Don’t sweep Plateau State’s terror attacks under the carpet- HURIWA

● Says it’s a national security threat

[Press Release] Prominent civil rights advocacy group- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA)- has accused military and police chiefs of subterranean plots to sweep under the carpet, the deadliest terrorist attacks in Nigeria of year 2023 which were the Christmas eve coordinated terror attacks in 23 Plateau State communities by suspected armed Fulani terrorists in which over 200 villagers mainly Christian natives were murdered and their housing assets burnt to the ground by the marauding terrorists.

HURIWA said the signal from the public statements and actions of virtually all the service chiefs including the Chief of Defence Staff and the National Security Adviser to the President, showed a notorious proclivity to sweep these crimes against humanity under the carpet of impunity just as the Rights group said letting these huge body of criminality to go without arresting the perpetrators and sponsors was definitely a massive National security threat.

HURIWA restated her conviction that the only reason terrorists continue to attack soft targets and get away with their crimes against humanity is because there are no consequences for offenders of the laws even as the government tolerates impunity.

HURIWA is asking the President and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Nigeria to mandate his service chiefs, the CDS primarily and his National Security Adviser to set up a high powered body of intelligence officers, investigators and forensic criminologist within and outside the security agencies, to undertake the urgent task of trailing, arresting, prosecuting and legally obtaining closures and inevitable justice for the victims of one of the most gruesome criminal acts of genocide and carefully choreographed pogroms in Plateau State which basically are about to be swept under the carpet by those whose primary duty it is to enforce the laws against terrorists.

Conversely, HURIWA backs the position of the Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State who believes and has professed in the media that the incessant attacks on the state are acts of terrorism, claiming security agents know the masterminds.

HURIWA recalled that the Plateau State government through the governor has just stated thus: “What I can tell you is the killings in Plateau and the attacks in recent times are pure acts of terrorism,” he said on Friday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.

According to him, the earlier Nigeria deals with these attacks, the better as he claimed those sponsoring terrorism are known even as the Plateau State government through the governor stated also as follows:
“I believe that the sponsors of the terrorists, the financiers of the terrorists, and those who arm the terrorists are known.
“And the security agencies know them or they have the capacity to know them. And that is why we are insisting that the security agencies must do their work, which is to protect lives and properties,” he maintained.

HURIWA in a media statement maintained that the way and manner that the heads of all the relevant security agencies have moved on from the Plateau State attacks by armed terrorists and are no longer seemingly under any kind of pressure to arrest the suspects, show that these crimes on the Plateau State will be swept under the carpet which makes Nigeria a nation that officially tolerates impunity and lawlessness.