HURIWA CHARGES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ON INCESSANT RAPE;

As Nigerian Woman Emerges Chairperson of AU Rights Panel;

A development focused non-governmental organization- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA [HURIWA] has charged the Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Federal Attorney General to take comprehensive, effective and immediate action to check the proliferation of sexual molestation and rape of women by ensuring that the necessary laws against sexual violations of women are strengthened and that culprits are made to face the full wrath of the law.

In a media statement to congratulate the Federal Government on the recent election of the Nigerian representative to the African Human Rights Commission Mrs. Dupe Atoki as the Chairperson of the African Union Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Rights group said the historic achievement by Nigeria at the African Union would be meaningless and irrelevant if the current unprecedented rate of human rights violations including sexual violations of women, extra-legal execution of suspects by men of the Nigeria Police Force and the general insecurity in the Country are not tackled effectively by the Nigerian Government.

                                                          

Specifically, during the 50^th Ordinary Session of African Union Commission on Human and Peoples Rights currently ongoing in Banjul the Gambia, Mrs Dupe Atoki was elected the chairperson of the Commission thus becoming the first Nigerian Woman to head an organ of the African Union.

She has wide and varied expertise and experience on issues of Human Rights and served Nigeria in various capacities in that wise including being a member of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission; member of the Federal Government’s presidential committee on the review of laws discriminatory of Women and was a member of the Committee on the reform of investment law.

Mrs. Atoki has also served the African Union in diverse capacities as a legal consultant in drafting; member of election monitoring/observer team to several African countries: Commissioner of the African Union Commission on Human and Peoples Rights where she was before her election the special rapportuer on prison and places of detention in Africa as well as the chairperson of the Committee for the prevention of torture in Africa.

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA in the statement made available to Journalists and endorsed jointly by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Officer Miss. Zainab Yusuf stated that the election of Mrs. Atoki is a challenge on the current Federal administration to rapidly rise to the occasion by working vigorously to enforce all laws and statutes that seek to promote and protect the vulnerable members of the Nigerian community including Women, Children and the aged who are at the receiving end of the astronomic rise in human rights violations especially by members of the nation’s law enforcement community and armed splinter groups.

HURIWA said that the Nigerian Government is paying lip service to the agitation by ordinary citizens for the security and law enforcement operatives to effectively and efficiently enforce laws that relate to punishing rapists and other notorious human rights violators just as it warned Government to put a halt to the ongoing institutionalization of impunity and anarchy in Nigeria because of the activities of armed splinter groups.

The group specifically criticized the Federal Government’s insensitive and irresponsible attitude towards the recent grave allegation of gang rape of a teenage girl by five adult males at the Abia State University and also the inability of the Nigerian Government to bring to justice the suspected rapist and murderer of Miss. Grace Ushang, the Cross River State born youth corper [NYSC] who was two years ago raped and gruesomely murdered by a suspected lone rapist in Maiduguri, Borno state.

25/10/2011