The Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s rejection of calls for restructuring as an endorsement of the dismemberment of the country.
Alhaji Mohammed Bello Shehu, who represented Buhari at an event last week, it will be recalled, described those calling for Restructuring as ignorant.
President General of UPU, Chief Joe Omene, while reacting to Buhari’s description of agitators for restructuring as naive in a statement on Tuesday, reminded the president that Nigeria is not a creation of God, but Britain for their selfish interest.
He, therefore, slammed those saying Nigeria is indissoluble and indivisible as daydreaming and being economical with the truth, adding that no nation across the world can be so described.
UPU, while frowning at the president’s statement, said “it is not only tantamount to pouring petrol on a raging inferno, but has sent shock waves of total disappointment and hopelessness among Nigerians, both at home and in the diaspora.”
According to Omene, “the Urhobo Progressive Union believes from its recent engagement with the Attorney General Of the Federation (AGF) that ultimately the Officers of the Federal Government, like all Nigerians, long for a Country that all Nigerians can be proud to live in, as equal stakeholders, where no group should lord it over others.
“This has been the challenge and the overwhelming task that we have not been able to achieve since independence with the result that, as of today, the country is collapsing and in urgent need of the embrace of enduring solutions that will bring peace to the land.”
According to the statement, “Nigeria has become so riven with social strife emanating from disaffection with how federalism is practised within the country, these disaffections and dissatisfaction are rooted in issues that have been identified before independence like the fears of the peoples of Niger-Delta and have been repeated in several national conferences that have been suppressed whenever nationalities or fragments of their demographics agitate over such disaffections.”
“These suppressed yearnings are snowballing every day like the rumblings of a volcano about to erupt.
“These volcanic rumblings are evident in the increasing calls for secessions from diverse corners of Nigeria.
“Most moderate Nigerian Nationality groups, like the Urhobo Progressive Union, UPU, that have called for restraint on the part of those calling for secession, do not do so because the UPU feel that they have no justifiable cause.”
UPU added that Nigeria practices a distorted federalism and requires restructuring, adding that this has made it difficult for the Urhobo people and other hard-working Nigerians to achieve progress and prosperity, adequate welfare as well as security within the Nigerian federal union.
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