Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has warned President Muhammadu Buhari over the behaviour of some of his ministers.
HURIWA is of the opinion that some of the Ministers of the current administration are thinking good for the country and could tear the nation apart with reckless statements being put out to public domains.
According to the human rights organisation, some ministers are undermining the rule of law and are abusing their public offices by influencing the President not to confront human rights abusers in the Army and Police.
Some of the ministers mentioned in a statement signed and made available to journalists on Monday, November 29, 2021, by Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, coordinator of the group, are the ministers of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed and that of State for Labour, Festus Keyamo, SAN.
According to HURIWA, these ministers, with their comments are undermining the dispensation of justice, especially the redress of the monumental human rights abuses by Army and Police as found out by the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on the #EndSAR Protest.
The Minister of Information and Culture recently claimed that there was no evidence of any killing of anyone even when the panel reported otherwise and the minister of Labour is now saying that the panel is illegal.
And to add insult to injury, Keyamo described the panel the Lagos State Government set up to probe police brutality as illegal.
This is despite the fact that the National Executive Council, NEC had approved the States panels following the incidents of October 20, 2020.
However, trouble started after the Lagos panel submitted its report, which was eventually leaked.
“These contradictions by these two ministers are directly detrimental to national security because what they stand to be saying is that extrajudicial killings of citizens should continue and that the effort made by the panels set up at the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari are of no moment meaning that they even rubbished the National Exco meeting and NEC meeting of the President and his cabinet which had authorised the setting up of these panels all across Nigeria.
“These two ministers are enemies of human rights and they constitute grave dangers to national security because Buhari’s administration was right to have authorised the constitution of the #EndSARS protests panels of investigation in line with the constitutional powers of the president.”
