HURIWA urges Nigerians to demand government’s accountability on terrorists attacks

A civil rights group, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA), has carpeted the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Gwobin Musa, and the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja, for failing to take steps to internally sanction top officers responsible for the recent accidental bombing of a village in Igabi LGA of Kaduna which killed over 100 villagers and Commanders who were negligent of their duties that occasioned the successful invasion and attack of 33 villages in Plateau State by armed Fulani extremists/terrorists that slaughtered over 200 villagers on Christmas Eve.

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HURIWA argued that if Nigerians once more tolerate this massive scale of security breach that led to these levels of pogroms in Plateau State, then we can as well know that the people of Nigeria are comfortable with incompetence and inefficiency on the part of the public office holders who are exercising authority because the people of Nigeria democratically donated legitimacy to them.

HURIWA in a statement declared: “We as citizens must never be this laid back and tolerate this evil practices that make it possible for mass murders to keep happening intermittently in the country and no security officers are held responsible nor do we as Citizens demand accountability from the government.”

The group lamented that Nigerians have completely lost their collective sense of national outrage and have consistently accommodated the spectacular failures of intelligence by top flight officers of the relevant security agencies over the past many years which is responsible for the persistent and enduring cases of mass killings and well coordinated terrorist attacks which have cost over 30,000 lives of Nigerians in just less than one decade.

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According to HURIWA, “It is absolutely inappropriate and unbelievable that such a colossal numbers of citizens in many of the villages in Plateau State could be wiped off the earth, but the generality of Nigerians are comfortably going about their daily pursuit of bread and butter rather than mobilise and collective show a profound sense of national outrage and to consistently make public demands on the President and the heads of the security agencies to punish those of their Commanders and officers guilty of dereliction of duties that resulted in the many deaths from the recent Plateau terror attacks and the accidental airstrikes in a village in Kaduna in which over three hundred innocent Nigerians died in both of these recent incidents.”

HURIWA berated the defence headquarters for even coming up with a shallow excuse on why the terrorists succeeded in attacking those Plateau villages, leading to a very unacceptable human toll just as the group said the practice by heads of security forces not to administratively sanction the officers whose incompetence give way to killings of citizens, is a demonstration that the country’s leaders are at home with inherent incompetence and lack of professionalism as demonstrated by these officers who didn’t do their jobs diligently to prevent the full scale slaughter of hundreds of citizens in Plateau State.

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HURIWA said the failure of the security agencies to arrest the terrorists but to rather go after youths of those communities attacked by Fulani terrorists shows that the nation is deeply sick and need to be revived.

The group stated that the December 30th 2023 press statement by the Defence Headquarters which stated that troops intervened in 19 out of the 36 villages in Plateau after receiving distress calls from villagers about attacks by militants on December 24 and also said the troops arrived after the devastation has happened because of poor roads network, is an unmitigated insult on the intelligence of Nigerians just as the group urged Nigerians not to move on from this disaster but insist that accountability must be rendered and justice must be done or else we are diminished as a sovereignty.

HURIWA recalled that the Director, Defence Media Operations, Major General Edward Buba, had said that the militants carried out simultaneous attacks on the villages from various fronts. Musa said the intervention of the troops in Bokkos and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas forced some of the militants to withdraw after wreaking havoc on the defenceless villagers.

The Defence Headquarters was cited to have said: “Sadly, events turned gloomy with the attack on Bokkos LGA and some part of Barkin Ladi LGA on Dec. 23.

“It should be noted that, Bokkos and Barkin Ladi LGAs span about 2,315 Square kilometres with over 350 villages, mostly dispersed.

“The distance between some of these villages and troops’ locations is over 90 kilometres and sometimes difficult to access because of the rugged terrain which are mostly inaccessible to vehicles.
“Thus, affecting the reaction time to incidents, except when there is credible intelligence before the attack.”

HURIWA, however, dismissed these lines of poorly articulated response made by the defence headquarters as substantially laughable and preposterous, urging Nigerians to wake up and become active citizens by demanding comprehensive accountability by the Army and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on this very incident just as the group is asking that the president must demand immediate actions by his military chiefs to show that they are remorseful about the unambiguous twin failures of intelligence and security.

The group insisted that the terrorists must be arrested and prosecuted for crimes against humanity and get the severest punishment of death by firing squad.