Buhari is speaking nonsense about Nigeria unity, says Odumakim

Spokesman for the Yoruba socio -cultural organisation, Mr Yinka Odumakin, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, described President Muhammadu Buhari as a sectional leader who northernised Power in the country.

He said it is nonsense to say that the country is “indissoluble” when the president is running a sectional government instead of a unity government that he preach.

He said, “You can see the way Buhari has northernised power in the country and now sits on the rest of us and begins to teach us about how Nigeria is indissoluble, indivisible and all that kind of nonsense.

That they could not even see anything wrong in holding that meeting the way they held it shows that we have a great problem as the people we call fellow countrymen are not on the same page with us at all.

“Look at the way the #EndSARS protest was carried out. It is not unusual that the protest was stronger in the South because southern youths were the victims of profiling by the (disbanded) SARS operatives.

“SARS was led by mostly northern officers who came into a different culture. SARS operatives were not doing any serious investigation; they would just profile you and say because you wore earrings or had a kind of hairstyle, you must be a fraudster because their own (northern) youths dress differently, which does not mean that they are better.

“But if they were people with an idea of how to build a modern society and who believe in inclusiveness, there was no way they would have held that kind of meeting at this period in time or call a meeting of governors, traditional rulers and bring all the northern mafias in the Federal Government, and take them to Kaduna.

In 1999, when Afenifere invited Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as a president for a meeting in Lagos, I was surprised that when Obasanjo came, the people that came with him were Fulani people. I saw it that he would not want to be accused of holding secret meetings with Afenifere.

“But we have a President who cannot see that it is wrong and it is an assault on our unity for top government officials to go and sit in Kaduna on a Monday morning for a sectional meeting. Even in their communiqué, they left a space for the Federal Executive Council to have nominees in their committees as if they are the ones to run the country and the rest of us would just fall in.

Odumakin also said that the North always think that Southerners are only important during election time to thumbprint ballot papers for them.

“It is all clear that they don’t care about the rest of us. They need the rest of us to go and put our thumbprints on ballot papers for them. But once they have power, they take this country as their own – ‘our power’. The rest of the people are just instruments to be used. They don’t see other Nigerians as equal partners. If they did, they would have more respect for us and not do such a thing.

“That is why it is important for us to get to the bottom of the Lekki killings to know those who are responsible and where they are from. You kill human beings and think you don’t owe us any explanation. They didn’t have a word of condolence for those who died; they were only abusing them.