The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has rebuked the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, for saying some religious leaders are silently trying to remove President Muhammadu Buhari from power.
HURIWA accused Mohammed of using propaganda to demonize the Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto Diocese, Rt. Rev. Mathew Hassan Kukah over his latest article.
The frontline activist group said the Minister should shut up if he can’t read and understand the simple essay written by Kukah.
In his article, the clergyman had on December 25th 2020, lamented the state of nepotism under President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
However, HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and the group’s National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, said it was baffling that Mohammed could misinterpret Kukah’s write up to mean he wants Buhari ousted.
The rights group insisted that the Buhari-led government was characterized by nepotism.
According to HURIWA, Kukah only pointed out the obvious that “President Muhammadu Buhari has consistently and continuously unleashed a divisive and scotch earth apartheid policies of divide and rule, nepotism and religious cum ethnic chauvinism and bigotry in all his appointments especially to top internal security Architectures including the recent promotions in the Nigerian Police Force in which the North got the significant percentage of all the promoted top senior police officers even when the Igbo speaking South East of Nigeria was allotted just one top position.”
The group lamented that only Northern Muslims were appointed to head the country’s security architectures.
HURIWA added: “The entire internal SECURITY architectures are dominated by persons from one section of the Country- Hausa/Fulani Moslem North to the exclusion of all others which offends the relevant sections of the Constitution that speak to the issue of federal character Principle as provided for in the Constitution and also offends Section 42(1) which speaks to the issue of discrimination on the bases of tribe, religion or political affiliations.
“Rather than read the message in the essay and reflect deeply on ways the current administration will amend its ways and stop the violent defecation on the sanctity of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 as amended, the very loquacious Lai Mohammed chose half baked propaganda and extreme innuendos to seek to demonize the respected Clergy who is one of the few lovers of Constitutional democracy and modern day Nigeria that should work to uplift the welfare and protect the sanctity of the fundamental human rights and most especially the RIGHT TO LIFE as espoused in Chapter 4 of the Constitution and most particularly in Section 33(1).”
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