The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) which is a pro-democracy based non-governmental organisation has condemned the killing of inhabitants of Shonong Village in Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau. It also called on the Federal Government to disband the Special Task Force (STF) charged with maintain peace in Plateau.

The organisation described the killing as “barbaric, primitive, reprehensible, despicable and odious”. It went further to demand that the Federal Government arrests, prosecutes and sanction the perpetrators in competent courts of law in compliance with section 6 of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) which is a pro-democracy based non-governmental organisation has condemned the killing of inhabitants of Shonong Village in Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau. It also called on the Federal Government to disband the Special Task Force (STF) charged with maintain peace in Plateau.

The organisation described the killing as “barbaric, primitive, reprehensible, despicable and odious”. It went further to demand that the Federal Government arrests, prosecutes and sanction the perpetrators in competent courts of law in compliance with section 6 of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

HURIWA’s National coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and National media affairs director, Zainab Yusuf in a joint statement called on the Federal Government to break the vicious cycle of carefully plotted killings of villagers and farmers all around the middle belt and northern states that is carried about by hired mercenaries suspected to be Fulani herdsmen. It advised the presidency to withdraw the STF and order the military to be on high alert in the state.

Plateau state Government was advised by the organisation to set up community-based armed security outfits to be drawn from members of the various communities which will be supervised closely by the Plateau State Security Council and the presidency. It added that members of state-wide community security patrol teams should be men and women with clean records whose fingerprints and complete personality data must be stored in a manner that will make it easy for the state government to trace their whereabouts.

The organisation frowned at the inability of the STF to unearth the bandits carrying out the killing unabated two years after its establishment. It says that this goes to show that STF lacks the professional competence and discipline to put a stop to the ugly development.

HURIWA reminded the Federal Government of its earlier pronouncement of the various intra-communal and inter-communal killings that have happened in Plateau state since the return to democracy with the objective of filing a petition in January 2015 at the International Criminal Court, ICC in the Hague, Netherlands. It also called on the presidency to consult widely with a view of finding a permanent solution to the incessant killings and destruction of properties in the zone.

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Shonong Killings: HURIWA tells Jonathan to withdraw STF and calls on Jang to set up community-based armed security outfits in Plateau