The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has advocated for the inclusion of physically-challenged members of the community in the cabinet of the incoming administration of Muhammadu Buhari.

HURIWA said it believed that the continuous exclusion of the physically-challenged was tantamount to the gross violation of section
14(3) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 (as amended). “This persistent rights violations must be torpedoed now,” the organisation stated.

National Coordinator of HURIWA, Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Zainab Yusuf, jointly signed the statement.

There an estimated 20 million disabled people in this country with 176 million people, the largest in the continent.

“From our extensive findings, we are aware that Nigeria is blessed with top quality intellectually vibrant women who can competently and professionally pilot the affairs of vital federal ministries and agencies as the abundance of empirical evidence has shown,” HURIWA officials stated.

“We therefore urge our newly elected President to write his name in gold as one of the respected liberators of Nigerian women and the physically challenged by equitably allotting high caliber cabinet level appointments to these groups of very important Nigerians.”