A non-governmental organisation, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has asked the re-elected President Muhammadu Buhari to adopt a number of measures to calm down the tensed atmospheres in Nigeria and bridge the divides created by many of his policies and pronouncements in his first four year tenure.

Such policies, the rights group said, included his proscription of the unarmed pro-self determination group, the Indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB), as a terror group; his heavily lopsided top level security appointments skewed to favour his Hausa/Fulani Muslim kinsmen and his failure to rein in armed Fulami terrorists who have destroyed many largely Christian communities in the North Central and have slaughtered women; children and old men including youths in their thousands with no one of these killers been prosecuted and sanctioned in accordance with the law.

HURIWA said in a statement issued on Wednesday in Abuja that it has always faulted the misuse of state power by the Federal Government officials including Mr. President which resulted in the illegal proscription of an unarmed group like IPOB as a terror group even as the same administration went about dialoguing with the violent armed Fulani killer gangs and failing to declare their leaders known as Miyetti Allah Cattle Owners Association, a terror organisation.

HURIWA also condemned the killings of unarmed demonstrators in Onitsha; Aba and Umuahia prior and during the ill-fated operation Python Dance 2 which targeted the destruction of the fully civilian-led pro-self determination platform of IPOB.

The rights group said the government encouraged impunity and lawlessness by not charging indicted operatives of armed security forces to court for unlawful killings of IPOB members as recorded in a science and evidence based reports by such credible groups like the Amnesty international.

HURIWA recalled that to show how irregular and unconstitutional the one-sided declaration of IPOB as a terror group even when the unarmed members of the organization had suffered thousands of casualties from unprovoked attacks by the army and police is, HURIWA said two days to the official proclamation of IPOB as a terror group the army had already jumped the gun by pronouncing the group a terror organisation when the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) in 2017 two days to the Presidential controversial proclamation had illegally declared IPOB a “terrorist organisation.”

HURIWA recalled that a statement signed by the then Director of Defence Information (DDI), Major General John Enenche (as he then was) in Abuja listed reasons why the group was declared a terrorist organisation to include the formation of a Biafra Secret Service; formation of Biafra National Guard; unauthorised blocking of public access roads; extortion of money from innocent civilians at illegal road blocks.

Others include militant possession and use of weapons (stones, molotov cocktails, machetes and broken bottles among others) on a military patrol on the September 10; physical confrontation of troops by Nnamdi Kanu and other IPOB actors at a checkpoint on September 11, 2017 and also attempts to snatch their rifles and attack by IPOB members at a military checkpoint on September 12, 2017, at Isiala Ngwa, where one IPOB actor attempted to snatch a female soldier’s rifle.

HURIWA, however, said that the claims contained in the statement by the army were absolutely untrue; spurious; unconstitutional and had demonstrated a plot to demonise the group only because the members are mostly from the Igbo-speaking South East of Nigeria that has in the last four years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration suffered systemic marginalisation and has not been given her due in terms of appointments at the top most security levels to depict the Federal Character principles.

HURIWA also recalled that in a swift reaction, the IPOB leader, Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, told the Channels Television in a telephone interview then that IPOB is a non-violent group and should not be tagged a terrorist group.

When asked why the group was recruiting a secret army, the rights group recalled, Kanu said that his group was not recruiting any secret army, but a vigilante group. He said his group would follow due process in challenging the declaration by the army.

HURIWA asked President Buhari to de-proscribe IPOB as a terror group, make top level security and national appointments in the last four-year term of his Presidency to reflect Federal Character principles and present him as a statesman rather than a Northern regional warlord that most Southerners think of him and also set free all political prisoners including erstwhile National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, and the leader of the Shiites Islamic Movement of Nigeria.

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