By Fortune Eromosele, Abuja
Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA on Tuesday, asked Security Heads of the Federation to give account of violent acts and their perpetrators during the February 25th general elections.
Its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko at a press briefing in Abuja, said the heads of the security institutions such as the NSA, Nigerian Police Force, Army, Civil Defense, Immigration and the Federal Roads Safety Corps, FRSC amongst others should be tasked by the National Assembly as soon as possible to make open the personnel audits of their personnel deployed for the February 25th presidential election and the national legislative assembly elections and the gubernatorial poll of March 18th, 2023.
He highlighted some states that witnessed gross violence such as, Ebonyi, Lagos, Rivers and Kano State, where he emphasized that there were no proper security details to curtail the violence that erupted in the states.
HURIWA said the crimes that occurred during the elections in Ebonyi State have already been captured in a detailed report that the group will despatch to the International Criminal Court in The Hague Netherlands.
Onwubiko, asked the international community to probe the political killings and violence and slam extreme sanctions on the perpetrators. He also wants the international community to slam travel ban on Governor Umahi unless and until he can prove that perpetrators have been arrested and handed over to an unbiased judicial forum for prosecution of murder.
He noted that HURIWA will be writing Amnesty International to also conduct her own separate independent investigation on the alleged executions.
HURIWA’s Onwubiko said, “The political intolerance in Ebonyi reached a crescendo in the buildup to the 2023 general elections.
“Already, we have drawn up a list of citizens killed before, during and after the 2023 poll in Ebonyi State under the current dispensation and we are asking the USA, UK, AUSTRALIA, Canada, EU and the ICC to ask President Muhammadu Buhari to investigate those responsible and to prosecute them either in Nigeria or in ICC for crimes against humanity. We are not saying Governor Umahi did the killings but as the Chief Security Officer of Ebonyi State he is legally obliged to render absolute accounts of all these unwarranted killings during his 8 years regime.”