The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has expressed both shock and consternation at the killing, last Saturday morning by a hit-and-run driver in Lagos, of popular journalist and the Vice Chairman of Sun group of Newspapers, Pastor Dimgba Igwe.

Besides, the rights group has called on state governments and the Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory to restore the right of way for pedestrians and bicycle riders in the planning and execution of city and township infrastructure to save pedestrians from the menace of rough and sometimes drunken drivers in most Nigerian cities.

In a statement in Abuja signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and National Director of Media Affairs, Ms Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA also called on the Federal Ministry of Information, the Nigerian Union of Journalists and the Nigerian Guild of Editors to jointly work out how to immortalise the late Igwe.

HURIWA wants the proposed headquarters of the Nigerian Guild of Editors in Abuja named after Mr. Dimgba Igwe because of his immense contributions to journalism in Nigeria even as it called on the Nigerian Universities Commission to erect a professorial seat in the faculty of mass communications in one of the federal universities to document and pass on to generations yet unborn the large volumes of journalistic activities of the late scholar and journalist.

HURIWA stated: “We join millions of people in Nigeria to mourn the demise in the most cruel fashion of one of the nation’s finest minds and easily the most widely read back page newspaper columnist in contemporary Nigeria, Mr. Dimgba Igwe, who also excelled in the field of authorship of scholarly books. We call on the Nigerian Government through the office of the Federal Minister of Information to meet with the Nigerian Union of Journalists and the Nigerian Guild of Editors to formulate and implement rapid measures on how to immortalise the memory of Mr. Dimgba Igwe who served Nigeria meritoriously using his prodigious gift of the creative writing and scholarship.

“We also wish to remind all state governors and the minister of Abuja to ensure that pedestrians are given their right of way in the planning and implementation of city infrastructure and there has to be an effective way of monitoring the abuses of pedestrians’ right of way by callous and reckless motorists. There is no justification for any driver to run down a man/woman jogging if not that such a heartless driver is an anarchist who is so mean as to knock down a human being he/she must have seen clearly. This is so sad.”

HURIWA equally called for stiffer penalty for reckless drivers to serve as a deterrent to would-be violators of the fundamental human rights of pedestrians in the country.

•Photo shows late Dimgba Igwe.

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