Time to restructure Nigeria is now, SLF tells Buhari

SOUTHERN Leaders Forum comprising of prominent Nigerians, on Wednesday insisted that the time to renegotiate the country along Federal lines to stem the tide of separatist feelings and agitations is now, calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to realise that the country was in bad shape and, therefore, requires demonstration of statesmanship on his part.

The SLF made the demand through a communique signed by Chief Edwin Clark, Chief A. K Horsfall (South- South); Chief Nnia Nwodo and Prof Joe Irukwu (South- East) and Chief Reuben Fasoranti and chief Ayo Adebanjo (South- West) and read to newsmen by Mr Yinka Odumakin.

The group, whose response was in reaction to President Buhari’s broadcast made a few days back, while drawing attention to facts that as elders they had spent most their lives fighting for the unity of the country based on justice, fairness and equity, said it did not portray the president in favourable light to be away for a long period, only to return to a badly fractured polity and avoid promoting a new dialogue for a better, just, inclusive and peaceful country.

SLF, while contending that it did not hold the Buhari administration for all the causes of agitations in the country due to the crises of unitary constitution, it, however, said that there were clearly many errors of commission and omission the government had committed that had accentuated the strong self- determination feelings across Nigeria which only restructuring could tame.

According to SLF, the several sins, include the insensitive and clearly lopsided recruitment/appointments into all federal institutions, concentration of most of the heads of Armed Forces and other National Security Agencies in a section of the country and the president going on a global stage to say he could not treat those who gave him 5% of their votes equally with those who supported him with 97%.

Others are official indifference to the murderous activities of herdsmen against peace- loving citizens on their farms and other settlements, the flagrant breach of the constitutionally enshrined federal character Principle, appointment of legal adviser of Meyeti Allah as Secretary of the Federal character Commission and the lopsided early retirement of mostly southern senior officers from the Nigerian Forces and other security services.

This was just as SLF said that even prominent Northern leaders had expressed openly their disapproval of the pattern of appointments by the Buhari regime.

Speaking essentially on President Buhari’s broadcast, the SLF said the threat to treat “hate speech” as “terrorism” could be a vieled threat to bare fangs and commence the criminalization of dissenting opinions in the country’s national discourse.

“Experience has shown that any attempt to deal with dissent by force usually drives it underground which makes it muvh more dangerous and difficult to deal with.

“We should have learnt a lesson or two from Boko Haram which was an open organization before the state drove it underground and we are still under its reign of terror despite official claim that it has been ‘technically defeated’ or degraded.’

“As elders who believe that it is better to seek solutions to problems, we appeal that we must engage in social engineering fully aware that globalization has made it very difficult to use repressive tactics to suppress opinions,” the group said.

The group faulted President Buhari on the parley he said he had in 2003 with the late Chief Emeka Ojukwu where both agreed that Nigera must remain “one and united.”

SLF said while it agreed on conclusion of the duo, the meeting between them could not have been a Sovereign National Conference whose decision cannot be reviewed.

“The fact that we agree on their conclusion that we should remain united does not foreclose discussion of terms and conditions of the union.

“The claim that Nigeria’s ‘unity is settled and not negotiable’ is untenable. Every country is daily dialogue and there is nothing finally settled in its life,” it said.

According to SLF, stable nation are still fine- tuning details of the architecture of their existence now and then, querying: “How much more Nigeria that has yet to attain nationhood?

“If we are a settled nation, we would not be dealing with the many crises of nation building that are afflicting us today which have made it extremely difficult to squarely and urgently face issues of growth and development,” the group stated.

SLF also condemned what it described as one sentence response of President Buhari that every Nigerian can live anywhere without let of hindrance while trying to address the quit notice issued by the Arewa Youths against the Igbo living in the North.

According to it, the “one sentence” is rather too short to address the clear and present danger that the unwarranted threat represents, just as SLF expressed worries that by the refusal of the police to comply with the arrest orders given by the Kaduna State governor, malam Nasir el-Rufai and the Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo while the president was away.

On the claim made by Buhari that the National Assembly and the Council of State were the appropriate bodies for national discourse, the SLF disagreed, saying that though were legal but not appropriate organs to discuss the social contract that could bind the country together as a nation- state.

It said, “If any discourse was to take place on constitutional changes within the democratic framework, Mr President is the one who has the responsibility to initiate the process.”

Other eminent personalities in attendance inlude, Prof Banji Akintoye, Col Tony Nyiam, Chief Supo Shonibare, Dr Amos Akingba, Otunba Gani Adams, Chief guy Ikokwu, Dr walter Ofonagoro, Ambassador (Prof) George Obiozor, Prof Joe Irukwu, Tony Uranta, Gen Ike Nwachukwu, Denzil Kentebe, Obafemi Ayo Adebanjo and Efiye Bribena.