By: Hamid Hendrix
Freedom without responsibility continues to pose a great challenge to the
realization of the full potentials of our democratic dispensation and it
is rather unfortunate that foremost beneficiaries of such liberty are too
often also the major culprits.
Though measures have been taken to curb the excesses of abusers of civil
liberties it is obvious that the more needs to be done to safeguard public
interest.
One area where this menace continues to rear its ugly head is in the rowdy
ranks of human rights advocacy groups which were once credited with
facilitating the successful liberation of several African nations from the
scourge of oppressive military regimes but are now becoming misfits in
democratic settings due to loss of focus and desperation to remain
relevant.
Rather than shifting their attention from the initial agenda of
campaigning for democracy to the equally relevant aspects of ensuring free
and fair elections and dividends of democracy, several of the advocacy
groups have been overtaken by pecuniary impulses that turned them into
rentable rabble-rousers, willingly lending themselves to the begrudged and
disgruntled elements. Such groups end up mired in miscellaneous advocacy
of discordant diatribes as they drift into charlatanism under the
counterfeit canopy of human rights advocacy.
A typical example of such mischievous misadventures masquerading as human
rights advocates is the recent statement issued by Human Rights Writers
Association (HURIWA) claiming that “under the President’s nose a minister
allegedly mismanaged N2 billion from the National Broadcasting Commission
for digitisation of broadcasting but till now both the minister of
information and DG of NBC are walking the corridors of power free.”
This single sentence of spurious speculation casting unsubstantiated
aspersions on the unblemished reputation of the Minister of Information,
Alhaji Lai Mohammed and the Director-General of the Nigerian Broadcasting
Commission (NBC), Malam Ishaq Modibbo Kawu and attempting to discredit the
highly–rated successful switch over to digital broadcasting (DS0) in
Nigeria was purported to be an exercise in human rights advocacy!
Incredulously, this fabricated defamation was an isolated insertion
lacking relevance or corroboration in a libellous list of
politically-motivated wild allegations against the person and
administration of President Muhammadu Buhari contrived by one Emmanuel
Onwubiko, coordinator of the so-called human rights group.
It is manifestly outlandish to portray the deliberate misrepresentation of
the nationally acclaimed resuscitation and diligent implementation of the
previously paralysed DSO project and callous assassination of the
character of the two government functionaries responsible for such an
achievement as a human rights infringement, just as it is absurd to smear
the hitch-free scheduled switch over to digital broadcasting across the
country with the brush of “mismanagement” of a bogus two billion naira.
These malicious distortions of verifiable facts amount to gross violations
of the principle of public accountability, which is a fundamental right of
citizens in a democracy.
To set the records straight, it is worth recalling that the DSO was
formally launched in Jos, Plateau State, in April 2016, followed by the
FCT, Ilorin, Kaduna, Enugu and Osogbo while the process of installation of
equipment for the roll out in Gombe and Delta states have reached advanced
stages.
The NBC expects to achieve DSO roll out in 12 states soon. This impressive
performance was the outcome of zealous commitment of Minister Lai Mohammed
and NBC DG Modibbo Kawu to break the four-year jinx that stalled the
project prior to the debut of the Buhari Administration’s change agenda.
For HURIWA to single out this glorious chapter in the remarkable record of
progress in the nation’s broadcast industry for a vicious vendetta is a
pathetic pointer to the ulterior motives that have hijacked the group and
falsified its declared mission.
In fact, a cursory review of its recent outings reveals a revolting
surrender to the most ridiculous and irrational advocacies imaginable ,
such as campaigning against the ban on production of the much abused
codeine cough syrups because it has “led to great financial misfortunes
for over 30 legitimate pharmaceutical companies,” urging the Federal
Government “not to stop expectant women and nursing mothers from
participating in National Youth Service Corps (NYSC),” appealing to “ the
government of the United States and the European Union to impose sanctions
on Nigeria” and dismissing the terrorist classification of Nnamdi Kanu’s
IPOB “ as a charade and a plot to initiate violent crackdown on the
members of this substantially unarmed and peaceful group”.
Even the EFCC has dismissed the occasional anti-corruption posturing of
HURIWA as “ethnic and political agenda by some mischief makers
masquerading as human rights writers” in one of its rebuttals of the
pseudo human rights advocacy group’s capricious campaigns.
This was also endorsed by Emmanuel Otairu of the Centre for International
and Strategy Studies, Abuja whose article titled “HURIWA As IPOB’s NGO
Arm” in The Nation edition of September 18, 2017 concluded that it was “ a
tool for extortion, paid activism, ethnic propaganda mouthpiece and most
recently a terror organization’s NGO arm”.
The steadily expanding coverage of the DSO in Nigeria under the diligent
implementation of Information Minister Lai Mohammed and DG NBC Ishaq
Modibbo Kawu has surely switched off anomalous advocacy groups like HURIWA
along with analogue noise.
HAMID HENDRIX is a communications writer in Abuja