Monday, November 30, 2015
Akinjide urges President to dialogue with biafra...
akinjide urges President to dialogue with biafra
Akinjide Urges President To
Dialogue With Biafra
Protesters
1 hour ago
Chief Richard Akinjide has said that the
agitation for an independent Biafra state
championed by some Igbo people is wrong
and that the country needed to unite.
In an interview with vanguard, the former
minister of justice and attorney general in
the second republic talked about the
selection of ministers by President
Muhammadu Buhari and noted that the
minister of the federal capital, Muhammadu
Bello is from the north which has been the
trend since the capital was moved from
Lagos to Abuja.
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He said: "He (Buhari) nominated very good
people, I have no doubt about that. But my
concern is with Abuja, the Federal Capital
Territory. When we were in Lagos as Federal
Capital, Yar Adua was a Minister for Lagos
and he came from the North. When Obasanjo
was in office before the Capital Territory
was created, a Yoruba person was in charge.
But since the Capital Territory has been
created, Northerners have been ministers
throughout. I don't think that is the best for
the country.
I will like to see an Igbo, Yoruba, Middle-Belt
man be a minister in charge of the Capital
Territory. To consistently pick someone
from the North as Minister for the Capital
Territory is not in our national interest and
is not good. I am not saying the people that
have been picked are bad but I am talking
about geographical spread. We should not
give the impression that the capital territory
belongs to a particular part of the country.
It should be something that belongs to the
whole country. That is the objection I have
and I hope that will be corrected very
soon."
He added that there was no reason to
support the agitation for Biafra as Igbos
have served in great capacities in the
country and urged the president to dialogue
with them.
Anybody supporting Biafra must be very,
very wrong. I don't know their reason but
whatever their reason, they are wrong. We
fought a war for three years over Biafra and
Biafra was defeated and the whole country
united with the belief that Nigeria should
remain one country and the Igbo joined the
country and since then they have been
governors in the country, they have been
ministers both at the state and federal
levels. They have been ambassadors abroad.
I don't see why anybody should now be
asking for Biafra again, I think it should be
rejected.
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I think they should call them to a meeting
and talk to them as father to son and ask
them to stop because there is no reason for
them to do what they are doing. In the last
government, we had an Igbo as Minister of
Finance (Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala) and
also, we had an Igbo as Secretary to the
government, we also had Igbo as
ambassadors in many parts of the world. So,
there is no excuse for anybody to say he
wants to break up the country again after
we fought a bloody war of about three
years. We don't want to go back to that. We
want peace everywhere and we want a fair
share whether you are from the North, East,
West, South, Middle-Belt everything should
be evenly and fairly distributed.
You can read the rest of the interview here.
Meanwhile, the Ohaneze Youth Wing told the
federal government that it will give room
for dialogue only after the release of Nnamdi
Kanu, the director of Radio Biafra.
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