Buhari should be barred from taking foreign trips until further notice – Falana on insecurity

A foremost human rights lawyer, Femi Falana has opined that the President Muhammadu Buhari and all public officials should be barred from foreign trips until the county resolves its security challenges.

Falana said this on Friday while presenting a paper on press freedom in Nigeria and the rule of law.

According to the senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), the president and all the governors must return home to attend to the country’s security needs.

What he wrote

“It is high time President Buhari and all state governors who are abroad returned to the country to attend to the urgent crisis of insecurity,” he said.

“With the virtual take-over of the country by armed bandits, terrorists and kidnappers, the president and all top public officers should be barred by Nigerians from embarking on foreign private or official visits to other countries until further notice.

“It is common knowledge that the security challenges facing the nation include terrorism, kidnapping, armed robbery, human trafficking, and extra-judicial killings. As the root cause of such violent crimes is traceable to the excruciating poverty in the land, a critical examination of the security challenges cannot be undertaken outside the nation’s neo-colonial capitalist political economy.”

“In Nigeria, no attempt has been made to repeal any of the repressive media laws while the national assembly has been trying frantically to censor the media and use the pending press council to gag the media,” Falana said.

“All elected public officers should be made to proffer solutions to the crisis of underdevelopment and stop the irrelevant debate on the educational qualification of any candidate.

“Since the 2019 elections have been concluded the duty imposed on the media is to ensure that political parties and elected officials are held accountable.

“To that extent, the media should ensure that the political parties are made to explain to the Nigerian people how they plan to address the crisis of underdevelopment that has reduced a richly endowed nation to a beggar taking questionable loans to pay salaries of public officers and service unproductive bureaucracy.”

He also called for a review of the concept and understanding of the rule of law among politicians.

“While senior public officers continue to give the impression that the country is operated under the rule of law their actions and utterances suggest otherwise. In the process, the country is reduced to a banana republic where the rule of law is substituted for the rule of the rulers,” he said.

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via: INFORMATION NIGERIA