HURIWA tackles Ganduje for destroying N200m beer products in Kano

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has reprimanded Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, for authorising the Kano State Hisbah Board to destroy 1.9m bottles of beer worth N200m under the guise of implementing of Shariah law in the state.

It declared that Ganduje and other northern governors’ consistent flouting of section 10 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which prohibits the recognition of a particular religion as state religion and Section 42 of the Constitution would spell doom for the country.

In a statement issued yesterday in Abuja by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and National Media Affairs Director, Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA urged the National Assembly and good-spirited Nigerians to intervene and tame the continuous drift of the Kano State government towards establishing an Islamic State within Nigeria.

HURIWA added that President Muhammadu Buhari had also manifested his partiality for Islam and ethnicity that he had rubbished Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution in the implementation of the principle of Federal Character in his appointments.

“Governor Ganduje’s total disregard of the Constitution shows that there is a conspiracy to Islamise Nigeria. We condemn Ganduje’s approval for the destruction of alcoholic beverages as despicable, provocative, vexatious and primitive.

“Destroying the products in the name of his personal religion even against the clear provisions of Sections 10 and 42 of the Constitution is unacceptable, just as the rapid Islamisation of Kano State is unacceptable going by the fact that indigenous non-Moslems are living and doing their businesses in Kano reputed to be one of the biggest commercial centres of Nigeria,” the statement added.

Continuing, the group said: “Besides, the Kano State government shares from revenues harnessed by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), which goes into the Federation Account and beer manufacturing industry pay a lot of taxes into the central treasury from where Kano draws its monthly allocations.

“Why destroy thee economic derivatives from whose source some of the monthly allocations Kano collects emanate? This is hypocrisy and this is offensive to all good thinking people and against the constitution.”

HURIWA, therefore warned that if President Buhari continued to encourage abuses of the nation’s constitution, other states dominated by Christians might promulgate Christian doctrines and laws as applicable in their states, which inevitably would have resulted from the tacit approval of Shariah laws that had been permitted in Kano.

It stressed that if nothing was done urgently, the illegality in Kano State could lead to destabilisation of the country.