The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has condemned the arrest of a Kaduna based Journalist, Mr. Midat Joseph, a correspondent with Leadership Newspaper on the orders of the State Governor, Mr. Nasir El-Rufai. The group also demanded a media blackout of the Governor.
HURIWA expressed concern that the Kaduna State government has gone haywire in clamping into detention, too many persons with difference of opinion from the Governor, especially because of the failure of both the state and federal government to contain the sporadic violent attacks of Southern Kaduna communities by armed Fulani herdsmen.
“We urge the Nigerian Union of Journalists to blacklist the current Kaduna State Governor for constituting a cog in the wheel of democracy and freedoms of the Press and right to freedom of conscience,” HURIWA said.
The rights group in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, affirmed that the constant harassment of voices of dissent and media practitioners by the state government does not augur well for a nation that claims to be practicing constitutional democracy.
The group said democracy thrives only when the basic freedoms guaranteed and provided for by the constitution and several global human rights laws are respected and complied with especially by those who wield temporary political power.
“Freedom of the Press and right to freedom of information are the kernels that sustain a democratic entity. When those who control the different layers of political power constantly abuse these powers to intimidate, harass and unduly incarcerate persons with divergent opinions that political space automatically becomes a dictatorship.
Nigerians must reject this gradual evolution of dictatorship in Kaduna State,” HURIWA said.
The group, which demanded the immediate release of the detained journalist, stated that the frequent misuse and abuse of power by the Kaduna State Governor by clamping into detention, different Journalists and other civil society leaders who disagree intellectually with the Governor clearly demonstrates the weakening of respect for the fundamental human rights of citizen in Kaduna State.
Besides, HURIWA has also lambasted the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for failing to defend Journalists particularly in Kaduna State where they have constantly faced arbitrary arrests and detention for filing their stories based on the facts of what has happened in the field rather than run with the propaganda churned out by the Kaduna State government.
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