As the military authorities recently confirmed that it would hand over 613 rehabilitated “low-risk repentant” terrorists to their state governments, the Civil Rights Advocacy Group-: HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has alleged that the unseen forces authorising the release of these mass killers are actually those top government  officials making billions of dollars from the spike in terrorist attacks through phantom arms and weaponry contracts.

HURIWA said: “Those at the top echelons of government who make a killing by negotiating and collecting generous commission on unexecuted and fake Defence budgets running into trillions of Naira for over ten years are the very persons pushing for their so-called ‘repentant terrorists’ to be released and reintegrated back into the same society that they masterminded series of blood cuddling killings and attacks for nearly a decade.

“This irrational talk about releasing over six hundred hard core terrorists that they rebaptised as ‘repentant terrorists’ is nothing but a gambit to keep up the tempo of vicious attacks by the terrorists so these fake defence contractors in government will continue to line their pockets with blood money whilst the people of North East perish and the millions of internally displaced persons and refugees forced to flee from Nigeria and millions of other civilian victims of terrorist attacks are left to face their cruel fate under excruciating circumstances.”

With the above summation, Civil society group- HURIWA has kicked against the plot as announced by the Chief of Defence Staff that 613 rehabilitated terrorists who were said to be currently undergoing deradicalisation and rehabilitation handled by Operation Safe Corridor would be released to States. HURIWA is demanding that the Federal Government must subject mass killers to the legal system so they are made to give accounts of their dastardly crimes and sanctioned heavily for daring to take up arms against the state and for slaughtering over 40,000 civilians including Children, old women and hundreds of sick, disabled people in the North East.”

HURIWA  recalled that the Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, disclosed this information on the impending release of terrorists during the fifth stakeholders’ meeting of Operation Safe Corridor in Abuja even as Irabor who was represented by the Chief of Defence Training and Operation, Maj. Gen. Adeyemi Yekini, said the meeting would exhaustively discuss the deradicalisation, rehabilitation, and reintegration programme ahead of the transfer of the rehabilitated clients to their state governments. The OPSC was established by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), in September 2015 as a window for willing and repentant terrorists to lay down their arms and undergo a structured DRR programme.”

The Rights group said it is strongly opposed to the planned release because those that are released under the guise of repentant terrorists are the same combatants recruited by boko haram terrorists and ISWAP and are the same persons bombing train stations, attacking communities, kidnapping travellers and aiding and abetting the many prison breaks that have happened in the recent times.

HURIWA said were Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari not converted to a rogue State, the Country would have by now built massive high security prison facilties in the large landed assets of Sambisa forests in Borno State whereby these terrorists arrested or surrendered should be sent to spend their entire lives for participating in the mass killings of worshippers in Churches, Mosques, government workers in their offices and even the United Nations complex in Abuja. Terrorists do not deserve reintegration back into the society but either execution by firing squads of life times in high net secured prison facilities built with modern information technology assets to monitor their movements for life. They should also be made to engage in farming and other productive ventures to fund the services they will get whilst in the prison facilities.”

HURIWA through the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko reminded President Muhammadu Buhari that generations unborn will remember him as someone who treated terrorists with kid gloves by releasing them back into the society that they carried out genocides whereas the real victims are abandoned to suffer deprivations and disabilities caused by the violence unleashed by the terrorists.