Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to put into practice what he said about justice, fairness and dialogue on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly when he addressed the world body last Friday.
Buhari, while calling for the reform of the UN, had said that “without justice, the legitimacy (even efficacy) of our organisation is called to question.”
He had also called for dialogue between Israel and Palestine to resolve their differences adding that the skirmish between the two countries bordered on “the question of justice, fairness and equity”.
Elsewhere in his speech, the Nigerian president also talked about the commitment of his administration to the respect of human rights.
Picking holes in the president’s speech, Afenifere, in a release signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Jare Ajayi, stated that ethnic nationalities and other concerned stakeholders in Nigeria had been calling for dialogue to resolve “Nigeria’s issues” for long, but the federal government under President Buhari had not only been ignoring them but hounding those calling for such dialogue.
Afenifere said, “It is interesting, perhaps comforting, that the Nigerian authorities realise that dialogue is the way to go in resolving knotty issues. It is however hypocrisy of the highest order for the same authorities to be prescribing this to foreign authorities while describing those calling for the same thing at home as ‘hate speech makers’ and separatists.”
“We, as Afenifere, commend the heroic efforts of the Nigerian Army but it is a fact that the activities of terrorists appear to be more expanding rather than receding going by the submission of the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Farouq, that over 330,000 Nigerian refugees are languishing in neighbouring countries due to insurgency and armed banditry in the North-East and North-West.
“This is as well as Kaduna State Governor El Rufai that advocated for the military to be decentralised. The level of insecurity in the country has got so bad that the authorities of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) advised youth corps members to always let their people prepare a ransom to be paid in case they are kidnapped in the course of travelling from one point to another while in service.
“We call on the government to immediately allow states to transform their respective security networks into state police with all the powers appertaining thereto.”
