Buhari too magnanimous with human rights - Attorney General Malami

Abubakar Malami, Nigeria’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice say President Buhari’s administration has been magnanimous in respecting the rule of law and enforcing fundamental human rights.

The minister made this comment during a programme on Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) on Tuesday.

The minister warned that the Buhari administration will not sit back and watch persons take up arms to render the government “helpless”, while he reverberated President Muhammadu Buhari’s “genocidal tweet” on Tuesday.

“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War,” Mr Buhari said on Twitter. “Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”

During the TV programme, Mr. Malami attributed Nigeria’s problems to Mr Buhari’s religious adherence to the rule of law as enshrined in the Constitution.

“Perhaps what we are witnessing today in terms of impunity, the insurgency could equally be attributed in one way or the other to a religious submission to the rule of law by the government,” he asserted.

“Consider chapter four of the Constitution on the enforcement of fundamental human rights; people are now operating much more in breach as far as the fundamental human rights enforcement is concerned as against operating in such a way that the rights are intended to bring about a harmonious co-existence in the system.”

Mr Malami further said people do not respect the Constitution and are not taking advantage of its human rights principles.

“Rather than people taking advantage of the human rights principles in the constitution positively, they are perhaps using it outside the reign of constitutional consideration,” he said.

“A single individual, within the context of public interest and the interest of justice, cannot unilaterally make a decision that will now render the judiciary, the executive and legislature helpless, perhaps all-out of appreciation of purported consideration of the rule of law,” he added.