Afenifere a pan Yoruba Socio cultural group , on Monday, warned President Bola Tinubu, not to fail Nigerians like his predecessor in office, Muhammadu Buhari, over national assignment.
Just as it advised the President to go after terrorists operating in some parts of the country.
The socio-political group in a statement jointly signed by its Publicity Secretary and Assistant, Mogaji Gboyega Adejumo and Justice Faloye respectively, said the time to act over Nigeria’s situation is now, by demonstrating
sheer political will and courage to annihilate those behind killings and abduction of Nigerians, particularly innocent schoolchildren.
Afenifere said it would be disappointing and disastrous if Tinubu would also treat the activities of the terrorists with kid gloves.
It said that the government must begin to work on the list of terrorists already with the government to make the criminals account for their heinous acts.
The group equally charged the President to commence the restructuring of the country to operate the regional government under a parliamentary system.
The group also bemoaned the unbearable economic hardship Nigerians are currently experiencing under President Tinubu saying that the local currency, the naira has suffered the worst trajectory of devaluation of 35 per cent in just the first 9 months of his administration.
Speaking over the recent killings in Plateau as well as abduction of over 100 school children in Kaduna, Afenifere said the agents of destabilisation who have dealt a severe blow to the past administrations have just begun to test the willpower of President Tinubu and the earlier he let them know it was not going to be business as usual the better it will be for his government and Nigerians.
The group said “The recrudescence of this human tragedy is as clear to the Afẹ́nifẹ́re as the daylight is distinct from the eventide. Since this democracy took off, this pattern has remained constant, ever present; Create chaos, destabilize the government, embarrass the President, and finally, disgrace the President out of office.
“No president since 1999 has escaped this scourge, coming with the political Sharia against Obasanjo, the Niger Delta violent political Agitation of Obasanjo and Yar’Adua and cleverly solved by the duo.
“The Boko Haram religio-later-turned-political instrument to embarrass a sitting southern Christian president as it was with Jonathan, who was told to convert to Islam, followed by the kidnapping extraordinaire of the Chibok girls type, the final shuck that shocked Jonathan out of office.
This , coming once a regime and for repeated times from as far back as the Zango Kataf crisis, come with land grabbing, human displacement, and subjugation of a people over another, often planned, aided, lauded, and prompted by those self-styled as owners of Nigeria.
“President Buhari openly displayed and practiced the FIVE “P”s: He prevaricated to them; He pampered them; He protected them; He paid them; He played along with them.
“They were terrorists; Buhari curiously preferred to call them Bandits. Their acts as aggressors, killing farmers, destroying their produce, stealing indigenous peoples’ lands, clearly marked them as Terrorists.
“Buhari’s Government would rather term these acts as Farmers/Herders clashes. The most disturbing expository, elucidatory, explicative REALITIES about the whole saga is that these terrorists are known to government.
Kabiru Sokoto, the Christmas Day bomber in a church in Abuja, in 2012, was found hibernating in the guest house of the then former governor of Borno, now the Vice PRESIDENT of Nigeria.
“A former Director of the Presidential Campaign Council of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Hajia Naja’atu Mohammed, fired her former party alleging that the then vice presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, now the vice president, is a sponsor of terrorism. The former APC chieftain said this during a television interview on Arise Television.
“Sheikh Gumi openly goes into the dense forests to meet terrorists in the company of those trained to eradicate Terror, but rather than arrest them, the Sheikh openly gives the terrorists money… For a job well done or the future jobs yet to be done in the name of Terror, for it never takes long after the monies were openly paid that yet another Terror act is carried out.
never served as a determent. It was always to the country’s detriment.
“Former Governor Ortom of Benue suffered the most. After hundreds of Benue Indigenes were killed and their ancestral lands were taken away from them, the terrorists had the nerve to drop a note, a promissory note that they would yet be back on New Year’s day to “finish the job”.
“The then Governor did what a sensible governor would do, took the letter to Buhari the president, and after studying the said letter, told the governor to “go and make peace with his neighbors”, only a complicit does that.
“Mr. President, you have to be brutally reminded of this recrudescence in history, a disease constant, an Àbíkú, real, clear, and present.
The group spoke of how the leaders of the Southern and MiddleBelt Leaders Forum under the leadership of Chief Ayo Adebanjo had in an open letter after 2023 Christmas Eve massacre in Plateau when over 300 were killed, told the President that he could not afford to be “another Nero who fiddled while Rome burnt”.
The group explained further that
“On Christmas Eve in 2023, there was a massacre on the Plateau. Chief Ayo Adebanjo Leader of Afẹ́nifẹ́re, led other leaders that make up the four zones from the SouthWest, SouthEast, SouthSouth, and the MiddleBelt on a condolence visit to the Governor and the Gwom Gwom Jos and the entire people on the Plateau.
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