•Accuses Nigerian Government of frittering $9 million on empty propaganda

Prominent pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has described as “uneducated and unintelligent propaganda the news attributed to New York Times as writing that a screwdriver trader based in Onitsha Anambra State was the source of information on the genocide of Christians in Nigeria by Islamic terrorists.”

HURIWA in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubko, declared that the “New York Times so-called exclusive report which attempted to ruin the reputation of Emeka Umeagbalasi, the Executive Director of the Onitsha-based Intersociety, one of Nigeria's most respected civil rights organisations, is a direct fallout of the $9 million USD lobbying payment made by the Nigerian government as reported previously by the Nigerian media.”

HURIWA in the statement issued on Monday debunked the newspaper’s claim that the United States relied on information and reports from Umeagbalasi, “a screwdriver trader in Onitsha, Anambra State, to launch air strikes in Nigeria.”

According to the report, Umeagbalasi, founder of the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, otherwise called Intersociety, is “an unlikely source of research that U.S. Republican lawmakers have used to promote the misleading idea that Christians are being singled out for slaughter” in Nigeria.

HURIWA however dismissed the news coverage by New York Times as “a soft tissue of lies packaged by the paid propagandists that picked up the generous pay package from the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration.”

The rights group noted that “sources of information about the persistent killings of Christians by Islamists and the abductions, assassination of Christian clerics are reported accurately periodically by Nigerian newspapers based on actual happenings of these attacks like the killing of over 50 worshippers at the Catholic Church in Owo, Osun state in which case the Department of State Services is even prosecuting the masterminds of that dastardly attacks on Christians.”

Besides, HURIWA said that, “the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Makurdi, Most Reverend Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, amongst several credible pastors, honoured several invitations by the United States of America's Congressional panel that heard testimonies about the incessant killings and indeed the genocidal killings of Christians in Nigeria by Islamic terrorists.” HURIWA reminded the New York Times that “the Congressional members from the USA Congress visited many sites of these attacks on churches in Nigeria in many Northern States and took interviews with survivors of these ongoing attacks even as these delegates reportedly briefed the President of the USA.”

Dismissing the New York Times report, HURIWA alleged that “the American newspaper engaged in a commercial propaganda to damage the truth of the continuous massacres of Christians in Nigeria by Islamic terrorists as a failed propaganda devoid of logic and characterised by incurable pitfalls of fallacies.”

Declaring that "PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE TRUTH ABOUT GENOCIDE OF CHRISTIANS IN NIGERIA HAS FAILED,” the rights group concluded, saying: “Tinubu’s government is already spending the $9 million slush funds for propaganda against killings of Christians. They tried to rubbish one of the several sources of published data on the casualties. But the propaganda in the media calling Emeka Umeagbalasi of InterSociety as a screwdriver trader in Onitsha, exposes the idiocy of this propaganda. These government propagandists in USA using New York Times thinks we are all readers without rationality like they are. The genocide of Christians in Nigeria is notorious and these killings are often reported around the globe. For the fact that Emeka Umeagbalasi is sometimes quoted by the media doesn't make him the sole source of the news on the killings of Christians. Was it Emeka Umeagbalasi that reported all the killings and destruction of Churches by Islamic terrorists documented in news coverages by newspapers in Nigeria and other online media that formed the intelligence used by President Donald John Trump to authorise the Christmas Eve bombing of terrorists in Sokoto last December? How come government of Tinubu gave our $9 million to some idle and small minds with small brains? This is a bad investment by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Even some idle people at the beer sit out @ the press centre in Utako Abuja would do even far better than this US lobbying firm."

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