The Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, has called on the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to revisit the 2014 national conference report and use the recommendations to move Nigeria forward.
PANDEF, which was reacting to a statement credited to former President Olusegun Obasanjo on the state of the nation, agreed that Nigeria was becoming a failed state and could crumble if nothing urgent was done to address the country’s challenges.
Obasanjo had during an event in Abuja said that Nigeria was slowly becoming a failed state that urgently needed to be pulled from the brink of collapse.
The former President also stated that he had never seen Nigeria so divided, adding that many of the problems currently plaguing the country were due to the recent mismanagement of Nigeria’s diversity.
According to The PUNCH, the forum’s spokesman, Ken Robinson, in an interview on Saturday, said the Buhari regime should take the former President’s analysis of the current situation in the country seriously.
Robinson said, ”The former President is one of our most respected elder statesmen in the country. As a former President, Head of State, he has been in the system; so, he understands what he is talking about.
”PANDEF has been saying long before now, that the country is divided more than ever before along the lines of ethnicity and religion, where the current leadership kind of promotes some sections of the country above other sections of the country, making it look as if some Nigerians are superior to others.
”The way forward is that all Nigerians across zones, religions and sections should sit down and discuss. We have done that in 2014; the documents has far reaching recommendations that were made by that assembly of Nigerians across the country, and this government has refused to implement or even look at those recommendations.
“We in PANDEF have also said that on the current move by the National Assembly to review the constitution, the starting point should be to go and study those recommendations (of 2014 National Conference) because the document contains therein everything that will help the country.
”So, in a situation where the government is reluctant, perhaps they want their own dialogue, Nigerians would not mind because we love this country; PANDEF would not mind if the government sincerely says we should sit and talk.”
The PANDEF spokesman, however, expressed the need for the Buhari regime to be more open, less nepotistic for Nigeria to move forward.
”Let the government of President Muhammadu Buhari be more open, be less nepotistic and then be the President of Nigeria and not a section of Nigeria,” he submitted.
