Professor Kingsley Moghaly, former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Deputy Governor has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to apply the same energy he used in suppressing Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Yoruba nation agitator, Sunday Igboho, in addressing the reason for their agitations.
The presidential candidate of Young Progressive Party (YPP) in the last general elections, in a press statement, urged President Buhari to focus the same energy put into suppressing Kanu and Igboho into addressing the root causes that have created the Nnamdi Kanus and Sunday Igbohos of Nigeria in order to create a truly enabling environment for the stability and unity of Nigeria.
He said, “The existential crisis of terrorism in the Northern Nigeria that has claimed innocent lives of thousands of compatriots in that part of our country, silencing and criminalizing essentially political agitations against the injustices inherent in Nigerian cannot be made the only priority of national security, while real terrorism that daily claims lives of Nigerians in the North and other parts of the country is aided and abetted by the state or state-approved actors.”
Moghalu stressed that President Buhari should decide if he is the President of all Nigerians or parts of Nigeria, or the President of 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.
“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,” he said.
Moghalu said, ‘Injustice against specific parts of the country by the government of President Buhari manifests in the evident double standards in the actions of the government in relation to national security and criminal justice.’
“The most important challenge Nigeria faces today is a failure of leadership. Contrary to popular opinion in some quarters, there is nothing impossible about unifying Nigeria on the basis of equity and justice (there can be no real “unity” and peace without justice) and creating prosperity for all 200 million Nigerians. Northern Nigeria, which has produced heads of government for 48 years out of Nigeria’s 61 years of independence, has suffered the most from poverty and, now, insecurity,” Moghalu said.
He added, “As regards the Southeast region, in particular, we must recognize the role that the leadership shortcomings of its political elite has also played in creating current conditions in the region vis-a- a-vis the rest of the country.”
“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 Kanu was apprehended.
“I call on the Federal Government 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 Igboho’s residence by security forces, the government’s increasingly obvious tendency toward the totalitarian repression of dissenting voices in the Nigerian polity,” Moghalu said.
