The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of grossly undermining the extant national human rights (amendment Act) of 2010 by failing and refusing to reconstitute a governing council for the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

The rights group said the deliberate refusal of the President to abide by the extant law and reconstitute the board of the apex human rights promotional agency shows his government’s disdain for human rights, respect to the principle of rule of law and his unambiguous hatred for constitutional democracy which he just recently restated whilst marking his 77th birthday.

In a statement by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA condemned the running of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) as an appendage of the political administration of the day and lamented that whilst human rights breaches have escalated, the agency that ought to independently probe and prosecute rights violators is administered as a stooge of politicians.

“The President is doing great disservice to the constitutional oath of office he took by repeatedly violating the NHRC amendment Act by preferring that human rights of Nigerians are gravely endangered whilst the Right commission go on partying and giving awards to government and private corporate bodies who themselves are guilty of human rights violations.

“We may have no choice but to write the United Nations Human Rights Council to ask that Nigeria be downgraded and seen as a nation whose political authority care less about promotion and protection of human rights of Nigerians.

“It is a fact that several security forces keep detainees extra judicially for years but the National Human Rights Commission is asleep. The last governing board was dissolved over three years ago and the government has refused to reconstitute the panel.”