The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of practicing dangerous apartheid policy through the demolition of houses of the poor and the flagrant abuses of the Abuja Master Plan by allocating lands in Green Areas to his political friends and cronies in Abuja.

The rights group also condemned as “despicable, outrageous, uncivil, wicked and reprehensible the evil policy of hiking the rates of electricity supply and pump price of premium motor spirit simultaneously at the time that most Nigerians have lost their means of livelihood due to the COVID-19 lockdown.”

It lampooned Buhari for his failure to provide humanitarian assistance due largely to the systemic and massive corruption by officials at the Ministry for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management.

The rights group said even when the President read out his inauguration speech last May and stated that there are over 100 million citizens in Nigeria, his administration has ended up inflicting pains, penury and agony on a massive scale on Nigerians through the recent “rash of anti-people actions and policy implementation.”

HURIWA said in a statement on Thursday that it was foolhardy for government to hike the purchasing prices of commodities when other nations of the world, including even capitalist nation’s like the USA and UK, are implementing different types of relief packages and funding aides to businesses in the formal and informal sectors of the economy to keep them operational irrespective of the effect of the COVID-19 and its attendant consequences on businesses.

HURIWA therefore canvassed “civil protests by Nigerians to reject these enslaving policies of government because all other organised trade union groups and notable civil rights bodies have either been bribed to shut up or cajoled with the threats of Company and Allied Matters toxic 2020 amendment Act because most of these civil rights groups and trade union bodies may have some skeletons in their cardboards.”

“Best bet,” according to the group, “is for Nigerians not to suffer and smile but to protest against these burdens imposed on the suffering and oppressed masses by government which has transformed from government that should govern to the new slave drivers.

“The oppressed masses should know that it is better to protest at the risks of arrest by the security forces than to be afraid, keep quiet and die in silence. Any government that has failed to provide funding assistance in this perilous period of health emergency but has instead chosen to over tax the people, has lost its legitimacy to govern.”

On the demolition of houses of the poor in Abuja, HURIWA said President Buhari is waging economic war of attrition against the poor at the time that the FCT Ministers are allocating lands in the hitherto Green Areas to their stooges in total disregard to the environmental Master Plan of FCT thereby exposing Abuja residents to predictable environmental hazards of floods and environmental disasters of unprecedented proportions.

“What is going on now in Abuja is same with the apartheid policy in South Africa just before the new South Africa introduced a new constitution which recognises right to housing as a human right. In Nigeria, the poor are made homeless and the rich helped by the oppressors wearing the garb of a government to basterdize the master plan,” HURIWA.

The rights group wondered why President Buhari adopted apartheid-typed housing policy of rendering poor people homeless without providing alternative shelters and the National Assembly members are all after their pockets to ratify their insatiable appetite for quick money rather than make necessary legislation to ensure that right to adequate housing for the poor is made a constitutional obligation just like in South Africa.

HURIWA accused President Buhari of disrespecting the relevant sections of the Constitution by churning out scorched-earth policy of inflicting exorbitant rates and pump price of essential supplies as against the Nigerian Constitution which provides that “It shall be the duty and responsibility of all organs of government, and of all authorities and person, exercising legislative, executive or judicial powers, to conform to, observe and apply the provisions of this Chapter of this Constitution. The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State base on the principles of democracy and social justice.”

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