HURIWA blames failure of Buhari’s govt for IDPs

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has blamed the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government for the proliferation of Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp scattered all over the country which it said had “highlighted the fact that :there is no government in place.”

The allegation by the human rights activists was conveyed in a message by the National Coordinator of HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement on Monday in Abuja on the backdrop of the World Human Rights Day 2022 which was celebrated worldwide on December 10.

In the message, Onwubiko said any nation that fails to make paramount the rights of its citizens is a failed state, adding that the Nigerian situation is worse because “apart from the fact that the government has accommodated terrorists, allowing them to operate at will at any giving time, the government has also introduced a policy to deradicalise them and return them to the society while nobody remembers the victims of terrorist activities, the IDPs.”

“The need to defend the environmental rights of citizens is the mainstay of governance. Any country that does not promote, protect, nurture, upgrade or mainstream the respect of the fundamental rights of the citizens into the political governance system is a failed state.

“As the world celebrates the human rights day, for us in Nigeria, the question of human rights is very important given the fact that there’s general democratisation of violence.

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“Violence is everywhere and the people no longer enjoy their rights to freedom of movement and the most important rights which are rights to live as talked about in section 33(1) of the Constitution.

“A lot of Nigerians do not enjoy their rights to life. We have cases of Police brutality… Most Nigerians are not enjoying their rights to life because of insecurity.

“Nigeria’s situation is worse because apart from the fact that the government has tolerated terrorists to be all over the place, government has also brought out a policy where they say they want to deradicalise terrorists.

“Those people in the IDPs camps are so disadvantaged and marginalised. They are suffering not because they’re the worst kinds of creatures or because they deserve it but because there’s no government. Because there’s a lot of incompetence in government. Government is not living up to expectations.

“If the government is living up to expectations and enforcing the fundamental duty of government which is to protect lives and property, there’ll be no IDPs,” he said.

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