Group urges Buhari to stop killings by gunmen in southeast

A group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), on Monday called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba, to take quick, decisive actions to stem the ugly trend of the unending bloodletting and carnage in the southeast.

HURIWA accused President Muhammadu Buhari of purportedly “tolerating serial dereliction of duties and clear intelligence failures by his security chiefs. The group argued that the Inspector General of Police, who is primarily in charge of internal security and law enforcement institution, would have been sacked for his spectacular failures.”

HURIWA, in a statement on Monday by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, lamented that it is saddening that security forces, including the Nigeria Police Force, the Nigerian Army, the Department of State Services, and other intelligence and security agencies, have failed to halt the barbaric killings in the southeast and demystify the “unknown gunmen” phenomenon.

The decried the endless list of horrific killings by unknown gunmen in the southeast, lamenting the fresh in the serial murder, which is the killing of Sule Mathew, a First Class graduate of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University, Kano.

The group noted that Mathew was killed in February by gunmen with some passengers in Ekwulobia, Anambra State while on a journey.

The group also highlighted that in May 2021, unknown gunmen also shot dead a former presidential aide, Ahmed Gulak, on his way to the Sam Mbakwe International Cargo airport, Owerri, Imo State.

In September 2021, the rampaging gunmen also brutally murdered Dr. Chike Akunyili, widower of the late Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Prof. Dora Akunyili, in Anambra State.

HURIWA National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, protested that it is disturbing that the President is comfortable with the descending of the southeast into another northeast Nigeria ravaged by insurgency.

The National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, declared: “It is alarming that despite the inability and failure of the security forces especially police and DSS to conclusively prove the exact identities of these mass murderers, the President is very comfortable working with heads of these institutions who clearly have demonstrated a classical failure of their key mandate.

“Also, there is for now no known empirical evidence to support the empty and unintelligent claims by the commissioners of Police in the South-East that the Indigenous People of Biafra is behind the killings.

“Finger pointing is needless and of no value to any Nigerians. Security agents must not allow the killings to continue. The South-East is gradually emaciating economically and in tourism due to the insecurity created by the “unknown gunmen” The security agents must quit rhetoric and apprehend those responsible, regardless of who they are. There must be no cover ups and sacred cows.

“Incompetent heads of security agencies who can’t deliver on a simple mandate of his job should be fired immediately. The President must not sit idly with underperforming commanders at security meetings.

“Security agents and their bosses should sit up and deploy intelligence led operations to uncover the kingpins of the unknown gunmen rather than the current modus operandi of the use of brute force and extrajudicial killings of mostly innocent Igbo youths and the destruction of towns and villages by security forces any time their personnel are killed by these so called unknown gunmen or hoodlums.”