Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha
A human rights and pro-democracy group known as Human Rights, Liberty Access and Peace Defenders Foundation (HURIJE) has alleged that at least 10 people were killed in Nigeria every day, especially in Zamfara and Kaduna states.
The group said that it came up with the figure after its investigative tour of Zamfara and Kaduna states where statistics showed that there was no day in Nigeria, ten people were not killed.
The chairman of HURIJE, Dede Uzor, who spoke to the media after the tour said the figure gives an indication of a country in a state of war.
Uzor asked that President Muhammadu Buhari to assume responsibility for numerous Killings across the country.
The group said the war was being waged against the people of Nigeria by Boko Haram sect, Fulani Herdsmen, armed bandits and other criminal elements in the country who are perpetuating heinous crimes in the country.
“This continuous trend of killings without any serious response from the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a clear indication that he is either incapacitated, lacks the political will to address the killings or he is allegedly and out rightly behind it.
“The president should assume responsibility for the continuous massacre in Zamfara, Yobe, Bauchi, Kaduna, Adamawa, Katsina, Benue, Enugu, Abia, Plateau, Taraba states. In fact, all over Nigeria, about 15 states are in a state of war.”
The president, the group said, took one billion dollars from the Federation Account to fight insecurity in the country during the last budgetary allocation but the menace has continued unabated. Again, a few days ago, it was said that the presidency provided a whopping sum of N100 billion to Fulani herdsmen to join hands with Federal government to fight banditry among other criminal activities in the northern part of the country.
“Is it that the president did not deploy the money? He should give an account of how he spent all the monies to Nigerians,” the group said.
The group, however, condemned as hypocritical, Buhari’s condemnation of the killing in Sri Lanka in which over 200 persons died in churches, “but blatantly failed to visit the scenes of brutal killing of soldiers and innocent citizens in Nigeria” the group stated.