Boko Haram: Group threatens to drag Jonathan, others before World Court

Posted by admin Boko Haram, Latest Politics Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

A human rights group has threatened to drag President Goodluck Jonathan and other key government officials before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Netherlands for crimes against humanity should the killings continue.

The group, Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) disclosed its intention in Abuja yesterday.
It was disturbed by the unending of terrorist activities by the Boko Haram sect and the attendant loss of lives and property, together with the incessant kidnapping in the South.

Already, the group, under the leadership of its national Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko had dispatched a letter to the National secretary of the ruling party-Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola for onward delivery to the Federal Government.

In the letter, HURIWA urged government to implement workable measures to end the bloody violence.
Besides, HURIWA asked the ruling party and other political parties with elected political office holders to establish functional anti-corruption units in the party offices to enforce compliance with anti-graft ethics and laws by their members as pre-requisite for holding offices.

The letter which was received by the National Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, dated May 11, 2012, reads: “We are disturbed by the state of insecurity in Nigeria and the general state of fear, uncertainty and apprehension among a generality of Nigerians because of the failure of the Nigeria police and other security agencies to combat this unprecedented wave of bloody violence.

From the North to the South, violence and crime of unimaginable proportions have become daily events and the policing institution put in place by law to maintain law and order has failed, yet the Federal Government has not effectively implemented comprehensive reforms to compel the Nigeria Police Force to be up and doing”.
“We are opposed to the proposal by the Steve Oronsanye’s committee to disband or merge the EFCC with the ICPC. Corruption is worrisome in Nigeria and therefore the two anti-graft agencies need to be empowered and further granted financial and operational autonomy to design better and effective strategies of fighting corruption. The recruitment process into the two anti-graft agencies is not transparent”.

“We propose that political parties should set up anti-corruption units to compliment the statutory roles of the anti-graft bodies because the absence of good governance caused by official corruption is the root cause of the growing security challenges and the collapse of crime-fighting and security architecture in Nigeria”.

On the possibility of filing cases of crimes against humanity in 2015 against government officials should the bloody violence is not efectively cecked, the Rights group stated thus; “We are here to remind the political party in power that the failure to check the ongoing bloody violence in the North may not go unpunished because of the possibility of bringing charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands against the perpetrators and even government officials who fail to bring this regime of violence to an end”.
“We know that there are good Nigerians around the world who are willing to institute these litigations against current government officials if they fail to bring perpetrators of the ongoing mass killings to justice”,HURIWA affirmed.

The group told the ruling party that as a development focused group, we are aware that poverty, corruption, high crime rate, terrorism and unemployment were some of the pressing problems confronting us as a nation.
“From our candid and non-partisan observation, we can state without fear of contradiction that most state governments have not done enough to pragmatically tackle these hydraheaded monsters. Only a couple of months ago, the National Bureau of Statistics published the poverty index report which showed that nearly 75 percent of Nigerians were living below the poverty level requiring comprehensive remedial measures to ameliorate”.

“We believe that the National head office of the Peoples Democratic Party has not effectively monitored the activities of its members holding sensitive political offices to minimize the high level of corruption and economic crimes and to ensure that public funds are transparently deployed for public interest/good”.
“We hereby appeal to state governors and the Federal government to improve the funding of the critical sectors of health, education, rural infrastructural development, water and sanitation and the road infrastructure. It is unacceptable that governments at every level pay lip service to the above critical needs of the people even while members of the political elite go abroad for medical treatment and allow the indigent populace to either perpetually suffer or perish. The electricity power situation is abysmal even after the PDP led Federal administration claimed to have invested nearly N16 Billion U.S. Dollars into the sector in the past few years;” HURIWA stated.

-Sunwp_posts