Segun Akanni, Toronto, Canada 
A former aviation minister and ardent critic of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, Femi Fani-Kayode, has warned the President to treat IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, with utmost care because he is the reincarnated copy of the trio of Chief Odimegwu Ojukwu, Major Kaduna Nzeogwu and Chief Nnamdi Azikwe rolled into one.
He also warned that despite the President’s assertion that the late Ojukwu believed in one Nigeria as Buhari does, if Ojukwu were alive, he would have condemned, unequivocally, the treatment that Igbo have endured under the Buhari administration in the past two years.
Fani-Kayode said this in reaction to President Buhari’s national broadcast of Monday morning.
Described as “thoroughly uninspiring,” Fani-Kayode said instead of appealing to Nigerians for patience and understanding, President Muhammadu Buhari returned home after 105 days in the United Kingdom to “insult Nigerians” and also to “threaten them.”
He argues that Buhari should have appealed to Nigerians to be patient and understanding with him; noting that his administration has so far displayed “ineptitude and sheer incompetence” over the last two years.
Interpreting the six-minute speech as an imposition of Buhari’s will on Nigerians, Fani-Kayode lamented that the President appeared to have “failed to appreciate the fact that times have changed and that he cannot impose his will on others.”
As far as Fani-Kayode is concerned, Buhari appeared undecided in his viewpoint about the happenings in the country, noting that though the President claimed that his views represented the thinking of the majority of Nigerians, yet he has refused to accept the idea or acknowledge the legitimacy of a national referendum.
Only a “military dictator, a Caliph or a King” would do that, Fani-Kayode argues.
He warned that if the President genuinely wants to enhance national unity, “he must desist from his dangerous and provocative rhetoric,” and he must accomodate “dissenting views.”
In a seeming veiled reference to the animal imagery employed by Senator Sani in one of his Facebooks posts talking about the Lion King and hyenas, Fani-Kayode urged Buhari to treat “all Nigerians like human beings.”
He advised President Buhari to do “a quick recourse to the devolution of power from the centre” and to also do a timely restructuring of Nigeria, which he described as “a fake pseudo-federation and a functional unitary state.”
Otherwise, the critic warned, “the agitation for emancipation will become more pronounced, the various ethnic nationalities in this country will eventually exercise their right of self-determination and our nation will eventually break.”
Recommending the way forward, Fani-Kayode said, “We must recognise our differences, acknowledge our fears, concerns and anxieties, soothe frayed nerves, bridge the gap, make the necessary concessions and heal the wounds.”
Failing to do this, he added, Nigeria “must prepare for the very worse in the not too distant future.”
Decrying Buhari’s reference to the late pardoned Biafran rebel leader, Chief Odimegwu Ojukwu, Fani-Kayode said, “If this great man were still alive today to witness what his Igbo people have been subjected to over the last two years under the Buhari administration, he would have been the first to insist on Biafra all over again.”
In an obvious support for the Biafran agitation, Fani Kayode said the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is a reincarnation of the trio of Ojukwu, Nzeogwu and Azikwe, urging Buhari to “handle (Kanu) with utmost care.”
He condemned Buhari’s “failure” to order the arrest of those who had given Igbo residents in the North a quit notice, saying, “This strange omission and instructive refusal by Mr. President is unacceptable and it feeds into the narrative that there may well be some kind of frightful hidden agenda unfolding.”
