The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has condemned the reported widespread violent attacks by armed soldiers of boys who wore dreadlocks in the commercial city of Aba in Abia State.

HURIWA calls the actions of these armed security forces as the clearest manifestations of criminal rascality and an elaborate attempts to draw a wedge between the military and civilians in an era whereby the nation’s military is in need of winning the hearts and minds of civilians so as to build formidable data bank of actionable intelligence to check the unprecedented upsurge in violent crimes all over Nigeria.

HURIWA has therefore asked the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Yusuf Buratai, to immediately order the investigation and prosecution of the soldiers who embarked on these sorts of violence against the civil populace just as the Rights group expressed shock that these misconducts and criminality can still go on amongst soldiers even when the current hierarchy of the Nigerian Army has reportedly invested so much human and material resources to build the capacity of personnel manning the human rights desks of the Nigerian Army in the last couple of years.

HURIWA reiterated her call that the Chief of Army staff should upgrade the Human Rights desks of the Army into a full-fledged department to be coordinated by a General just as the group calls for increased collaboration between the Army and credible and independent minded civil society organisations with track records of activities in the human rights industry.

In a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, the rights group said the attacks violates several provisions of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 (as amended).

HURIWA stated: “We have it on records that the commercial centre of Abia State, was on Saturday thrown into panic as masked soldiers reportedly arrested, flogged and shaved off the hair of young men wearing dreadlocks and those with bushy and tinted hair. It was gathered that the soldiers also took the young men to an unknown destination.”

Some residents who witnessed the incident, said they were afraid that another season of Operation Python Dance might have commenced in the state, adding that the inhuman treatment meted out to the young men and innocent youths was uncalled for.

HURIWA said: “We have been informed by our members in Aba that the soldiers visited major streets in the city dehumanizing young men and taking them to an unknown destination without any explanation. We were told that the targets of these marauding and lawless armed soldiers were young men, who wore dreadlocks and those who tinted their hair.

“The masked soldiers flogged many of their victims and used scissors to cut off the hair and then threw the victims into their vehicles and zoomed off.”

The rights group said it was nonsensical that professional soldiers can be let loose to go about harassing the civil populace and misbehaving in these sorts of pathetic modes. Dreadlocks are the choice of some persons even as some religious minded persons keep dreadlocks for spiritual reasons. Nigerian constitution provides for right to freedom of religion.

The rights group then condemns the misconducts of the armed soldiers as primitive and unbecoming of a modern day professionally trained armed forces. This show of shame must stop and the inducted soldiers punished.

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