The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has described the incessant violent attacks by armed Fulani herdsmen, and President Muhammadu Buhari’s handling of such national security issues as a family matter as dangerous.

The rights group in a statement jointly endorsed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, also called on the people of Southern Nigeria to demand the establishment of traders’ colonies whereby the Bank of Industry and the Central Bank of Nigeria could be tasked through legislation to assist the millions of distressed traders and small scale entrepreneurs whose businesses have suffered adversely due to unfair economic policies.

The group lamented that the government is pampering mass murderers by setting up committees at the Federal Executive Council to resolve what it calls farmers/herders clashes even when what is at stake are cases of well organised and clinically executed mass killings by armed Fulani herdsmen similar to pogroms and genocides which selectively targets farming communities in the areas of the country dominated by indigenous Christian citizens of Nigeria.

HURIWA said: “The soft landing being packaged for the mass murderers by the current administration will in the long run result in revenge killings one day when the table will turn against the current tide whereby the President carefully selected only Fulani as heads of strategic security forces.

“Buhari must realise that he will soon, rather than later quit public office and will be subjected to go through the rudiments of international justice system similar to the experience of former President Charles Taylor of Liberia for the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by his kinsmen whilst he looks the other way and stops the armed forces from protecting the victims of armed Fulani attacks and failing to invoke relevant legal and military authorities against the perpetrators.”

It expressed disappointment with the way President Buhari is pushing through what it views as the illegal plot to establish cattle colonies in all parts of Nigeria by deploying fund raised mostly from the sale of crude oil derived from oil bearing communities in the Niger Delta areas, which are grossly underdeveloped and their environments gravely degraded.

The group accused the President of abuse of power and favouritism adding that anything short of providing similar Federal Government’s funded non-repayable credit schemes for traders of southern origin amounts to discrimination.

It also accused the Federal Government of embarking on shadow chasing, a deceitful charade and manipulative plots to set up cattle colonies in Nigeria using public fund to the exclusive benefits of a tiny section of the populace who have repeatedly executed terror attacks on farming communities resulting in the gruesome murders of over 10,000 innocent women, children, the youth and the elderly.

“The extant criminal law books of Nigeria are littered with sufficient and tough legal frameworks on dealing with murderers such as the armed Fulani killer herdsmen responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities that the world has ever seen.”

The group lamented that the Presidency has failed to arrest, prosecute and punish the armed killer gangs of Fulani herdsmen, adding that the government is not only treating the mass killers with kid’s gloves but has begun series of measures meant to reward them for their criminal acts of terrorism by seeking to seize lands from communities whose indigenous people share no cultural and/or ethno religious attributes with the Fulani herdsmen.

“Cattle colonies will definitely be a reward for the cocktails of blood cuddling attacks by armed Fulani herdsmen. This is an unfathomable illegality and is similar to government officials actually being the unseen suppliers of the sophisticated weapons of mass destruction which are deployed by the herdsmen in their murderous rampage.”

HURIWA asked communities opposed to this indirect plots to take over their lands and impose foreign religion and way of life by force of arms to their communities to file petitions before competent courts of law.

“If the courts prove to be less independent as a result of the intimidation and subtle threats the judges are facing from the hatchet men heading the different segments of the armed security forces of President Muhammadu Buhari such as the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), then the communities face imminent extinction as a result of the illegal cattle colonies in their ancestral lands.”

HURIWA accused President Buhari of ethnic and religious bias by appointing an all Moslem and largely Fulani/Hausa heads of national security agencies and for letting the armed Fulani herdsmen to continue to carry out their well planned genocides against Christian farming communities.

HURIWA also accused the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Mrs. Amina Mohammed, a Fulani Muslim from Gombe State, of conspiratorial silence in the face of the vicious bombardments of Christian farming communities in Nigeria by armed Fulani herdsmen.

The group tasked the UN Secretary General, the former Portuguese Prime minister, Antonio Guiteres to call for a Security Council meeting over the armed Fulani killings in Nigeria due of the potential of an outbreak of civil war and the consequential grave refugee crisis that any civil war in Nigeria can generate.

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