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Following recent primitive and gruesome incident in which a 30 years old member of a local vigilante group, Ahmad Usman, was killed in Lugbe area of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja for allegedly insulting Islam, the Prominent Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA) said policing has collapsed in Nigeria because the response time to violent incidents by Nigeria Police Force is indeterminate due to lack of professionalism and leadership. 

HURIWA also said the fact that this incident at the Federal Housing Estates in Lugbe Abuja is the second time Islamic extremists have killed persons framed up for blasphemy or alleged to have committed blasphemy in the Nation’s Federal Capital shows that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is tolerant of Islamic extremism since the administration lacks the wherewithal and political will to act decisively to arrest those who had killed many Nigerians on similar trumped up allegations by mobs and the killers were left to roam around freely. 

HURIWA said the Federal government under the current dispensation has shown a shocking habit of cohabitation with mass killers, terrorists and kidnappers because the government has failed to carry out her constitutionally guaranteed fundamental obligations of protecting life and property of citizens and also refused to activate judicial mechanisms to bring killers who are mostly non state actors to justice.

HURIWA said there is an overwhelming amounts of killings under the nose of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in the last 7 years that have been deliberately left uninvestigated and no known actions have been taken to put the killers where they should be such as sending them for firing squads execution.

HURIWA recalled that in the first of the two killings of persons by Islamic extremists in Abuja, Mrs. Eunice Elisha, a Redeemed Christian Church of God’s pastor, was hacked to death at the Gbazango area of Kubwa, Abuja, by suspected Muslim fanatics, while conducting an early morning preaching.

The Rights group recalled that Shocking photos of the attack show her badly-battered body lying in the pool of blood, next to her megaphone.

HURIWA recalled that the Wife of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Dolapo, visited Mrs. Elisha’s traumatized family but that was all that government did unofficially and officially not one suspected Islamists who participated in the primitive execution in Kubwa was ever convicted and the matter was swept under the carpets by President Muhammadu Buhari just like many other cases in Gombe, Bauchi, Sokoto, Kano States. 

HURIWA apportioned blames too to the Christian Association of Nigeria and the Catholic Bishops of Nigeria for failing to consistently speak out and maintain a principled stand to obtain justice for the Christians murdered serially by Islamists but the Christian leaders simply made faint statements full of immaturity and panic and after that initial grandstanding the Christian leaders simply go to sleep and the killings of Christians continue unabated. 

In its first formal response on Christian Association of Nigeria said the attack was “yet another religious, hatred-motivated gruesome murder” that was growing under the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

“The discrimination against non-Muslims in Nigeria under the Buhari Administration is assuming a dangerous dimension that should not be left to the vagaries of time and circumstance to resolve,” the organisation warned.

The Christian Association of Nigeria, HURIWA recalled, had then  warned that “Nigeria is dancing a macabre dance of death, both for the nation and for its citizens”.

The National leadership and the entire members of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) have received with rude shock and disbelief the report of yet another religious hatred motivated gruesome murder of a dedicated 42 year old Christian mother of seven children, Mrs. Eunice Elisha, who on Saturday 9th July, 2016, was brutally killed while doing Christian evangelism.

Mrs. Eunice Elisha was murdered in Kubwa area of Abuja, FCT, in the early hours of the day. Her neck was slashed and she was also stabbed in the stomach.

About a month ago in Kano, Mrs. Bridget Agbaheme, a 74 year old Christian was murdered at Wambai market due to an altercation with a Muslim man who came to the front of her shop to perform ablution. Her offence was that she objected to the Islamic washing rite in front of her shop.

HURIWA which blamed also the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo also a Pastor at the Redeemed Christian Church of God for doing nothing about the first case of brutal killing of the female Preacher of Redeemed Christian Church in Abuja few Months back, stated that the latest case of mob attack was motivated and encouraged by the inaction of the Federal government and President Muhammadu Buhari who is in charge of the Nation’s capital as well as all of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria when all other previous heinous crimes occurred.  

The Rights group said it doesn’t really matter that the latest victim of killings by Islamists was a Moslem but essentially what this shows is that the Federal government of President Muhammadu Buhari is complicit in all of these religiously motivated hate crimes for taking no administrative, security or activate mechanisms for arrests and prosecution of these killers. 

HURIWA said although the victim of the latest insane mob action in Abuja was a Moslem like his killers, “but this means that just anyone can be framed up and publicly executed and the collapsed Nigeria Police can only arrive after the deed has been completed and the killers dispersed on their own accord.”

HURIWA recalled  that the latest avoidable incident, which occurred at the Lugbe timber market section of Fruit Market in Federal Housing Estates in Lugbe Abuja involved a Moslem but the person killed is a citizen of Nigeria with all his constitutionally guaranteed fundamental human rights and the government  failed in its legal obligation to Protect The Citizen.

HURIWA blamed also the police for failing to act swiftly to prevent the crime from happening instead of waiting for the armed Islamists to take action by killing the citizen before  a stampede was instigated as police fire gunshots to dispatch people. 

HURIWA lamented thus: “Nigeria police has no skills in swift response to emergencies and incidents of crimes but often arrive hours after the incidents and start creating undue harassment of onlookers who may be totally innocent. 

“This policing strategy of coming after the occurrence of crimes demonstrates the collapse of policing in Nigeria needing immediate action to revive, reform and restructure policing institutions in Nigeria including the Department of State Services because since government is deliberately lethargic,  just anyone can be a victim tomorrow.” 

HURIWA lamented thus: “It is indeed shocking that the police did nothing and left the the mob action to take place around 1pm on Saturday after Usman sought refuge in the vigilante office in the market.

“Findings revealed that the local security outfit was overpowered before Usman was killed in front of the office after which his body was set ablaze.

“Yet the police were not physically present to stop this from happening only for the police to be reeling out the funny figure that the mob numbered more than 200 people.

“Is Nigeria Police Force now a unit of the National Population Commission so much so that they abandoned their law enforcement and crime prevention duties to be engaged in conducting head count of killers of the victim of the blasphemy execution in Abuja at the Weekend and ended up not arresting even one of the 200 counted by Police?”

HURIWA said: “If he (Usman) was caught buying food in the market in the afternoon. When the blasphemy occurred, there were only a few people there and a stick was used to hit him in the head, why did the police not respond much faster and earlier in the morning or does police lack Intelligence gathering skills? But only after that, he was stoned before he ran into the office.

“His colleagues at the office could not protect him due to the number of people that chased him and then after he became unconscious, petrol was poured on him and he was burnt in front of the office and only then people witnessed the arrival of policemen after the heinous crime has been committed and the Federal Government won’t sanction the police head in FCT for dereliction of duty because apparently the current government is pro-Islamic extremists.”

HURIWA said only on May 12, a mob in Sokoto had gruesomely murdered Deborah Samuel, a female student of Shagari College of Education, and set her body ablaze after she was accused of committing blasphemy against Prophet Muhammed with a post on the school’s Whatsapp group. These killers are still largely roaming freely on the streets and may have migrated to Abuja to perpetrate this atrocity.

HURIWA is asking that the President himself takes steps to ensure that the culprits of this and the many other crimes of mass execution by Islamists are arrested, prosecuted and punished just as the Rights group dismissed the FCT’s police claim that normalcy has been restored after the brutal murder of the citizen in Lugbe because according to HURIWA, normalcy can only be restored when the killers are unmasked, prosecuted and possibly made to face the firing squads for their crime against humanity and then for the police to become professional and respond swiftly to crime incidents.