Defend Your Region Against Killings Now, Akinrinade Urges Southwest Governors
A chieftain of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), General Alani Akinrinade on Monday charged governors in the Southern states of the country to wake up from their seeming slumber and defend the region against invasion and killings by Fulani herdsmen.
Akinrinade who spoke at the first year anniversary lecture of Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu of Ondo state faulted Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), for admitting registering under age voters in the North because of threat to lives of its staffs.
Akinrinade at the lecture titled :Re-thinking The Nigerian Nation :Issues and Challenges, urged the governors of the region not to allow re-occurrence of what happened to Chief Olu Falae .
According to the formal Minister of Agriculture,”the past two or so years in our country, appears to me like a tragic thriller movie in slow motion, full of abject cruelty of the highest order of barbarity, edged on by those we elected or selected to give us governance.
His words, “The clock has started ticking again to the periodic bloody ritual of elections without the electorate. Or, how do you rationalise the INEC admitting recently that they were registering hoards of toddlers for elections in the northern part of Nigeria on the pains of death.
” What then happened to our humongous financial outlay on Seven infantry Army Divisions, a mighty Air force and Navy that supposedly rule our portion of the seas, hundreds of thousands of policemen and numerous other gun totting formations, when mere threat of violence is all that is required to hold sway over law and order?
“Or are all these for Python dancing? Where are the men to refuse to do the wrong thing? Could INEC not have withdrawn their services and closed down all their facilities? Collaborators?
“Herdsmen have been on the rampage for several months now killing, maiming, raping burning, kidnapping, name it, all the hallmark of those who never exited the animal farm.
“It was recently ,when our President was called out as the patron of his kinsmen, the herdsmen, that letters of complaints and it’s denials between the federal executive, the police and governors in distress started circulating that he gave a feeble, unclear, half -hearted order to stop the carnage.
“Let us allow history to deliver its verdict after many more have died, but I am certainly tired and ashamed of being classified as a barbarian “.
In his lecture, Prof. Akin Oyebode noted that the yoking together of the various people inhabiting the country through what has been described as “the mistake of 1914” has continued to pose serious challenges to many of them who barely have very little in common with others.
Oyebode said the country ostensibly at war with itself in the quixotic and frenetic quest for nationhood.
According to the varsity don, the “feeding bottle “federalism has effectively stunted Nigeria’s growth and development as the country nudges more and more towards perdition.
Oyebode said, “there is need for a moral rearmament in order to advocate the benefits of one nation and one people not through hackneyed programmes such as the NYSC but innovative policies that would fire the imagination of our youth, de-emphasising state of origin, ethnicity, religious and cultural orientation in favour of a broad national ethos and love for and commitment to a united Nigeria.”
