Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), yesterday, urged the International Criminal Court (ICC), headquartered in the Netherlands at The Hague, to arrest and prosecute Aminu Tambuwal, Sokoto State governor, for his alleged failure to arrest and prosecute Islamic extremists that stoned to death the Christian student, Miss Deborah Samuel Yakubu, in Sokoto. 
   
HURIWA in a petition dated May 23, 2023, and signed by its national coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said the refusal to bring Deborah Samuel’s killers to justice is a crime against humanity. 
     
The rights group asked the ICC to use the service of International Police (InterPol) to arrest Tambuwal immediately he entered Europe.
  
According to the group, Governor Tambuwal as the chief security officer of the state, has the primary responsibility of protecting the life and property of residents of the state, as has been repeatedly pointed out.
  
“If he has had any constraints in doing so, it was up to him to reach out to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) for logistical and personnel back up or even the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria himself for necessary backup, given the crass impunity of this cold blooded murder.
    
“The truth of the matter, however, is that governor Tambuwal is clearly unwilling to pursue and secure justice for the late Miss Deborah Samuel, for fear of losing the support of the predominantly Muslim population in the general elections that were just a couple of months away at the time.  
   
“Again, for these same reasons, the other state agencies of law enforcement were also unwilling to do something about it.
    
“It is for this reason that we at HURIWA decided to petition the ICC to step into the matter, through the Office of the Prosecutor and do the needful by arresting and prosecuting the said errant governor, under the auspices of the Treaty of Rome, which came into force on the first day of July 2001.
 
“The Statute of Rome and Domestic Criminal Impunity. Violation of human rights and protection of individuals from such violations, require appropriate mechanisms of law enforcement.
 
“Ordinarily, the prosecution of the perpetrators of these crimes ought ordinarily to be handled by the security agencies and courts of the individual countries, but in situations such as we have in the case of the gruesome murder of Miss Deborah Samuel, where these national agencies are clearly unwilling or even unable to discharge their duties, the alternative will be to resort to the International Criminal Court, ICC, hence the need for this petition,” the group noted.
 
The petition reads in part: “It is with utmost respect that we at HURIWA, a foremost human rights protection group in Nigeria, send the following petition to the International Criminal Court, through the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), which is responsible for initiating investigation of alleged genocide or crimes against humanity, upon receipt of concrete to reasonably support such allegations.
   
‘This petition therefore, is in pursuance of the attainment of the basic and fundamental objective of the setting up of the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose establishing legislation, the Rome Treaty, made it quite clear that its essence, was to end impunity in respect of four critical genres of serious crimes including genocide and crimes against humanity. This is particularly so, in situations where the perpetrators of such crimes are state actors, who are constitutionally supposed to stamp out the commission of such crimes.
 
“About a year ago, a young and defenseless Christian female student of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, Sokoto State, Miss Deborah Samuel, was gruesomely murdered and lynched in broad daylight by a mob of male Muslim fanatics, said to be students of the same Institution.
  
“Her purported offense termed blasphemy by the hoodlums, was her glib and careless reference to Islam as ‘this nonsense religion’, following a minor argument with some of her classmates.
   
“In fact, when the situation got out of hand, the helpless young lady ran from the classroom, the venue of the initially minor altercation, to the security post for her dear life, but the depraved bloodhounds followed her in a hot pursuit, got hold of her and despite her desperate plea for mercy, mercilessly slaughtered her like an animal.
  
“The beastly killers did not make any attempt to run away or even hide their faces and were caught on camera and could have been quite easily apprehended for necessary prosecution, if the relevant authorities were interested in doing so.
 
“The governor of Sokoto state, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, under whose direct jurisdiction the crime took place and whose duty it was to arrest and prosecute these criminals, was clearly unenthusiastic to carry out his constitutional duties in this respect. Obviously, with the general elections a few months away at the time, the governor was clearly not ready to incur the wrath of his largely Muslim population by appearing to support the act of ‘blasphemy’ against holy prophet Mohammed.
  
“It was therefore not surprising that this senseless gruesome killing of an innocent defenseless young lady, which led to a lot of uproar all over the country and even in the international community, was not officially treated with the seriousness that it deserves by the responsible state actors.
   
“In Nigeria as well as in other parts of the civilized world, the crime of murder is treated very seriously, with the least punishment being life imprisonment, but can attract a death sentence in some cases. Many states and the Federal Government in Nigeria, still have the death penalty for murder and in those states that do not, the maximum punishment is life in prison as aforementioned, without the possibility of parole (LWOP).”