Garba Shehu, a Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, accepted a challenge from the Nigerian Human Rights Writers Association, HURIWA, to travel Nigerian roads without his security details.
HURIWA, as previously reported by Newslodge, had challenged Shehu to undertake a road trip from Abuja to any of the northern states with security men.
The challenge followed Shehu’s public assertion that Buhari, as Nigerian president, deserves credit for his efforts to address security problems in the country.
HURIWA challenged him to embark on the journey or cover his face in shame for dancing on the graves of hundreds of innocent citizens whose lives have been cut short on Nigerian roads, especially in the Northwest, by Fulani terrorists in the last 6 years.
The prominent human rights organization went on to list numerous evidence of such incidents in which innocent travelers were massacred or maimed, insisting that the presidential aide lacks decorum and respect for the memories of those hapless and innocent citizens whose lives were deliberately seized by different non-state armed actors.
In accepting the challenge, HURIWA noted that Shehu appears to have confused the challenge made by altruism and patriotism with the fact that we had “bet” or fixed a certain amount of money that would be paid to him if he accepted the challenge.
“We made our challenge based on empirical evidence that insecurity is still rife and that unless the killers are brought to trial and published, which is not the case now, we cannot say that the government is successful in fighting the killings. en masse, ”HURIWA said. , adding that a senior lawyer has advised him to ignore Garba Shehu and his antics.
“Garba Shehu had called us on the phone to accept the challenge on the condition that within 48 hours we should bring our lawyer so that his lawyer could sign agreements that nothing adverse would be orchestrated while he embarked on the journey in accordance with our challenge. , ”The group explained in a statement signed by its national coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and made available to Newslodge on Monday.
HURIWA noted that by accepting the challenge with conditions, Shehu had already contradicted himself, adding that all he had to do was go ahead and travel to the aforementioned and show evidence that he actually took a road trip without security details.
“You have to do it with credible television stations that must also be brave enough to cover it as they denounced it saying that security has improved,” HURIWA said.
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