Muhammadu Buhari
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA has sent a warning to President Muhammadu Buhari after he gave an order for the review of 368 grazing sites in 25 states.
HURIWA gave the warning on Friday.
The group further warned of an impending civil war in the country if Buhari insists on grazing reserves for his kinsmen.
Buhari had during the week approved ‘with dispatch’ a review of 368 grazing sites across 25 states in Nigeria, this HURIWA has described as an inevitable invitation to civil war.
The group has now demanded that Buhari perish the ‘illegal and toxic’, idea adding that except the President is nursing an agenda to destabilize Nigeria.
The human rights advocacy group said this in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Director Miss Zainab Yusuf.
The group wondered how President Buhari is bent on coercing native peoples to surrender their ancestral lands to his kinsmen- Fulani herdsmen.
The rights group accused the President of having favoured his kinsmen since 2015 when he assumed office and failing to arrest and prosecute suspected armed Fulani herdsmen who have allegedly killed over 6,000 Nigerians since 2015.
“This is the first time in over 60 years of Nigeria’s independence that Nigeria is foisted with a fatalistic administration whose head of executive arm is doing everything outside of the law to arm-twist other ethnicities just so the president’s kinsmen are awarded the ancestral lands for their private commercial business of grazing cattle,” HURIWA noted.
The rights group, therefore, asked Buhari to desist from taking steps and doing things that will plunge Nigeria into a long drawn civil war.
HURIWA further accused Buhari of breaching his Constitutional oath of office which prohibits him from using his office to confer unlawful advantage on his people due to pedestrian reasons.
HURIWA dismissed the directive of President Buhari on the so-called grazing sites as an unmitigated unconstitutional act given that the extant Land Use law governing land administration gives the ownership of landed assets in each state of the Federation to the state government.
HURIWA said: “For the avoidance of doubts and from the abundance of scholarly submissions, Mr. President should note that the Land Use Act, enacted in 1978, was meant to standardise land administration systems across the country.”
