Civil Rights Advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria(HURIWA) has condemned and expressed deep shock at the reported rape and gruesome murder of Miss Vera Uwaila Omozuwa, a 100 level Microbiology student of University of Benin, by unknown persons, in a church in Benin City.
“This is a violent violation and termination of a dream. We think this is sacrilegious and totally unacceptable. Those who murdered this innocent teenage student who went to carry out private studies in the quietness and holiness of the Church are agents of Satan who are bloody murderers and persons bent on bringing the name of the Body of Christ into disrepute.
“They have committed the most egregious and most senseless profanity that is unprecedented in historical context and monumental in terms of the sheer quantum of what their attempts to damage the brand of the Church represents broadly which is a place that righteousness, peace and human progress are preached”, HURIWA said in a statement signed by it’s national Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko.
He further stated that, “These killers who ended the precious and sacred life of this girl are primitive, satanic, brutish and rapacious. They have committed multiple offences against the Body of Christ and violated the sanctity of the life of this teenage student and their deprivation of her life is murderous and has deprived her of her constitutionally guaranteed fundamental Right to life as provided for in section 33(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”.
HURIWA in the statement that was jointly signed by the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, said they are understandably discomfited and disappointed in the disruptive statement of UNIBEN (University of Benin) authorities, which sought to cast a damaging innuendos of impropriety on the incident, by blaming the victims of violence instead of the perpetrators.
“We think that the reaction of the University of Benin is not far reaching enough but is timid, tendentious, ambiguous and was done in bad faith. The University of Benin through their reaction tried to cast a blame that the victim of this deadly rape and insensitive gruesome attacks may have brought the misfortune to herself by the company she kept.
“This pedestrian argument without the faintest empirical evidence is irresponsible and irrational and has therefore exposed the signatory of that public statement by the authority of University of Benin of insensitivity.
“Is the University of Benin saying then that it has knowledge of those who carried out this dastardly act of murder and sexual violation of the most depraved dimension? why say the students should be careful of the company they keep as if the authority has information not available to the public about the identity of her killers or what? That mumbo jumbo of a media Statement by the University of Benin is absolutely absurd and ridiculous”.
HURIWA called on the Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu to immediately constitute a team of investigators and speedily bring the perpetrators to book.
“We plead with the General Overseer of the Redeem Church Pastor Adeboye who is one of the few credible fathers of organised religions in Nigeria to mount pressure on his friend President Muhammadu Buhari to task the Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu to arrest, prosecute and punish heavily these senseless killers of this young girl in a scene that is similar to the movie called MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL.
“These killers who committed this murder and raped the victim inside a Church of God must be immediately arrested”, HURIWA ended.
