Nigeria's Minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has been challenged to travel to some northern states without security to show that insecurity has reduced.
Human Rights Writers Association of HURIWA dared the minister while describing a recent comment he made as irresponsible, irrational and vacuous.
Mohammed had claimed insecurity in the country has reduced drastically.
“Once more, we in the human rights community representing the voiceless and oppressed citizens of Nigeria and inviting the cabinet-level minister of information to travel by road with no security cover from Abuja to Zamfara, Katsina, Borno and then back to Abuja through the Lokoja/Kwali Abuja Federal Highway,” HURIWA challenged the minister in a statement signed by Emmanuel Onwubiko, its National Coordinator.
The group said while making the journey, the Minister should stop over at the Okene highway near Ajaokuta in Kogi State, adding if the minister is able to embark on this journey which should be televised live on NTA, Trust television and AIT then maybe his statement about improved security may be listened to by right thinking human beings that are rational.
“We find it completely ludicrous but insensitive, reckless and unacceptable that in the face of the heightened security challenges confronting Nigerians including the 28 bus passengers in Ondo that were just kidnapped into the Ondo forests by suspected armed Fulani herdsmen, the holder of the office of information minister will continue to assault our sensibilities and spread fake news,” it added.
HURIWA said the information minister must be living on a very distant planet from the earth for him not to be aware that in some parts of Katsina State, the home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, armed terrorists have started carrying out government jobs and reportedly arresting petty thieves and handing them over to the police.
The group reminded the minister that in parts of Kaduna State and Zamfara State, farmers now pay taxes to terrorists even as a terrorist kingpin was recently inaugurated as a traditional title holder in Zamfara depicting a failed state.
Also, HURIWA recalled that a few days ago, elders of rural communities in Katsina State lamented that men in their villages now work as slaves on farms ‘owned’ by bandits, even as the hoodlums have developed a taste for constantly raping married women and teenage girls.
Besides HURIWA narrated that a newly posted Divisional Police Officer (DPO) to Birnin Gwari local government area of Kaduna State, was kidnapped and for weeks has been in chains.
The rights group specifically recalled that the DPO was abducted along the notorious Kaduna-Birnin Gwari highway around 9am a few weeks back on his way to assume duty at his new place of assignment, according to sources who confirmed the incident to journalists on conditions of anonymity.
