The pan Yoruba social-political organisation, Afenifere has berated the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, over his stance that the President cannot be forced by Nigerians to succumb to restructuring. According to Afenifere, Garba Shehu’s incoherent and illogical vituperations on the issues of restructuring and secession could be described as someone living in the denial of the debilitating state of the Nigerian State.
The Presidential spokesperson had on Tuesday, while foreclosing the possibility of a national conference of the federating states in the country had stated that President Buhari cannot be bullied to con-vene a gathering of ethnic groups in the country. Afenifere in a statement issued by its General Secretary, Chief Sola Ebiseni, said Garba’s comment showed how insensitive the President could be in the face of undeniable national calamity. Ebeseni said instead of Garba to use the occasion of the “recent image laundering programme of the self professed APC professionals at the National Secretariat Ruling party”, for a sober reflection of the state of the nation and for a realistic solution to pull the nation from the brink, he further soiled the image of his principal.
The statement partly read: “The President, he said, would not be pressurised to accede to the clamour of Nigerians for restructuring because the current vexed constitution had provided mechanism for amendment, through the National Assembly, which anyone desirous of change should approach. “To him, those Nigerians calling for restructuring were unelectable.
Yet, he was full of praises for organisations like Afenifere, Ohaneze Ndigbo, Governors of the South- West, who are all proponents of restructuring, for not embracing secessionist agitations. “It was convenient for him to deliberately ignore the fact that the Southern Leaders and Middle Belt Forum and most recently the Arewa Consultative Forum and the Northern Elders Forum, have all reached a national consensus on the imperative and inevitability of restructuring.