The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has urged Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser to President Bola Tinubu, to set aside political theatrics and focus on addressing the nation’s security challenges.
HURIWA faulted the open display of partisanship by the NSA in viewing terrorists as mere ‘rivals’, who, according to him, ‘daring’ the President.
The group said it was an irreparable fallacy and distorted thinking for the presidential security aide to assume that armed non-state actors killing and maiming Nigerians in different parts of the country are just ‘daring’ Tinubu.
The rights group lamented the introduction of political showmanship into the national conversation about terrorists, bandits, outlaws and well-armed non-state actors by the National Security Adviser.
Recall that Ribadu on Wednesday declared that nobody dares Tinubu and remains the same, while reacting to the activities of the new terror group, Lakurawas.
This came on a day the Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, General Christopher Musa, deployed a contingent of soldiers to the troubled Augie Local Government Area of Kebbi State where no fewer than 17 people at Mera village were killed by members of the terror group.
Mallam Ribadu, who spoke at the Comptroller-General of Customs conference in Abuja, vowed that the Federal Government would eliminate the group shortly for daring the President.
HURIWA, however, said it strongly disagrees with the position of the NSA, adding that he seemed to be equating the continuous bloody attacks by terrorists and the invasion of Sokoto and Kebbi by a terrorist group known as Lakurawas, as daring Tinubu, which has reduced the war on terror to a personalised level.
HURIWA said that personalised approach by the NSA is absolutely uncalled for because terrorists unleashing violence are threatening the corporate existence of Nigeria and they are not just daring Tinubu.
“To be candid, we think sir, that as the NSA to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that you know very well that our security challenges are not personal issues directed at the person of President Tinubu,” HURIWA’s statement signed by Emmanuel Onwubiko said.
“Our security challenges threaten our continuous existence as a nation irrespective of whoever is in office as the President.
” The most appropriate professional approach is to avoid the use of political rhetoric in addressing security matters because whereas the President will serve out his constitutional term limit and quit, the corporate sovereign state of Nigeria would remain.
“Those who attack Nigerians are not rivals to the President politically, as the NSA’s most recent statement sounded, attackers of Nigerians are enemies of Nigeria as a political entity.”
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