6th July, 2021.
Your Excellency,
Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu SAN,
The Chairman,
Southern Governors’ Forum,
SGF Secretariat, Lagos.
Your Excellency,
ANSWERING THE NATIONAL QUESTIONS
There is no better time to have these sets of Governors, across the Southern States than now. You have indeed demonstrated leadership at both meetings in Asaba, Delta State and Ikeja, Lagos State on 11th May 2021 and 5th July 2021 respectively. Before now, Your Excellency, Nigerians from the southern extraction seems helpless, hopeless, miserable, frustrated and agonized; believing that the Governors of the South have conspired with the killer impostors because of the quest for political relevance.
To some of us, the Asaba declaration was a political gymnastic not until your seriousness was confirmed in text and context at the Ikeja affirmation.
Your Excellency, may I specially commend you and other Excellencies, Governors of the 17 federating States in Southern Nigeria for rising up to the Nigerian questions that beckon for answers.
We used to have challenges of corruption and Boko haram insurgency, but now, the Nigerian State has advanced from a smaller problem to bigger challenges of economic crisis and security catastrophe that are undoubtedly characterized by trans-ethnic banditry, organized crimes, nomadic killings and sectional injustice.
Your Excellency would agree that the Government has failed on her focal mandate of providing “Security and Welfare” to her citizens according to the grand law.
Mr. Governor, the commitment to the unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable. However, the negotiation for her peaceful co-existence based on justice, fairness, equity and oneness is/should/and must be negotiated now, beyond the meetings and press parleys.
I am pleased that you have finally joined us to agree that the Nation is divided sharply between the North and South. Hence, the fate of the South in the lasting co-existence of Nigeria must be discussed for political and socio-economic parity as co-actors in the Nigerian project.
No doubt, I am certain that the unity between our governors shall affirm the end to the spate of banditry and kidnappings and establish the beginning of food security in Southern Nigeria.
Your Excellency, may I revise that rather than waiting ad infinitum for the Federal Government, that has apparently lost touch with quality and productive ideas concerning how best to check the cattle-herder crisis, it would be advisable that the Governors of the South develop alternative and modern livestock management framework. It is evident that we can only wait till eternity thinking the Buhari-led Federal Government would lead from the front.
We have had enough of National dialogues and a call for another by Your Excellences is either a time-wasting strategy or a deliberate attempt to postpone the evil days. Can we just implement the 2014 Confab report, once and for all?
As a security scholar, I strongly propose that the Southern regions should increase the personnel/officers of her State-sponsored security outfits and also provide needed logistics and pieces of training in partnership with the Nigeria Army, Police and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
This is a better way to reduce unemployment while strengthening security architecture within. The State Police is a Must. Requesting for approval before enforcing any arrest in the southern region is a mere murmur. The arrest of Sunday Igboho is condemnable and a desecration of the Constitution. The Governors are expected to speak beyond whispers. This should stop!
Your Excellency, how best would you speak to your Governor-colleagues from the Northern extraction? The spate of banditry and kidnapping v the support enjoyed by these bandits from the communes does add up to a reasonable human being.
For how long would the Northern oligarchs pamper the hungry alligators with their babies? The silence of the Northern Governors is not golden; it is conspiratorial!
It is no gainsaying that leadership is the major problem in Nigeria and the process must be well sanitized, transparent and credible. The ruling party could be a beneficiary of the ‘federal might’ today but what if a more power-conscious party emerges in the immediate future? Why do we not learn from history? Why do we prefer to modify public office holders rather than build strong electoral institutions? History would not be fair to Your Excellences if you do not mobilize your Senators and Federal Representatives to return the expunged electronic transmission of results.
There is no rest, Your Excellency, till peace is restored in our lands. If these bandits could not reach you directly, how about indirectly?
Be assured of my very best regards,
Oludotun ADETUNBERU, PhD, A Security Consultant from Ekiti State.
