Ajaero: Save Democracy In Nigeria, HURIWA Asks UN, US, Others

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has asked leaders of the United Nations, US, Canada, the UK and other world leaders to intervene to save Nigeria’s democracy.

The group made the call on Monday following the arrest of the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero by the operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS) at the Nnamdi Azikiwe’s airport in Abuja.

HURIWA in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, invited President Joe Biden of the US, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, the PM of Canada, Justin Trudeau and the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guiterres to intervene in the “rapidly deteriorating democratic standards in Nigeria.”

The rights group urged them to intervene to stop President Bola Tinubu “from destroying democratic freedoms in his attempt to establish dictatorship and tyranny in Nigeria which violates the sanctity of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,1999, as amended which the current administration swore to uphold.”

HURIWA decried the action of the security forces which “constantly harass and arrest key human rights, media and trade union figures and particularly the constant tormenting through the instrumentality of the state armed security operatives of the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Comrade Joe Ajaero only because the leadership of the foremost central Labour platform in the country refused to be pocketed by the All Progressives Congress-led federal administration.”

The group said the government has “constantly introduced toxic and deadly economic austerity measures that have unleashed mass hunger, poor salaries for the public workforce, mass unemployment, uncontrollable inflation amidst high rate of official corruption, is totally unacceptable and condemnable.

“We are by this statement calling for the immediate cessation of all kinds of coordinated attacks targeting the NLC, human rights campaigners and media practitioners by this administration so as to protect and preserve constitutional principles in Nigeria.”

The group warned, “this intimidation and assault must stop.”

While calling on credible civil society organisations and activists to rally round the leadership of the NLC, the group said the president “should be told in clear terms that human rights and trade union activism is not a crime. Stop these harassments and intimidation now.”