HURIWA Criticizes GESTAPO LIKE MILITARY OPERATION
A pro-Democracy Non-Governmental Organization- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA [HURIWA] has carpeted the top Nigerian military hierarchy for using brute force to chase out legitimate occupiers of maitama shopping/office complex in the highbrow Maitama district this morning under the guise of counter terrorism operations.
In a statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Ms. Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA faulted what it termed as gestapo type military operation that was executed this morning by a combined armed team of Army, Nigeria Road safety commission and the Nigerian Civil Defense Corps arrived at about 10 am and drove virtually every occupants and their clients away from the vicinity of the busy shopping mall on the pretense that the owners [management] of the commercial plaza hasn't complied with a deadline of few weeks to install security gadgets and close circuit television system within the complex to check the infiltration of armed terrorists.
According to HURIWA: “it is unconstitutional and illegal for armed operatives paid and maintained with tax payers money to undertake an operation that is akin to an ambush targeted against law abiding citizens under the guise of trying to safeguard their lives and property. It is expected that under a democratic atmosphere the armed security operatives should work in partnership and indeed build a proactive synergy with members of the civil society so as to achieve meaningful and constructive counter insurgency measures since those security measures are in the first instance enforced to promote, protect and enhance the constitutional rights of the citizenry. The Nigerian Military must stop these arbitrary and unilateral operations which are clear breaches of the constitutionally guaranteed human rights under chapter four of the Nigerian constitution of 1999 as amended and the Universal Declarations of Human Rights including the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. Why should law abiding citizens be chased away like common criminals without sufficient and prior knowledge and notice?.”
The Rights organization which stated that it was not against any effective measures to stop terrorists from achieving their devilish aim of attacking soft targets in the nation's capital and indeed any part of the country, however cautioned the military to stop the military era dictatorial style of arm twisting the civil society trough the use of brute force or psychological torture to seek the implementation of any of their counter insurgency measures.
“What happened this morning at the usually boisterous Maitama shopping plaza [August 7th 2014] by the combined armed security operatives which drove away legitimate operators of businesses and their clients thereby occasioning contractual inconveniences is unacceptable in a nation that claims to be practicing civil democracy. Those who lead the ongoing counter insurgency drive must introduce strategies that will incorporate the active buy- in of the process by genuine law abiding business owners and ordinary citizens of Nigeria so every citizen is carried along in the collective national crusade to defeat terrorism in all its ramifications in Nigeria”.
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