A civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has challenged President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to invest substantially on human capital development and to nullify any plan to set up the Ruga Fulani settlements across Nigeria because “the selfish policy is unconstitutional and illegal going by a plethora of provisions of the Land Use Act of 1978.

HURIWA affirmed that the insistence by the President to deploy public fund to establish the Ruga settlements project amounts to a direct affront to the oaths of allegiance as enshrined in the seventh schedule of the Nigerian constitution of 1999 (as amended).

On the corollary, the rights group has called for the arrest and prosecution for alleged battery and assault, the serving Senator representing Adamawa North, Mr. Elisha Abbo, following the attacks he unleashed on a nursing mother and shop attendant at an undisclosed sex toy shop in Abuja.

The rights group has also applauded his political party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for condemning the alleged misconduct of a senator elected under its platform just as the rights group has asked the mass media to be professional in their reportage so as not to indulge in the disclosure of the private health status of the said senator in compliance with the ethical issues on non-disclosure of private health status that could lead to stigmatisation and discrimination which the violence against Persons Act of 2015 frowns against.

In a media statement by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA applauded the decision of the hierarchy of the Senate, the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, and the National leadership of the PDP for swiftly embarking on the immediate investigation of the remote and immediate circumstances that resulted in the alleged physical violence unleashed by the senator on the woman’s shop attendant without provocation.

HURIWA said the thorough, transparent and open investigation, prosecution of the Senator before the competent court of law in line with Section 6 of the Nigerian Constitution would convey the direct message that nobody is above the law just as the rights group believes that the victim of his unprovoked attacks must be adequately protected and granted legal remedies for those violations.

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