Tuesday, 19th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

HURIWA urges UN to probe of Boko Haram activities, troops arrest four terrorists

By Segun Olaniyi (Abuja) and Njadvara Musa (Maiduguri)
22 March 2018   |   4:24 am
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called on the United Nations Security Council to probe the activities of the Boko Haram sect in the North East.

AFP Photo/Issouf Sanogo

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called on the United Nations Security Council to probe the activities of the Boko Haram sect in the North East.

It noted that that it has become imperative for the international community through the global body to put in place mechanisms to end the seemingly ‘business-as-usual’ operations of the armed insurgents, particularly “when there are suspicious circumstances surrounding the abductions and series of subterranean negotiations for their freedom.”

It also expressed shock at the news of the death of five of the 110 kidnapped Dapchi school girls even as the group raised the alarm that there could be more to the release of the girls than meets the eye, hence a transparent investigation.

In a statement yesterday in Abuja by its National Coordinator and National Media Affairs Director, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said: “It looks like some persons now have the franchise of masquerading as Boko Haram terrorists or may be colluding with the real Boko Haram terrorists to play on the gullibility of Nigerians by staging choreographed abductions and releases of kidnapped hostages either with commercial or political benefits in mind or both. This game of deception must stop and the good people of North East of Nigeria must be allowed to have their peaceful, communal and productive lives back.”

The rights group stated that since the Federal Government had demonstrated lack of political will to investigate, document and publicly transmit to Nigerians and the international community, the exact circumstances, actors and sponsors of the sect’s terror activities, it therefore behooves the international community to conduct an independent, transparent and evidence-based probe into the whole affairs with the goal of bringing it to a minimal level.

It noted that the inexplicable circumstances surrounding the sad incident and the contradictory narratives from official and unofficial sources surrounding their ‘freedom’ demand that the United Nations Security Council should lead an international investigative commission to be set up by the global body to uncover the remote and immediate happenings that evolved into the full blown insurgency by the armed insurgents in the North East for over five years now and to unravel the syndicates milking the nation through payments of secret ransoms and financial settlements.

HURIWA also stated that there was the need to understand why the military, which claimed to have technically defeated the terrorists, was reportedly prevented from decisively crushing the last stronghold of Abubakar Shekau in Sambisa Forest prior to the kidnap of the Dapchi schoolgirls and their release in controversial circumstances.

“The report that troops were surreptitiously withdrawn as they approach the enclave in Sambisa where Shekau was hiding must be investigated and the most credible forum for such investigation is the Security Council of the UN.

“The world also must be told in very clear term if it is true that an imminent capture of the Shekau was aborted by the Army on the purported directive of someone from above,” it added.

Besides, the group lambasted the Federal government for failing to forestall the kidnap, even as it called for the identification of the security officials who got wind of the invasion but failed to prevent it as alleged factually by the United Kingdom-based Amnesty international.

HURIWA equally condemned the decision of the security authorities and the state government not to detail adequate troops to secure the school, saying the alleged withdrawal of the military from the town prior to the abduction of the girls had fueled a conspiracy theory that it may have been carried out to score a cheap political point.

Meanwhile, troops of Operation Lafiya Dole have arrested one Bubayi Isa, a suspected high profile Boko Haram insurgent at Panama village in Gunda
District of Borno State.

The Director, Army Public Relations, Brig.-Gen. Texas Chukwu, confirmed the development in a statement yesterday in Maiduguri, said three other suspects were also apprehended in Borno and Adamawa states.

He listed the others to include Muhammad Buba, Yakubu Abubakar and Yakubu Abdullahi.

In this article

0 Comments