The former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kingsley Moghalu, has condemned the re-arrest of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the attack on the residence of the Yoruba Nation agitator, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho.
The former Presidential Aspirant said this in a statement on Monday, noting that Nigeria can remain united on the basis of equity and justice, calling on the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to address the root cause of the duo’s agitation.
While tracing the root cause of the Nigerian problem to its constitution and incompetent political elites, Moghalu said Buhari’s administration has aggravated double standard in its dealing with national security and criminal justice.
He maintained that unifying Nigeria is possible, saying that “the most important challenge Nigeria faces today is a failure of leadership.”
He cited that the north, which has produced heads of government for 48 years since the country’s independence in 1960 had suffered poverty and is currently battling insecurity.
He added that the failure of the political elites in the southeast had a greater contribution to the polity.
He then called on stakeholders to work toward building Nigeria on the basis of mutual trust and respect, adding that it is the only way in which a “troubled union” can survive.
He said, “based on all the foregoing, without prejudice to the obligation of the Nigerian authorities to protect the Nigerian Constitution unless and until it is lawfully amended or replaced, and without prejudice to any issues regarding the manner in which Nnamdi Kanu was apprehended, I call on the Federal Government of Nigeria to understand the full sensitivity and long term implications of his re-arrest and impending trial and ensure that Kanu’s rights are fully respected in this process. I condemn the violent attack on Sunday Igboho’s residence by security (and possibly other) forces, the Government’s increasingly obvious tendency toward the totalitarian repression of dissenting voices in the Nigerian polity.
“I urge President Buhari and his Government to focus the same quantum of energy he has put into suppressing Kanu and Igboho into (a) addressing the root causes that have created the Nnamdi Kanus and Sunday Igbohos of Nigeria in order the create a truly enabling environment for the stability and unity of Nigeria, and (b) the existential crisis of terrorism in the Northern states of Nigeria that has claimed the innocent lives of thousands of compatriots in that part of our country. Silencing and criminalizing essentially political agitations against the injustices inherent in the Nigerian state cannot be made the only priority of national security, while real terrorism that daily claims huge numbers of Nigerian lives in the northern and other parts of the country is aided and abetted by state or state-approved actors.
“Finally, President Buhari needs to decide if he is the President of Nigeria and all Nigerians equally, the President of parts of Nigeria, or President of a Nigeria that exists in his worldview merely to serve vested and parochial interests. His approach to the security threat by killer herdsmen, mainly from outside Nigeria, remains a fundamental security threat to our country. As a leader, he must watch his language carefully, and moderate his instincts. I caution that, if he continues on his current path, sweeping real issues under the carpet because he commands the instruments of state-sanctioned violence today, he will be setting up a massive constitutional confrontation between the northern and southern parts of the country that will further destabilize Nigeria.
“Nigeria’s unity should be on the basis of mutual respect, give and take and mutual accommodation amongst all the country’s component nationalities. Our aspirational democracy cannot be turned into a dictatorship that in reality exists to serve vested or sectional interests. This is a most dishonest approach to nationhood and statecraft.”
