Leading Civil Rights Advocacy Group:- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has thrown her weight behind the conclusion reached by the National Daily –Daily Trust that life in Nigeria has lost meaning.
However, unlike Daily Trust that fails to totally recommend lasting solution to the incessant terror attacks all across Nigeria, HURIWA says the best way out is for President Muhammadu Buhari to either throw in the towel since he clearly lacks the capacity to protect Nigerians or he be impeached by the National Assembly.
HURIWA however regrets that even the leadership of the National Assembly is so incompetent and compromised that it may take extraordinary measures to get them to follow the constitution and impeach the Non performing President.
HURIWA has also condemned the diversionary response to the damaging but truthful Daily Trust’s editorial on the instability steering Nigeria on the face as made by the Spokesman of President Muhammadu Buhari just as HURIWA said the attempt to introduce extraneous factors of health emergency as a response by special assistant to the president on media Garba Shehu, to the expertly articulated exposition on the failing security infrastructures in Nigeria under the watch of a grossly incompetent president Buhari, shows that the current administration is delusional and is living in pathetic state of denial.
“It is unfortunate that the spokesman of president Buhari attempted to divert the attention of Nigerians to the loaded editorial opinion of the well respected Northern based Newspaper Daily Trust on the collapsing state of security by talking about such unrelated issues as Covid-19 and chased shadows by asserting without empirical evidence that insecurity is global.
It is shocking that president Buhari does not know that the unprecedented violence unleashed on Nigerians are so unique that not even in war ravaged Yemen or Afghanistan do you see armed Non State actors kidnapping citizens and setting travelers on fire”.
HURIWA wonders why President Buhari through his spokesman who suffers from Igbophobia, known as Alhaji Garba Shehu, took the opportunity of responding to the cases of terror attacks in the North as pointed out by the Northern-oriented Daily Trust to introduce the angle of the military action in the South East.
HURIWA reminded Garba Shehu and other Igbo haters hibernating in this government that to a large extent, what President Muhammadu Buhari calls military actions in the South East of Nigeria, constituted crimes against humanity because of the wanton killings by Soldiers/Police of unarmed Igbo youths under the guise of chasing after the Eastern Security Network.
HURIWA said the atrocities committed in the South East of Nigeria and are still been committed by the security agencies are already compiled by Amnesty International as war crimes.
“But instead of Garba Shehu telling Nigerians why the government has allowed Northern terrorists to destroy all of North West as observed by Daily Trust, Garba Shehu disingenuously went on a voyage of discovery by talking about unrelated issues.”
HURIWA recalled that Mr. Garba Shehu in responding to daily Trust opinion on failed state of security had veered off by stating thus: “The growing instability and violence in the North of Nigeria and elsewhere is unacceptable. No one, not least the Presidency underestimates the seriousness of the situation. Every day, the President holds the victims and their families in his thoughts and prayers. Above all, he wishes to reassure them – and all Nigerians – that tackling the scourge of banditry and terrorism remains this government’s first priority”.
Garba Shehu said also: “Sadly, in this respect, Nigeria is not unique. Violence and terror have risen steadily across the entire African continent over the last decade. The Economist magazine in a recent publication wrote about “The Next Afghanistan,” warning the global community of the horrifying security in our neighborhood, citing specifically the states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. So we understand the frustrations of the Daily Trust and Nigeria’s northern communities about the ongoing challenges of security and the Buhari administration is no less worried. But it is only fair to say that Nigeria’s persistent and continued efforts to suppress that instability have seen results, with the terror group Boko Haram among others reduced to a shell of its former self.”
Garba Shehu further said: “Yet, now we Nigerians face a new threat: the worst global health crisis in living memory. Even Nigeria that proudly holds the mantle of Africa’s largest economy is not immune from the debilitating economic impact of COVID-19. The economic instability that the pandemic has wreaked has proven an effective recruitment tool for bandits and terrorists across the continent”.
HURIWA recalled that in an editorial titled: “LIFE HAS LOST ITS VALUE UNDER BUHARI’S NIGERIA”, Daily Trust stated thus:”In a space of just two days last week, 23 travellers heading to Kaduna were burnt alive in a commercial bus at Sabon Birni,…
“In a space of just two days last week, 23 travellers heading to Kaduna were burnt alive in a commercial bus at Sabon Birni, Sokoto State. No fewer than 15 worshipers killed as they prayed in a mosque at Ba’are village, Mashegu Local Government Area of Niger State. A Commissioner in the service of Katsina State, Dr Rabe Nasir was gruesomely murdered in his own house located at Fatima Shema Quarters in Katsina city, while a housewife identified only as Salamatu, was killed as bandits abducted six others during a raid at Piri community in Kwali Area Council of Abuja.”
Daily Trust stayed also thus: “Welcome to northern Nigeria, circa 2021, where life has seemingly lost its value, under a President voted en masse five times by the same populace. The commissioner was stabbed several times until he died. A 30-year-old woman watched as her mother, four children, an uncle, a nephew, and a niece, all burnt to ashes. She died too a few days later. Their attackers, of course, watched in delight”
Daily Trust said too that: “But the horror and barbarism of these killings is only one thing. The frequency with which these gruesome killings occur and recur is another. The Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, summed up the sorrow and grief-stricken mood of the region and the nation, when he said, shortly after these events, that, “if I continue talking about the insecurity in the North, we will not leave this room… There is no single day that passes without people being killed in the North especially in the North West now, but we don’t hear it,” even as bandits continue to kill and maim in part of Katsina State and elsewhere in the North.”
HURIWA therefore condemns the Federal government for spectacularly taking pride in brandishing unrelated issues around the World in what is clearly incoherent attempts at justifying the failure of governance under President Muhammadu Buhari who took oath of office to respect the Nigerian Constitution which primarily mandates the President to ensure that he implements his primary Constitutional duty to Nigerians which is to protect lives and property of Nigerians as enshrined in section 14(2) (b) of the Nigerian Constitution. “Why is Garba Shehu citing examples of other nations as if President Muhammadu Buhari never committed himself by his official oath as written in the GrundNorm of the Federal Republic of Nigeria?”
