A non-governmental organization, Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to immediately disband the Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, headed by the Minister of Special Duties, Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN).
HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, yesterday, said it would amount to grave disservice to the public for the committee to continue to exist after Mr. Jonathan had debunked Turaki’s claim that his committee has secured a cease fire deal with Boko Haram.
In a recent interview monitored on Cable News Network (CNN), President Jonathan while speaking on ‘Talk Asia’ programme, emphatically denied negotiating with the dreaded Islamist sect just as he refuted the existence of a cease fire pact.
The President’s position also came on the heels of a claim by the sect’s leader, Sheik Abubakar Shekau, that he had agreed to cease hostilities.
HURIWA therefore described the exercise as a “huge scam and a scandalous contraption that ought not to have been set up in the first place,” adding that members of the committee should return to the public coffers all expenses incurred so far in their “merry-go-round.”
Furthermore, the group said, “the claim of ceasefire was within 48 hours repudiated by the leader of the dreaded armed Islamic rebels, Sheikh Abubakar Shekau, who claimed in a 10-minute video recording that it has no subsisting peace talk with the Nigerian Government.”
“That was besides President Jonathan’s interview with the United States’ Cable News Network, where he told the world that the country had no ceasefire talk with the group” HURIWA stressed.
