Blasphemy Killings: Nowhere is safe anymore because policing has collapsed

Following the primitive and gruesome incident in which a 30-year old member of a local vigilante group, Ahmad Usman, was killed in Lugbe area of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, for allegedly insulting Islam, a civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), says policing has collapsed in Nigeria.

This, according to the group in a statement by the National Coordinator of HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, was because the response time to violent incidents by Nigeria Police Force is indeterminate due to lack of professionalism and leadership.

HURIWA also said the fact that this incident at the Federal Housing Estates in Lugbe Abuja is the second time Islamic extremists have killed persons framed up for blasphemy or alleged to have committed blasphemy in the Nation’s Federal Capital shows that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration was tolerant of Islamic extremism since the administration lacks the wherewithal and political will to act decisively to arrest those who had killed many Nigerians on similar trumped up allegations.

HURIWA said the Federal government under the current dispensation has shown a shocking habit of cohabitation with mass killers, terrorists and kidnappers because the government has failed to carry out her constitutionally guaranteed fundamental obligations of protecting life and property of citizens and also refused to activate judicial mechanisms to bring killers who are mostly non-state actors to justice.

HURIWA said there is an overwhelming amounts of killings under the nose of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in the last 7 years that have been deliberately left uninvestigated and no known actions have been taken to put the killers where they should be such as sending them for firing squads execution.

HURIWA recalled that in the first of the two killings of persons by Islamic extremists in Abuja, Mrs. Eunice Elisha, a Redeemed Christian Church of God’s pastor, was hacked to death at the Gbazango area of Kubwa, Abuja, by suspected Muslim fanatics, while conducting an early morning preaching.

HURIWA recalled that the Wife of Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, Dolapo, visited Mrs. Elisha’s traumatized family but that was all that government did unofficially and officially as not one suspected Islamists who participated in the primitive execution in Kubwa was ever convicted and the matter was swept under the carpet, just like many other cases in Gombe, Bauchi, Sokoto, Kano States.

HURIWA apportioned blames too to the Christian Association of Nigeria and the Catholic Bishops of Nigeria for failing to consistently speak out and maintain a principled stand to obtain justice for the Christians murdered serially by Islamists but the Christian leaders simply make faint statements full of immaturity and panic and after that initial grandstanding the Christian leaders simply go to sleep and the killings of Christians continue unabated.

In its first formal response on Christian Association of Nigeria said the attack was “yet another religious, hatred-motivated gruesome murder” that was growing under the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

“The discrimination against non-Muslims in Nigeria under the Buhari Administration is assuming a dangerous dimension that should not be left to the vagaries of time and circumstance to resolve,” the organisation warned.

HURIWA which blamed also the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, also a Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, for doing nothing about the first case of brutal killing of the female preacher of Redeemed Christian Church in Abuja few Months back, stated that the latest case of mob attack was motivated and encouraged by the inaction of the federal government and President Buhari.

The rights group said it doesn’t really matter that the latest victim of killings by Islamists was a Moslem but essentially what this shows is that the federal government of President was complicit in all of these religiously motivated hate crimes for taking no administrative, security or activate mechanisms for arrests and prosecution of these killers.

HURIWA blamed also the police for failing to act swiftly to prevent the crime from happening, instead of waiting for the armed Islamists to take action by killing the citizen before a stampede was instigated as Police fire gunshots to disperse people.

HURIWA lamented thus: ” It is indeed shocking that the police did nothing and left the the mob action to take place around 1pm on Saturday after Usman sought refuge in the vigilante office in the market. Findings revealed that the local security outfit was overpowered before Usman was killed in front of the office after which his body was set ablaze. Yet the police were not physically present to stop this from happening only for the police to be reeling out the funny figure that the mob numbered more than 200 people.

HURIWA said only on May 12, a mob in Sokoto had gruesomely murdered Deborah Samuel, a female student of Shagari College of Education, and set her body ablaze after she was accused of committing blasphemy against Prophet Muhammed with a post on the school’s Whatsapp group. These killers are still largely roaming freely on the streets and may have migrated to Abuja to perpetrate this atrocity.

HURIWA is asking that the President himself takes steps to ensure that the culprits of this and the many other crimes of mass execution by Islamists are arrested, prosecuted and punished.