Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), has said that despite the Department of State Service (DSS) arrest and detection of four leaders, its planned protests against insecurity in Kano state hold.
The spokesperson of the coalition, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman in a statement made available to newsman in Abuja, said that the protest will continue until victory is pronounced with the achievement of full cessation of hostilities, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration in the entire northern region.
The CNG demands the newly formed SWAT be adequately empowered and sufficiently incentivised for effective and efficient discharge of its primary duty of securing the nation and restoring law, order and public peace particularly in the distressed communities of northern Nigeria.
“We also demanded the National Assembly to urgently provide the enabling legislative environment for the mandatory extension of guarantee of social security to families of slain personnel in the form of access to free education, healthcare and shelter in addition to financial packages for starting over,” Suleiman said.
The CNG also condemned actions of those who perpetrate criminal attacks on persons exercising their right to peaceful protests anywhere in Nigeria and strongly denounce those who instigate others to commit such acts of violence and lawlessness.
He said, “We also emphatically repudiate the preferential treatment by law enforcers, of one ethnic and regional group or the other for whatever reason or justification.
“We deem the targeting of organizers of the protests against the killings in northern Nigeria for systematic humiliation, intimidation, profiling, alienation or any action that will render them object of persecution by any organ of the security or attacks by state sponsored thugs, not only immoral and illegal, but also abhorrent to our sensibilities and ordinary decency and therefore unacceptable.
“CNG is quite aware that targeting of any ethnic or regional group and singling it out for any negative action for all intents and purposes, is against both our laws and international laws, treaties and conventions to which Nigeria is a signatory,” he said.
He further said that the protests against the rampant killings in northern Nigeria and displacement of hundreds of communities has come under intense pressure and intimidation in the last few hours by the DSS which is hell bent on suppressing the tearful voice of the northerner.
The CNG leaders arrested are Nastura Sharif, Balarabe Rufai, Aminu Adam and Dr Muhammad Nawaila.
The CNG officials were said to have been invited by the DSS in Kano where they were held from 11pm on Friday to 2.15am on Saturday.
Recently, Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) directed all its chapters members across the 19 northern states to begin an expanded protest across the region.
