Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has tasked the Federal Government and the Sokoto State Government to treat as terrorists sympathisers, the riotous youths in the streets of Sokoto State protesting for the release of killers of Deborah Samuel Yakubu.
HURIWA warned that any attempt to free the suspects will send the signal that Sokoto and the President Muhammadu Buhari administration are also sympathetic to terrorists.
HURIWA reminded the Sokoto State Government and the Federal Government that sympathisers of terrorists are committing egregious offence against the Nigerian State and must be appropriately handled in compliance with the counter terrorism law.
HURIWA, in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said: ” Can these protesters seriously have a rethink that if their sister was the victim, Deborah Emmanuel, a 200 level female student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, that was mobbed and killed before her remains were set ablaze within the school premises on Thursday, will they be ready to pour out on the streets in solidarity with these primitive killers who took the law into their hands and behaved just like terrorists that they are to take the life of a citizen in a Country in which section 33(1) of the Grund Norm emphatically prohibits EXTRALEGAL EXECUTION OF ACCUSED PERSONS?
“What those killers of Deborah did is pure and simple terrorism and mobster murder and must never be swept under the carpets if we are prepared to remain together in one Country. The security agents must treat the protesters demanding that murderers be freed as sympathisers of terrorists and what they are doing is not captured under the fundamental human rights provision that permits for freedom of expression because freedom of expression does not permit aiding and abetting terrorist crime of broad day lynching of a young girl to death over alleged blasphemy that is unproven and untested in Court.
“In fact the protesters are enemies of free speech because they want murderers who killed a girl for expressing her belief in Christ Jesus captured under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Chapter 4 of the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria as specified under the RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF RELIGION. Deborah from all available evidence did not blasphem the religion of Islam and the laws of Nigeria regards lynching the type these Sokoto mobsters committed and recorded in videos circulating on the social media as TERRORISM”.
HURIWA said it thinks the Sokoto State governor has done well by declaring 24 hours curfew but “we must warn that those who killed Deborah Samuel Yakubu must be made to face the full wrath of the law as murderers and on no account should the unruly mobs of protesters be allowed to free the suspected killers that publicly confessed in recorded videos going viral that they killed Deborah Samuel Yakubu. The Governor of Sokoto State and the Armed Forces of Nigeria must not be overwhelmed by the antics of the sympathisers of terrorists in Sokoto. Enough is enough!”
