The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has carpeted President Goodluck Jonathan for appointing the Information Minister Mr. Labaran Maku as “Supervisory” Minister in the Ministry of Defence “even when his alleged role in the ongoing fratricidal violence in his home state of Nasarawa is yet to be transparently investigated and issuance of clean bill of health to the serving federal cabinet member done by an independent judicial commission of inquiry to assuage the bottled up emotions of certain persons who feel otherwise.”

HURIWA asked the President “to desist from actions that may be misconstrued to graphically paint his administration as being insensitive to the feelings and complaints of a section of the Nigerian people no matter how speculative or emotional such sentiments may be without clearly justifiable and superior logic by the Government for such actions communicated to the Nigerian people.”

The rights group also condemned the piecemeal approach adopted by both the Federal and Nasarawa state governments to the growing and spiraling bloody violence in Nasarawa State linked to suspected cult members belonging to the local militia known as Ombatse. It demanded the arrest, prosecution and judicial sanction on all the sponsors and perpetrators of the violence which has so far consumed hundreds of innocent citizens including nearly 100 serving police and State Security Service (SSS) operatives who were deployed to quell the uprising recently. HURIWA has also condemned as reprehensible and despicable the killing in a Nasarawa cult war at the weekend of over 30 innocent citizens just as it tasked the Nigerian Government to protect the lives and property of Nigerians since that is the fundamental constitutional role of Government in modern times.

According to HURIWA in a statement jointly signed by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and National Media Affairs Director, Miss. Zainab Yusuf: “Although for now, the remote linkage of the serving Information Minister, Mr. Labaran Maku, in the ongoing bloody violence in his home state of Nasarawa is still mere conjectures and speculations, the Federal Government has failed to investigate clinically and professionally using the services of tested and trusted serving Supreme Court of Nigeria’s justices and independent security and forensic experts, the remote and immediate causes, circumstances and individuals fingered for being responsible for the ongoing killings and inter-ethnic upheavals in Nasarawa State.

“Therefore, it would be hasty and preposterous for President Jonathan to assign the very strategic Defence Ministry to Mr. Maku who for now is alleged to be a party rightly or wrongly in the violence tearing his state apart which is linked to the politics of 2015 governorship. President Jonathan ought to have probed this groundswell of allegation before ever contemplating assigning Mr. Maku a supervisory role over the ministry of defense which oversees armed security operatives responsible for quelling and checking the violence.”

HURIWA further faulted Maku’s appointment as supervisory defence minister thus: “Moreover, the Minister of Information has so far failed to perform his mandate even in his own field of information whereby he has held sway in the last two years, so he is the least of the serving ministers to be so assigned additional functions in a very strategic beat.”

In a related development, HURIWA has charged the Federal Government to ensure that the real masterminds and perpetrators of the bloody violence that trailed the year 2011 general election in which the incumbent President emerged victorious, are arrested and prosecuted in courts of competent jurisdiction so as to discourage similar occurrence in the coming 2015 elections.

The rights group faulted the speed with which the Federal Government is keen on paying compensation to victims of the mass killings which HURIWA has canvassed. It insisted that “payment of financial compensations will not do complete justice to these martyrs of the post-2011 Presidential election if the real perpetrators and remote and immediate masterminds/sponsors of the organised and well coordinated genocide are left to roam freely in Nigerian cities even without being prosecuted and punished for the mass killings of innocent Nigerians.”

•Photo shows Labaran Maku.

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