Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has lamented that President Muhammadu Buhari made changes in Service Chiefs without accommodating the interest of the Igbo-speaking states of the Southeast.

HURIWA said it was patently obvious that President Muhammadu Buhari hates Ndigbo otherwise he could have used the opportunities offered by the vacancies in the positions of Service Chiefs to prove naysayers wrong that he does not harbor any forms of hatred or revulsion for Ndigbo by nominating an officer from the region to head one of the branches of the armed security forces.

“The Southeast, with a population of over 50 million, does not have any representative in the National Defence Council of Nigeria and this has been the ugly situation since the last five years as if the current administration is waging a war of attrition against Ndigbo. This is pathetic,” HURIWA said

It lamented that “President Buhari has continued in his breach of section 14(3) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 as amended on federal Character principles and sections 42(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of on discrimination against any Ethnicity on the ground of ethnicity.”

HURIWA pointed out that Section 14(3) states that appointments into political or even offices must comply with federal character principle so all ethnicity are represented or at least it would be shown that there is no preponderance of a single ethnicity in the composition of government offices.

The rights group argued that the continuous marginalisation of South East means that the security of the people may not be considered important since nobody will speak for the South East of Nigeria when matters of security are being discussed at the National Defence Council.

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