Insecurity: HURIWA backs Kukah, knocks NASS over oversights functions failure

A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), on Monday, backed the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Kukah, who criticised President Muhammadu Buhari over insecurity, corruption and division in Nigeria.

HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said the cleric was right in saying that everything under Buhari has “literally broken down” and Nigeria has become “one big emergency national hospital with full occupancy.”

The group also knocked the Ninth National Assembly led by Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and House of Representatives Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, over the collective failure of the lawmakers to impeach Buhari despite his many failings and vacuous incompetence.

Recall that Kukah in his Easter Message on Sunday titled “To mend a broken nation: The Easter metaphor,” said: “The challenge of fixing this broken nation is enormous and, as I have said, requires joint efforts. With everything literally broken down, our country has become one big emergency national hospital with full occupancy.

“Our individual hearts are broken. Our family dreams are broken. Homes are broken. Churches, Mosques, and infrastructure are broken. Our educational system is broken. Our children’s lives and future are broken. Our politics is broken. Our economy is broken. Our energy system is broken. Our security system is broken. Our Roads and Rails are broken. Only corruption is alive and well.

“The greatest challenge for Nigeria is not even the 2023 elections. It is the prospect for the reconciliation of our people. Here, the Buhari administration sadly has divided our people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, and region, in a way that we have never witnessed in our history.”

Expressing support for Kukah’s views, HURIWA said: “The respected Catholic Bishop was on point when he said every aspect of our national life has been broken since President Muhammadu Buhari came into office in May 2015. Everything he said is true.

“In all ramifications, the President and his entire cabinet have failed in the government’s primary responsibility, which according to Section 14 (2)(b) of the Nigerian constitution, is: “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”

“Monthly, vicious insurgents, killer herdsmen, and gunmen slaughter hundreds of innocent Nigerians in Kaduna, Zamfara, Borno, Yobe, Plateau, Taraba, Imo, Enugu, Ebonyi, and other states. Sadly, these terrorists and enemies of the country walk freely, not arrested and unprosecuted by the Buhari regime while security agents pander around, sparing the killers while the President gives empty marching orders and unsympathetic condolence messages.

“The Senate and House of Representatives are also complicit over their failure to impeach President Buhari after he has lost legitimacy to exercise authority as President having failed woefully to enforce section 14(2) (b) of the Constitution which is the primary duty of government.

“Apparently, the President, through his All Progressives Congress party, has captured the conscience of the NASS leaders and pocketed the two other branches of government with his surrogates and lackeys as military chiefs, hence, his remaining in Aso Villa, despite the many impeachable offences he has committed against the Nigerian people, some of which is his inability to decisively defeat, degrade and deal with terrorists who kidnap school children and citizens and keep them in the forests for months without himself, as the Commander-in-Chief taking enforcement measures to rescue these citizens.

“Nigerians are tired of the current failed administration and the gross failure in all aspect of governance and we are afraid that if the trends are not arrested and Nigeria becomes a failed State, then Africa, as a Continent, can’t contain the refugees that will stream out of a failed Nigeria.”