The recent report of the United States Department of State classifying Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari as among countries persecuting Christians has received the endorsement of a civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA).

It noted that the indictment could not have come at a better time “considering the fact that the Nigerian government has willfully failed and refused to arrest, prosecute and punish the sponsors and actors in the serial mass killings of farmers, Christian worshippers and villagers by armed Fulani herdsmen for over three years running since the current administration came on board in 2015.”

HURIWA in a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday also asked world leaders “to mount pressure on the Nigerian government to render proper account of the number of armed kidnappers and bandits rounded up and paraded in the media by the Nigerian Police Force but who have till date not made to face justice.”

The rights group said it is also shocking that over three months since a Taraba-based armed kidnapper, Alhaji Hamisu Wadume, and a serving Army Captain were indicted for killing three armed police crime investigators there are concerted effort to sweep the heinous crime under the carpet.

According to the rights group, “Several top ranking government officials working for President Buhari openly backed the activities of the dare-devil armed Fulani herdsmen which they justified by criticising some states like Benue and Taraba for legislating against open grazing of cattle by Herdsmen.”

It further alleged: “The Presidency has failed to either set up judicial commissions of inquiry or to cause the immediate arrest of all the suspected mass killers who masquerade as armed herdsmen to perpetrate dastardly crimes of blood-cuddling violence unleashed on selected Christian communities in Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Adamawa, Taraba and Benue states, including the killings of several Catholic Priests in Benue state and their worshippers and the systematic kidnappings of Christian pastors in Kaduna State by suspected armed Islamists and armed Fulani herdsmen which the central and state governments have failed and refused to handle with efficiency and effectiveness because of their faith or their Ethno cultural backgrounds.”

HURIWA said it has consistently blamed the current administration under the Katsina-born President of sidelining Southerners and Christians in the composition of the hierarchies of the nation’s internal security architectures.

The rights group said “the lopsided appointments of only Hausa/Fulani Moslem Northerners to head strategic internal security institutions in a secular society like Nigeria against the constitutionally guaranteed Federal Character Principles enshrined in section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).”

“We are exceedingly pleased that the United States of America has belatedly acted to challenge the current administration in Nigeria on its failure to arrest and prosecute mass murderers.

“We are happy to read from the world’s strategic super power nation that no country, entity, or individual will be able to persecute people of faith with impunity, in the same words of the United States’ Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, as said in the statement from the USA.”

“Atrocities targeted religious minorities of Christianity in the North have happened and President Muhammadu Buhari overlooked these vicious criminal acts of killings and genocide,” HUIWA said.

It added: “To say that religious sectarian violence increased in 2018, with Muslims and Christians attacked based on their religious and ethnic identity as indicated in The American report is to state The obvious. The Nigerian federal government failed to implement effective strategies to prevent or stop such violence or to hold perpetrators accountable as disclosed in the United States’ report and these are factually accurate and can’t be contradicted by anybody of superior arguments or body of empirical knowledge. These are the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We plead with the US GOVERNMENT to impose sanctions on the federal government headed by the former military leader Muhammadu Buhari.”

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