International lawyer and rights activist Emmanuel Ogebe, yesterday, Thursday, September 26, 2019, wrote the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Gutteres, on the latest terror executions in Nigeria and the Federal Government’s suspension of some international aid NGOs operating in the country’s troubled North-East.

Highlights of the letter by Ogebe, Principal Partner of the Washington-based US NIGERIA LAW GROUP, included photos of latest victims executed by terrorists in the North-East and statistics of over 40 aid workers killed in 10 years.

Entitled “Terrorists execution of Aid-workers & Govt Suspension of Aid NGOs in Nigeria

Your Excellency”, the letter reads:

We regret to inform you that this week Boko Haram/ISWAP Terrorists released videos of the execution of two hostages working on humanitarian assignments in the northeast. Please accept our deepest condolences on the dastardly murder of these two young men during the ongoing UN General Assembly.

Our preliminary investigation has determined that their names are Lawrence Duna Dacighir and Godfrey Ali Shikagham.

Both men are Christians from Kombun District area of Plateau State in central Nigeria.

They were in Maiduguri helping with housing construction to meet the needs of aid workers and victims that have saturated the city when Boko Haram apprehended them.

We are puzzled that while President Buhari was asked at UNGA about future hope for Nigeria’s gargantuan youth population, his response was that the youth will plant 25 million trees. Yet he did not draw attention to youths such as Lawrence and Godfrey who were using their skills to provide a basic human need of shelter to others when they were killed and how this can be averted.

Your excellency, we wish to draw your urgent attention to the fact that taken together with the execution of aid worker Hauwa Liman (ICRC) this time last year, the recorded number of aid workers slaughtered by terrorists in Nigeria over the past decade is now in excess of 40. This averages one per quarter for 10 consecutive years!

Weeks ago an ISWAP terror video claimed that a UNICEF midwife Alice Ngaddah and 16 year old Christian heroine Schoolgirl Leah Sharibu whom I wrote to you about last year have also been killed although not independently confirmed.

The new hostages of Action Against Hunger issued distressful pleas for intervention with no response of note. More executions of humanitarian workers could yet occur.

Despite these humanitarian organizations’ resilience in still serving victims, the Nigerian Government has since just last week suspended Action Against Hunger and Mercy Corp on dubious grounds.

We urge, your excellency, the Secretary General to obtain from Gen. Buhari an assurance that all the hostages will be released before Nigeria’s Independence Day on October 1, 2019.

We also ask that you implore him to lift the suspension on humanitarian groups providing urgent services to victims.

We urge the Secretary General to remind President Buhari of Nigeria’s obligations under international humanitarian law to negotiate the protection of aid workers and non-combatant civilians in its dialogue with BH/ISWAP.

Alice Ngaddah is one of the remaining hostages from a UNICEF project in the Rann IDP camp. UNICEF had previously lost a staff member in the 2011 bombing of the UN Building in Abuja by Boko Haram.

We note however that this is the first execution by Boko Haram/ISWA of an aid worker on the basis of ethnic cleansing.

While the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC rightfully determined, per our submissions, that Boko Haram deserved preliminary examination as a salafist terror group perpetrating crimes against humanity on the basis of religious persecution, the summary execution of Lawrence and Godfrey on the basis of their ethnic origin in Plateau State is a new low for Boko Haram.

A local partner of ours Rev John Pofi of the Pofi Foundation in Plateau State who is related to the slain young men lamented that “we will never get their corpses to bury. The community will have to make do with a makeshift memorial to these young lives cut short so horrifically.

Lawrence and Godfrey left Abuja for Maiduguri in search of opportunities to utilize their skills for the betterment of humanity and paid with their lives. If indeed this administration had firstly created opportunities for the youths and secondly achieved security for the nation, my young cousins would not be dead now.

We must ask ourselves if this is the kind of country we want where young men who are earning an honest living are brutally killed while those who abduct and kill others are invited to dialogue with government and paid handsomely. President Buhari must show the people of Plateau that he does not condone the ethnic cleansing against them just declared by Boko Haram.”

We also wish to urge your excellency to ensure that local aid-workers particular those of Nigerian extraction working on UN projects are provided with life insurance and necessary safeguards like their expatriate counterparts to help assuage their families.

We conclude by wishing you successful deliberations at the UNGA as people of goodwill work collectively towards world peace and pay tribute to those who in that effort paid the ultimate price such Lawrence and Godfrey this week.

Kind regards.

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