Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA has attacked President Muhammadu Buhari over a statement he made saying that banditry in the north west is ‘disturbing’ on Thursday.

The group frowned at the empty-speech by Buhari and his failure to declare bandits terrorists.

Buhari spoke while hosting 12 governors and some federal lawmakers, said the lingering crisis in the Northwest is caused by the same people against themselves.

“They are the same people, the same religion but keep on killing and stealing each other’s cattle and burning their own villages,” the President had said.

Reacting, HURIWA, in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, frowned at what it described as the lackadaisical attitude of President Buhari towards handling the issues of terrorism in the North West, saying it was unjustifiable and tragic.

The Rights group said it was most troubling that President Buhari allegedly pampers the terrorists by first calling them mere bandits instead of declaring them as terrorists.

“President Buhari should know that what troubles rational human beings all over the World is that his government uses the sledgehammer on unarmed Eastern Security Network and Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) in the South East and the Yoruba nation freedom crusaders in the South West but resorts to empty rhetorics and sophistry on matters concerning the terrorists in the North West, thereby making the rest of Nigerians to assume that the largely Fulani militia doing the terrorists acts in the North West are being pampered for ethnoreligious considerations,” he said.

“We humbly pray the President to take a look at his oath of office and take decisive steps irrespective of the ethnoreligious links he may have with the terrorists in the North West and enforce the counter-terror law to crush them instead of the constant sermonization.

“For the umpteenth time, we in HURIWA pray President Buhari to stop the violations of the oath of office he took which is binding on him legally.”