The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has condemned the invasion of Ukpabi Nimbo Community in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area Council by armed Fulani terrorists and the killing of nearly 100 villagers in their sleep.

The rights group said the failure of intelligence or the deliberate stoking of embers of Igbo hatred by the Department of State Service (DSS) may have caused this latest attack on this Igbo community.

The group, thus, demanded for the prosecution of the Director General of Department of State Services (DSS) for authorising a recent diatribe against Igbo when the agency wrongfully accused members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) of alleged killing of the five Fulani herdsmen who were allegedly kidnapped recently in Abia State, South East Nigeria.

Believing that these dastardly killings by the armed Fulani bandits have reached absolutely unacceptable dimension, the Rights groups has again called on the Federal Government to ease the process of issuance of firearms licenses so all sane and law abiding adults can have access to gun to protect their inalienable, universal and constitutional right to Right to life. HURIWA said it made no sense denying Nigerians the right to weapons ownership when it is now clear that all security agencies have spectacularly failed in the constitutional mandate to protect lives and property of the citizenry.

In a media statement jointly signed by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA anchored its fresh call for the liberalisation of firearms licensing regime on section 220 (1) of the Nigerian Constitution just as the group said government was under constitutional obligation to give military trainings to all adult Nigerians as a way of ensuring lasting peace and inter ethnic harmony.

“In Nigeria whereby Government disallow people from bearing firearms except the useless hunting Dane guns for the village hunters, armed hoodlums have wasted hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and these lives would have been saved if Nigerians with sound mental state and clean criminal records were licensed to carry firearms. Section 220 [1] of the Nigerian constitution clearly supports the issuance of firearms licences on certain strict conditions since even the wording of that section specifically stated that the National Assembly Shall legislate into being the establishment of military training camps for all Nigerian adults and if such are not yet legislated then the President of Nigeria can order the use of public schools for the purposes of compulsory military training for law abiding adult Nigerians.”

“Meanwhile section 33[1] of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 [as amended] clearly spelt out in white and black that every Nigerian has the inalienable right to life. How then do you safeguard this sacred constitutional right to life in a situation of near-anarchy which has exacerbated with the arrival over three years now of armed Islamic terrorists known as Boko Haram who most times invade towns and villages killing, maiming and destroying innocent lives and property of Nigerians and the security forces seems clearly unable to provide security for all people? Now we are witnessing attacks of deadly dimension from armed Fulani herdsmen rated as the 3rd most dreaded terrorists group globally and again even the President is himself too busy to give clear Presidential directive on how the military should decisively crush these mass murderers whose bloody violence could snowball into protracted war.”

“Will the Nigerian Government stand idly and watch as armed hoodlums decimate Nigerians in their thousands before it can do the needful to legalise individual firearms ownership under certain regulations? Our take is that the Nigerian Government must liberalise firearms ownership in Nigeria as one way of safeguarding right to life since the armed forces and police have proved seriously challenged and unable to be everywhere to protect the lives of Nigerians and the constitution makes it imperative that the security and welfare of every citizen is the primary duty of government. A stitch in time saves nine.”

Also, the Rights group asked the outgoing Inspector General of Police Mr. Solomon Arase, that the International Criminal Court will soon go after him unless he prosecutes the policemen that shot and killed two students of University of Lagos, Miss Oluchi Anekwe and University of Port-Harcourt, Mr. Peter Ofurum.

“We condemn the Nigerian Police Force for these primitive killings of innocent students who were simply peacefully protesting the collapsed state of infrastructures in their campuses.”

•Photo shows Comrade Onwubiko.

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