HURIWA attacks Buhari over Gaddafi comment

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has attacked
President over his comment on the rampaging Fulani herdsmen.

Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari, who is currently on vacation
in London, had during a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury,
blamed erstwhile Libyan President, Col. Muamar Gaddafi, for the
attacks in various parts of Nigeria.

But Reacting to the president's comment, HURIWA, through its leader,
Emmanuel Onwubiko, said Buhari showed no sympathy to thousands of
Nigerians being murdered in their farms and homes, adding that he
(Buhari) and the entire presidency, have tried to confuse Nigerians
with different narratives as regard the real cause of the continued
attacks.

In a statement forwarded to DAILY POST on Friday, Onwubiko said, "I
watched in considerable trepidation and anxiety as my President who is
vacationing in London, in the United Kingdom held a conversation with
the Archbishop of Canterbury around the issues of the pre-meditated
mass murders by armed Fulani herdsmen targeting rural Christian
farmers.

"He showed no remorse or sympathy with the thousands of the victims
cut down in their prime but was smoking with some hot air around some
make-belief and hearsay proposition.

"My trepidation and anxiety later turned into astonishment and
disappointment when against every sheds of empirical evidence to the
contrary, my president and commander-in-chief of Nigeria Armed Forces
blamed a dead man, the erstwhile Libyan leader colonel Muamar Gaddafi
for the upsurge in targeted genocides by armed Fulani herdsmen all
around Nigeria. See how long Gaddafi had been slaughtered by Libyan
rebels trained and armed by Europe and America.

"The claim made by president Buhari is a sharp departure from some of
the things he and his affiliates in the presidency have always told
Nigerians on the remote and immediate causes of the armed insurrection
against land owners and farmers by armed Fulani herdsmen. It
contradicts his illegal initiative to colonise peoples' landed for the
purposes of using public fund to set up cattle colonies. Was he
planning to set up cattle colonies to resettle the so called Libya
trained mass murderers or what?

"For instance, in the wake of the mass killings by armed Fulani
herdsmen in Benue State of over 100 farmers who were given state
public burial by Benue State government, president Buhari told the
visiting community and political leaders from Benue who had thronged
the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja that 'they should learn to
accommodate their neighbours.' Who are these neighbours if we go by
the most recent hypothesis of Buhari who introduced the illogical
Gaddafi narrative?

"The Inspector General of police Ibrahim Idriss Kpodum who clearly has
demonstrated high level of incompetence and incapacity to tackle the
rising rate of vicious attacks by hoodlums targeting civilians, had
blamed what he called 'Communal Conflicts' for the killings in Benue
State. Who are these communities fighting if we go by Buhari's tale by
moonlight on the Libyan nexus?

"Another narrative was however introduced by the Minister of Defence,
a retired Major General from Zamfara state when he shifted the blame
for the phenomenal bloody violence in Benue, Taraba, Adamawa, Southern
Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa and Kogi states to what he termed' the
blocking of cattle grazing routes by some states.' Who are grazing
these cattle that found out that their traditional grazing routes are
blocked if we go by Buhari's sensational claim on the Libyan
connection?

"Buhari himself has prevaricated and has engaged in a multiplicity of
narratives around the disturbing issues of armed Fulani attacks. His
only consistency in the entire scenarios is his inconsistency.

"Each time he is addressing foreign audiences in the West, he has
attempted to market the Gaddafi's narrative as the cause of the
heightened state of insecurity in Nigeria. But at home, he oscillates
between blaming foreign mercenaries to the illogicality of the
blockade of grazing routes.

"For one arm of the intelligence gathering agencies – Department of
state services (DSS) also headed by Buhari's Fulani kinsman, the main
perpetrators of the killings are not Fulani herdsmen original to
Nigeria but foreign fighters and terrorists affiliated to the Islamic
state of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) that is already defeated by the
coalition forces headed by the United States.

"It would therefore seem that Nigeria under the current political
leadership with a preponderance of Fulani/Hausa born heads of all the
internal security agencies, does not have a harmonized theory about
who is behind the ongoing attacks targeting largely Christian farmers
in the North central and Southern Kaduna axis."