Human Rights Writers Association
of Nigeria, HURIWA, has warned that Nigeria risks falling into totalitarianism
and a failed state should President Muhammadu Buhari be left to continuously
shrink the civic space.
The group submitted that the
fundamentals of the practice of constitutional democracy are animated by the
protection and promotion of the basic constitutional freedoms of speech and the
opening of the civic space.
It raised an alarm that since
coming into office, Buhari has allegedly adopted anti-democratic postures that
constitute grave threats to constitutional democracy.
In a media statement issued on Monday by its national coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, the group
disclosed that Nigeria faces the possibility of a slide into dictatorship if
the trends of rapid surrender by the judiciary and legislative arms to the
executive arm headed by a former military strongman are not effectively and
speedily arrested clinically.
HURIWA expressed fears that both
the legislature and the judiciary are now effectively in the hands of lackeys
and bootlickers of the executive arm of government.
The rights group argued that if
the decline of autonomy by the judiciary and the legislature is not immediately
addressed and restored by some progressives internally and externally, then
Nigeria may lose all the gains of constitutional democracy that have been made
since 1999 when the military dictators handed over to civilians after nearly
four decades of military interregnum.
The statement added that “It is
an open secret that the judiciary though the national judicial council (NJC)
was successfully bullied by the executive arm of government and arm-twisted to
self-destruct by the use of a kangaroo trial of the code of conduct Tribunal
headed by a chairman that is tainted with anti-graft allegations, to sack
Justice Sylvester Onnoghen seen by president Buhari as independent minded, only
for the weakest academic link in the supreme court Justice Tanko Muhammad to be
rapidly railroaded into the office of chief justice of Nigeria even when his
confirmation process in the national legislature turned out to be a show of
shame.”
HURIWA also stated that “although
the election of Senator Ahmed Lawan to the position of senate president on the
surface appeared to be free, fair and transparent, there were underlying power
plays and executive bullying using the slavishly loyal Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission, EFCC, to precipitate the withdrawal of some of the leading
opponents just to make way for the emergence of Ahmed Lawan who is the hard
core loyalist of president Buhari since 2015.
“The Federal House of
Representatives also saw the conduct of a manipulated poll which led to the
predetermined outcome that has seen another lackey of the president and a man
with series of allegations of fraud as far back as when he was in private law
practice in the USA, emerging as the speaker.
“The judiciary and the
legislature at the center are effectively taken over by the executive and the
first sign of the looming threats to freedoms of speech and civic spaces is the
ex parte order by the Federal High Court which permits president Buhari to
classify the Islamic movement of Nigeria or Shiites as a terror group only
because they have persistently demanded freedom for their illegally detained
leader Sheikh Ibraheem Elzaczacky who had previously been granted bail by the
same Federal High Court, Abuja division for which president Buhari failed to
comply with.”
HURIWA therefore called on “the
international community not to allow the imminent collapse of constitutional
democracy to happen because the import of the vicious attacks by the federal
government against fundamental freedoms of citizens and the shrinking of the
civic spaces is the emergence of totalitarianism which may spiral into
breakdown of law and order and anarchy.”
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