Group faults US verdict on graft, insecurity in Nigeria

A group, Coalition for Nigeria Movement, has faulted a recent report by the United States of America’s 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices which claimed that “impunity remains widespread at all levels of government in Nigeria.”

The report, which was published on the website of the US Department of State, indicated that “several acts of gross human rights abuse were committed by both government and non-government actors within Nigeria in the year under review,” many of which were not investigated.

However, in its reaction, the coalition stated that the attack “on Nigeria as a country and its leadership for daring to work for what is in the interest of citizens is provocative.” 

Addressing a news conference Wednesday in Abuja, the group’s national convener, Gabriel T. Kifasi, called on the federal government to reject the “insinuations and wrong conclusions drawn in the report as citizens expect nothing less of their government.”

The statement read in part: “This unsurprising nature of the report is based on the knowledge that the United States in its arrogance continues to parade itself as the “Police of the World” while being dismissive of the rights of other nations to sovereignty. 

“To the extent that the United States has failed to put its own house in order, a natural reaction to this most recent outrage would have been to completely ignore the junk document. But we reason that part of the misplaced importance the US arrogates to itself is because citizens of other countries often neglect to challenge the lies emanating from the devil’s worldly capital, hence the misplaced aura of infallibility that makes this country continue to ply the world with its garbage. 

 “If we do nothing to call attention to the lies built into the latest 49-paged fiction by the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, there is then the risk that the fallacies will be committed to history as the true state of affairs in Nigeria.”

“We call on the Federal Government of Nigeria to reject the insinuations and wrong conclusions drawn in the report as citizens expect nothing less of their government.”

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