Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA) on Wednesday, slammed President Muhammadu Buhari, for his re-submission of the controversial National Water Resources Bill, 2022, for the third time in about five years.
HURIWA said the action of the President violates his sacred constitutional oath of office not to allow his interest to endanger and undermine national interest just as the rights group said the persistent presentation of the toxic bill is a signal that President Buhari intended to flood Nigeria with displaced Fulanis from the war-torn Central African Republic.
HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement, said the President has ulterior motives for insisting that the bill be passed into law despite the obnoxious and problematic clauses in the bill which have attracted widespread rejection by all and sundry except the Fulani ethnicity.
The group further urged the 9th National Assembly to throw the bill into the trash can just as the 8th National Assembly did, adding that the bill if mistakenly passed by the rubberstamp Senate led by Buhari’s ally, Lawan Ahmad, will empower killer Fulani herdsmen to hijack wells and boreholes in Southern Nigeria just as they have been flagrantly hijacking the lands and farms of original dwellers to graze their cattle even as the Rights group said no amount of selective amassing of weapons of mass destruction by Fulani terrorists can make the native people abandon their Gid given water resources in their communities for cows of private owners to be permanently kept in those communities by strangers from distant lands.
Recall that the vexatious national water resources bill was reintroduced in June by the chairman of the House Committee on Water Resources, Sada Soli, a lawmaker from Katsina State, the hometown of the President.
The bill dates back to the eighth National Assembly when it was first sent to the parliament by the executive. It was later withdrawn following public outrage.
Amongst the contentious issues in the proposed legislation include those in clause 13 which provided thus, “In implementing the principles under subsection (2) of this section, the institutions established under this act shall promote integrated water resources management and the coordinated management of land and water resources, surface water and groundwater resources, river basins and adjacent marine and coastal environment and upstream and downstream interests.”
