How President Has Led Nigeria Backward In Five Years, By HURIWA

THehuman Rights Writers Association of Nigeria ( HURIWA) has claimed that the current government has dragged Nigeria backward in all identifiable human development indices by about 60 years or more.

The rights group said the state of human rights violations in the past five years has assumed epic proportions, noting that impunity, lawlessness and lack of respect for the sanctity of human life have become so widespread that many parts of the country were currently “in a state of civil war.”

HURIWA lamented that “hundreds of armed mass killers were getting away with their dastardly acts of genocides waged against communities all across the country with the Northwest and Northeast of Nigeria becoming killing fields.”

“The unfortunate scenario is that since the last five years, top government officials have misused their powers to turn Nigeria into a police state thereby clamping journalists who write unfavourable news stories into detentions with lots of framed up and trumped- up charges,” it said. In a statement yesterday in Abuja by the National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director, Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said that it was laughable that whereas the Federal Government identifies the armed Boko Haram insurgency group as terrorists, it has rather chosen to treat armed Fulani herdsmen and the murderous attackers in the Northwest states of Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto as mere armed bandits.

The statement added: “It is sad that in the last five years, the current administration has treated with kid gloves the cases of coordinated killings orchestrated and choreographed by armed Fulani herdsmen in Benue, Plateau, Enugu and Delta with the clear failure of either the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami or the Inspector General of Police ( IGP), Mohammed Adamu, to prosecute and punish armed Fulani herdsmen arrested with sophisticated weapons and paraded by the National Police in Abuja.