A former presidential aspirant and legal practitioner, Chief Reuben Famuyibo, has cautioned northern leaders against plunging Nigeria into chaos by making statements capable of inciting Nigerians against the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
Famuyibo, speaking with The Nation on Monday, February 19, emphasized the potential for such statements to precipitate nationwide turmoil that would affect everyone.
He criticised the ongoing attacks on the Tinubu administration, highlighting the inconsistency of political, traditional, and religious leaders who remained silent during the tumultuous eight-year tenure of former President Muhammadu Buhari but now seem vocal in what he perceives as playing identity politics with governance.
The Ekiti-born politician stated that he had engaged in extensive consultations with Yoruba leaders both domestically and internationally, revealing their growing discomfort with the implicit threats, subversive rhetoric, unfair criticisms, and insinuations directed at President Tinubu, based solely on the notion that Nigerian leaders warrant reproach only when they hail from a specific region of the country.
Famuyibo said: “My consultations across the length and breadth of the Southwest and with leaders in the Diaspora shows that while many of our leaders see nothing wrong in President Bola Tinubu receiving criticism over the pains Nigerians are going through following the policy reforms embarked upon by his administration, they are, however, surprised that certain elements in the North have been hiding under the issue of the policy reforms to openly make politically charged, ethnically insensitive, and provocative statements aimed at inciting the Nigerian public against the Tinubu administration and plunging Nigeria into civil strife.
“These leaders ascribe ethnic and religious sentiments to even the purely administrative actions of the Tinubu administration, including the relocation of key departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to their natural habitat in Lagos.
“We learnt authoritatively that even Julius Berger, the construction company behind the CBN Abuja office, said that the overpopulation of the Abuja CBN office with 11,000 plus workers when it was designed for 4,000 workers could cause the structure to experience strain, yet these so-called northern leaders act like nothing was amiss.
“We want to remind those threatening fire and brimstone against President Tinubu over the problems created by the Muhammadu Buhari administration, which ran the economy aground and made Nigeria the poverty capital of the world, that neither Nigeria nor Abuja is the exclusive preserve of anyone but all Nigerians.
“They must stop the politics of provocation and incitement influenced by a born-to-rule mentality and years of patient endurance by other sections of the country.
“The self-serving, perfidious, insidious, provocative, and inciting utterances must be denounced by all right-thinking Nigerians.”
