HURIWA canvasses more women in incoming govt.

Makes case for the physically challenged 
HUMAN Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) yesterday urged the President-Elect Muhammadu Buhari to improve on the performance of the outgoing president, Goodluck Jonathan in the appointment of women in his cabinet.

The Rights group also tasked Buhari-led administration to include the physically challenged in the composition of the Executive Council of the federation.

In a statement by its National Coordinator, Mr. Emmanuel Onwubiko, the group expressed worry that since 1999 all successive federal administrations have consistently left out the physically challenged persons in the society as far as appointments to positions of responsibilities are concerned.

Canvassing immediate redress of the neglect suffered by the groups over the years, the rights group particularly reminded the President-elect to maintain the tempo of greater involvement of women in strategic cabinet level positions as institutionalised by the outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan led administration.

HURIWA specifically asked Buhari to surpass the antecedent already set by the out-going President Goodluck Jonathan-led Federal Government by appointing more quality and corruption-free women into the Federal cabinet to achieve gender parity and proper gender mainstreaming into the governance of Nigeria at the highest levels.

HURIWA also maintained that the continuous non-inclusion of the physically challenged Nigerian citizens in the hierarchy of civil governance at the federal level amounted to the perpetuation of the gross violation of section 14(3) of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 (as amended) and insisted that this persistent right violation must be torpedoed now. Underlining it’s position, HURIWA argued that the supreme law states as follows;

“The composition of the government of the federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty….”

HURIWA submits that the physically challenged community is a strategic group that has suffered political alienation even when they form part of the larger federal demographic character of modern day Nigeria and indeed parade significant percentage of academically and morally sound citizens with requisite competences to join the national effort to achieve speedy transformational change of the Nigerian comatose economy.

The rights group which canvassed strongly the involvement of quality women in the running of strategic cabinet level positions under the incoming Muhammadu Buhari-led presidency said that as far back as year 2011 the World Bank statistically projected that women of Nigeria constitute nearly 49.36 percent of the entire populations.

HURIWA also stated that since the estimated population of the physically challenged Nigerians are over 20 million conservatively, it would be a gross human right breach for this critical section of the Nigerian populace to be sidelined in the composition of the federal cabinet of quality Nigerian decision and policy making body.

“From our extensive findings, we are aware that Nigeria is blessed with top quality intellectually vibrant women who can competently and professionally pilot the affairs of vital federal ministries and agencies as the abundance of empirical evidence has shown.

We therefore urge our newly elected President to write his name in gold as one of the respected liberators of Nigerian women and the physically challenged by equitably allotting high caliber cabinet level appointments to these groups of very important Nigerians”, HURIWA affirmed.

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May 20, 2015