Afenifere is compelled to issue a timely warning
to the Nigerian political class and their military fronts on the dangers of
resorting to the military option as the final act in the orchestrated hysteria
being created in the polity as the law of unintended consequences does not
unfold until after the event.
We are issuing this warning as we can no longer
ignore the rumor that has been very thick in the air that some forces who want
to abort the proposed National Conference are scheming to exploit the
challenges of our democracy to cause an unconstitutional change in the polity.
All citizens of our country with a sense of
history would have been able to draw a parallel between General
Obasanjo's December2 letter to President Goodluck Jonathan and a document
circulated in January,1976 entitled "FACTS TO KNOW ABOUT MURTALA-A
WARNING TO THE NATION".
Gen. Murtala Muhammed was assassinated a
month afterwards. Interestingly, General Obasanjo was prominent among those
copied the document.
Also, in the days preceding the coup against the
Alhaji Shehu Shagari government in 1983,Gen.Obasanjo was very loud in
criticizing the government.Thirty years after that act of treason, Mr Max
Suollin in SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE has righty captured what was happening as
"coup baiting" with generous quotation of IBB's confessions that
those who staged the 1983 coup actually asked Obasanjo to come and lead the
government,a request he turned down while encouraging the putsch.
"Question: “It
was also said that those of you who ousted Shagari actually wanted to bring
back General Obasanjo as Head of State in 1984. Is this true?”
Babangida: “It is true. But to be very fair to
General Obasanjo, he rejected the offer. He said no. He said it would destroy
his integrity, that he handed over to Shagari and that it is not right for him
to get involved. But he (Obasanjo) said he was not stopping us from going ahead
with the plot”."(Soldiers Of Fortune,Max Siollun,Pg 14)
It was little wonder that while Gen Obasanjo
issued another in the series of his infamous letters against Babaginda Military
Junta in 1992,the "evil genius" quickly ran from Abuja to Otta and
followed up with reshuffles in the military high commands.The same IBB is the
first person Obasanjo copied his letter.
This is why we in Afenifere are not impressed
with the sinister letter from the ever manipulative and evil agenda setting
General who has never shown any pure motive since he started his interventions
in our national affairs.
It is therefore the height of foolhardiness and
or a lack of any sense of history for members of the political class to be
enabling these Generals who have not been known to act in the
collective interest in their infamous careers.
Have our politicians forgotten so soon what the
country went through for six years when Abacha was enabled to overthrow the
Shonekan Interim Government in 1993?
We do not argue that Nigeria does not have
serious challenges at the moment but we refuse to accept that the solutions to
our problems would come from any group of military adventures.It is a jaded
option that we have been offered over the years and it has always created more
problems than the ones it promises to solve.
On a more fundamental note,there is a delicate
balance in the country at the moment which has made the proposed National
Conference the most veritable platform to address the crises facing Nigeria and
for which the nationalities are rearing to go.
To attempt to stop that process by staging a
coup would amount to rushing Nigeria to a major catastrophe as any group of
military adventurers may discover there is no space for them to preside over.
It is therefore in the best interest of all that
all those who are possibly plotting to cause crisis in the country perish the
thought and allow the National Conference to proceed seamlessly so that the
people of Nigeria can proffer their own solutions to our challenges so we can
emerge a united and prosperous entity from the table of brotherhood.
This is our patriotic approach to nation
building which we commend to all reasonable Nigerians.
Yinka Odumakin.
National Publicity Secretary,
Afenifere .
A timely warning for all those equipped with the right memory chips. One of the greatest tragedies of Nigeria is that a charmed circle of few uninformed Nigerians assume the country belongs to them alone to the exclusion of better-informed and educated Nigerians. This is deepened by the fact that rather than having an army, the Nigerian state suffers from the burden of having the class of 1966 acting as though they own the state. They act as though the military own the tsate and not the other way round. Let it be sounded loud and clear that that arrogant class does not own the Nigerian state. We must not allow them turn back the hand of our collective clock.
ReplyDelete