HURIWA asks South East govs, others to proffer solutions to insecurity

• Urges FG to classify Miyetti Allah as a terrorist group
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has asked South-East governors, religious and civil rights leaders to furnish solutions to end insecurity in the region.

It said that if the Federal Government wants an end to insecurity, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) should be classified as a terrorist group and investigated for its alleged funding and fuelling of violence in the South-East.

In a statement, yesterday, in Abuja by its National Co-ordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, the group regretted that the Igbo political leaders were busy chasing shadows and failing to take deep measures to check the expanding frontiers of co-ordinated attacks against South-East.

HURIWA, which urged thorough investigation of the widespread allegation that the Department of State Services (DSS) might have a hand in the spate of attacks in the region, said that only pragmatic measures could bring to an end the rising security nightmares in the South-East and the escalation of targeted killings and destruction of strategic national security assets.

The statement read: “HURIWA is once more compelled to express resounding disappointment and shock at the clear absence of any pragmatic approaches by Igbo leaders and governors but instead, most of the decisions reached on Tuesday in Enugu are cosmetic, unrealistic and utopian.

“The most pragmatic approach is to negotiate an end to the tagging of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as a terrorist group, institute constructive back channel dialogues with the detained leader of IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and his members, consider conditional release from incarceration of all prisoners of conscience, belonging to IPOB, including their leader and for government to realistically investigate the possibility that Miyetti Allah may have a hand in the activities of the so-called unknown gunmen.

“It heartwarming that President Muhammadu Buhari has showed his readiness to mediate in the ongoing war between Ethiopia and Eritrea but since charity begins at home, the President needs to initiate far-reaching measures to negotiate a truce with agitators for self-determination in Southern Nigeria.”

HURIWA, therefore, wondered how the governors of the South-East have failed to hire private forensic investigators from Europe to help unravel the identities of the funders of unknown gunmen and to ascertain the persons carrying out the killings, but instead have continued to hold on to the lazy, infantile and highly unscientific conclusion that IPOB is behind the killings.