The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to rejig the internal security architectures of the country to reflect federal character.
HURIWA made the call against the backdrop of killings by terrorists in the Northern part of Nigeria.
The right group said religious and ethnic bigotry by security heads was responsible for killings and terrorism in Nigeria.
A statement by HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko reads: “Following the serial blood cuddling butcher and slaughter by terrorists in the North West of Nigeria of civilians including travellers and the persistent failures of intelligence gathering capacity of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a call has gone to the President and Commander-In-Chief President Muhammadu Buhari to rejig, reorganise and reshape the internal security operations especially the hierarchies to reflect the Federal CHARACTER Principle as enshrined in section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution. HURIWA believes that religious and Ethnic bigotry by heads of the internal security operations is why there are a lot of terrorism and killings by armed non state actors aided by serving members of the armed forces.
“Specifically, Section 14 (3) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria said thus: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”
HURIWA accused Buhari of being a habitual abuser of this law by not only concentrating strategic internal security appointments to Muslims but “he even violated with ignominy the law in making top two appointments into the Federal Character Commission which is an agency to address Federal character issues.”
The group tasked Buhari and the National Assembly to investigate the allegations that the Nigerian Army and Air force deliberately began uncoordinated and poorly executed military actions against terrorists hibernating in Zamfara State and deliberately created escape routes for them to escape the theatre of fire into Sokoto State where they are now transferring their unjust aggression to target civilians and innocent citizens.
The statement added: “It’s shocking that for over six years, President Muhammadu Buhari refused to listen to the voice of reason and stop the religious and Ethnic bigotry which characterised the formation of the heads of the entire agencies of government in charge of internal security operations, thereby allowing only Muslims and mostly Hausa/Fulani to head strategic internal security operations as the Nigerian Customs Service, the Nigerian Immigration, the Nigerian Civil Defence Corps, the Nigerian Correctional Centre and the Nigerian Police Force and a South West fanatical Moslem heading the ministry of internal Affairs.
“It is disheartening that the heads of Department of State Services and the Nigerian Intelligence Agency are all headed by Fulani Muslims but yet sophisticated weapons have flooded into Nigeria from the North and these officers perfectly pretended not to know what they are doing whilst terrorists have overwhelmed the entire North, but it took pressures for the government to lazily proceed to the Federal High Court to belatedly classify these suspected Fulani armed militia in the North West as terrorists.
“Why is President Muhammadu Buhari comfortable and sleeping peacefully whilst Nigeria is turned upside down by killers and all kinds of armed non state actors and the Muslim-controlled internal security architectures that have failed and indeed compromised against national security are left intact in their offices as if the government is actually happy that blood is flowing all over the nation? Mr. President, sack these incompetent officers who cannot protect Nigerians. These persons are delegitimising your administration because any administration that is unable to defend the defenceless is a fraud.
“HURIWA is asking the President to appoint qualified Nigerians from all religions and ethnicities to man the internal security operations of Nigeria because empirical evidence now shows that the all Muslim-internal security team have acted like compromised bunch of Islamists who have permitted the infiltration and flooding of Nigeria by all kinds of armed bandits, terrorists and Islamists and it seems these bunch of killers are waging Jihad in Nigeria against Christians whilst a few of them are engaged in the terrorist acts of kidnapping of civilians and destruction of communities.”
