MY ENCOUNTER WITH ALHAJI LAI MOHAMMED: BY SIR DON UBANI; KSC, JP, OKWUBUNKA OF ASA
1ST MARCH, 2017
The 5000 capacity International Conference Centre at Ogurube Layout in Umuahia was filled to capacity. No seat was vacant. Yet many invitees could not help but stand.
This reminds me of one of my 'motions' in the Abia State Executive Council in 2014 when the International Conference Centre was being rounded off. I had moved that, taking into consideration the global publicity the city of Umuahia had received through the various writings and publications of Chinua Achebe that the Conference Centre be named 'Chinua Achebe Conference Centre'. Unfortunately, no body supported me. This is just by the way.
As for date, it was Monday 27th February, 2017. The purpose of convergence was a Town-Hall Meeting that would also witness the launch of 'Change Begins With Me' at the instance of the Honourable Minister of Information & Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
Lai Mohammed did not come unaccompanied. With him were the Ministers of Trade & Investment; Dr Okechukwu Enelama, Labour & Productivity; Dr Chris Ngige, Agriculture; Dr Audu Ogbe and their counterpart in the Ministry of Mines & Solid Minerals.
Apart from display of videos that portrayed 'war against corruption' which were shown on a power-point, each of the Ministers spoke on how the moribund national economy could be ameloriated through patriotism, dedication and transparency. Their speeches were not in any way different from regular rhetorics Nigerians in such heights speak each time people gather.
As a concerned citizen and in my capacity as the Executive Director of Centre For Equity And Eradication Of Rural Poverty, I had wanted to take advantage of the interactive nature of the meeting to ask four questions that have been agitating my mind. I was, however, restricted by contraction of time. The Moderator limited questions by an individual to one and not more than two.
The questions I had lined up in my mind for the Hon Minister of Information and Culture to answer were; (1) Why has the Federal Government of President Buhari been nonchalant each time illegally but sophisticatedly equipped Fulani herdsmen not only attack but butcher Christian farmers in Nigeria, especially in Southern Kaduna, even in the midst of much publisized fifty-five thousand police men sent to check the killings in that zone? (2) When you (Alhaji Lai Mohammed) were the National Publicity Secretary of Action Congress of Nigeria during which period late President Musa Yar'adua was sick, you consistently demanded that Nigerians should be informed of his state of health on a daily basis but today that President Buhari is sick, why would you not want Nigerians not even to know the State of health of their President but to ask what is wrong with their President? (3) Why has the APC Federal Government of President Buhari militarized our democracy? To expatiate on this question, I had intended to remind the Hon Minister of what happened in governorship elections under Buhari in Edo, Ondo, Rivers Legislative Rerun Elections and the latest Federal and State Constituencies' rerun elections in Eche/Omuma In Rivers State. (4) Why is the Buhari/APC Federal Government opposed to restructuring of the Nigerian Federation, a federation of more than two hundred and fifty ethnic nationalities that were coerced into one only by brutal force of arms but which had started making remarkable advancements based on the 1963 Republican Constitution, which emphasized fiscal federalism, a development that became truncated by Hausa/Fulani domination of the Military in governance for twenty-nine years?
Out of the four questions I had had in mind, I was only able to ask the first two. As it is usual with him, Lai, mind you I did not say Liar, fidgeted up and down only to end up saying that President Buhari is 'hale and hearty and that he has just spoken with him'. What a 'beautiful way of thinking he could deceive Nigerians'
As for my question on Fulani herdsmen, he asked Dr Audu Ogbe to answer it. I sympathized with the Honourable Minister of Agriculture who knows the truth but could not say it as it is because saying the truth would bring him into a head-on collision with the Fulanis.
Okwubunka of Asa.