ABUJA — Nigeria’s Punch newspaper says it will henceforth prefix president Muhammadu Buhari’s name with ‘major general’, his rank when he led a coup in the 1980s, because he is acting like a “military dictator”.
The paper also said it would refer to his administration as a “regime”, until members of his government purged “themselves of their insufferable contempt for the rule of law”.
In a scathing editorial, published both online and its print version, the newspaper said the government’s “actions and assaults on the courts, disobedience of court orders and arbitrary detention of citizens reflect its true character of the martial culture”.
Last Friday’s dramatic arrest in court of Omowole Sowore, the publisher of online newspaper – a day after his bail was upheld by a high court – was cited by the paper in a long list of alleged “violations of rights”. The president was also accused of failing to release the leader of a banned Shia Muslim group, Ibrahim el Zakzakky, and his wife, and the country’s former security adviser Sambo Dasuki – all have been granted bail by different courts, but remain in detention.
– BBC News
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