•HURIWA logo and Tinubu
With nearly 200 people killed on Wednesday by Islamic terrorists in separate attacks in remote villages in central and northern Nigeria, as confirmed by a Kwara State legislator, residents and police, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has asked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to suspend all his scheduled foreign trips in 2026 to enable his government focus on waging relentless counterterrorism campaigns and defeat the terrorists.
HURIWA further stated that the president is heavily distracted by the politics of 2027 general elections, just as the rights group blame the All Progressives Congress for putting on the front burner, the re-election of the incumbent president rather than letting him to concentrate and pay attention to achieving holistic and positive results in the counterterrorism campaigns, reports Daily Independent.
“It is unfortunate that the APC supported by the President has already started campaigns for the 2027 poll in clear violation of the extant electoral law even as serving political office holders of other parties are cajoled, blackmailed and compelled due to the fear of EFCC’S prosecution, to defect to the president’s political party and to even kick-start campaigns for the re-election of President Tinubu.”
HURIWA, a pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group, said it is inexplicably shocking that President Tinubu spent 22 days outside of the shores of Nigeria in January 2026 and had travelled across the globe last year just as the bilateral agreements he signed during his foreign tours have had little or no benefits economically to millions of heavily impoverished citizens even with thousands of Nigerians killed by terrorists.
The killings show a fundamental failure of governance and the failure of the president to keep to his legal obligation of protecting lives and property of the citizens which is the primary constitutional duty of government.
“We do think too that governors who lack what it takes to partner with the security forces to protect their people should throw in the towel. The Kwara state governor has indeed failed in his constitutional duty to Kwara people.
“In central Kwara State, gunmen attacked the Woro Community on Tuesday, leaving at least 170 people dead,” the lawmaker for the area Saidu Baba Ahmed said by phone.”
It was the deadliest assault recorded this year in the district bordering Niger State, an area increasingly targeted by gunmen who raid villages, kidnap residents and loot livestock.
Ahmed said the gunmen rounded up residents, bound their hands behind their backs and executed them. The lawmaker shared photographs of dead bodies with Reuters, which the agency was not immediately able to verify.
Villagers fled into surrounding bushland during the attack, he said. The gunmen torched homes and shops.
“As I’m speaking to you now, I’m in the village along with military personnel, sorting dead bodies and combing the surrounding areas for more,” Ahmed said.
Several people were still missing on Wednesday morning, he said.
Residents told Reuters the gunmen demanded during a sermon that locals ditch their allegiance to the Nigerian state and switch to Sharia Islamic law. When the villagers pushed back, the militants opened fire.
Reacting, HURIWA is suggesting that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu cancel all his already scheduled trips to foreign jurisdictions so he can lead the armed forces of Nigeria from the front in coordinating the counterterrorism campaigns just as HURIWA said the heads of the security institutions appointed by president Tinubu must be made to sign social contract performance forms of what thresholds each of them must achieve in the war on terror or be fired from office within a specific time frame.
The National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko said HURIWA is miffed that even when 200 citizens were killed by Islamists, there hasn’t been any administrative sanctions imposed on the heads of the security institutions based in Kwara state that committed the spectacular security and intelligence blunders that allowed for the callous slaughtering of Nigerians by Islamic terrorists.
