Establishment of technology, health universities: HURIWA kicks as Buhari snubs S/East

  Establishment of technology, health universities: HURIWA kicks as Buhari snubs S/East

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to reverse his decision to exclude the South East from the immediate establishment of specialized technology-based and health universities in five of the six geopolitical zones of the country.

HURIWA described Buhari’s decision as Igbophobic, discriminatory and unconstitutional, asking the President to perish his alleged hatred for Igbos and work towards salvaging his nearly destroyed legacy as a nationalist.

President Buhari had recently approved the immediate establishment of five new universities specialised in technology and health with a take-off grant of N4 billion each for the universities of technology and N5 billion each for the universities of health science.

Angered that the South East was snubbed in the arrangements, HURIWA also wondered what the minister of state for education, Emeka Nwajiuba, is doing in the federal cabinet having allegedly failed to represent the region when the President sidelined his Igbo speaking zone in this very strategic matter.

In a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and Zainab Yusuf, its National Secretary, the rights group asked Buhari to work towards salvaging what it described as the President’s nearly destroyed legacy as a nationalist.

“Mr. President, stop hating on Igbo speaking ethnicity. We are a very fascinating people who love other people of our nation,” the group reminded Buhari.

HURIWA warned the President to stop destroying all the fabrics of Nigeria’s unity and integration by openly and brazenly denying the South East Igbo people their constitutionally guaranteed rights and positions.

“This hatred you are displaying against a section of Nigeria at such an advanced age is untenable and unsustainable and for sure you will go down as one of the most divisive and bigoted Presidents that Nigeria has ever produced,” the statement added

“This systematic exclusion by President Buhari of the Igbo speaking region as a beneficiary of the newly created specialized universities is to put it mildly totally unconstitutional and tantamount to a very wicked deprivation of the fundamental rights of the citizens of Nigeria of Igbo Extraction.”