*Urges INEC to call Atiku to order
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has faulted the Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and erstwhile Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on his recent campaigns speech in which he presented himself as the Northern candidate and warned Northerners not to vote for Igbo or Yoruba candidates.
HURIWA expressed shock that Abubakar who has been in the corridors of national politics for years “can descend to the dirty arena of ethnicity and tribal politics to try to sell his candidacy, even when he ought to be aware that the last eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari has led to deep divisions on the grounds of nepotism, ethnicity, favouritism and Northernization, Islamisation agenda of the All Progressives Congress-led Federal government of Muhammadu Buhari”.
HURIWA said it watched the video of the deliberations in Kaduna in which the former Vice President pointedly asked Northerners to reject Yoruba or Igbo candidates just as it dismissed the ethnic card played by PDP’s Presidential candidate and challenged him to inform Nigerians about his developmental blueprints on how to turn around the economy of Nigeria already destroyed by the current administration.
The rights group rejected the notion that any of the presidential candidates of either the Labour Party or APC are Igbo or Yoruba candidates, stressing that “they are presidential candidates seeking the votes of fellow Nigerians to become the successor to the current President whose destructive tenure is due to terminate on May 29th 2022”.
HURIWA added” “Is the former Vice-President not totally informed about the turmoil of ethnicity tearing Nigeria apart?
“Is he not aware of the deep gulf that President Muhammadu Buhari has erected amongst Nigeria’s diverse ethnicities by portraying his government as that of the Northern Muslims?”
HURIWA observed that the personal Media Adviser to the Presidential candidate of the PDP, Mr. Paul Ibe, attempted to patch up the tragic error of speech by his principal by asserting that Atiku had said that the credential of national inclusivity, not ethnicity, should be an ideal that the Northern part of the county should examine in electing a new president for the country in the 2023 elections.
HURIWA lamented that “the quantum of damage done by Atiku in labelling his co-contestants in LP and APC as Igbo and Yoruba candidates respectively, has shown him to be an ethnic bigot which is far from the sort of person Nigerians are looking for to amend the cracks of disunity erected by the incumbent President who has gone about his duty as a Northern President”.
Atiku made the remarks when he featured as a guest of the Arewa Joint Committee interactive sessions with various presidential candidates of political parties on Saturday in Kaduna and “HURIWA is demanding that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should call Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to order for spreading Ethnically biased hate speech”.
