The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, on Monday lambasted Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State for permitting the destruction of beer products worth N200 million in the state.
Hisbah police had destroyed 1,970, 000 bottles of beer worth N200m under the guise of implementing Shariah law in Kano State.
However, HURIWA, a frontline activist group lamented the consistent flouting of section 10 of Nigeria’s 1999 constitution as amended.
The group’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko said that the section prohibits absolutely the recognition of a particular religion as state religion and Section 42 of the same constitution which absolutely prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion and ethnicity in the implementation of public policies by elected government as clearly manifested in the unrepentant application of religious laws.
According to Onwubiko: “The Nigerian National Assembly and rational-minded and right-thinking citizens should intervene and arrest the continuous drift of Kano state government towards the establishment of an Islamic State within Nigeria.
“President Muhammadu Buhari has manifested his partiality for his Religion and Ethnicity in such massive dimensions that he has rubbished Section 14(3) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 as amended on the imperative essence of enforcement of the Principle of Federal Character in appointments.
“The President has the proclivity of appointing only Hausa/Fulani/Kanuri Northern Moslems in strategic military and internal security Architectures of Nigeria”.
HURIWA said that the, “total disregard of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by Ganduje, the ‘Man Friday’ of Buhari shows that there is indeed a grand conspiracy to Islamise Nigeria.
“We absolutely condemn as despicable, provocative, vexatious and primitive, the destruction of the alcoholic beverages by the Kano State governor in the name of his personal religion even against the clear provisions of Sections 10 and 42 of the Nigerian Constitution just as the rapid ISLAMIZATION of Kano State is totally unacceptable going by the fact that within Kano State, there are indigenous non-Muslims living and doing their legitimate businesses in that part of Nigeria reputed to be one of the biggest commercial centres of Nigeria.
”Besides, Kano State government shares from the Internally Generated Revenues harnessed by the Federal Inland Revenue Services which goes into the Federation Accounts and Beer manufacturing industry pays a lot of taxes into the central Treasury of government from where Kano State draws her Monthly allocations. Why destroy these economic derivatives from whose source some of the monthly allocations Kano collects emanate? This is hypocrisy and this is offensive to all good thinking and against the Nigerian Constitution.”
