A pro-democracy and Non-Governmental Organization, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has described as laughable, pedestrian and disgraceful, the seeming joy and apparent celebrations by some supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari over his proposed visit to the South-East of Nigeria.

The rights group has also challenged President Buhari to display presidential statesmanship by discontinuing the implementation of policies and programmes that graphically present him as being rabidly pro-North and pro-Islam.

HURIWA expressed the view that the disproportionate concentration of all or most of the strategic national defence portfolios and internal security command positions in the North and by Moslems under the current dispensation remains a big dent in any claim by President Buhari of being a nationalist and a statesman.

The rights group said the President must use the opportunity of this state visit to the South-East to end the perennial alienation and lopsided appointments that relegated the South-East of Nigeria to the background in the scheme of things especially on issues of National Defence and security architecture.

HURIWA carpeted the loyalists of the APC-led Federal Government for erecting a mountain out of a Molehill by celebrating the proposed visit of President Buhari as if it amounted to the breaking of a world record. The rights group wondered why some misguided and mischievous politicians holding public offices under the Federal Government are dissipating and frittering public fund to sponsor advertorials to celebrate Buhari’s planned visit to the South-East of Nigeria.

The rights group said by constitutional provisions, the President must view all parts of Nigeria as his immediate constituency just as it regretted that since coming into office as President of Nigeria, President Buhari established the unacceptable regional pattern of always travelling to Northern Nigeria as if he was elected not as President of Nigeria but as Sardauna of Northern Nigeria.

“May we ask with Dr. Tunji Abayomi as follows: Does the President owe equal duty to those who vote for him as well as those who vote against him? The question can easily be answered when we understand that the President is elected by the negative as well as the positive votes within the national constituency that elects him. A candidate for the election into the office of the President cannot be deemed to have been duly elected until he has more positive votes than negative votes cast at the election for the President. It is doubtful if he can be deemed duly elected under Section 133 and 134 if he has no negative votes cast against him. The effect of the provision is that negative votes against the President are recognised and validated as necessary by the Decree in the election of the President and are thus protected. If, as it observed, such votes are protected, any prejudice or penalty against them will clearly be inconsistent with the exercise of executive powers of the federation. It is not just that the nation is recognised as one constituency for the election of the President under Section 132(4), but the President’s responsibility to all the members of that constituency is by the provision of the section not only inherent, but also required.”

HURIWA said the President must play a nationalistic card and also compel his officials in all defence related agencies to stop the nepotistic appointments of Moslem Northerners only.

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