Emeka Anyaoku
Chief
Emeka Anyaoku, former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, has
expressed worry over the security situation in Nigeria and has sent a
message to President Muhammadu Buhari and members of the National
Assembly, complaining about the worsening security situation in the
country.
He
urged them o take urgent steps to arrest the drift before
Nigeria fails.
Speaking
at a book launch in honour of a former judicial icon, Justice Dadi
Onyeama, in Abuja on Tuesday, Anyaoku pointed out that the emerging
scenarios in the land were ominous signs that needed to be checked
without further delay.
According
to him, “Let me now come to my message to President Buhari and all
members of our National Assembly. The message is two-faced: Nigeria
is on the brink; and our foremost national challenge is the
management of our country’s diversity.
“Every
diverse federal country throughout the world achieves political
stability and socio-economic development through successfully
managing its national diversity. There are two common keys to this.
The first is having an inclusive central government which gives the
peoples of the component parts of the federation a sense of belonging
that in turn underpins the sense of unity and patriotism in all the
citizens.
“The
second is having adequate delegation of powers to the federating
units to enable them to handle their internal security and
significant aspects of their socio-economic development.
“However
today, Nigeria is on the brink. For no objective observer, including
those in the government, can deny that the current state of affairs
in our country is extremely worrisome.
“We
see an unprecedented diminution of national unity; we see an
unprecedented level of insecurity of life and property with
kidnappings and killings of human beings occurring virtually every
day in many parts of the country including the seemingly unchecked
violence by Fulani herdsmen which has spawned fractious controversies
over the proposed Ruga policy by the federal government.
“For
the sake of peace and integrity of the country, the Ruga policy must
be handled with circumspection and strictly in accordance with our
extant constitution’s provisions on the land tenure.
“And,
we see that all these unwholesome developments are accompanied by a
worsening level of poverty that is leading to Nigeria fast becoming
the poverty capital of the world.
“I
call on our president, the members of the National Assembly, the
governors, and indeed, on all our political elites not to continue to
live in denial of the seriousness of these glaring facts, if not
effectively addressed, are bound to push the country over the brink
of a national disaster.”
He
also said that Nigeria is already blessed with what is needed to
tackle the security challenges before they get out of hand.
“Fortunately,
to provide insightful governance which would facilitate effective
tackling of these challenges, Nigeria does not need to reinvent the
wheel. If only the people in government and all concerned would learn
from our history, thereby avoid validating the saying by the German
philosopher, Friedrich, Hegel that “the only thing we learn from
history is that we learn nothing from history”.
“Because
it is undeniable that Nigeria’s history has demonstrated that the
economy attained greater sense of national unity and faster progress
in socio-economic development during its period as a true federal of
more viable federating units with greater devolution of powers to
them. The period was in the immediate years after the country’s
independence under its 1960/63 constitutions.
“As
I have stated on many occasions, I believe that the current travails
of Nigeria will more effectively tackled if the country’s diversity
is managed with a structure of governance that draws not only from
the present lessons of successful diverse federations, but more
importantly, from Nigeria’s own past happier experience during its
immediate post-independence years.”
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