Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has described the claim by the federal government that is spent over N6.2 billion to train and equip 16,820 Bauchi youths in the art of smartphone repairs as superfluous and unbelievable.

HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emma Onwubiko, called for a thorough investigation into the claim by the Minister of Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Farouq, who spoke at the flag-off of the N-Skills (Smart Phone Repairs) Programme in Bauchi last Wednesday.

The programme is used to pilot the N-Skills programme, which is part of the N-Power non-graduate programme. The Minister said that it was consistent with President Muhammadu Buhari’s aspiration of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.

The group argued that “it is fallacious that a government under austerity can fritter such humongous amount of public funds to teach people the trade of phone repairs when, in actuality, the totality of phones in use in Bauchi State is not likely going to be worth a quarter of that massive scale of public funds made from the export of crude oil produced in the neglected Niger Delta region now being claimed to have been blown away in a non- productive and non-commercial venture as phone repairs.”

According to Onwubiko, the group would send a team of her members to ascertain the number of phone repairers available in the entire Bauchi State, adding that “from preliminary investigation from our registered member resident in Bauchi, phone repairs as a job, is not commercially viable since most people who use handsets owned China made torchlight phones that do not require regular repairs since they are so cheap that it is a waste of resources to attempt to fix them when damaged.”

“It is not empirically practicable that such a huge amount of money will be committed to teach a skill in a place whereby such services are essentially not in demand since majority of the users of telephone do not own sophisticated handsets that require the kind of technical know-how that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management is laying claim to have imparted to those number of youths in a state that is not commercially viable and with little or no significant functional industries,” HURIWA insisted.

HURIWA also accused the Ministry of deviating from her core mandate but was now doing the institutional interventions that local or state governments ought to do with financial assistance from the Office of the President or, at most, some of those disbursements ought to be handled by Ministries of Youths, Social Development and Women Affairs.

The civil rights advocacy group has, therefore, expressed shock that the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) were looking the other way and mortally afraid of the Minister, and were “turning blind eyes to these fantastically unbelievable claims that the sensibilities of right thinking Nigerians are being assaulted constantly with vacuous and unreliable claims by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management.”

Onwubiko also challenged the Minister “to a public debate on all or some of these claims” for her to have the opportunity to take hard-core questions from a credible platform like the HURIWA, on behalf of the good people of Nigeria, to demand accountability and transparency face-to-face from her because “in our thinking, the civilised International community are now making fun of Nigeria as a failed democracy whereby good governance is very far from the corridors of power.”

According to the group, the demand for a public debate with the Minister “is made in deference to section 22 of the 1999 Constitution and the Freedom of Information Act of 2015.

HURIWA alleged that the anti-graft agencies have continued to treat serving government officials, especially those connected to Aso Rock such as the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, as sacred cows which offends constitutional democracy given that section 15(5) of the Constitution provides that the duty of government is to eradicate corruption and abuse of power.