southeast  

A group, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has challanged Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State to provide details of the identity of the unknown gunmen terrorizing southeast Nigeria.

HURIWA in a statement by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, requested that political leaders of the Southeast, lawmakers in the National Assembly, governors and traditional leaders of all Igbo speaking States, should task Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State to volunteer information that could lead to the unraveling of the faces behind the killings in Southeast Nigeria since he has already identified the Ethnicity of the unknown gunmen. HURIWA insisted “Igbo people must demand this information in greater details urgently.”

HURIWA recalled that Governor Umahi had said that unknown gunmen terrorising southeast Nigeria and killing people are from the southeast region and not from outside.

“Answering questions regarding the identities of the killers on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Umahi said the atrocities committed in the region were largely carried out by youths from there,” HURIWA said.

HURIWA cited Umahi to have said: “People tend to be funny at times when they say that we have been invaded by outsiders, but it is not true.

“We have people from other regions that are in the Southeast. There’s no tribe that doesn’t have criminality. I wouldn’t say some of these people from other tribes don’t engage in criminality.

“What I call bandits are people that engage in violence; and they are our people, South-East people. The youths, some of them are in this category.

“So, when people say insecurity in the South-East is being imported, I do not buy that. Because I am a Governor, I do security reports. We have arrested a number of these people, and it should be that they are about five or 14 per cent of those outside the South-East. If we have 90 per cent of our youths engaging in these things, you cannot say the South-East is being infiltrated.

“We engaged with some of the bandits, we made contacts with some of them. We had to say, what is your problem? If it is infrastructure, we have done that. “If it is jobs creation, we have addressed that through direct labour. The bandits are angry about the lack of what to do, and we said to them that if your only trouble is that you didn’t have formal education, there is no job for you to do.

“We put them together and said, if you will stop attacks on our strategic inf rastructure, killing of our people and attack on security agencies, we can rehabilitate you. So, we have rehabilitated a number of them.”

HURIWA National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, therefore, commended  the Ebonyi State governor for publicly disclosing the ethnic identity of the UNKNOWN GUNMEN, thereby, ending the spectre of misidentity of these murderous terrorists destroying the Igbo Motherland. HURIWA, however, said that rather than engaging in media showmanship in a matter as sensitive as the terrorists destroying the Southeast of Nigeria,  the Ebony State governor should be challenged by all Igbo people to meet with the National Security Adviser, the DG of DSS, the Chief of Army Staff and the IGP together with the governors of the SOUTH EAST REGION and Civil society leaders of South East extraction so the governor can do the South East the favour of “full disclosure on those unknown gunmen he has now revealed their ethnicity and he must do this within 74 hours or be taken as a joker.