Security heads must account for security failures during elections, says HURIWA

HUMAN Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), on Tuesday, said that the heads of security institutions such as the military Police and others should be made to account for the actions of their personnel deployed for the 2023 general elections.

The Rights group said there was no justification for the gross abdication of their pre-election and election security duties that was witnessed massively in Ebonyi, Lagos and Rivers State and not forgetting Kano State.

HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, added that the “horrific and horrendous crimes against humanity that occurred during the elections in Ebonyi State” have already been captured in a detailed report that HURIWA will dispatch to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

The group asked the international community to probe the political killings and violence and slam extreme sanctions on the perpetrators.

HURIWA also wants the International community to slam the travel ban on Governor Umahi unless and until he can prove that the killers of affected citizens have been arrested and handed over to an unbiased judicial forum for prosecution for murder.

It argued that most of the suspicious deaths were politically motivated and that the reason HURIWA would be writing Amnesty International to also conduct her own separate independent investigation on the alleged executions.

Onwubiko said: “The political intolerance in Ebonyi during Governor Dave Umahi and his All Progressives Congress party reached a crescendo in the build-up to the 2023 general elections and this was responsible for the withdrawal of our support for Umahi’s Senate Presidency ambition.

“Already, we have drawn up a list of citizens killed before, during and after the 2023 poll in Ebonyi State under the current dispensation and we are asking the USA, UK, AUSTRALIA, Canada, EU and the ICC to ask President Muhammadu Buhari to investigate and those responsible be prosecuted either in Nigeria or in ICC for crimes against humanity.

“We are not saying Governor Umahi did the killings but as the Chief security officer of Ebonyi State he is legally obliged to render absolute accounts of all these unwarranted killings during his eight years regime.”

Huriwa alleged that several party agents, traditional rulers, and engineers have been killed, while several others were declared missing which calls for serious and immediate action.