HURIWA wants Minister Lai arrested over alleged defence of herdsmen

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has charged security agencies to arrest and prosecute the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed for his alleged defence of criminal herdsmen.

HURIWA made this call on Tuesday via a statement issued by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko.

This was in response to a statement by the Minister that herders are unlike secessionists because they are not out to create division in the country.

However, HURIWA, in its statement, said, “The criminal act of actively soliciting support for terrorists offends the extant anti-terror law of Nigeria which the information minister has breached with reckless abandon.

“From empirical evidence, it may take international pressure to dissuade the central government from going ahead with its entrenched active support for Fulani terrorists going by public utterances of key officials of the current administration in Abuja which appears to be heavily sympathetic to Islamist and Fulani terrorists.”

READ ALSO: HURIWA accuses Presidency of preemptive attacks on IPOB, Yoruba Nation agitators

The group further espoused on the criminal activities of the bandits in the aftermath of the recent killings of over 43 villagers in Sokoto State.

The rights group said, “Lai Mohammed’s defence of armed Fulani attackers confirmed that there is an official agenda in Aso-Rock to pamper, defend, protect, promote and sponsor the increasingly expansive terrorist attacks all across the Country targeted largely at Christians or non-Fulani such as Hausa farmers in the North West.

“It will be difficult to convince any right-thinking and objective Nigerian Worldwide that the current central government is actually carrying out any concrete and factual, verifiable and determined, precise and transparent attacks targeting Fulani terrorists.

“The terror attacks in Sokoto by the Fulani terrorists have shown that maybe Nigerians are being deceived by the military who keep dishing out tissues of Media propaganda claiming to have decimated certain numbers of Fulani terrorists around the North West and the North Central states.

“These may just be audio and deceptive military phantom attacks. Now the national interview by Lai Mohammed has further confirmed the suspicion by millions of Nigerians that the Federal Government harbours terrorist sympathisers including one that is a minister who was caught on tape supporting Al-Quaeda and the murderous Taliban terrorists”.

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