The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has asked the security services in the country to ‘arrest, prosecute and jail’ the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed for allegedly defending armed Fulani herdsmen.
The rights group alleged that the Minister had, during a broadcast, referred to armed Fulani herdsmen as ‘nationalists’ who believe in the sovereignty of Nigeria.
‘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,’ HURIWA said in a statement on Tuesday.
Angered by the recent massacre of over 43 villagers in Sokoto State by armed men suspected to be herders, HURIWA slammed Lai Mohammed over the alleged comments.
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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”.
Following the massacre which occurred on Sunday when the assailants invaded the Goronyo Market in Sokoto State, HURIWA said, ‘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’.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK