… Says It Has No Business With PEIWA

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has been accused of misdirected aggression from the Private Estate International West Africa Limited (PEIWA).

HURIWA said that PEIWA’s aggression came in the form of a warning which was contained in a statement on Thursday while reacting to a recent statement by the human rights group where it alleged that operatives of the Nigeria Police were being used to support land grabbers.

The rights group has described the warning as a misdirected aggression and a subtle blackmail to harass it from exercising its responsibility as a civil rights advocacy group.

PEIWA reportedly threatened to institute a contempt or defamation proceeding against HURIWA.

But HURIWA through its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and its National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf has told PEIWA to take its aggression elsewhere because HURIWA has no business with any of the said pending court cases related to land ownership in Enugu State .

HURIWA insisted that as a responsible body of activists, its intervention ends at informing the inspector-general of police to investigate the allegations that some of his officers went on an illegal duty in a part of Enugu State and in the process some villagers who alleged violations “of their human rights approached HURIWA and we subsequently asked the Nigerian Police as an institution created by the Constitution to investigate their men.”

READ ALSO: Govt Evacuates 101 Stranded Nigerians From Libya

PEIWA reportedly noted that the press conference by HURIWA as an association could be perceived as an interference with the course of administration of justice and could mislead the public.

It therefore alleged that the said press conference by the human rights body constituted actionable falsehood, “for which redress may be sought at the appropriate judicial fora under the laws of defamation against your organization corporately and against Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and Ms. Zainab Yusuf personally.”

PEIWA said thus: “You are also advised to henceforth desist from taking any further step in the aforesaid matters or conducting itself in any manner as may embroil your organization in time-consuming, costly and very public litigation.”

HURIWA has, however, expressed shock that “we are being threatened with a defamation or contempt suit by a business entity that we absolutely have no relationship with whatsoever just as the rights group faulted the claims by the company that it interfered in certain court cases by the said company” even as HURIWA submitted that it has no knowledge of any litigation but that “its intervention was purely because some people from Amechi and Obeagu Awkunanaw communities in Enugu South Local Government Area of Enugu State alleged that the Force Criminal Investigation Department sent armed SWAT officers to their communities and in the course of this alleged illegal duty some of these persons were brutalized physically just as some of them were arrested and driven to Abuja and some were allegedly taken to Nasarawa State by the office of the Deputy Inspector-General of Police incharge of FCID in Abuja.

HURIWA therefore wondered if this “company that threatened with audacity to institute a defamation suit against HURIWA thinks that Nigeria is North Korea or Communist China whereby civil rights are subjugated by the whims and caprices of the powers that be and the dictators of those nations.”

The rights group said as long as “there are allegations of human rights abuses by the police or anyone for that matter, HURIWA will step in to sensitize the heads of the security forces to their constitutional mandates and obligations to the citizens and no amount of blackmail,  intimidation, threats to life can stop the just struggle for protection of human rights in Nigeria.

“HURIWA acted armed with this video footage that went viral in which personnel of the SWAT team, FCID Abuja , penultimate week, reportedly arrested nearly a dozen persons. Interestingly, none of the persons arrested thus far, have any direct connection to the incident they’re supposed to be investigating. Interestingly again, all other persons arrested and those they have, in different Gestapo styles, attempted to whisk away from their houses in the last week, are out-spoken individuals from Amechi allegedly.

Read more authentic news on our social media platforms

“The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria is established to deal with all matters relating to the promotion and protection of human rights, investigation of alleged human rights violations, and to seek the enforcement of professional code of conducts by armed security operatives in Nigeria. The people of Amechi and Obeagu Awkunanaw communities consider this SOS appeal to us and to IGP a last resort, and we as an independent organisation of human rights activists only addressed a press conference to state that we will ask the IGP to intervene and provide immediate and far- reaching redress to these Nigerians whose civil rights were flouted by the police.

“In which way did we defame PEIWA or does the company work for the DIG in charge of FCID in Abuja? How did we defame a company that does not work as part of the Nigerian Police Force that we complained about? May we also ask this company to leave us out of their issues because we are simply doing our job as human rights practitioners who in the course of our duty therefore prayed the IGP to heed the SOS appeal of the Amechi and Obeagu Awkunanaw people whose constitutionally guaranteed human rights are abused by certain individuals belonging to the Nigeria Police Force.”

Read more authentic news on our social media platforms