Following the appointment of Major-General Farouk Yahaya as the new Chief of Army Staff, COAS, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has tackled President Muhammadu Buhari for reappointing a Northerner as the COAS, .
The civil rights advocacy group made this known in a statement titled: ‘New Army Chief: We Are No Longer Shocked By Buhari’s Primitive Nepotism’, which was issued by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, on Thursday.
It could be recalled, that the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, had criticised the President for appointing 4 Service Chiefs and an Acting Inspector-General of Police earlier in the year, with none of the 5 appointees being of Igbo extraction.
The Ohanaeze had said that the injustice of the Federal Government under the leadership of President Buhari, is responsible for the growing agitations and insecurity in the South-East.
Reacting to the new COAS appointment, HURIWA knocked the President for not distributing his appointments across all the socio-ethnic interests in the country.
The statement partly reads: “The shameless, nepotistic decision of President Buhari to continue in the illegal and unconstitutional abuses of appointing only Hausa/Fulani citizens into juicy Internal Security positions in breach of the Nigerian Constitutional provision of Federal Character, is despicable, reprehensible, and totally toxic.”
The group accused President Buhari of violating his constitutional Oath of Office, by his aversion to respect the Federal Character principle.
It added: “Buhari’s refusal to appoint an Officer from the South-East of Nigeria as the Army Chief of Staff, even when he is the Most Senior of the Major-Generals, further solidifies his notoriety as someone who does not believe in one Nigeria.”