Nigeria must be restructured before 2019 elections, Nwabueze tells Buhari

RENOWNED constitutional lawyer and president of the Igbo Leaders of Thought, Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN), has described the seeming refusal of President Muhammadu Buhari to condemn the “anarchic refusal” of the Miyyeti Allah Cattle Breeders Association members to abide by anti-open grazing laws in some states as betraying the president’s “northernisation agenda.”

Nwabueze, in a paper entitled Quit Notice, Hate Speeches and President Buhari’s Northernisation/Islamisation Agenda and made available to Sunday Tribune, on Saturday, called for the restructuring of the country before the 2019 elections.

He claimed that Buhari had compromised his position as the leader of the country and had been looking after the interest of his kinsmen from the North.

He called on the president to institute an all-inclusive government that would embrace all Nigerians based on equity, justice and equality, saying it was time Buhari gave up his northernisation/Islamisation agenda.

“The manifold problems tearing the country apart under President Buhari – insecurity, disagreements over re-structuring, the quit notice given to Ndigbo by the Arewa Youths, the hate speeches accompanying it, the lop-sided strategic appointments, etc – all revolve around one thing – President Buhari’s Northernisation/Islamisation Agenda.

“His unwillingness to run an all-inclusive government to which all Nigerians can feel they belong and in which they have an equal stake. The cabinet is largely a screen. Even the problem of the economy, which the Administration puts at the forefront, pales to secondary importance.

“The injurious ways in which the agenda has impacted on our problems are evident. First, the president’s undisguised, unabashed favouritism and solicitude for a united Northern Nigeria arouses in him and his fellow northerners a renewed sense of solidarity in defence of whatever they perceive, rightly or wrongly, to be its interest.

“This inclines them to adopt antagonistic, even confrontational stance towards southerners in discussions of national affairs, thereby disabling them from approaching national issues in the spirit of what the interest of the nation as a whole demands, even issues such as re-structuring, Fulani herdsmen insurgency, and other national issues,” Nwabueze stated.

“Second, his bias for the Fulani herdsmen and their masters, the Cattle Breeders Association (Miyetti Allah) is the aspect of his lack of impartiality that most compromises his position as leader of the nation.

“This is manifested in his inability or unwillingness to take firm, decisive actions against the herdsmen’s killings in Benue, Taraba and Zamfara States in particular, and against Miyetti Allah’s blunt, anarchic refusal to abide and be bound by the anti-open grazing law of those States, which is the governing law there until declared unconstitutional, null and void by the courts.

“The President should not condone anarchy by anyone, the Miyetti Allah people not exempted. Gratifyingly, the herdsmen are said to be now “willing to abide by the Benue State anti-open grazing law”, according to Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State, chairman of the Mediation Committee on the herdsmen/farmers clashes, but does that represent the position of the Cattle Breeders Association (the Miyetti Allah)?

“Third, the President’s favouritism for the North in pursuance of his Northernisation Agenda is again betrayed in a markedly unabashed manner by his reinstatement of the Director-General of the National Insurance Health Scheme (NIHS), Professor Usman Yusuf, a northerner, suspended for alleged financial impropriety by the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole whose ministry has supervisory authority over the scheme.

“Work at the workplace of the NIHS has been paralysed by workers’ industrial action caused by controversy over the president’s action. The reinstatement betrays favouritism for the DG in two main ways. The DG’s statement that he is answerable only to the president as the authority that appointed him, but not to the minister, is an unpardonable act of insubordination, deserving to be severely reprimanded, not condoned,” he said.