N27bn NASS renovation: HURIWA calls for nationwide protest

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has condemned the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration and the National Assembly’s leadership “for going ahead to approve the whopping sum of N27 billion for the renovation of the National Assembly Complex, an amount that is ten times higher than what was utilised to build the edifice.”

The rights group said on Wednesday that the approval of N27 billion for the renovation of the complex “is criminal, misplaced, dubious, and is a bribe for the Senate and the House of Representatives to continue to remain docile and subservient to the whims and caprices of the lawless executive arm of government”.

HURIWA has also asked organised civil society community in the country “to brace up and defend constitutional democracy from the strangle hold of oppressors and demagogues that have hijacked all tiers of government”. The rights group said the present leadership of the National Assembly “and the handpicked hierarchy of the nation’s judiciary pose grave threats to the continuous existence of constitutional democracy unless the entire Nigerian masses stand up and demand immediate overhauls and restoration of the constitutionally guaranteed principles of checks and balances and the separation of powers.” 

HURIWA in a statement lamented that the huge monetary approval granted by the executive arm of government “and the crude fact that the Chief Justice of Nigeria Muhammad Tanko  was railroaded into office through a kangaroo tribunal and through an ex parte injunction granted by the ethically challenged quasi-judicial contraption called Code of Conduct Tribunal controlled and orchestrated by the executive arm of government shows that Nigeria has effectively entered a totalitarian dictatorship of one man in the person of the President.”

“There is no further need to look for evidence of collusion  between the leadership of the National Assembly and the Executive arm of government to collapse the constitutionally guaranteed separation of powers going by the unfortunate fact that both the Legislative and judicial arms of government are now headed by O-Yes men of Mr President and the sad reality is that unless the slumbering civil society wakes up and demand restoration of constitutional democracy we can as well sing “nunct dimitis servum tuum” meaning “it is finished; every man to his tents,” HURIWA said.

The rights further lamented that organised labour has since been bought over and pocketed by an increasingly autocratic executive.