HURIWA Urges Buhari To Appoint Credible Persons Into Governing Board Of NHRC

As Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark International Human Rights Day tomorrow, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to appoint credible persons into the governing board of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

It said appointing credible persons to the board would make the commission attend to her constitutional mandate, adding that as it is now the commission is being administered as a routine government office and has failed in its ombudsman’s role to promote and protect human rights. 

The rights group also decried the present human rights situation in Nigeria as been deplorable which does not aid the cause of the government nor the plight of citizens, adding that there is the urgent need to address it otherwise the country faces uncertainty and most certainly drifts towards anarchy where even governance is not guaranteed. 

National Coordinator, HURIWA, Emmanuel Onwubiko in a statement titled: “Nigeria: The Slumbering and Plummeting State of Human Rights” on Monday in Abuja to mark the day also called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands to investigate the killings carried out by armed Fulani herdsmen which the current government has failed to investigate and punish the mass killers.

Onwubiko said Nigeria celebrating the human rights day is simply a cosmetic event given the propensity of the holders of political power to flagrantly and wantonly violate the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He decried the shrinking civic spaces in Nigeria and the organised attacks targeting fundamental rights of citizens from both the executive arm of government and from the National Assembly whose members are incubating sinister plots to legislate against free speech and limit access to the social media through the so called hate speech legislation.

He said: “President Muhammadu Buhari must be told to set up the governing board of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) made up of only credible persons so the commission can very competently attend to her constitutional mandate because the commission is being administered as a routine government office and it has failed in its ombudsman’s role to promote and protect human rights.

“Tomorrow being the 10th of December, the World will once more gather together as one human family to mark the epochal and iconic signing into a Universal Law of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which together with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights are key global human rights and humanitarian laws that are the best and greatest safeguard against the self-destruction of the World by the members of the human race.

“Nigeria must protect our constitutional democracy  by all lawful means and never allow for the destruction of constitutionalism because there is no alternative to constitutional democracy. 

“Moreover, no reasonable human gravitate towards areas of human rights abuses; the present situation is a minus to the investment drive of the government. Urgent attention is required to salvage the sinking sheep before it is completely submerged.”