HURIWA ASKS PRESIDENCY TO RESTORE TAMBUWAL'S SECURITY

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

A civil society group with inclination towards the promotion and protection of democratic ethos- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA [HURIWA] has asked President Good luck Jonathan to order the immediate restoration of the full compliments of security details to the person and office of the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives Aminu Waziri Tambuwal and sanction administratively the top security officials in the armed security community that authorized the withdrawal in the first instance.

In a statement jointly issued by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA [HURIWA] said it received with the utmost shock and unpalatable consternation the undemocratic development of the withdrawal of the security operatives attached to the office and person of the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives on the alleged orders from above. The Rights group said the security officials who did the unthinkable of effecting the withdrawal of security cover given to the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives could even be mistaken as persons plotting to undermine democracy and the Rule of Law and must be dearth with accordingly in line with the principle of rule of law.


Citing the extant national order of protocols which ranks the holder of the high national office of the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives as the Number four citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, HURIWA said it smacks of illegality and the height of impunity for the hierarchies of the security community under any guise to have contemplated talk less of actually enforcing the primitive punitive atrocious act of withdrawing the statutory security details of the Speaker of Nigeria's parliament on the nebulous and unqualified ground that he switched over his political allegiance from one registered political party to another just as the group said the action was capable of damaging in a very serious way the international image of Nigeria as a democracy.

''When have the serving security chiefs become members of the Federal House of Representatives that they are adopting this extreme measure to get at the office and person of the Speaker for changing his membership of the national ruling party? We must defend the integrity of the armed security organs by not letting the commanding officers dabble into the naked arena of partisan politics. This action they have taken has damaged in a very comprehensive dimension the image and democratic credentials of Nigeria in the eyes of members of the international community and must be remedied by Mr President immediately.''


HURIWA stated thus; ''By merit the Speaker of the Nigerian Parliament ought to be provided adequate security of his life and property especially when he is occupying such a high office in an increasingly unsecured terrain such as we are experiencing with the heightened spate of violence and terrorism all across the large segments of the Nigerian nation. We initially did not believe that the security details of the Speaker have actually been withdrawn but upon further inquiry we were indeed told that the security operatives attached to the Speaker was surreptitiously withdrawn. We view this as one of those primitive operational styles of the military reminiscent of the long gone dictatorships.

We hereby urge Mr President to order the immediate restoration of the security details to the person and office of the Speaker without further delay. For now and until there is a substantive and binding decision of the competent court of law on the defection of the Speaker, he remains the defacto and dejure Speaker of Nigeria's House of Representatives just as all the respects due to the office and holder of that high office must continue to be observed.

We believe that President Jonathan as a democrat will investigate the remote and immediate circumstances surrounding this illegal and unconstitutional primitive and extreme reactionary measures adopted by the hierarchy of the nation's security community against the person and office of the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives Mr Aminu Waziri Tambuwal.''