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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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Rights activist urges law to prevent terrorist acts
PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo has been urged to ensure that the country enacts laws that will prevent the emergence of terrorists acts in Nigeria.
Hundreds of pro-democracy, human rights activities, public affairs commentators as well as religious leaders, Christians and Moslems converge in Kaduna at the weekend to commemorate the unfortunate September 11 terrorists attacks on the United States during which thousands of people lost their lives.
At a seminar organised by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) held at Adriel Hotel, renown Public Affairs commentator and editor-in-chief of the defunct Democratic Newspapers, Alhaji Abdulkadir Al Bashir, said that the Federal Government should rise to the responsibility of warding-off all traces of terrorism from Nigeria, "because all the parameters for the unwholesome acts are prevalent in the country."
Al-Bashir who delivered an eight-page lecture, titled "The definition of Terrorism" said that areas to pay particular attention and which may be vulnerable to manipulate by unpatriotic elements are religion, economy and political enterprise.
"If we are able to unite and co-operate as a people, in spite of our religious, ethnic and political difference there is no way the western powers can penetrate us and use these factors against us as we weakness and to see as terrorists," he said.
Al-Bashir, specifically faulted the policy of American government for solely policing and branding some people as terrorists, pointing out that "the powerful define terrorism and the western media loyally follow the agenda of their own leaders."
He said: "Within this group falls the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and others already cited. When the same terrorists group attacks an unfriendly country they bear the name of freedom fighters, "the terrorists group which was nurtured by them to unleash terrorism in Nicaragua, was a legitimate freedom fighter. Osama bin Laden was recruited and trained by them to fight Soviet presence in Afghanistan.
"They created his Al-Qaeida network for that purpose. All was fair then, when his terrorism was deployed against the Soviets. Not so when he allegedly turned against them."
The president of CRC, Malam Shehu Sani, in an opening remark, argued that "a specific event that had transformed global politics and changed perceptions and views was the attack on the United States, exactly three years ago."
He noted that even before the attack on the U.S., terrorism had been an issue, but never was it debated with such emotion, sensation and interest it today generates in local and international politics.
Sani said: "Since the advent of democracy in Nigeria in 1999, we have witnessed upsurge in armed violence on the domestic scene that are unambiguously terrorising in nature. While some are politically motivated, many of such bloody engagements were also criminally induced. This militancy and resort to arms directly threaten the survival of not only our democracy but the unity and sovereignty of the country."
He charged the Federal Government to rise to the need of arresting eruption of crisis in some parts of the country.
According to Sani "the rise of ethnic militia in the South-West, the seemingly intractable youth restiveness in Niger- Delta, the re-occurrence of sectarian violence in Northern states are fundamental challenges that pose threat to our survival as a nation."
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