Southern Leaders Oppose President's Broadcast, Insist On Restructuring

Southern leaders drawn from the South-west, South-east and South-south geopolitical zones have collectively expressed their strong opposition to the position taken by President Muhammadu Buhari in his national broadcast on Monday.


The leaders, who converged on the Colonades Hotels, Ikoyi, Lagos, Wednesday to take a stand of the president's broadcast, said in a statement titled, "Only restructuring will ensure the unity, peace and development of Nigeria," and jointly signed by Chief Edwin Clark and Albert Horsfall for the South-south; Chief Nnia Nwodo and Prof. Joe Irukwu for the South-east; and Chief Reuben Fasoranti and Chief Ayo Adebanjo for the South-west, that Nigeria was in a "very bad shape and requires statesmanship in its leadership".

Buhari, in his broadcast, barely acknowledged the growing agitation for the nation's restructuring, and only stated that the appropriate institutions for national discourse were the National Assembly and National Council of State.

The southern leaders noted that the president, in his broadcast, handled some very important issues with levity that did not give cognisance to the level at which they affect the overall well-being of Nigerians.

"We have studied the national broadcast by Mr. President on Monday, August 21, 2017 and after a careful and thorough analysis of the speech, we make the following observations: the president expressed his disaffection about comments on Nigeria while he was away that 'question our collective existence as a nation' and which he said had crossed the red lines.

"Against the background of the threat to treat hate speech as terrorism, we see a veiled threat to bare fangs and commence the criminalisation of dissenting opinions in our national discourse.

"The president deployed the imagery of the late Chief Emeka Ojukwu to play down the demand for the renegotiation of the structure of Nigeria by saying they both agreed in Daura in 2003 that we must remain one and united.

"While we agree with them, the meeting between the two of 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 discussions of the terms and conditions of the union," they said.

The leaders contended that the claim that Nigeria's unity was settled and not negotiable was untenable on the grounds that "every country is in daily dialogue and there is nothing finally settled in its life".

"Stable nations are still fine-tuning details of the architecture of their existence now and then," let alone Nigeria, which they described as a country yet to attain nationhood.

Regarding the October 1 quit notice given to Nigerians of eastern extraction by Arewa youths, the southern leaders noted that Buhari did not give the issue the needed attention in his speech.

According to them, "The one sentence by the president that every Nigerian can live anywhere without let or hindrance, if meant to address the quit notice by Arewa youths against the Igbos was rather too short to address the clear and present danger that the unwarranted threat represents.

"We are distressed by the refusal of the police to comply with the arrest orders given by the Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai and the vice-president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo while the president was away.

"Instead of ensuring that these orders are carried out, the president has now come to make a bland comment on the explosive issue. We are of the view that leadership requires more than that at this crucial moment."