A pro-Democracy Non-governmental organisation ,Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA ) has cautioned against the possible deliberate exclusion by President Muhammadu Buhari of his Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo from security meetings as that could create bad blood and distrust.
HURIWA gave the caution in a statement to the media against the backdrops of widespread reports especially in the new media and a national print media that twice the Vice President couldn’t be ‘cleared ‘ by security chiefs to attend security briefing sessions at the instance of President Muhammadu Buhari just as the Rights group stated that by his oath of office sworn in line with constitutional provisions and by the legal fact that it’s constitutionally impossible for Mr President to have won election without pairing as a joint ticket with the Vice President, it is unconstitutional and illegal for the Vice President to be further subjected to the so called security clearance to attend a security meetings.
Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko the National Coordinator and Miss Zainab Yusuf the National Media Affairs Director who endorsed the statement jointly faulted the claim that the Vice President couldn’t be cleared because he lacks cognate security experience because according to the Rights group the first security briefing session as publicised was attended by General Abdul Danbazau (rtd) and Colonel Hamid Ali (rtd) both of whom left military services many years ago and have become integrated with the civil populace to an extent that one of them Colonel Ali (rtd) reportedly became the Secretary General of the Arewa Consultative Forum ,a purely Ethnic interest group in Northern Nigeria.
“If these persons, one of whom has played parochial role as an Ethnic champion can attend the first and possibly second security meetings at the instance of Mr President it amounts to standing logic on its head for disallowing and/or barring the Vice President from attending when the supreme laws of the land makes it imperative that the nation can not have a President without a Vice President and that in some exceptional natural instances the Vice President could step in as acting President to act in the place of the President. Why should persons who as at the time of the said security meetings were neither officially appointed as state officials nor were they elected by the Nigerian people attend security meetings accompanying Mr President when the Vice President elected and inaugurated in accordance with the laws of the land was reportedly denied the so called security accreditation to attend?”.
The Rights group also cautioned the President to avoid displaying through his actions and appointments an attitude that shows him to be favourably disposed to carrying out a sectional agenda because that would be tantamount to a breach of his constitutional oath of office as the President of Nigeria. “The President must respect the basic ethics of equitably distributing the sensitive security appointments to reflect Federal Character so this government is not mistaken as an administration set up to promote a particularly Regional or religious agenda “, HURIWA stated.
