The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called for change of what it described as myopic narrative by administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, with a view to stopping his undue loyalty to his religion and ethnic background, which has created chasms around the country since he came to power.
HURIWA specifically said: “President Buhari has maintained his nepotistic practices of always insisting on picking his Hausa/Fulani Moslems to head security architectures of significance.” The group said it was incomprehensible that Igbo tribe has never had a service chief since assumption of office by Buhari in 2015.
HURIWA, who spoke against the backdrop of the inter-ethnic conflict in Ibadan, Oyo State, said Buhari had created perception that members of his Hausa/Fulani ethnicity can never be prosecuted for alleged invasion and destruction of farms and killing of innocent citizens, majority of whom are Christians.
To the human rights group, police have also exacerbated the conflicts between different ethnicities because they have been ethnicised by the President to appear more like a Hausa/Fulani brigade than a national police force with the dominance of Moslems of Hausa/Fulani ethnic stock being favoured in all the top flight promotions ever carried out under President Buhari since 2015, with the South East always kept in the fringes.
“When you make your administration appear like a village meeting of Hausa/Fulani and only promote your people in the security forces, you are only stoking up the embers of ethnic and religious hatred and conflicts like the type that flared up sadly in the biggest city in West Africa- Ibadan, Oyo State, South West of Nigeria,” it said in a statement in Abuja, yesterday, signed by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf.
HURIWA pointed out that the deliberate failure of the administration of Buhari to prosecute armed Fulani herdsmen responsible for massive destructions of parts of Benue, Southern Kaduna, Plateau, and Enugu states, including the spate of killings and kidnapping in such places like Nasarawa, Benue and Kaduna, masterminded by mostly armed Fulani herdsmen, is the fundamental cause of organised chasms and divisiveness dovetailing into conflagration and bloody conflicts such as the fight between traders of Hausa/Yoruba ethnicities in Ibadan.
“It is increasingly becoming notorious that the Presidency or rather, the administration of Buhari, is much more concerned about elevating parochial and mundane group interests of his ethnicity, no matter how dangerous to the health of the nation.
“This the President has demonstrated overwhelmingly and has had running squabbles with representatives of diverse ethnic groups in a warped attempt to impose policies that are offensive to the greatest public good.
“This tendency directly contradicts the Buhari whereby he said and I quote: ‘I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody’”.
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