Human Rights activist, Chief Mike Ozekhome SAN has decried the President Muhammadu Buhari’s Independence day speech, describing it as 'unpresidential and unreconciliatory' broadcast focused on trivial matters instead of the real issues.
Ozakome noted that the speech clearly betrayed Buhari’s disdain and fixated hatred for the Igbo by lambasting the entire South-east leaders for allowing the agitation of their people who feel seriously marginalised and oppressed.
He wondered how Buhari could see nothing wrong in the murderous and rampaging activities of herdsmen across the country as well as the illegal ultimatum by Arewa youths for South-easterners to vacate Northern Nigeria without any repercussion against them.
The Constitutional Lawyer bared his mind on the presidential broadcast in a statement issued on Sunday night, personally signed by him with the title: ‘President Muhammadu Buhari’s National Day Broadcast: Yet Another Golden Opportunity Lost’.
According to the statement, “The entire national day broadcast by PMB on the occasion of Nigeria’s 57th independence is quite disappointing in all ramifications.
“It was very un-presidential and un-reconciliatory. PMB left the real issues and pursued trifles.
“The speech was bereft of nobility of statesmanship, and devoid of a calm grasp and appraisals of the dire straits Nigeria is currently in.
“The broadcast was rabidly narcissist, parochial, nepotic and clannish, as it failed to see anything wrong with the blatant and well reported threats by the Arewa youths to quit fellow Nigerians from their domains.
“The speech followed his now well worn out fixation of perceived hatred for the Igbo race, whose leadership he needlessly scurilized and lampooned, for allegedly being behind IPOB and other agitations.
“I doubt and didn’t hear him mention anything about gun wielding herdsmen that literally vanquish citizens in their own homesteads across Nigeria.
“The President celebrated mediocrity and edified his government’s non-performance two and half years down the line”.
Ozekhome continued, “I genuinely wondered if he was discussing the same country, Nigeria, that I am in, or another utopian planet Mars
“The beautiful picture of a peaceful country he painted so glowingly and artistically with the paintbrush of breathless satisfaction is quite different from the stark reality on the ground, which every beleaguered Nigerian labours under.
“His speech writers either wallowed in utopian mystic of redemptive messianism, or in crass fraud and grand deception.
“But, Nigerians are no fools. Did I hear PMB say this is the first time a government at the Centre is losing the governorship, senatorial and Houses of Assembly’s elections to the opposite at the state level?
“No sir, wrong. Whoever gave Mr. President this false electoral history has done him incalculable disservice and great damage and ridicule’.
“Few examples: Remember Ondo state (Labour Party), Osun and Edo states (AC), Anambra (APGA), etc?
“Not only did the ruling PDP party lose the elections to those opposition parties, the then President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan actually rolled out the drums and congratulated the new governors, Senators and House members.
No comments:
Post a Comment