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The leader of the Afenifere socio-political group, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, called President Muhammadu Buhari ignorant about his national program on Independence Day.
Buhari had on a nationwide broadcast to mark the Independence Day celebration said Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable.
Reacting in a conversation with PUNCH on Friday, Pa Adebanjo said Buhari was talking nonsense because he was a little boy when the country’s independence and unity was being negotiated in the 1950s.
According to the leader of Afenifere, aged 93, in 1953, when the North opposed the call for independence and instead advocated “Araba” (secession), Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe convinced the leaders of the North led by Ahmadu Bello, to negotiate the terms of their unity and ultimately their independence from British rule.
Adebanjo said: “He (Buhari) is talking nonsense. These are the kinds of things that cause problems.
“How can the president of a multinational, multilingual and multi-ethnic corporation say that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable? We negotiated the unity of Nigeria in 1954 before independence.
“The 1960 Constitution is the result of negotiations born out of the London Constitutional Conference.
“Of course I can’t blame him (Buhari). He was still in elementary school at the time, so he couldn’t understand. It should go back to the archives.
“Before the constitutional conference, the country was run as a unitary government and that is what caused the crisis.
“When we got to this conference, Chief Awolowo re-educated them that you cannot run the country as a unitary system. It was during this conference that Nnamdi Azikiwe converted to federalism and upon his return from this conference, Azikiwe, at the airport, declared that federalism was imperative. It was in the Daily Times from 1954.
Source: Naija News
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