Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, on Thursday met with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja, saying that the Southwest does not want war.
Against the backdrop of the rising insecurity in the country and the utterances of stakeholders, he pointed out to State House correspondents that some people were already beating the drums of war.
He said with the previous experience, the Southwest region does not want anything that will cause another war in the country.
He revealed that he was at the presidential villa on behalf of traditional rulers to discuss with the President ways to improve the security situation in the country.
He said: “How to improve security, I came to speak on behalf of other traditional rulers. The issue at hand in the Southwest is real, the issue of insecurity.
“We that live in the remote and rural areas of the south western part of the country, most of the bushes are occupied by strange people and we decided to work with the government to fish them out.
“Everybody is beating the drum of war. We don’t want war. Who can stand war? We want something better for our youths.
“We should better use them for something good other than shouting war and anarchy. We don’t want that.
“We told the President that, and he is on the same page with us. Politicians should be careful not to throw things out of proportion.
“We should make sure things are right and the President has given good directives to security chiefs including the IG to visit all traditional institutions in the Southwest.”
The royal father cautioned that everything must be done to put all security agencies to good use while working with the locals to separate the bad eggs.
“We shouldn’t keep over hyping war and we still want to keep the peace in the Southwest. We don’t want anarchy,” he stressed.
On the President’s response, he said Buhari assured him that he will address his side of the Ruga controversy which he said the President believes has been blown out of proportion.
The Ooni added: “What is important is for the youths not to take laws into their hands, killing and causing violence. The drum of war is resonating loud and we are very worried.
“We need more federal apparatus to defend ourselves. Reinforcement from federal government.
“We understand more than anybody.
We don’t want war and we want to work with Government to bring peace
“We are not saying all Fulanis are bad.. It’s about the bad guys working under the name of Fulanis.”