The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has asked the Directorate of State Services (DSS) arrest insecurity in the country, rather than acting as “national alarmist or town criers”.
The National Coordinator of HURIWA, Comrade Emma Onwubiko, said on Thursday in Abuja that it is worrisome that prominent Northerners like Katsina and Zamfara states governors and lately the Kaduna based Muslim cleric, Dr. Ahmed Gumi have had open interfaces with armed bandits but the DSS has yet to arrest the suppliers of those sophisticated weapons being displayed openly during such publicized parleys.
“We suspect that there are vested interests supplying these weapons of mass destruction to armed bandits who have taken control of most forests across the country.
“We wonder why the DSS has yet to catch up with the sponsors of these bandits but are often inundating the public space with irritating alarms as if it has become the “village town criers”. Is this why Nigerian public spend billions of public cash to maintain that once professionally excellent security institution?
“Please the DSS should be operated in line with the law setting it up so all the suppliers of weapons to armed non- state actors especially the armed Fulani herders attacking every communities in the country through the forests are arrested prosecuted, sanctioned to save Nigeria from imminent war of ethnicities,” Onwubiko said.
He recalled that Dr. Ahmed Abubakar Mahmoud Gumi, on Tuesday visited some bandits in the forests of Shinkafi and Gummi local government areas of Zamfara State, even as the cleric was reported to have gone to another forest at Makkai Forest, where he and his entourage met with more than 600 bandits with automatic rifles, with their top commander, one Kachalla Turji, welcomed the Sheikh.
He said that by virtue of the National Security Agencies ACT, it was irregular and unconstitutional that DSS will do nothing to arrest persons welding sophisticated weapons just as politicians and Islamic clerics are photographed holding conversations with the terrorists and the armed Non- state actors will then speak like persons being owed by Nigerians.
