A prominent civil rights group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, on Tuesday said President Muhammadu Buhari lacks “human empathy.”
HURIWA stated that the President was not prepared to strictly adhere to the law regarding the fundamental human rights of Nigerians.
It was reacting to Buhari’s nationwide broadcast wherein he ordered the total lockdown of Abuja, Lagos, and Ogun States due to the outbreak of Coronavirus.
Recall that Buhari had on Sunday ordered a total lockdown of Abuja, Lagos and Ogun State in a bid to tackle the scourge of Coronavirus.
Buhari had ordered a 14-day lock down in the states, though exempted some Nigerians providing essential services.
However, the right group stated that the President’s nationwide broadcast lacked clarity, adding that Buhari showed a lack of empathy by not announcing palliatives for Nigerians before ordering the lock down.
In a statement by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, the rights group lamented that Buhari handed over licence to security agencies to violate the human rights of Nigerians.
Onwubiko expressed concern that the ambiguities contained in the national Broadcast by Buhari has handed a “free licence to armed security forces to wantonly breach the fundamental human rights of Nigerians contained in chapter 4 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 (as amended) including the freedom from arbitrary arrests and detentions, right to life, right to dignity of the human person and other basic freedoms recognised in all international human rights laws.”
According to HURIWA: “Federal government must never be allowed to abuse the human rights of Nigerians through arbitrary detention and illegal arrests of citizens on frivolous reasons of violating the so-called quarantine. There is the possibility and indeed it has started happening that armed security forces are already arresting and detaining Nigerians under flimsy excuses and these armed security forces are extorting Nigerians in the guise of granting them bail.
“The national Broadcast by President Muhammadu Buhari lackiclarity because according the directive to totally close down the nation’s commercial and political capitals of Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory for two weeks without making provisions for how families can buy their daily groceries and essential perishable food products and without any form of arrangements on how the poorest of the poor can get the food aids shows that President Muhammadu Buhari lacks human empathy and is not ready to adhere strictly to the demands of the law to respect the fundamental human rights of Nigerians.”
