The National Media Affairs Director of Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), Miss Zainab Yusuf, has said President Muhammadu Buhari is to blame for the current ethnic tensions in the country, for failing to address numerous atrocities committed by herdsmen in the country particularly in Southern Kaduna, Plateau and Benue States where herdsmen wrecked massive havoc since he became President in 2015.
Zainab who released the statement on Sunday alongside the National Coordinator of the group, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, also said Buhari cannot pretend to not know the cause of inter-ethnic clashes in the country, when he consistently made lopsided appointments mostly favoring Hausa/Fulani Moslems to head key positions in his administration.
“When you make your administration appear like a village meeting of Hausa/Fulani and only promote your people in the security forces, you are only stoking up the embers of ETHNIC and RELIGIOUS hatred and conflicts like the type that flared up sadly in the biggest city in West Africa- Ibadan, Oyo state, South West of Nigeria,” the group said in a statement.
HURIWA spoke against the backdrop of the Hausa versus Yoruba Inter-ethnic conflict in Ibadan just as the group said Buhari has created the perception that: “members of his Hausa/Fulani Ethnicity can never be prosecuted for the offences of alleged invasions and destruction of farms and the slaughter of Citizens majority of whom are Christians”.
It said that the Police has also: “exacerbated the conflicts between different ethnicities because the Nigerian Police Force has been Ethnicised by President Muhammadu Buhari to appear more like a Hausa/Fulani brigade than a national police force with the dominance of Moslems of Hausa/Fulani ethnic stock being favoured in all the top flight promotions ever carried out under President Muhammadu Buhari since 2015 with the South East of Nigeria always kept in the fringes.
The group said the failure of the present administration to prosecute armed herdsmen responsible for the massive destructions of parts of Benue, Southern Kaduna, Plateau and Enugu States including the spate of killings and kidnapping in such places like Nasarawa, Benue, Kaduna, masterminded by mostly armed herdsmen is the fundamental cause of organised chasms and divisiveness dovetailing into conflagration and bloody conflicts such as the fight between traders of Hausa/Yoruba ethnicities in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital.
It called on the government to stop Commissioners of Police and military commanders from showing open partiality and double standards whenever there are issues of alleged invasions of farmland as was recorded in Oyo and Abia State in which the: “Police Commissioners took sides with the suspected herdsmen who were accused of destroying farms of communities in the two States.
“Unless there is equality and equity in the enforcement of the laws, there will continue to be conflicts between the people who feel alienated and the favoured tribal and religious group that enjoy Presidential cover and one sided protection of armed security services in Nigeria”.