Over 5,000 persons killed in North

A group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, has stated that no fewer than 5,000 persons, mainly from ethnic and religious minorities in the North, have been killed by Boko Haram.HURRIWA therefore challenged the United Nations and the Federal Government to take comprehensive and effective measures to protect the minorities in the North, particularly in the North-Eastern region.In a statement by the groups National Coordinator, Mr. Emmanuel Onwubiko, and its National Media Officer, Miss Zainab Yusuf, on Monday, HURRIWA said because of the developments, hundreds of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities had started abandoning their traditional homes. It said many of them had taken refuge in places like Kaduna or Abuja, warning that if no effective action was adopted to check the "genocide" against ethnic minorities, Nigeria might witness unprecedented reprisals from relatives and sympathisers. The group said, "In the Northern parts of Nigeria, especially in the North Eastern segment of the country, many ethnic and religious minorities running to over 5,000 persons have been gruesomely assassinated. "Also, their religious and habitable structures have been destroyed by the firepower of splinter groups made up of armed radical Islamic fundamentalist groups, commonly identified as Boko Haram." It cited the recent attacks on some Christians by suspected armed Fulani herdsmen in Zonkwa town, Southern Kaduna, as well as the killing of Christians and Southerners as some of the worst signs that religious intolerance had assumed a frightening dimension in the North. It regretted that in the midst of the whole development, the Federal Government and concerned state governments did nothing to bring perpetrators of the "dastardly acts of brutality, bestiality and mass killings" to effective and competent prosecution and punishment. HURRIWA noted that the investigation and prosecution departments of the Nigeria Police were allegedly compromised and weak that suspects were left to escape prosecution. It urged the UN to categorise Nigeria as a country undergoing selective genocide of ethnic and religious minorities and to take effective measures to protect them.
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