The group said the Nigerian president has a
responsibility to check threats of violence.
A group of journalists, Human Rights Writers Association
of Nigeria, HURIWA,
has called on President Goodluck Jonathan, using state institutions, to put a stop to
inflammatory statements by former Niger Delta Militant, Dokubo Asari.
Mr. Dokubo had threatened violence in the
Niger Delta if the president is not re-elected in 2015.
The group said the statement by Mr. Dokubo
and that made by the president’s aide on amnesty in the Niger Delta, Kingsley
Kuku, are capable of leading the country into full blown anarchy before,
during, or after the general elections in 2015.
During a recent visit to the United States,
Mr. Kuku said that peace would not be guaranteed in the Niger Delta if the
president did not win the 2015 election.
Lashing on the statement made by Mr. Kuku,
Mr. Dokubo said during an interview: “the statement has been attacked from
several quarters, expectedly from the Action
Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and others. I want to go on to say
that, there will be no peace, not only in the Niger Delta, but everywhere if
Goodluck Jonathan is not president again, by 2015, except God takes his life,
which we don’t pray for.”
HURIWA said the statement by Messrs Kuku and
Dokubo are “careless, callous, and well- calculated and divisive statements of
threats against the peace, unity, and stability of the nation for political
gains are not protected by the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of
expression as enshrined in chapter four of the Constitution of the federal
Republic of Nigeria of 1999 (as amended).”
The group therefore called on the Mr.
Jonathan to “strongly reprimand” and admonish the two men from “making
inflammatory media statements capable of igniting instability and disunity, if
indeed President Jonathan still holds firm to his professed ideology of
politics without bitterness.”
The group also frowned at the President’s
silence over the issue 48 hours after Mr. Dokubo made comment.
“The silence of President Jonathan in the
last 48 hours since Mr. Dokubo made the threat of war should he (Jonathan) not
be re-elected in 2015, is absolutely unacceptable and incongruous just as the
Rights group reminded the President that he maintained silence when in 2011 a
similar threat was made by some cabals in the North and ever since then
instability heightened all around the North,” the group said.
The group said the likes of Adamu Ciroma and
Lawal Kaita that have made similar comments from the north should also be
reined in.
It said President Jonathan as the constitutionally
recognised sovereign Head of Nigeria should also caution self acclaimed
Northern regional leaders such as Adamu Ciroma, Lawal Kaita and a few others
who had earlier issued similar threats that the North must produce the
president in 2015.
HURIWA said do-or-die politics must be
consigned to the dustbin of history if Nigeria is to outlive its centenary of
amalgamation between North and South.
May 8, 2013.
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