Activist lawyer, Chief Mike
Ozekhome has said President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech on Octpber 1 clearly
displayed his hatred for people of the South-East.
He said Buhari showed a fixated
hatred for Igbos when he berated leaders of the region for allowing those
feeling marginalised to agitate for the breakup of the country.
Describing the speech as not only
un-presidential but un-reconciliatory, Ozekhome wondered how Buhari could see
nothing wrong in the murderous activities of herdsmen across the country as
well as the illegal quit notice asking Igbos to vacate the North without any
repercussion against them.
Ozekhome’s stance on Buhari’s
speech was contained, in a statement he signed, entitled ‘President Muhammadu
Buhari’s National Day Broadcast: Yet Another Golden Opportunity Lost.”
According to Ozekhome, “The
entire national day broadcast by PMB on the occasion of Nigeria’s 57th
independence is quite disappointing in all ramifications.
“It was very un-presidential and
un-reconciliatory. PMB left the real issues and pursued trifles.
“The speech was bereft of
nobility of statesmanship, and devoid of a calm grasp and appraisals of the
dire straits Nigeria is currently in.
“The broadcast was rabidly
narcissist, parochial, nepotic and clannish, as it failed to see anything wrong
with the blatant and well reported threats by the Arewa youths to quit fellow
Nigerians from their domains.
“The speech followed his now well
worn out fixation of perceived hatred for the Igbo race, whose leadership he
needlessly scurilized and lampooned, for allegedly being behind IPOB and other
agitations.
“I doubt and didn’t hear him
mention anything about gun wielding herdsmen that literally vanquish citizens
in their own homesteads across Nigeria.
“The President celebrated
mediocrity and edified his government’s non-performance two and half years down
the line.
“I genuinely wondered if he was
discussing the same country, Nigeria, that I am in, or another utopian planet
Mars.
“The beautiful picture of a
peaceful country he painted so glowingly and artistically with the paintbrush
of breathless satisfaction is quite different from the stark reality on the
ground, which every beleaguered Nigerian labours under.
“His speech writers either
wallowed in utopian mystic of redemptive messianism, or in crass fraud and
grand deception.
“But, Nigerians are no fools. Did
I hear PMB say this is the first time a government at the Centre is losing the
governorship, senatorial and Houses of Assembly’s elections to the opposite at
the state level?
“No sir, wrong. Whoever gave Mr.
President this false electoral history has done him incalculable disservice and
great damage and ridicule’.
“Few examples: Remember Ondo
state (Labour Party), Osun and Edo states (AC), Anambra (APGA), etc?
“Not only did the ruling PDP lose
the elections to those opposition parties, the then President Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan actually rolled out the drums and congratulated the new governors,
Senators and House member.
“Peter Obi won the Anambra state
governorship election in 2010 for the second time on the platform of APGA.
“Obasanjo was President at the
Centre under the PDP, just as Bola Tinubu won the Lagos state governorship seat
twice under AD and ACN, with Obasanjo as president under PDP at the Centre.
“Buhari lost yet another golden
opportunity to balm bruised nationalities’ ego and cement Nigeria’s yawning
cleavages, hate and divisiveness.
“Must everything be predicated on
falsehood, force, threats and gun boat diplomacy, viet armis?
“It didn’t ever work. When he
applied such excessive force and threats to the Niger Delta militants, I
counseled then it would not work.
“The marginalized youth picked up
the gauntlet, serially blew up oil pipelines, tore up Nigeria’s oil jugular
into smithereens.
“Crude oil output plummeted to
about 700 thousand barrels per day from 1.5m barrels.
“It took the then Acting
President Yemi Osibanjo’s shuttle diplomacy to the Niger Delta region to quell
the strife.
“It was Napoleon Bonarparte, a
French General and Emperor (1769-1821), who famously declared: “do you know
what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize
anything.
“PMB sir, allow Nigerians enjoy
the full bloom of democracy and its inbuilt mechanisms for conflict
resolution.”
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My brother, what do U expect from Muhamnadu 'Mujahedeen' Buhari?
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