From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
An advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has accused the United Kingdom-based international media outfit, Reuters, of pursuing an evil agenda to destroy the Nigerian military’s anti-terror war with its skewed abortion report in Nigeria’s North-East.
In a statement on Friday, National Coordinator of HURIWA, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said the editors of the news service are complicitous by keeping a purported secret and illegal abortion programme in the terror-torn North-East zone since 2013 and should therefore be arrested and prosecuted by International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes.
The group said rather than rope in the Nigerian Army, it is on record that a UK-based NGO, Marie Stopes International Organisation Nigeria self-confessed that the organisation averted unintended pregnancies in 59,452 women in Borno between 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.
HURIWA described as misleading and malicious, the report by Reuters because the group sounded the just days ago that a foreign news organisation is fanning the embers of hatred against the Nigerian Army and peddling false or exaggerated accusations supposedly to weaken the military and help arms supplies to sell more weapons to terrorists.
HURIWA’s Onwubiko said, “Reuters is complicitous to have generated a report about what it calls abortion clinics in North East since 2013 but kept it to itself meaning that it should be prosecuted by ICC. Editors of Reuters should be arrested and prosecuted by ICC for hiding information about these crimes against humanity which may have been committed by this NGO and not Nigeria Army.
“Reuters has agenda to destroy Nigeria’s war on terror by peddling the totally disjointed allegations against the Army when it is even a public knowledge that a certain UK based NGO may even be the one clandestinely running abortion programme under the guise of providing women with reproductive rights related services in the North East.
“The Nigerian Army knows nothing about the abortion clinics based on the affirmation of the UK-based NGO aforementioned. The NGO may have committed unapproved abortion services for which Reuters is attempting to rope around the neck of Nigerian Army for some ulterior motives. Reuters should publish an apology to the Nigerian Army for such distortion of truth.”
