By Ayo Adebanjo (For the Records)
In the 93 years of God’s special Grace of my life, over 70 of which I have relentlessly spent in the struggle for a united, civilised, prosperous and federal Republic of Nigeria, and I have waited for some time in the departure lounge of life, and I owe it to posterity, to speak unalloyed truth to unconscionable powers, and to clarify the position of my people, the Yoruba of the Nigerian state, so that whenever I might be recalled home, it shall be said of me, that I not only did my bit, I indeed said my bit, and the position of the Yoruba people and Afenifere, were clearly and succinctly enunciated.
In spite of deepening disappointments, the Nigerian Press has stood as, perhaps, the last and only beacon of hope in that realisation. I have invited you here today, therefore, as partners in that shared vision so that, through you, President Muhammadu Buhari and other political actors, blinded by ambition, may see the need to fix Nigeria before the imminent eclipse of her horizon.
Nigeria is dying.
To be sure, the Nigerian state that was negotiated before independence in 1960, the one that was birthed and named on the 1st of October 1960, is long dead.
It was mortally wounded in January 1966, and was then slaughtered in July of 1966. Its funereal obsequies were held between 1966-1970.
The Frankenstein that was cobbled together in place of the dead nation that was agreed, has survived this long on the back of repression, lies, illusions, and outright delusions. But Buhari has finally killed it by his endless arrogance, the manifest incompetence, and the vile ethnoreligious agenda, with which he is dangerously strangle the insufferable Frankenstein.
The Nigeria that was agreed, is one that was deliberately FEDERAL in structure. The Nigeria that was AGREED, was by design, based on a parliamentary system of governance.
The Nigeria that was agreed, was one that recognized the rights of the federating regions, to nationhood within the ambit of the FEDERATION that was birthed
. The Nigeria that was agreed was not a perfect place, but neither is anything constructed by men, and the proof of its imperfections are embedded in the tragedies of the civil war that buried it.
I am constrained by the limitations of time to adumbrate, and I shall fast forward to the emergence of Abdusalami and the transition to civilian rule in 1999.
It was the position of Afenifere and NADECO, that there existed an urgent need to convene a Sovereign National Conference of the ethnic nationalities that have become known as Nigerians
Afenifere’s position has not evolved.
We remain convinced that the need for a sovereign national conference is imperative.
THE BASIS OF THE NIGERIAN STATE MUST BE CLEARLY NEGOTIATED.
We have heard and read countless ripostes to our considered position, many have pointed to Decree 24 of 1999, the same fraudulent document that is infamously known as the 1999 Constitution, and asserted that there is no need for an SNC, as the country already has a constitution. We disagree most vehemently, and INSIST, that Nigeria is not possessed of any expression of the WILL of the peoples, whose will it presumes to fraudulently appropriate.
It is instructive to note, that when the Midwestern Region was to be created out of the Western Region, a rigorous process was embarked upon.
The motion for its creation went through the Western Regional Assembly, and the Federal House of Representatives in Lagos, and the peoples of the proposed region voted for its creation in a plebiscite.
This only after the fact of its economic viability had been scientifically established.
This rigorous process birthed the additional region that was created in 1962, and duly established under the 1963 Republican constitution.
Nigeria is today a Frankenstein with 36 states.
How many of these states are viable entities that would have passed the 1962-1963 means testing of the Midwestern Region?
By whose will were they created? Whose interests are they serving?
The Nigeria that has been set up for failure by these evil restructuring is visibly bleeding to death and is in its death throes on Buhari’s watch.
The entire country is burning.
The Northeast was already aflame before the coming of Buhari, its peoples rendered as pawns in the power games of the northern elite, who allowed Boko haram to fester as the evil powers of the federal government was lost to them, and the insurgents were seen as ethnic champions, indeed, Buhari protested about the onslaught on Boko haram, and for those who might have paid attention, Gumi’s interventions are merely aping what Buhari used to say, before he gained office in 2015.
But what used to be confined to the northeast, has today become a pan Nigerian problem.
The terrorists have crossed into the northwest and as they have ravaged the entire region including the president’s home state, kidnapping hundreds of schoolchildren and their teachers, raping and pillaging the land, the Buhari regime has treated them with kids gloves, and have blithely labeled them as bandits, businessmen, vandals, and even recently as Area Boys.
Train track bombers, who were clearly intent on the derailment of a passenger train, are labeled as vandals in a clear advertisement of the complicity of the Buhari regime in the terrorist led insurgency, ravaging Nigeria.
In the Middle belt, what were once episodic outbursts of Fulani herdsmen and farmers conflicts, a conflict as old as man, has acquired a most evil dimension.
The Buhari that stormed the Government House in Ibadan during the administration of Late Alhaji Lam Adesina, is the one established inside Aso Rock, and the extreme nepotism of the man, his unbridled Islamist irredentism, are not only intact, they are unfettered by any pretense at presidential leadership.
“Be your brother’s keepers” was Buhari’s response to the slaughter in the Benue debacle, and “give up your land in order to live” was the spokesman’s recommendation to the victims.
In the southeast, in the lands of the Igbo people, Gen. Buhari has been most indecorous with his words, but his actions are even worse than his words, and he has effectively lost control of the East.
The Anambra elections are instructive on several fronts, and I shall return to the subject soon enough, but the facts of the restiveness of the East, is not a fact that might be said to be either in issue, or in dispute, and yes, this is without having factored in the existence of pockets of Fulani terrorists, in parts of Igboland.
The South-South has been up in arms for a while, and the Niger Delta is essentially a war zone.
These are the realities of the Niger Delta, where the wealth being evilly dissipated around the length of Nigeria originates, but where all of the Nigerian deprivations are curated.
The environment is even more violent, rendered so by decades of criminal exploitation of its land and peoples by the Nigerian state, and just as volatile as the hydrocarbons that are being taken from its bowels.
The Niger Delta is a volcano waiting to erupt, and the PIA is poised to ignite it.
The southwest, home to the Yoruba people and all men and women of goodwill, whom we have always welcomed, and who have made our lands their homes, have never had it so bad
. Our hospitality has been violently abused, our generosity of spirit, taken for granted, and the security of lives and properties wickedly undermined.
Bands of Fulani terrorists are in our forests and farms, they rape, rob, kidnap, and TERRORIZE the people.
They bear arms brazenly and they act above the law, and when our people respond in self protection, they are victimized by the Nigerian police and the army, which have acted to establish presidential complicity.
I have pondered Chief Awolowo’s words in his 1981 public letter to Alhaji Shagari, and I have found a part to be metaphysically intriguing, even though it has only served to deepen my alarm, such that I believe that I owe it to posterity to place my fears on the record; “the ship of state is fast approaching a huge rock and, unless you, as the chief helmsman, quickly rise to the occasion and courageously steer the ship away from its present course, it shall hit the rock, and the inescapable consequence will be an unspeakable disaster such as is rare in the annals of man”.
Buhari was to be that disastrous rock a few months after the warning.
The problem with the rock this time, is that the rock is the helmsman of the ship, and he would appear to be DELIBERATELY AND INTENTIONALLY steering the ship to its END.
The Nigeria cobbled together by Decree 24, of 1999, yes, you get it.
FRAUDULENTLY known as 1999 Constitution, is built on several lies, and the preservation of these lies, are predicated on several more lies. Buhari, is unilaterally imposing another lie, on top of the original lies, and these lies, are what have assured the death of Nigeria.
The Fulani Islamist agenda of the Buhari regime has found accommodation for each and every one of the public rebuttals of the lies of Nigeria.
Confronted with repeated questions about the identity of the sponsors of terrorism, that were discovered by the intelligence services of one of the Gulf Arab countries, and the fact of the convictions of several Nigerian citizens by that country, the Buhari regime, was unequivocal in showing where its preferences and loyalties are;
“Naming and shaming of suspects is not embarked upon as a policy by the federal Government out of sheer respect for the constitutional rights of Nigerians relating to presumption of innocence.” Abubakar Malami SAN, AGF.
But it is curious to note, that the same government, is quick to rush to the media, to declare the identities of those that it has declared to be the sponsors of Sunday Igboho, and Nnamdi Kanu., and the greatest victories of the Buhari regime, in its incestuous relationship with corruption, has been won in the media.
The speed with which it labels voices of dissent as terrorists, whilst ignoring and outrightly colluding with self declared terrorists, renders the Buharist regime a proven accomplice to the terrorist network that is destroying the country.
Commodore Olawunmi is on record as saying that the security services had submitted a report to General Buhari since 2017, and that a list of the names of the major sponsors of terrorism in Nigeria is one of the several pieces of information in that file.
He went further to affirm, that several of these positively identified terrorists and terrorist sponsors, are today sitting in the Buharist government at the highest level, and many more are serving senators and governors.
The fact of Buhari’s terrorists sympathies are too glaring to require any proof beyond the demand that a man should believe the evidence of his own senses.
The Wall Street Journal in an exclusive piece, REVEALED THAT THE NIGERIAN MILITARY HAS been dealing with terrorists, and in the particular instance, BOUGHT BACK from the terrorists, an ANTI AIRCRAFT GUN, that the terrorists had captured from a unit of the army, because the presence of the piece in the hands of the terrorists, was a direct risk to Buhari himself, who was apparently scheduled for an appointment in his hometown.
If they knew the location of the terrorists to exchange guns for cash, they most definitely could have bombed the terrorists, instead of paying them off, but how do you bomb “businessmen” “bandits” “vandals”?
The terrorists are called several names but are rarely called what they are.
Welcome to the land of REPENTANT BANDITS AND VANDALS.
THE COUNTRY WITH THE MOST SUCCESSFUL DERADICALIZATION in the world.
I shall not waste any more time to establish the facts of Buhari’s ethnoreligious bigotry, he has saved everyone the task of doing that, he happily wears his ethnic and religious supremacist uniforms, and has never pretended to be anything else, but the time has come to state to the whole world as follows.
We shall be seeking to persuade our people to avoid being lured into a legitimization of Buhari’s ethnoreligious agenda by engaging with the patently fraudulent lies of any elections in 2023, in the absence of a restoration of peace, and a substantial restructuring of a NEGOTIATED Nigeria.
WE ARE NOT ANARCHISTS, WE ARE NOT SESSIONISTS, we are DEMOCRATS
. We recognize that there is a democratically elected president in Aso Rock.
We are not asking for Buhari’s resignation, and since the National Assembly has not seen fit to impeach him, he remains the president of Nigeria until the 27th of May, 2023.
But it is the considered position of Afenifere that he urgently constitutes a Government Of National Unity, charged with the sole task of seeing to the restructuring of Nigeria, in consultation with the Nigerian peoples.
The Buhari regime has no plans for any elections in 2023, and this statement is not a difficult proposition to establish, once the parties to the debate, are fully seized, of their faculties.
Anambra should be useful in ESTABLISHING this obvious fact.
AS BAD AS THE SECURITY SITUATION IN ANAMBRA MIGHT BE, it is nowhere near as bad as the situation in the NORTHWEST, NORTHEAST, or the MIDDLE-BELT, and the rest of Nigeria is hardly at peace.
By official accounts, outside of the ones that might be deployed to carry their Oga’s briefcases or to hold umbrellas, the Nigerian Police deployed 34K officers to Anambra for the November 6 elections.
I am not sure if these are in addition to the ones that were already under the state police command, or if these 34K is the totality of the men.
But it is important to note that these 34K represents approximately 10% of the entire capacity of the Nigerian police, if we are to accept the official numbers without considering the inherent lies that have been told to accommodate the ghosts.
It is interesting to note, that for every three persons that voted in the Anambra mockery of democracy, there was a policeman, Civil Defence, or military personnel. THE ELECTION HELD, ONLY BECAUSE IT PLEASED IPOB TO CALL A TRUCE.
In the face of the facts and realities, the Buhari regime has labeled self determination groups as terrorists, gone to extraordinary lengths to abduct MNK, invaded the home of Sunday Igboho and murdered two innocent men in cold blood, chased the same Igboho into Benin Republic, but rolls out the red carpets for terrorists.
The same Buhari regime had labeled the just and peaceful demands of Omoyele Sowore’s RevolutionNow Movement as terrorist, and judicially curtailed his freedom.
It is easy to see through the multiple lies of General Buhari if one is minded to look, but the question is, IS ANYONE LOOKING AT US AGAIN?
The world would appear to be tired of Nigeria, and the preoccupation of the world is fixed on a containment of the nuisance that we have become, because if the world has any care left for us, how has it found the grace of condonement, acquiescence, and obvious complicity?
How has the cause of liberty been promoted in Nigeria by the British and the Americans? With ALL of their eyes in the Nigerian skies, what did they see on the 20th of October at Lekki.
The Western world has found accommodation for evil in Nigeria. But if Harold Smith is to be believed, the ruination of Nigeria by the British is not an accident, it is by design.
Let it be heard loud and clear; Afenifere shall be leading the Yoruba nation to demand substantial restructuring, before any FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS might be held in 2023, and the response of the Buharist regime to these equitable demands for restructuring the country along federalist lines, in order to restore it to its roots and original agreements, shall go a long way in shaping the position of the Yoruba people in the future, but let it be heard loud and clear;
NIGERIA IS NOT ONLY NEGOTIABLE, IT IS EVIDENTLY DYING
Gen. Yakubu Gowon (rtd) to keep Nigeria one, is it for the Fulani to dominate other ethnic nationalities?
Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd), Nigeria unity is non-negotiable, for the Yorubas to be under Fulani domination?
Your Eminence Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, Sultan of Sokoto, Gen. Abdusulami Abubakar (rtd), Bishop Kukah, can we have peace without equity and justice?
*Full Text of a Press Conference addressed by:
CHIEF AYO ADEBANJO
Leader of Afenifere, in
Lagos, on November 11, 2021
