The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA has said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech on Thursday at Arise TV has done more damage to the fragile unity of this country.
In a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko on Friday, HURIWA also claims President Buhari’s method of keeping mute and confining himself to the comfort of the villa appears to be the best option since his recent comments are divisive.
The rights group said the President must henceforth return to his old ways and speak less because, as HURIWA noted, his public speeches of late rather than give hope and faith in the unity of Nigeria, evoke old faultlines threatening to tear Nigeria apart.
He noted that Buhari’s speeches have increasingly become more negative, bellicose, divisive and totally out of touch with the realities on ground.
Furthermore, HURIWA slammed the President for showing a poor appreciation of the problems of insecurity in the Southeast during his interview with Arise Television on Thursday, by comparing the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, to the whole of Igbo ethnic group (Ndigbo).
Buhari had said during the interview that, ‘IPOB is just like a dot in a circle. Even if they want to exit, they will have no access to anywhere.
‘And the way they are spread all over the country, having businesses and property, I don’t think IPOB knows what they are talking about.
‘In any case, we say we’ll talk to them in the language that they understand. We’ll organise the police and the military to pursue them.”
Continuing, HURIWA said it was totally unacceptable that a “country like Nigeria with millions of intellectuals of global reputation to be governed by a President like Muhammadu Buhari who clearly does not know that Igbo Ethnic bloc is distinctive and separate from the self-determination group known as the Indigenous peoples of Biafra.”
The group said Buhari’s ignorance or willful forgetfulness on the fundamental conceptual chasm and distinction between a group of youthful agitators with the entire IGBO RACE is unpardonable and dangerous.
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