Afenifere spokesman, Yinka Odumakin says Northern leaders are “concerned with the conquest of Nigeria and see southern leaders as their tools”.
He disclosed this while flaying last Monday’s meeting held by governors, prominent traditional rulers, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and members of President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet, all of Northern extraction, in Kaduna.
The Afenifere spokesman said that it surprised him that the northern leaders saw nothing wrong with such a sectional meeting at this difficult time in the nation’s history.
“The whole idea of the meeting is divisive, diversionary and an attempt to maintain that Nigerian protectorate.
“We are not fools. You can see the way Buhari has northernised power in the country and now sits on the rest of us and begins to teach us about how Nigeria is indissoluble, indivisible and all that kind of nonsense.
“That they could not even see anything wrong in holding that meeting the way they held it shows that we have a great problem as the people we call fellow countrymen are not on the same page with us at all,” he told Saturday Punch.
He noted, “But if they were people with an idea of how to build a modern society and who believe in inclusiveness, there was no way they would have held that kind of meeting at this period in time or call a meeting of governors, traditional rulers and bring all the northern mafias in the Federal Government, and take them to Kaduna.
“In 1999, when Afenifere invited Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as a president for a meeting in Lagos, I was surprised that when Obasanjo came, the people that came with him were Fulani people.
“I saw it that he would not want to be accused of holding secret meetings with Afenifere.
“But we have a President who cannot see that it is wrong and it is an assault on our unity for top government officials to go and sit in Kaduna on a Monday morning for a sectional meeting.”
Odumakin added that the communiqué issued at the end of the meeting was even more provocative than the meeting itself.
According to him, it was easy for the northern governors to describe the #EndSARS protests as the handiwork of subversive elements because northern youths were hardly victims of atrocities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
“It is not unusual that the protest was stronger in the South because southern youths were the victims of profiling by the (disbanded) SARS operatives.
“SARS was led by mostly northern officers who came into a different culture. SARS operatives were not doing any serious investigation; they would just profile you and say because you wore earrings or had a kind of hairstyle, you must be a fraudster because their own (northern) youths dress differently, which does not mean that they are better,” Odumakin stated.
“That is why it is important for us to get to the bottom of the Lekki killings to know those who are responsible and where they are from. You kill human beings and think you don’t owe us any explanation. They didn’t have a word of condolence for those who died; they were only abusing them.”
He added that the northern leaders were quick to restate their belief in one Nigeria because it suited their “conquest” agenda.
“Holding such kinds of meetings now means we are getting to the end of the road.
“We have made tremendous sacrifices to keep this country together. Those who are calling for an indivisible Nigeria now were the ones who were killing people in Kano when the motion for independence was moved.
“Today, because they are reaping all the benefits to the exclusion of others, they can sing songs of indivisibility and indissolubility of Nigeria.
“When they are talking about the indivisibility of Nigeria, what they mean is the conquest of Nigeria. That is what they are celebrating, not unity,” Odumakin stated.
He said that if Southern leaders decided to hold a similar meeting, some of them that behave like “slaves” would back out in deference to their “Fulani masters”.
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“A lot of the people we call governors here are their (northerners’) agents in our midst. They remain governors here and are exploited to be their agents, not to serve.
“Like you said, if we call for our own southern meeting, many of them (governors) will give excuses not to come because their masters are up there.
“That is what we are mindful of; we have said that we have got to a point where we are not ready to go for any other national election except we restructure this country.
“Hold a million elections under this system and you will have the same result, nothing will change,” Odumakin noted.
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