Nigeria’s former President, Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo has met with leadership of Fulani herdsmen in the Southwest,
Kogi and Kwara States, saying that the nation is currently in darkness due to
wanton insecurity and killings.
Obasanjo, at the meeting held at
with Gan Allah Fulani Development Association of Nigeria (GAFDAN) at the
Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta, Ogun State on
Saturday, Obasanjo decried the high rate of kidnapping and killings in the
Southwest and summed it up that Nigeria is in darkness now now needed light.
The former president advice
Nigerians to stop putting blames on anybody and accept individual
responsibility on how to put an end to the issues at hand.
“I take it that you are
sufficiently knowledgeable, sufficiently aware, sufficiently understanding to
be able to interact actively and successfully at this meeting on behalf of
those that are not here. None of us here will say he doesn’t know what has been
happening, what has been reported and what are being reported about insecurity
in our country generally.
“I believe that whatever that we
are able to achieve or to discuss or to disabuse in this zone will be taken as
a model in other zones. I want to learn from you and I hope you will learn from
me and at the end of the day, we will all be wiser and we will be able to
determine what should be way forward for us to get rid of bad things in our
community.
“Let me tell you some of the
reasons for our meeting. What has been happening in Nigeria, particularly in
this area, the Southwest, we have got a lot of bad things happening here, let
us not deceive ourselves. We have got a lot of heat, not enough light. And
without adequate light, we may not be able to deal with the problem the way we
want to and find solution to it. We have got enough heat but we now need light
to guide us so that we are all out there.
“Secondly, we are all in
darkness, all of us. We need to be in the light. And those who may want to
choose to be in darkness and want to deceive themselves, we can leave them in
darkness but majority of us have to be in the light and let the light shine
upon us so that we can see our faces, we can see ourselves as we are, where we
are naked, let us see ourselves as naked, where we are half covered, let us see
ourselves as half covered, where we are fully clothed, let us see ourselves as
fully clothed,” he explained.
According to Obasanjo, “We are
also going about among ourselves with history, some of the histories that we
are going about among ourselves are the histories we need not perpetrate. We
are going about with myths, we are not going about with reality. We are going
about with lack of clarity so what we want to do is to push aside myth and talk
about reality, we want you to talk about clarity. We want to see things clearly
the way they are.”
The former president stated
emphatically that there is criminality and insecurity in the land and that it
had not been like that before, saying that “if this is what we have, what we
want to do at this meeting is find solutions to stop it. We want to interrogate
and be inquisitive among ourselves about things around us but particularly
about unusual things around us. We are not inquisitorial, we are not
prosecutorial but we want to interrogate ourselves; why is it, how is it, where
is it and then we find solutions to it.”
He said the nation wanted to have
peace, security, harmony, wholesomeness and progress, stressing that “We want
to move Nigeria forward, irrespective of tribe, religion, ethnicity, trade,
profession, where I come from, where you come from. How can we together move
Nigeria forward? And there is nobody else who will do all these for us, it is
you, we, all of us here and all our brothers and sisters wherever they may be
in Nigeria.
“It is not one man’s job or one
person’s job or one group’s job, it a job for all of us, all Nigerians and
unless and until we see it that way, we should stop passing blame, everybody is
wrong and everybody is right. Let us take what is right in one group and join
it what is right in other group and throw away what is wrong in all the groups
then we will move forward.”
Obasanjo said the people in West
Africa were worried about the situation in Nigeria and were wondering if
Nigeria could not manage her security, how could they look up to Nigeria whom
they normally see as big brother, that they could call upon to help them when in
trouble.
“We are Nigerians, we can deal
and we will deal with our security problem and any other problem that we need
to deal with,” he said.
Obasanjo, while recalling his
experience with other tribes while growing up, said he grew up among different
tribes whom his late mother believed were the best people to sell her market to
than the Yoruba tribe and that there was peace then because there was no
discrimination of tribes then, unlike what was happening in the country right
now.
“I was born in a village and grew
up among all tribes that were in that area: Igbira, Egun, Igbo, Igala, we don’t
even called them Hausas or Fulanis, we called them Mallams because that is what
we knew them as. We knew them as Mallams and we grew up friendly. Peace was
reigning but what has now changed?
“From my own knowledge, when i
joined the army, I came back from training in 1959 to Kaduna, my interaction
with the North and particularly with Hausa/Fulani is a different experience
from the one that I hear and see today. Normally, you know it when a stranger
come into a community, the head of that community must know and it is the
responsibility of the head of that community to maintain peace and security; so
what is the problem with our community leaders, the chiefs while things are
going wrong in your community?
“Is it that you do not have
knowledge? Is it that you do not know what is happening, what exactly is the
problem? Because this is what I know, this is what used to happen and part of
what we have to do is what is wrong that we have to put right.
“We must be able to have what I
will call take away from meeting. We will have positive measures that are
measurable which we will put timeline to and which will be actionable by
individuals and groups and which we can follow and see what progress we are
making and maybe before long, we can then have what I will call progress
meeting to discuss what we have achieved, what is left to be achieved, where do
we move to next? But we must have take away things that will work for us
individually and collectively,” Obasanjo said.
The National Chairman of GAFDAN,
Alhaji Sale Bayari, prayed for the former president and referred to him as the
pillar of the country and that they believed he is the best person who could
help solve the puzzle of unnecessary killing and kidnapping in the country with
his advice “if only our leaders can listen to what he says.”
Many of the members from
different state who had accompany the chairman to meet Obasanjo blamed the
insecurity on the traditional leaders because they did not consult or see them
as part of the members of their community, saying that they just accommodated
other people claiming to be Fulani from other countries, like Togo,Senegal and
others and that when strange things happened they would say it’s the Fulani.
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