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*Expresses doubt that Bola Ahmed Tinubu with high appetite for foreign medical tourism may not be able to tackle challenges of national security if inaugurated:
Leading civil Rights Advocacy group- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has tasked the incoming administration and especially the President and the National legislative assembly on the urgency of the moment to comprehensively overhaul the operational modus operandi, the staffing and professional upgrading of the operatives so as to prevent the persistent and intermittent intelligence failures that occasioned the rapid decline of national security in the past eight years.
HURIWA said the incessant attacks and mass killings of Nigerians, including security operatives by armed non state actors, are intolerable unless Nigeria has become a failed state.
HURIWA said that the outgoing Government of President Muhammadu Buhari introduced selfish, illegal and unconstitutional policies and practices regarding the staffing and appointments of heads of these relevant national security outfits to such a ridiculous extent that it almost became the official norm that to rise to the peak of the professional career in any of the intelligence generating security agencies, that the candidate must be a Muslim by religious persuasion and of same Fulani, Hausa, Kanuri ethnicities like the appointing authority.
HURIWA stated that without doubt, the extensive breakdown of law and order in all parts of Nigeria in the last eight years happened because the majority of Southerners believe that the security forces are only headed by the Northern Muslims and therefore there is a lack of patriotism to the extent that it became difficult for Citizens to give actionable intelligence to the security forces because the President, Muhammadu Buhari has shown that he has an Ethno-religious agenda in the operational modalities of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.
The Rights group said it was shocking that even when the Muslim Northerners dominate all the internal security operations as the heads, the North West States of Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina and Sokoto have become operational bases of top terrorists and bandits.
HURIWA blamed large-scale compromises by these top security chiefs from Muslim Northern Nigeria for the large-scale smuggling of weapons of mass destruction that are coming into Nigeria from Chad, Niger and Northern Cameroon inhabited by native speakers of Fulfulde which is same as the Nigerian Fulani speakers affiliated to virtually all the heads of the top intelligence and security institutions in the Country.
The Rights group said that it is regrettable that for 8 years, President Muhammadu Buhari did not practice the management strategy of sanctioning security heads for the gross failures of intelligence occasioning mass killings of Nigerians because of nepotism and tribalism which were the hallmarks of his eight years of treacherous leadership of Nigeria.
HURIWA cite examples with North West States of Kaduns, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto and Katsina as places of operations of mostly Fulani terrorists and bandits who are tolerated by the central government due to ethnic considerations and this accounts for the attacks, killings of citizens and the extensive kidnappings for cash payments that have permeated so much of the North West of Nigeria to an extent that school girls are regularly kidnapped by these dare devil terrorists and kept in the deep forests for as much as two years and even with the phantom air raids by the Nigerian Airforce, saboteur inside of the military give these terrorists kingpins valuable intelligence on planned military operations and therefore providing them with vital information to escape before the bombings take place.
HURIWA stated thus: “One case that calls for the immediate overhaul of the DSS, the Police, amongst few other security institutions including the NIA, is the kidnapping of Kebbi state school girls that are still in the forests two years after they were taken away and the persons responsible are known to the government but they are operating freely to some extent that an investigative report stated that after collecting a huge amount of money as ransom, a notorious bandit kingpin, Dogo Daji, has released four of the 11 remaining students of the Federal Government Girls’ College Yauri, Kebbi state.
Citing an investigative report by PRNigeria, HURIWA said it was gathered that two of the released students returned with two babies delivered while in captivity.
Dogo Daji had insisted that some conditions must be met by Kebbi State government before the remaining girls could be released.
HURIWA quoted media sources as adding that the ransom had to be generated by parents and other stakeholders when Kebbi state government was reluctant to meet the bandits’ demands. The parents had to beg Nigerians to come to their aid financially in order to rescue their children from their abductors.
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HURIWA recalled that in a letter addressed to all Nigerians in January 2023, which PRNigeria obtained, the group known as “Committee of Parents of 11 Abducted Students of F.G.C Birnin Yauri, Kebbi State, Nigeria,” passionately solicited financial assistance towards raising the sum of N100 million as ransom to be paid to the terrorists, in exchange for their wards.
The Rights group recalled too that in their letter, the Chairman and Secretary of the ‘Committee of Parents, Salim Ka’oje and Mr. Daniel Alkali respectively, said their female children (aged between 12-16 years) had been in the custody of their abductors for about 20 months now.
“…And the abductors are demanding the sum of N100 million before they release the girls,” they added.
It would be recalled that the 11 students were kidnapped when bandits invaded their school on 17th June 2021.
In November last year, PRNigeria reported that some of the girls had become teenage mothers, while about four others were pregnant.PRNigeria cannot independently confirm if the ransom paid by the parents was up to the 100 million naira demanded by the bandits.
HURIWA is therefore describing the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari as that which has destroyed the security forces through nepotistic appointments to such a filthy extent that incompetence and corruption in the security services have systematically denied the intelligence generating and security institutions, the capacity and competence to gather actionable intelligence to stop terrorists, kidnappers and sundry Armed non state actors from constituting the kind of spectacular threats they have become against the national security of Nigeria.
Emmanuel Onwubiko is the head of Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) and was National Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria.
