The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), a civil rights advocacy group, on Thursday, condemned the gruesome murder of Master Warrant Officer Audu Linus (retired) and Private Gloria Matthew.
This was also as it urged the Nigerian Army not to use the excuse of trying to fish out the killers of the soldiers to launch full-scale genocide in the South-East.
HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, tasked security agents to give the assailants a hot chase and bring them to book, noting that such actions should not go unpunished.
Gunmen had killed the two lovers on April 30, 2022, while they were on transit to Imo State for their traditional wedding. Matthew was first raped before she was shot dead along with her lover, Linus and then both were beheaded. In a sickening twist, the killers had made a video of the incident and circulated it online.
The Army had also accused the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its arm, the Eastern Security Network (ESN) of the heinous crime. But IPOB led by embattled Nnamdi Kanu had denied the allegation, saying it knows nothing about it.
Onwubiko said: “It is disappointing that the Army and the Presidency are threatening fire and brimstone against imaginary enemies they identified as IPOB even without verifiable, forensic evidence pinning IPOB to the cruelty and gruesome beheading of the Igbo female soldier and her lover. HURIWA unequivocally condemns any primitive act of murder like the killing of these two soldiers and other security personnel. However, the government should blame itself for its inability and unwillingness to expose with concrete evidence the real perpetrators of the many violent killings in the South-East attributed to people known and called unknown gunmen.”
The coordinator further said that the government should tell Nigerians how it reached the conclusion that IPOB was responsible for the spate of attacks in Igboland.
He advised the government and soldiers not to hide under the anger over the brutal murder of the two soldiers to kill off innocent Igbo youths that might be roped in with phantom charges of involvement even with no scientific evidence.
“Terrorists are overrunning the country, bringing down Nigerian Air Force jets in Zamfara and other parts of the country, bombing moving trains in Kaduna, attacking airports all over the North-West. The terrorists also kill, maim and kidnap innocent Nigerians. They are everywhere and HURIWA posits that they have infiltrated the South-East to cause unprintable horror. The government and the Army must fish out the exact killers of the two lovebird soldiers and the perpetrators of other despicable and dastardly acts of criminality in the South-East and other parts of the country so that the innocent won’t be punished while the real devil walks away freely,” said Onwubiko.
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