A Human Rights group, International Society for Human Rights and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) has said it was time for the Military Service Chiefs in Nigeria to quit the scene, saying they have overstayed their tenures.
It said that by attempting to perpetuate themselves in office through the antics of anti democratic forces and processes, the Service Chiefs have proclaimed themselves as life Service Chiefs until they die in office.
In a statement issued on Thursday in Onitsha, Anambra state by its chairman of Board of Directors, Comrade Emeka Umeagbalasi and others, the group likened the service chiefs to “a big masquerade that has overstayed his welcome at entertainment arena, thereby attracting pouring of sand by children and booing by women of non menopausal age”.
The group said it was not unaware of renewed ‘permanent tenure extension for Service Chiefs campaigns’, mounted on their behalf by some citizens and groups including the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan; all in a bid to see them continue in office in perpetuity.
The statement partly read, “Before now, there had been a lot of criticisms on the lopsided appointment of the nearly “the 90% Muslim controlled Nigerian security forces that must be surgically reorganized from their present radically religious and clannish lines to secular, professional and ICT-powered or ‘man-mental-technological lines.
“Under the watch and leadership of the Senate President, the sectional and religious balancing principle ensured by federal character and Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution has been set aside and observed in breach as all the legislative oversight committees in charge of army, navy, air force, police, intelligence, defense, interior, national security, customs, immigration and other paramilitaries are dominated, if not all headed by Northern Muslims.
“This is a country composed of proportionate multi religious and ethnic groupings and constitutionally said to have been founded on multi party democracy and secular constitutionalism.
“Having woefully failed the country and her citizens particularly in matters of defense and safety of the citizens, their properties and the country’s land, water, air and wild spaces, it has become inexcusable and beyond logics and sentiments for the Service Chiefs to pack and go”.
