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HURIWA urges voters to shun inducements from politicians

By Segun Olaniyi, Abuja
22 February 2019   |   3:18 am
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has cautioned voters to reject inducements from politicians and cast their votes based on a clean conscience. It urged the electorate to remember that Nigeria has become the world’s capital of poverty and has become unsafe, due to acts of terrorism. The rights group lamented that a…

[FILE PHOTO] Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Co-ordinator OF HURIWA

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has cautioned voters to reject inducements from politicians and cast their votes based on a clean conscience.

It urged the electorate to remember that Nigeria has become the world’s capital of poverty and has become unsafe, due to acts of terrorism.

The rights group lamented that a country with global reputation as having some of the most religious people is deeply entrenched in criminality and reprehensible acts of accepting bribes from politicians so as to mortgage their consciences to vote for bribe givers.

Besides, HURIWA wondered why security agencies have ignored widely reported leaked audio of a meeting in which National Leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Ahmed Bola Tinubu, promised to offer monetary rewards to those, who vote for President Muhammadu Buhari.

National Coordinator of HURIWA, Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement in Abuja yesterday, said the security agents were showing double standards and behaving like slaves of the APC by not inviting Tinubu for questioning since financial inducements for votes contravenes the Electoral Act.

“It is sad that the law enforcement agents have become armed guards of the party that produced the incumbent president by either chasing after leading political opponents or engaging in illegal profiling of Igbo officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

“This is particularly worrisome since the botched February 16, 2019 election even when President Buhari’s niece Mrs. Amina Zakari heads the logistics and operations committee of INEC, which has been blamed for the postponement of the polls,” the statement reads.

HURIWA, therefore, charged the electorate to consider the issues of poverty; high youth unemployment, unrelenting terrorists’ attacks and herdsmen’s killings, as factors that should inform their choice in casting their votes given that Nigeria’s future was at stake.

The group explained that the World Poverty Clock, created by a Vienna-based World Data Lab, indicated that 91.16 million Nigerians were living below a dollar a day as at February 13, 2019.

In June 2018, the Brookings Institution projected that Nigeria had overtaken India, as world’s poverty capital, with 86.9 million extremely poor people.

It stated that this was further confirmed by the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, who said Nigeria was home to the largest number of very poor people in the world, putting the figure at 87 million.

“Much of Nigeria is thriving with many individuals enjoying the fruits of a resurgent economy, yet 87 million Nigerians live below $1 and 90 cents a day, making it home to more poor people than any other nation in the world,” May had said.

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