A former Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinde (retd), on Monday lamented that the past two years of President Muhammadu Buhari government has been characterized by cruelty and complete bad governance.
General Akinrinade spoke in Akure, Ondo state at the lecture organised to mark the first-year anniversary of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s administration.
Like Nobel Laurette, Professor Wole Soyinka who last week said the President is governing Nigeria as if he is in a ‘trance’, Akinrinade said the Buhari led All Progressives Congress (APC) government has approached the job of administering Nigeria “like a tragic thriller movie in slow motion”.
Sahara Reporters correspondent reports that the lecture with title: Rethinking the Nigeria Nationhood, Issues & Challenges was delivered by Prof. Akin Oyebode, a Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law.
General Akinrinade said the Buhari administration must admit its failures before starting a new journey into the 2019 general elections and seeking the vote of the electorates.
“The past two or so years in our country appears to me like a tragic thriller movie in a slow motion, full of abject cruelty of the highest order of barbarity, edged on by those we elected or selected to give us governance.
“The clock has started ticking again to the periodic bloody ritual elections without the electorate.
“Or, how do you rationalize the INEC admitting recently that they were registering hordes of toddlers for elections in the northern part of Nigeria on the pains of death?
“What then happened to our humongous financial outlay on seven Infantry Army Divisions, a mighty Air Force and a Navy that supposedly rule our portion of the seas, hundreds of thousands of policemen and numerous other gun totting formations, when mere threat of violence is all that is required to hold sway over law and order?
“Or are all these for Python dancing? Where are the men to refuse to do the wrong things?
“Could INEC not have withdrawn their services and closed down all their facilities? Collaborators? he questioned.
The elder statesman also lamented the dastardly activities of the Fulani herdsmen in the southern regions of the country.
The retired General also accused Buhari of treating complaints about the rampaging herders with kid gloves.
He therefore called on the governors from the southern parts of the country to wake up to the challenge of the violent Fulani herdsmen.
According to him, political leaders in the country must join hands to curb incessant attack on farmers by the herders to avoid throwing Nigeria into anarchy.
“Herdsmen have been on the rampage for several months now-killing, maiming, raping, burning, kidnapping, name it: all the hallmark of those who never exited the animal farm.
“It was recently, when our president was called out as the patron of his kinsmen, the herdsmen, that letters of complaints and its denials between the federal executive, the police and governors in distress started circulating that he gave a feeble, unclear, halfhearted order to stop the carnage.
“Let us allow history to deliver its verdict after many more have died, but I am certainly tired and ashamed of being classified as a barbarian.
“May I appeal to the governors in the southern states to stand up strongly together before more Chief Olu Falaes happen and we descend further into anarchy”, General Akinrinade said.
He noted that the 2014 National Confab had addressed many issues confronting the country, but wondered why the Buhari administration has neglected the report.
In his lecture, Professor Oyebode noted that the country was still struggling with underdevelopment in some key sectors of the nation’s economy.
He also called for emergence of a strong vanguard of crusaders that could champion the true vision of a sustainable road map for the country.
“it is simply indefensible and unacceptable that nearly 60 years after the country’s political independence, we are still in the quagmire of under performance and stasis.
“Therefore, a consensus has to be forged among opinion leaders across the country regarding the country’s vision and mission with in-built timeliness of the roadmap for Nigeria’s transformation.
“There is need for fore a moral realignment in other to advocate the benefit of one nation and one people not through hackneyed programmes such as NYSC but innovative policies that would fire the imagination of our youths, de-emphasizing state of origin, ethnicity religious or cultural orientation in favour of a broad national ethos and love for and commitment to a united Nigeria.
“We have not tapped sufficiently into the transit patriotism witnessed whenever the Super Eagles are engaging foreign teams arising largely from failure to provide “democracy dividends” to the preponderant majority of the population”, he added
