Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has described the call for the execution of Major General Zamani Lekwot as idiotic.
Lekwot had earlier in the year said that security challenges in Southern Kaduna was caused by outsiders rather than indigenes of the area.
He was reacting to a media report that quoted the Commander of the Military Operation Safe Haven, Maj.-Gen. Augustine Agundu, who accused retired and serving security officers of Southern Kaduna extraction of fueling the crisis in the area.
On the 14th of August, the media went into a frenzy with a statement by the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria that the only way for peace to reign in Southern Kaduna was for the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to execute Major General Zamani Lekwot (retd.) and other leaders sentenced to death over the Zango-Kataf riot in 1992.
HURIWA, in a statement signed and made available to DAILY POST on Sunday by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said “this call is not just idiotic and irrational but barbaric and senseless.”
“We note also the treasonable and hate speech made by one Ardo Bulama who reportedly swore that Christians in Nigeria will be attacked by armed mercenaries and unfortunately the Department of States Services which is too quick to invite Dr Obadiah Mailafiya and Ex-Speaker Ghali Naaba for questioning and making certain comments considered to be against President Buhari has so far turned deaf ears to these dangerous hate speech.”
It would be recalled that Zangon Kataf Local Government Area of Kaduna witnessed a gory and gruesome hostility between Muslims and Christians in the area. Two major ethnoreligious conflicts also took place in Zangon Kataf in 1992.
Following the crisis, hundreds of people were arrested and the Federal Government set up a Civil Disturbances Special Tribunal before whom General Lekwot; a former military governor and ambassador alongside 5 others were charged with complicity in the sectarian disturbances.
They were sentenced to death by two different Civil Disturbances TribunalA but the Federal Government, however, converted their death sentences to five years imprisonment each.
“We condemn and describe as idiocy and primitive the call for the execution of Zamani Lekwot by some religious fundamentalists in the North,” HURIWA’s statement reads in part.
