HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has advised the National Security Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Alhaji Nuhu Ribadu to keep political theatrics aside in confronting the matters of National security interest. HURIWA faulted the open display of partisan politics by the NSA for viewing activities of terrorists as mere ‘rivals’ of President Tinubu who are in his word ‘daring’ President Tinubu. HURIWA said it was an irreparable fallacy and a distorted thinking for the presidential security aide to assume that armed non-state actors killing, maiming Nigerians in different parts of the Country are just ‘daring’ the person of President Bola Tinubu just as the Rights group lamented the introduction of political showmanship into the national conversations about terrorists, bandits, outlaws and well-armed non-state actors by the National Security Adviser. HURIWA says issues of national security interest go beyond a mere political CIRCUS SHOW’.HURIWA recalled that the National Security Adviser, NSA, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, said on Wednesday that nobody dares President Bola Tinubu and remains the same, warning the new terror group, Lakurawas, of making the mistake of invading parts of the northwest.This came on a day the Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, General Christopher Musa, deployed a contingent of soldiers to the troubled Augie Local Government Area of Kebbi State where no fewer than 17 people at Mera village were killed by members of the terror group.Mallam Ribadu, who spoke at the Comptroller-General of Customs conference in Abuja, vowed that the Federal Government would eliminate the group shortly for daring the President.The NSA, who represented the president at the conference, said: “The new group, Lakurawa, or whatever they call themselves, have made a mistake. This is Nigeria of 2024, we will finish them.“No one dares Tinubu and wins. No one fights Tinubu and wins. The terrorists that were in many parts of the country, we are killing.“There is silence in many parts where they were operating. Go to where Boko Haram was operating, there is silence. They have fled to the Niger Republic; many are surrendering.HURIWA however strongly disagreed with the position of the National Security Adviser who seemed to be equating the continuous bloody attacks by terrorists and the invasion of Sokoto and Kebbi by a terrorist group known as Lakurawas, as a direct daring of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu which has reduced the war on terror to a personalised level.HURIWA said that personalised approach by the NSA is absolutely uncalled for because terrorists unleashing violence are threatening the corporate existence of Nigeria and they are not just daring President Tinubu. HURIWA reminds NSA Ribadu that Nigeria is bigger than anyone of us including the person holding a tenured office as the President and therefore any attempt to elevate the person of the president to that of a DEITY, is absolutely unacceptable and erroneous. “To be candid, we think sir, that as the NSA to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that you know very well that our security challenges are not personal issues directed at the person of President Tinubu. “Our security challenges threaten our continuous existence as a nation irrespective of whoever is in office as the President. The most appropriate professional approach is to avoid the use of political rhetoric in addressing security matters because whereas the President will serve out his constitutional term limit and quit, the corporate sovereign state of Nigeria would remain. “Those who attack Nigerians are not rivals to the President politically, as the NSA’s most recent statement sounded, attackers of Nigerians are enemies of Nigeria as a political entity.”Besides, HURIWA faulted the NSA who claimed that there is quiet in the South East of Nigeria just as the Rights group said President Bola Tinubu has failed to restore genuine peace and tranquility in the South East by failing to free Mazi Nnamdi Kanu the leader of the Indigenous peoples of Biafra (IPOB) even when respected leaders of the Igbo ethnicity made genuine entreaties to the President. “The silence that Nuhu Ribadu said exists in his ‘imaginary South East’ is just the silence of the graveyard because insecurity is pervasive in the South East today as we write with a wide expanse of lands that are ungoverned spaces with armed groups controlling those places that are out of reach by soldiers and police.”There are ongoing killings by both state and non-state actors even as latest as 24 hours ago when some persons destabilizing the South East killed two soldiers manning a roadblock in the border between Abia and Imo state. HURIWA said the central government alongside the South East state governors are in a conspiratorial communion not to resolve the issues in the South East because it would seem that the instability in the South East benefits those running the central government, politically.”
Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA). November 14th 2024.
