You’ve killed Nigeria’s economy, allowed Ganduje, others destroy constitution

A prominent civil Rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has accused the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration of serial defecation and disrespect of the constitution of Nigeria.

According to the organisation, the government under Buhari’s watch was willfully demolishing the national economy of the country.

HURIWA, therefore, advocated emergency actions by citizens to compel the Nigerian government to halt the systematic destruction of the Country.

The rights group also decried the existence of the National Assembly’s leadership that is allegedly pliant, inept, cash-driven, unpatriotic and hedonistic, asking Nigerians to play their civic oversight role of demanding accountability and transparency in governance or use civil resistance strategy to protest the rot.

In a statement signed by Emmanuel Onwubiko, its National Coordinator and made available to DAILY POST on Wednesday, HURIWA said, “The damage unleashed on the domestic economy of Nigeria since 2015 by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration-led administration is horrendous. It may take a lifetime for the nation to recover.

“But the drive to rebuild the devastated economy must start immediately by the collective decision of the citizenry to halt the deterioration.

“Speak out and demand that President Muhammadu Buhari and his Cabinet stop depleting the resources of Nigeria and to open up the books for forensic auditing because as it is the Nigerian economy has collapsed.

“The speedy collapse of the economy will adversely affect the social peace of Nigeria because of the fact that the wider implication of the massive scale of poverty that has already been unleashed on the nation could instigate social discontent.

“This is the right time for all patriots to rally round and rescue Nigeria from the MISMANAGERS at the central governmemtal positions.”

HURIWA said President Buhari-led Federal government had also serially violated the constitution and had looked the other way whilst some governors like the Kano state Chief Executive Abdullahi Ganduje defecates on the Nigerian constitution by expelling a citizen of Nigeria in the person of the deposed Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

HURIWA said Sanusi’s action smacks of primitivism and a throwback to the dark days of military dictatorship and regime of impunity.

“There is currently a double-barreled attacks on the constitution of Nigeria and the deliberate demolition of the domestic economy of Nigeria resulting in the large-scale impoverishment of millions of Nigerians in addition to the systematic enslavement of Nigerians to the apron strings of shylock creditors with the recent debt overhang of $27billion to be borrowed by this regime,” the group added.

“The persistent demolition of the excess crude account to a now pathetic $71 million outstanding deposits is a monumental economic sabotage and brigandage by officials of the Federal government which will in a very huge way, affect the future of Nigerians.

“How on earth can we ever explain the level of mismanagement and financial rascality in the federal government that saw the depletion of the excess crude account which was established as a buffer but was vandalized and reduced from $324.96 million in January 2020 to a paltry $71 million only in March?

“How come the accountant general is reportedly unwilling to render transparent account of this scandalous mismanagement which includes the payment of $4 million fee to an unknown lawyer? Nigeria has been made broke by the incompetent and reckless politicians that are put in place to administer our commonwealth.

“£Nigeria now parades the most incompetent economic mamagers whose stock in trade is going a borrowings from all nooks and crannies at unaxceotable repayment conditionalities including the decision to borrow $27.9billion for building of infrastructures to the exclusion of the South East of Nigeria.

“A respected media ibstitution has only just tokd us historically that the Excess Crude Account was established by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration with a visionary aim: when prices of crude oil are above the national budget benchmark, the marginal revenue would be placed in the ECA.

“It would then come in handy to be drawn down to support the finances of the federal, state and local governments when oil prices fall below the benchmark for three consecutive months. Sixteen years after its establishment, the ECA has never achieved its noble objective of providing a cushion for the three tiers of government. It is no longer relevant.

“HURIWA entirely endorses the position of this notable media institution that further affirmed that While the Obasanjo administration that conceived it built it to $22 billion on leaving office in mid-2007, its successors immediately began raiding the fund even as oil prices moved up.

“As Chukwuma Soludo, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria when the account was created, explained, that the government started saving when crude prices hovered at $30 per barrel.

“This government has also violated the Nigerian constitution with reckless abandon including the disobedience to lawful orders of courts of competent jurisdiction; the invasion by security forces of homes of judges; the unconstitutional removal of the substantive chief justice of Nigeria only because he is a Christian and now the Kano state governor ordered the illegal banishment of citizen Sanusi Lamido Sanusi to Nasarawa state whom he illegally dethroned whilst there are pending cases and now illegally detained in breach of all known human rights laws including chapter 4 of the 1999 constitution,” it said.

HURIWA also alerted Nigerians that “the illegal removal of Justice Walter Onnoghen was a breach of Third schedule, part 1 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which gives the power of removal of the Chief justice of Nigeria to the National Judicial Council just as the Rights group said the illegal removal through the contrived exparte order of the kangaroo panel of the Code of Conduct Tribunal headed by a morally challenged Chairman remains the biggest affliction of violence on the sanctity of the Nigerian constitution which is why the Kano state governor has been emboldened to expel a citizen of Nigeria from Kano State in the person of the deposed Emir of Kano when Section 41(1) of the Nigerian constitution states thus: “Every Citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof, and no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereto or exit therefrom.”