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Buhari to respond to petitions on killings at The Hague ICC meeting

by Armada News
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By Baron Ike

It emerged at the weekend that President Muhammadu Buhari who left the country on Monday to attend a meeting at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, The Netherlands may as well be responding to petitions allegedly written to the body by concerned Nigerians in respect of insecurity.

President Buhari is expected, among other things, address the ICC on more than 100 petitions allegedly written against him on herdsmen and ethnic-based killings, according to sources.

Both Christian leaders and other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria had at one time or the other complained of the killing of their members with some threatening to draw the attention of the international community to it.

Most of the petitions had dwelt on alleged religious and ethnic cleansing by Fulani herdsmen.

President Donald Trump of the United States had during his meeting with Buhari recently warned against killing of Christians and other ethnically-motivated killings in the north, particularly, the middle belt axis.

It was learnt that the presence of Simon Lalong of Plateau State, who accompanied the president is to help deny the killings in Plateau State as ethnic cleansing by herdsmen.

Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State will corroborate Lalong as it concerns the South West while the Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffery Onyema will be game for the South East.

Lalong, it was learnt, will speak as the governor of one of the affected states.

He will be letting the ICC to believe that the killings in Plateau State and the Middle Belt is not genocide and has nothing to do with ethnic cleansing by herdsmen.

Report Yourself to ICC, PDP Tells Buhari 
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has charged President Buhari to use his attendance of the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Rome Statute to report his administration to the court over documented human right abuses, crime against humanity and killings in Nigeria under his watch.
The party said the fact that President Buhari is the only head of state invited to the event shows that the world is particularly alarmed by the spate of bloodletting, extra-judicial executions, illegal arrests,
arbitrary detention, torture and reported disappearances, as captured in the reports by the United States Department of State, Amnesty International (AI) and Transparency International (TI).
“The PDP notes that contrary to the effort by the Presidency to present the invitation as positive for the Buhari Presidency, the administration has a lot of questions to answer,” according to a statement signed by the party spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan.
Ologbondiyan added: “What the Presidency seeks to hide from Nigerians is that the ICC Rome Statute deals directly with critical issues of crime against humanity, which is already prevalent in Nigeria under President Buhari’s watch.
“The PDP recalls that it had earlier filed a petition at the United Nations (UN) against the Buhari administration over issues of human rights violations in our country.
“The party therefore calls on the ICC to take President Buhari to task on the documented abuse of human rights in Nigeria, particularly, the US Department of State 2017 Human Right Report, which catalogued issues of extrajudicial and arbitrary killings; disappearances and arbitrary detentions and torture, particularly in detention facilities in Nigeria under this administration.”

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