The meeting that Acting President Yemi Osinbajo held with the 36 state governors on Wednesday was the last in the series of consultative meetings he held with major groups in the last two weeks in order to douse tension in the country. Osinbajo had earlier met with Northern Leaders of Thought; Eastern Leaders of Thought, Northern traditional rulers; Eastern traditional rulers; newspaper proprietors and state governors.
Unlike the earlier groups he met with, state governors are the chief security officers of their states. Even though security agencies are wholly federal, they answer to state governors in their day to day operations and they receive a lot of direction and material support from state governors. This is apart from governors’ usually firm control over their communities and the many other agencies of mobilisation and security at their disposal, including the state bureaucracy, traditional rulers and political party machinery. Each governor has also sworn to an oath to defend the Constitution. Many political and community leaders have mixed attitudes to the unity of the country and the preservation of peace but sitting governors have a duty to uphold both, though not always successfully.
The 36 governors assured the Acting President that they stand together with the Federal Government in their determination to keep Nigeria as one indivisible entity. Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi, who spoke to the press after the meeting said, “It has been unanimously decided that the unity of this country is sacrosanct, is non-negotiable and we have all agreed to work together to educate people.” He added, “Any time you have agitation, usually there will be poverty, there will be unemployment, there will be hardship; so we should address fundamentally these areas of poverty, unemployment and hardship.” Ajimobi also had a warning for the news media, saying “To you the media, look for what unites us and not sensational news. If we fight, everybody will lose. Have you ever seen a country that fought civil war and remained the same? We don’t want to be another Rwanda and Somalia and all these places.”
It was Acting President Osinbajo however that gave a summary of the consensus reached by the various elected and unelected leaders at the various meetings held. He said, “We must not allow the careless use of words, careless expressions that may degenerate into crisis… We agreed that under no circumstances should we condone hateful speeches and that government should take all steps necessary to bring to book all those who preach violence.” Some people in Nigeria have made a habit of constantly spewing hate speeches against the people of other regions or faiths in order to settle personal political scores or to protect themselves from their previous misdeeds. It remains to be seen how the authorities intend to deal with such persons who hide under free speech to toy with the country’s peace and stability.
Osinbajo also said, “We also agreed on the permanency of the Nigerian constitution, that 1999 Constitution is the basis for our unity. It is the basis for the legal contract that exists between all of us.” If that is what the leaders agreed, then all agitators for all problems real and imagined must be told to seek constitutional solutions to their problems. The 1999 Constitution makes no provision for secession so agitators for “Biafra” must be told to shut up. Those who are loudly campaigning for “restructuring” should also be told to define their ideas properly and get their MPs to introduce it as a bill seeking to amend the constitution. Any other method is futile and amounts to trouble making since no “National Conference report” can supplant the Constitution.
According to Osinbajo, leaders have “also agreed that we need to do more to engage our youths productively, create some jobs, multiply the economic opportunities available.” There is no doubt that economic hardship is the fulcrum which sectionalists and selfish agitators are capitalising upon to mislead jobless and poorly educated youths with the promise of a return to a false secessionist utopia. If only the three tiers of government in collaboration with the private sector will find a way to generate millions of jobs, there will be that fewer jobless youths to be used as cannon fodder by selfish agitators.
The Acting President also said, “We agreed on the need for leaders to speak out forcefully to counter divisive speech or any kind of war mongering. We agreed that leaders at all levels speak out forcefully against any kind of divisiveness or divisive speech. This applied to both the statement made by the young people in the Southeast as well as the youth in the Northern states.” It is very unfortunate that community leaders choose to remain silent when misguided agitators seeking the limelight whip up sentiment and mobilise the youth towards a goal that the elders know to be both misguided and unrealisable. Even worse is a situation where some elders openly support the misguided agitation or seek to exploit it in order to achieve personal political goals. Going forward, we expect to see a real determination of the part of the political class and the government to come down hard on such selfish persons and to provide protection for elders to speak out against extremism of any kind.
Osinbajo’s rounds of consultations have been worthwhile. They have already reduced tension in the country and given everyone the needed assurance to live and work wherever he chooses. It remains for government to quickly deliver on the resolutions reached.
