Pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has condemned the weekend’s violent crackdown by the Nigeria Army of the procession staged in Abuja by the Islamic sect known as Shiite in which over a dozen persons were reportedly killed. The rights group, at the same time, expressed shock and consternation at “the gruesome mass murder of a group of travelling hunters mistaken for kidnappers in Edo State and massacred by vigilante members.”

HURIWA said it is so unfortunate that Nigeria has become the killing field whereby armed state and non-state actors are going about taking away precious lives of mostly innocent citizens. It wondered how and why the government in Abuja has often permitted the military and police to use lethal weapons and live bullets instead of water canons and rubber bullets to break up demonstrations staged by citizens.

HURIWA said the rampant deployment of armed security forces to use weapons of death to quell civil protests, processions, demonstrations or even peaceful assembly is what has provided the needed motivation for armed non state actors to continue to kill citizens at the slightest opportunity available to them.

According to a statement issued over the weekend and signed by HURIWA National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, “Whereas we condemn the members of Shiite Islamic sect for not complying with the reported denial of permission by the National Security Adviser to stage a procession on the streets of Abuja in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, the Rights group blamed the armed security forces for mismanagement of the measures to quell the procession by resorting to public deployment of lethal weapons in a highly and densely populated Wuse two urban centre at a time that commercial activities and government agencies were operating at optimal levels.

“Honestly, the Nigeria Army should be told that the rules of engagement in internal security operations forbid them to open fire publicly which endangers even innocent members of the public who are not part of the crowds that the Army intended to disperse. Civility demands that non-lethal equipments should be used to disperse civilian crowds especially when nobody in the crowds is armed and intended on killing the soldiers. This method of internal security operation is primitive, brutish, unconstitutional and undemocratic. We condemn the killing of one soldier during the incident in Abuja and we hope there would be transparent investigations to ascertain why this level of deployment of lethal weapons on civilian populated area in the very busy Friday afternoon.”

Citing Section 217 (2) © of the 1999 Constitution and Section (8) (1) and (3) of the Armed Forces Act, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, (LFN) 2004 which provides the code of conduct and rules of engagement for the armed forces in internal security, HURIWA condemned the use of violent force by the Army.

In the case of the Uromi killings, HURIWA said: “If they were kidnappers, why not hand them over to the Nigeria Police force for the necessary legal prosecution?”

It further said: "This kind of mob killing is what we have consistently condemned and this is why we think the federal government should not flippantly permit armed security forces to open fire on civilian protesters as we have continued to witnessed since president Tinubu assumed office and his administration has shown zero-tolerance to civil protests of any genre and has often deployed armed security forces to use maximum and deadly force to quell the protests leading to fatalities.

“These state sponsored killings of civilian protesters are exactly what motivate mobs and armed non-state actors to embark on instantaneous killings of persons suspected of committing a crime either wrongly or rightly. Government must become a respecter of the sanctity of human life. We call on the Edo state government to prosecute and punish the killers of these travelling hunters.

“We appeal to opinion leaders in the North to stop ethnicising this criminality of mass murder of hunters. This crude crime is not something that we should look at it from the prism of ethnic colouration. We must not instigate reprisal with the panicky and ethnicity coloured reactions the leaders from a section of Nigeria give to this act of despicable criminality. Let us condemn criminality but let us not encourage reprisal killing of Southerners residing in the North by the way we paint this crime as if it is South versus north. The crime is reprehensible and is not a war between sections of Nigeria but between forces of good and evil which the law enforcement agencies should be allowed to treat.”