. . . Demands tough actions on kidnappers including summary trials and execution

Prominent civil rights group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has described as “horrendous, despicable and reprehensible, the killing by Fulani terrorists of the Proprietor of Tana Suites, Ogbomoso, Olugbenga Owolabi, and one of his workers, Rachael Opadele, a final year student of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso.”

HURIWA, in a statement over the weekend, challenged governors of the 36 states of the federation “to take stiff legal and policing actions against daredevil kidnappers”.

HURIWA lamented that “the security forces were so incompetent not to have trailed the calls to the spots whereby the hostages were kept to rescue them with minimal risks but the security forces decided to use crude techniques of display of unscientific presence to provoke the kidnappers to have the victims shot dead by the kidnappers on Tuesday evening, August 2, after collecting N5 million as ransom.”

A family source had disclosed that the kidnappers became angry and killed the victims when they noticed the presence of soldiers at the LAUTECH area. It was gathered that soldiers had stormed Ogbomoso on Tuesday in order to beef up security as a result of increasing rate of kidnapping in the area. HURIWA faulted the soldiers for not being professional and allow for the kidnapped victims to be free before they showed up.

The rights group is advocating for stiffer legal and prosecutorial actions against kidnappers just as it suggests that a law be made to fast-track the arraignment and conclusion of cases of kidnapping to last just a month, including all appeals arising from conviction or non-conviction. “Thereafter the suspects convicted should be executed by firing squads in the kidnappers’ community of origin to serve as deterrent,” HURIWA said.

It regretted that “both President Muhammadu Buhari and the governors are playing with the serious security breaches that kidnappers have assumed in Nigeria.”

HURIWA, in the statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, also condemned the bombing of a police formation in Imo State by yet-to-be-determined attackers who slaughtered four police operatives in the line of duty including some women police operatives. The rights group described the attack as “unbelievably cruel and irrational”, even as it condemned the Imo State Police Command “for blaming men of the proscribed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) for the attack on its station at Agwa in Oguta Local Government Area of Imo state when it has no shreds of empirical and scientific evidence to nail the despicable crime to the self determination group.”

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