The much talked about phantom interim government is actually in active operation currently and as things stand, three cabinet level ministers under Muhammadu Buhari’s administration and a retinue of assistants are piloting this illegal contraption.

Making this allegation is the prominent civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), which has accused the information minister Lai Mohammed, Youth and Sports minister Sunday Dare, Minister of State for Labour, Mr. Festus Keyamo, and scores of presidential assistants supposedly working for the current government and are being paid by the tax payers but these persons have constituted themselves into a ‘quasi government within a government’ devoted to marketing the interests of the yet to be sworn-in President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress.

HURIWA said these tendencies and assignments being carried out at the behest of the President-elect making use of appointees of the incumbent administration, is absolutely illegal, unconstitutional and constitutes a huge affront to constitutionalism and civil democracy.

“We wonder what else the security services mean by ‘interim government’ when certain principal officers of the extant Federal government have on their own or under circumstances not approved by the constitution have begun full time strategic Communications and media propaganda in foreign jurisdictions on behalf of someone that the Independent National Electoral Commission proclaimed controversially as President-elect – Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu – and whose proclamation as President-elect is a subject of intense litigation, yet ministers have constituted themselves perhaps into somewhat or some kind of illegal interim government, taking orders from God knows where but are all over Europe, the United States of America, and everywhere else including the federal capital territory working for the president-elect whose position is not a constitutionally created position and who is not permitted to run a ‘quasi-cabinet’ until he is officially administered the oath of office and oath of allegiance to the Nigerian constitution.

HURIWA affirmed that these serving ministers working now under President-Elect, Bola Tinubu, have told the international media that the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate won the February 25 polls contrary to the claims of opposition parties such as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP).

The team, led by serving ministers who are cabinet level members of the Federal government currently are Mr Festus Keyamo, who doubles too as the chief spokesperson of the Tinubu Campaign and Minister of State Labour, the team, had Minister of Youth and Sports, Mr Sunday Dare; and Assistant Principal Spokesperson, Mr Ajuri Ngelale, had at a parley with the International Media at the Press, Centre Washington Dc, United States on Wednesday. HURIWA said it is obvious that these assignments are nothing short of cacophony of illegality.

According to the group, “We wonder what else the security service are doing instead of inviting these ministers so listed who are practically not working for the present government but are working for someone who holds a non-constitutional position of president elect but they still collect salaries from the taxprayers. We call on these ministers of sports, information, labour and productivity, the Minister of State, to tender their resignation immediately since they are now loyal to the President-elect and not the current president.”

The rights group therefore is asking that these persons appointed by the current administration but who are now devoted to working for the President elect yet to be inaugurated be forced to resign since what they are doing show devised loyalty both to their appointing authority and to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

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