₦airaland Forum

“In the absence of a cat, the house becomes a playfield for rats”, so goes a Yoruba saying. Another like it notes that “The return of a cat from a long sojourn always restores sanity and ends the free run of rodents and their destructive activities in a house”.

President Muhammadu Buhari may not be a cat, but he has proved that his being symbolically likened to the wild specie and king of the jungle, the lion, by his wife, Aisha, is no fluke at all. While away on his prolonged medical vacation in London, Nigeria’s corporate existence floundered and tottered on the brink, as all manner of groups took the opportunity to intensify hate rhetoric, agitations and agenda believed to be inimical to the corporate existence of the nation. Although his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, who acted for Buhari in his absence, tried to douse the tension, his pacifist methods and dialogue with leaders of ethnic nationalities, as well as his own perception as a ‘dove’, coupled with power play believed to have hamstrung his decision making hardly went far in containing the state of anomie.

However, signaling hope in the improvement of her husband’s health and his mind on goings on in the country, which, Buhari himself hinted in his Monday broadcast to the nation he monitored closely, albeit with distressed mind, Mrs. Buhari had assured a despairing citizenry of normalcy being restored, with far-reaching measures, once the ‘lion king’ was back in the country in her parable of the ‘hyenas and the jackals’.

His condemnation and threat to deal with the threats to national security and stability, in his terse broadcast, which drew mixed reactions from the populace, followed by his recent order to security agencies to crush ‘trouble makers’, notably the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Boko Haram are simply in line with the character of President Buhari as a strong leader.

Although it is viewed in certain quarters as overkill, the President’s directive has been fully backed by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF). Chairman of the organization, Dr. Paul Unongo in an interview with Saturday Sun’s WILLY EYA, explained that if the Nnamdi Kanu-led IPOB was allowed to carry on with its activities as it had hitherto done, it would drag the nation back into civil war. This, according to the NEF chief, would be disastrous, when Nigerian leaders including Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu and Buhari, who were actors and also fought in the 1967-1970 armed conflict in which 3 million souls perished, regretted ‘Biafra’, had made up and agreed on national unity.

President Buhari has given the security chiefs marching orders to crush the Indigenous People of Biafra(IPOB), Boko Haram and other groups that pose a threat to national unity. What do you make of his directive?

I know Buhari very well. It was in my hometown, Gboko that Buhari and Ojukwu met for the first time after the war. I arranged for Buhari and Ojukwu to meet in Gboko. So I could feel Buhari’s pain. You feel pain when young men that were not even born when we went and suffered so much and inflicted so much suffering on our people are using such verbiage and such type of rhetoric. They cannot even talk in such a sophisticated and philosophical manner like Ojukwu. They cannot match Ojukwu in any way. Remember all the troubles that we went through to try and say look if we make ourselves to fight a war, we are going to come back to the same basic problems that we would sit down, talk about it and sort out. Ojukwu said let us go to Aburi and I would stand on Aburi and everybody said take Aburi; then something changed and he said give me confederation now or give me war. They were young people; both Ojukwu and Gowon were colonels. They told Ojukwu take federalism, let us dialogue and Ojukwu said no, let us fight and they now said, okay, if you fight, I would respond. And we saw these things for two years between 1967 through 1968. Then you have young persons who did not see what happened going around and matured people making the young boy feel that he is something special. They are using half the idioms that Ojukwu used. They speak half the English that Ojukwu spoke and they are delivering the message less than the way Ojukwu delivered it and people are saying let us go to war. So, I can understand Buhari, a man who was a commander in the warfront, fought against Ojukwu and three years they never talked nor greeted, and after the war, they refused to greet, until I arranged and brought them to Gboko; Ojukwu from Nnewi and Gen. Buhari from Daura and we met at St John’s Catholic Church, Gboko. I think it is annoying. What kind of country is this? What sort of human beings are we to now prove that man does not learn from history? Shall we, Nigerians, start all over again and not move forward. After 50 years, we come back to the same rhetoric to abuse people and heat up the polity with tribal feelings right to the pitch and we fight a war. Last time, we lost 3million people. If we go with Nnamdi Kanu now, how many millions are we ready to part with? Maybe 15 million and we wait for another 50 years and the cycle continues. I support the position of Professor Ben Nwabueze who is one of the constitutional lawyers in the world. The position is, please, let us come and sit down in a Sovereign National Conference; we are all very educated; even our children have become professors. Nigerians can sit down and talk over their differences very coolly. They can shout and abuse themselves if they want, but I do know one thing, the state of friendship, and love that was shown during the Nigerian civil war proves that Nigerians can reach agreement on every single thing, but the insensitivity of people who do not know the trauma of those who participated in the war are going through is the problem. They are talking as if there was never a Biafra. We fought a war for three years, very serious and devastating that you can’t imagine. People sought for food and anything. In fact, it got to a stage that people could have consumed human beings. The people out there who saw this horrific suffering, how are they allowing these young children to do what they are doing? We that are old have an obligation to tell the young people that we cannot go back to war. The issue of Biafra was sorted out on the battlefield and about 3million Nigerians died in the process. I understand when Buhari talked about it with a little bit of anger. I say it softly; I beg you my brother, Kanu. We do not want another Biafra. We settled the issue of staying together with 3million people. I am 100 per cent with Buhari on that.

With less than two years of his administration left, what do you think Buhari should do to douse tension in the country?

I think that Buhari, as a politician now, has spelt out the orientation of his government and his political party has an agenda. Three items of the agenda are central to his administration. These terrorists called Boko Haram were contesting the Nigerian territory; they seized a huge chunk of the Nigerian territory. Let me give you a graphic illustration of the territory for Boko Haram. You know Borno State, in relative comparison, is seven times more than the whole landmass of the South East and Boko Haram captured almost 90 percent of that. Boko Haram successfully captured 80 percent of the state and hoisted their flag on the territory. They captured land as big as the whole of South East. They were administering that land when Buhari took over power. They were threatening to capture Adamawa, which is two to three times the size of South East and they were encroaching into Gombe and also Bauchi. And Buhari said he was not going to tolerate anybody. He said he was going to chase them out and crush them. He made security his first priority. He also said he would fight a war against corruption and fix the economy too.

Militants set October 1 deadline to declare Niger Delta republic

• MASSOB condemns call for boycott of Anambra election

• FG plans to engage 50,000 youths for pipeline surveillance

Niger Delta militants under the aegis of the Niger Delta Volunteers (NDV) have stated that arrangements have reached an advance stage with other agitators to declare a Sovereign Republic of Niger Delta (SRND) on October 1, 2017.

Besides, the group has called on International Oil Companies (IOCs) to relocate to the region before the set date, failure, which would attract resumption of hostilities against oil and gas infrastructure in the region.

These threats were contained in a statement signed by the leader of the group, General Ekpo Ekpo, and made available to The Guardian in Uyo yesterday.He said the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and other pro-Biafra elements should steer clear of Akwa Ibom, adding: “We are not part of Biafra; we belong to Niger Delta.”


The self-acclaimed leader of the group, who frowned at the action of some Niger Delta leaders who recently met with Acting President Yemi Osinbajo under the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), said: “We totally condemn the recent meeting of PANDEF with the Acting President and wish to state clearly that the delegates from Akwa Ibom State to that meeting did so on their own because they did not consult with relevant groups and therefore cannot claim to speak for everybody in the region.”

In another development, leaders of the Movement for Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in Delta South and Central Senatorial District have said the call for a referendum by IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is a belated issue, saying that the Biafra referendum had since been conducted before the United Nations (UN) in 2004.

In a statement signed by MASSOB leaders, Joseph Odikpo and Pastor Francis Chigbo, the Elder In-Council and director of religious affairs, the body also described the call to boycott Anambra election in November this year as anti-Igbo, which should be condemned by well-meaning Igbo sons and daughters.


Meanwhile, the Federal Government says it has commenced efforts at gainfully engaging 50,000 youths from oil producing states for pipeline surveillance jobs in their communities.

Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Co-ordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Office, Brig.-Gen. Paul Boroh, who stated this yesterday during a media interaction in Abuja, said nine governments of the oil producing states had forwarded an aggregate of 10,000 names to his office for the take-off of the initial stage of the programme.He noted that the aim was to get the youths in those communities engaged to stem the tide of militancy, kidnapping and other vices in the region.

Boroh also used the occasion to present certificates to three beneficiaries of the amnesty programme who recently graduated with First Class degrees from the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radio Electronics.