Dismissing as hypocritical and cosmetics, the idea of the imminent convocation of a dialogue session by government amongst ethnic nationalities as a way of promoting national harmony, a rights group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has tasked government at the center to remove the log of wood in its own eye before making a move for the speck from the ethno-religious groups.

The civil rights advocacy group was reacting to the security blueprint published by the Office of the National Security Adviser in which government is considering engaging in dialogue with those it called ‘sectional and factional groups’ in the country as part of measures aimed at tackling the nation’s security challenges.

However, the rights group wondered why and how a federal government headed by President Muhammadu Buhari that is so heavily sectional in terms of appointments and promotes the impunity of failure to prosecute armed Fulani herdsmen over the willful killings of thousands of farmers due to the ethno-religious affiliations of the suspected mass murderers to the current president, can successfully midwife and drive the process of actualising national peace and security.

“How can a President under whose watch all the multi-billion dollar national strategic public works and projects by strategic ministries and agencies including armed forces are localised and set up majorly in his community of birth Daura Katsina State whereas most parts of Southern Nigeria including crude oil bearing communities are criminally neglected and marginalised be seen attempting to drive a national process of dialogue for peace and national security if not that it will end up as the dialogues of the deaf?

“A government that allows the security forces and armed thugs to manipulate elections in favour of its own All Progressives Congress (APC) all over the country even at the risks of setting ablaze a Woman in Kogi State so as to rig the governorship poll can’t possibly be talking about national peace when the same government is the engine room of organised anarchy, disunity and politically motivated killings.”

Dismissing the document on security published by the Office of the National Security Adviser to the President as diversionary and cosmetic, the rights group said the greatest threats to national security is the lopsided appointments of persons from the Muslim, Hausa/Fulani section of the North of the country to head all vital national security institutions, all financial and economic institutions including all revenue generating agencies such as the federal inland revenue service, the customs, the immigration, the aviation industry and top national security positions headed by Northern Muslims is indeed a government that has balkanised Nigeria alongside ethno-religious divides and unless these distortions are dismantled and all the injustices unleashed must be resolved and balanced to reflect federal character principles if President Muhammadu Buhari ever plans to bequeath the legacies of national harmony and security to Nigeria.

“A government that leaves out over 50 million Igbo-speaking population out of all strategic senior Policing and Military Commanding heights can’t possibly be talking about national harmony when this discriminatory policies remain the greatest threats to national security,”

HURIWA said.

It also told the Federal Government that the frequent disobedience of the orders of the competent courts of law including the illegal detention of political prisoners, invasion of court rooms and houses of judges by the DSS and the illegal unseating of the former CJN Onoghen based on his Christian background so as to railroad a Moslem judge Muhammadu Tanko as CJN through an ex parte order obtained in the night from a kangaroo tribunal headed by a morally challenged Chairman are threats to national security and must dismantle all these threats before thinking of bringing about the diverse ethno religious multitudes in Nigeria to a meaningful and constructive national dialogue table. Anything short of this is simply what we can call ‘food is ready so come and chop political meeting’ and nothing more.

HURIWA cited constitutional provisions breached by President Buhari in his policy of appointments to include: 14(3) which states thus: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”

Also, the President for failing to appoint a representative of the South East of Nigeria in the National Defence Council has breached flagrantly Section 42 and that his disrespect for the principle of rule of law is a threat to national security and a total violation of the supreme law of Nigeria in section 6.

HURIWA recalled that the security blueprint/document was prepared by the Office of the National Security Adviser just as according to the document, the government is willing to do everything possible to achieve political security, economic security, energy security, food security, labour security, health security, education security, environmental security and social security among others.

HURIWA noted that the security blueprint of President Muhammadu Buhari recently launched also noted that the nexus between political stability and economic prosperity called for appropriate measures to be taken to ensure the political security of Nigeria.

HURIWA dismissed the document as a product of falsehood and hypocrisy which will never achieve nor is it even meant to achieve national harmony and national security amidst grave breaches of the Nigerian Constitution by the Federal Government that arbitrarily proscribed as terror groups the peaceful and unarmed Indigenous peoples of Biafra (IPOB) that peacefully seeks self-determination in line with international law and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria for protesting the illegal clampdown of the religious group and the clamping into prolonged detention against binding court orders to release their leader Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky even when the armed Fulani herdsmen which has killed over 6,000 innocent Nigerians and dispossess farmers of their ancestral lands are placated, protected, pampered and celebrated by the current Federal Government.

HURIWA has therefore tasked President to immediately deproscribe IPOB and IMN because these are peaceful agitators whose members have suffered state sponsored killings and repression from the current administration.

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