The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has counselled President Muhammadu Buhari to stop crying wolf over the political vicissitudes afflicting the nation, but to rather reflect sincerely and introspectively on his deeply divisive nepotistic and discriminatory practices of trusting only persons of his religion or ethnicity to hold sensitive internal security jobs under his administration, since he came on board as a democratically elected president in 2015.
The Rights group said Buhari’s attempt to pass the blame to some inexplicable forces is at best an effort at sophistry and deception, just as it asked the President to amend his political modus operandi and behave like a statesman, by giving appointments into strategic national security portfolios to the most competent and meritorious patriotic Nigerians from all religious and ethnic affiliations.
The body said: “What the President does is to practise his deep-rooted nepotism and favouritism in appointments, whereby he prefers his fellow Fulani/Hausa northern Muslims to hold such strategic portfolios as heads of Department of States Services; Inspector General of Police, Comptroller Generals of Customs and Immigration; Director-General of National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps.”
HURIWA reminded Buhari that his nepotistic and skewed appointments are the most treacherous acts of corruption and a grave threat to Nigeria’s national security, aside the intrinsic reality that this illegal practice offends sections 14(3) and 42(1) of the Nigerian Constitution of 1999 as amended, which speak to the twin critical components of Federal Character principles and the absolute delegitimisation of discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion or political affinities.
A statement issued last Sunday in Abuja by the National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director, Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said: “The President has failed to use the opportunity of his reflection on the bloody attacks against Nigerians by a broad range of armed non-state actors, terrorists, bandits, kidnappers, armed Fulani herdsmen and cultists of the last twelve calendar months to tell Nigerians categorically of his pragmatic approach to solving the widespread insecurity and widening spectre of bloody attacks. Rather, he went round and round in a circus with no deliverables, playing on sophistry and deception.
HURIWA recalled that the President had on security stated: “Re-energising and reorganising the security apparatus and personnel of the armed forces and the police to enhance their capacity to engage, push back and dismantle the operations of both internal and external extremist and criminal groups waging war against our communities in some parts of the country…”
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The group said the empty rhetoric about the cases, whereby some fortunate Nigerians were rescued or bribed away from being killed by terrorists were few and far between, given that the far-reaching extent of violent attacks has become ever widening.
HURIWA said Buhari has also done nothing concrete to change the trajectory of incessant extralegal execution of citiz ens by the Police Force, a central issue that instigated the largest civil protests anchored by hundreds of thousands of young Nigerians under the aegis of EndSARS.
The Guardian
