Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has threatened to enlist the Zamfara state Governor Bello Matawalle in a soon to be introduced National Black Book of Promoters of Hate Speech and Hate Crimes.

The rights group has also decided to circulate a travel advisory globally warning people not to travel to Zamfara State.

It equally challenged the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Ibrahim Isa Pantami, to convince Nigerians that he is no longer associated with his alleged anti-American rhetorics and alleged endorsement of the ideology of AlQaeda by travelling to the United States and then return without any incidence with the Federal Bureau of investigations (FBI).

HURIWA promised to start off a Go Fund Me initiative to raise money for purchase of return tickets for Minister Pantami should he take up the challenge to travel to the US and return “so we believe that he has no link whatsoever with his alleged romancing of the extremist teaching of AlQaeda.”

In a media statement on the allegations of having links with AlQaeda which the Minister vigorously denied, the rights group said although the Minister had disassociated himself from the claim of being listed by the US on its FBI watch list, “We are indeed at a loss how a man with so much of Western education with a chain of academic laurels including a prestigious doctorate from a Scottish University, can be the same person in some of the audio-visual records being circulated and in which he allegedly supported the Islamic extremist teaching of global jihadists movements.

“We think it is disingenuous for the Minister to threaten media houses with law suit for publishing what he considers as untrue story that he is on the watch list of FBI but the rights group is hereby demanding his removal from such a sensitive position that has to do with the custody of the very sensitive cyber-data of Nigerians going by the available body of evidence surrounding his alleged support for global jihadists movements. So, we think he should resign from public office until we are convinced that our data are safe with him in the office of Communications and Digital Economy Minister.”

On the Zamfara State governor who recently allegedly threatened to attack Southerners in the North, the rights group said the governor has clearly written his name in the black book of persons who are now threatening to destroy the longstanding Inter-ethnic and Inter-religious harmony even as his recent diatribe against Southerners amounted to stocking up ethnic conflicts in Nigeria.

“We urge the security forces to put the Zamfara State governor on active Surveillance as someone who could undermine National Security,” HURIWA said in the statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday.