The Ondo State Governor, Mr Rotimi Akeredolu, has lambasted
the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Muhammadu Buhari, Mr Garba Sheu, over the latter’s recent
comment on the resolutions of the 17 southern governors made at a meeting in
Asaba Delta State.
Shehu, in a statement allegedly from the presidency, was
quoted to have gone against the resolutions of the 17 southern governors.
Akeredolu, who described Shehu as an agent provocateur, said
the presidential media aide was not speaking for President Buhari on the ban on
open grazing which is one of the resolutions of the SGF.
This was contained in a statement issued by the Senior
Special Assistant on Special Duties and Strategy, Dr Doyin Odebowale, on
Tuesday, title ‘Mr Garba Shehu: On the trail of an agent provocateur’.
The statement read, “Anyone who has been following the
utterances of this man, as well as his fellow travellers on the self-deluding,
mendacious but potentially dangerous itinerary to anarchy, cannot but conclude
that he works, assiduously, for extraneous interests whose game plan stands at
variance with the expectations of genuine lovers of peaceful coexistence among
all the peoples whose ethnic extractions are indigenous to Nigeria.
“Mr Garba must disclose, this day, the real motive(s) of
those he serves, definitely not the President. He cannot continue to hide under
some opaque, omnibus, and dubious directives to create confusion in the polity.
The easy recourse to mendacious uppity in pushing a barely disguised pernicious
agendum is well understood. The declaration that the recommendations of the
Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Sabo Nanono, a mere political appointee like
Garba Shehu, are now the “lasting solutions” which eluded all the elected
representatives of the people of the Southern part of the country, exposes this
man as a pitiable messenger who does not seem to understand the limits of his
relevance and charge.
“Mr Garba contends that “their announcement is of
questionable legality”, referring to the 17 Governors of the Southern States,
but the decision of certain elements to take the ancestral lands of other
people to settle their kinsmen, including the “gun-wielding “killer herdsmen”
and their families, and provide “veterinary clinics, water points for animals,
and facilities for herders and their families including schooling through these
rehabilitated reserves” for which “the Federal Government is making
far-reaching and practical changes allowing for different communities to
co-exist side-by-side”, does not appear to him as a comprehensive plan for land
grabbing, a precursor to internal colonialism. He wants to “revive forest
reserves” but seems particularly uninterested in the current position of the
same law, that he and his cohorts often misinterpret to serve parochialism and
greed. Governors no longer have powers over the lands in their territories.
They must take instructions from appointees of the Federal Government on such matters.
“It is superfluous, and that is being charitable, for anyone
to remind us of the constitutional right of bona fide citizens “to enjoy rights
and freedoms within every one of our 36 States (and FCT)-regardless of their
state of birth and residence”. There has never been any contention on this
provision. It is clear that Mr Garba seems to have issues understanding the
difference between licentious criminality and qualified rights under our law.
It is our duty to continually nudge him off his current state of cognitive
dissonance. His pronouncement betrays dubiety and mischief.
“Most traditional families in Nigeria have occupations.
Pastoralism is not an exception. Any ethnic group still trapped in anachronism
may be assisted to embrace modernity. Dispossessing communities of their
ancestral lands, encouraging denizens of the forests to overrun lands belonging
to other people, and forcing alien bands of migrants on the local populace to
live “side-by-side” with other communities cannot be for the purpose of animal
husbandry. It raises suspicion on a grand, deliberate, persistent, and
insidious design to use naked force to subjugate the real owners of the land.
Mr Garba Shehu is a major supporter of the current pervasive anarchy in the
land.”
The statement warned Shehu “and his cohorts” to desist from
hurling insults at the elected representatives of the people, saying he “lacks
the authority to make policy statements for the Federal Government, unless
directed, expressly. His acts are clearly those of an agent provocateur. Other
closet dreamers, aspirers to colonial fantasies, must be weaned off their
delusion. ”
He also declared that “no inch of the space delineated and
known, currently, as South West, and indeed the whole South, will be ceded to a
band of invaders masquerading as herdsmen under any guise.”
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