New Telegraph

Activist slams Buhari over threat to human rights

A human rights activist has said that the New Year’s speech of President Muhammadu Buhari, was nothing other than a draconian piece, laced with unnecessary threats to human rights.
The activist, Deji Adeyanju, who on Friday said Buhari’s intolerance for opposing voices, was always manifest in his lifestyle and conduct, also condemned the fresh arrest of Omoyele Sowore by agents of government.
Adeyanju noted that the President’s New Year’s message was not just totally void of inspiration and consolation for citizens, but has further threatened public liberty and fundamental human rights guaranteed by the constitution.
He stressed that the President should not reinvent the hurtful experiences he deliberately unleashed on law abiding citizens who dared to challenge his undemocratic principles and policies in 2020.
He has also demanded for the unconditional release of Sowore and cessation of harassment for peaceful protesters in the country.
“Just as I was putting this piece together, information filtered in that human rights activist, Omoyele Sowore, has been arrested for leading and calling for a peaceful cross-over night protest! Such is the manner of intolerance for criticisms that has characterized the year 2020 under president Buhari.
“But the government had to restrain itself, lest, the world will quickly discover that the tag of being a reformed democrat was nothing but a pseudonym perpetuated by the government of the day to give the people a false sense of hope that change has come. Few years later, the government showed its hands, when it first started hounding the Shiites and later, Sowore, who often gathered around the Unity Fountain to protest against the government.
“In 2020, the government, apparently having had enough of those calling on it to treat its people better, shut down the Unity Fountain permanently, with barricades. While the government’s action may appear innocuous, the symbolism is not lost on the civil society, who has found it difficult to subsequently rally together.
“By a single stroke, the government broke the civil society’s back. What the government, has, however, failed to realise is that those who criticize, do so because of the love for the nation. A government without critics is a government that is doomed to fail,” he said.

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