Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), on Tuesday asked President Muhammadu Buhari to sack his National Security Adviser (NSA), Major General Babagana Monguno (rtd).
HURIWA accused the NSA of undermining the security of the country.
According to the human rights group, Buhari has no business keeping a national security adviser whose trusted aide is facing multiple allegations of economic crimes.
It said the continuous retention of Monguno would be interpreted as Buhari’s lack of passion for implementing credible measures to promote national security and ensuring a law-based mechanism against corruption.
The advocacy group, through its boss, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said: “We are definitely as shocked as millions of Nigerians that President Buhari has kept his failed and non-performing NSA who relies on a civilian and the Kaduna-based Islamic cleric Ahmed Gumi to deal with terrorists and who also has failed to stop the alleged financial malfeasance said to have been perpetrated by no other person but someone he, the NSA, made the director of finance in his office.”
He said: “Insecurity and corruption are the twin evils that Buhari’s administration purportedly came to power to eliminate. But right under the nose of Mr. President is an NSA who for six years has not offered any workable security advise and under whose office, his trusted staff committed monumental corruption as alleged by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
“Mr. President needs to dismiss Monguno immediately unless he does not care about what kind of legacies he wants to bequeath to Nigerians in 2023.”
He asked: “How can President Buhari keep an adviser who admitted allowing Sheikh Gumi to violate the anti-terrorism act (a valid and binding federal anti-terrorism law) by encouraging negotiations with terrorists whose hands are drenched in the blood of innocent northern school children?
“Sheikh Ahmad Gumi who has been meeting with suspected bandits terrorising communities in the north-west and in the north-central had likened them to militants in the Niger-Delta, and asked that they are not tagged criminals. But the NSA endorsed the unorthodox modus operandi of this Sheikh who has only just recently reportedly stated that school children will continue to be kidnapped unless government grants a soft landing to terrorism.”
