The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity,
Femi Adesina, has knocked the Northern Elders Forum for asking the President, Muhammadu
Buhari, to resign over his handling of insecurity challenges bedeviling the
country.
This is as he also alleged that the NEF position was borne
out of the members’ frustration after they allegedly failed to be part of
Buhari’s regime.
Adesina revealed this in an article titled, ‘Hiding under
the umbrella of insecurity’, and shared on his official Facebook page on
Thursday.
NEF had on Tuesday asked Buhari to resign for failing to
provide security in the country. The forum made the demand in a statement by
its spokesperson, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed.
It said it was disappointing that after nearly seven years
of being in office, Buhari still has no answers to security challenges across
the country.
The statement read in part, “The administration of President
Muhammadu Buhari does not appear to have answers to the challenges of security
to which we are exposed.
“We cannot continue to live and die under the dictates of
killers, kidnappers, rapists, and sundry criminal groups that have deprived us
of our rights to live in peace and security.
“Our constitution has provisions for leaders to voluntarily
step down if they are challenged by personal reasons or they prove incapable of
leading.”
But reacting to the NEF’s position in his article, Adesina
alleged that NEF was peopled with “self-seeking individuals” who had hoped will
get the better of the regime after Buhari’s electoral victory in 2015.
He wrote, “The point of interest today is the hackneyed
calls on President Buhari to resign over the country’s security challenges, the
latest coming from a so-called Northern Elders Forum (NEF), a group I’d once
described as “Generals without troops.”
“The Forum is largely made of angry, bitter, self-seeking
individuals, who had thought they would be leading President Buhari by the nose
when he emerged in 2015. In fact, key personalities in the group made strenuous
efforts to be part of the administration. When they didn’t succeed, they became
adversaries.
“It is on record that
NEF had always opposed the Buhari administration since its gambit failed, and
before the 2019 presidential election, it openly endorsed Atiku Abubakar of the
People’s Democratic Party as next President.
“And that completely vitiates whatever position the Forum
adopts today. It is partisan, bilious, by no means neutral. It is from a
self-serving standpoint.”
Furthermore, the presidential aide argued that there were
issues of insecurity globally and that the President was sparing no effort in
securing Nigeria and Nigerians.
“Between 2009 and 2022, there were at least 271 mass
shootings in United States of America, resulting in 1,518 people killed, and
980 wounded. Just this week, there has been the Brooklyn Subway Shooting, in
which at least 23 people were critically injured.
“vIn all these, did you hear calls for the resignation of
any American President? It is on record that last year was the deadliest in a
decade, in terms of mass shootings. Have you heard of calls for the resignation
of President Joe Biden by a caterwauling band? No.”
“Every life is important. No single life should be taken
wantonly. Not in America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and definitely not in Nigeria.
And when challenges occur, as we currently have, it should not be turned to a
leaky political umbrella, from under which you hide to express hatred and
malice.
“That is what is happening in Nigeria today. Individuals,
groups, organizations, political parties, who had been against President
Muhammadu Buhari, and who had been given bloody noses at the polls, are now
using the smokescreen of insecurity to vent their spleen.
“We failed to oust him through the ballot box, let’s run him
out of town by another means. Let’s instigate the country against him. But
majority of Nigerians know better.”
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