16th March, 2014
EROMOSELE EBHOMELE
A Nigerian Senator, Babafemi Ojudu, representing the Ekiti Central Senatorial District, has cautioned the country’s President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, against inciting Christians in the country against their Muslim neighbours as his visits to churches in recent times for campaigns do not augur well for the country.
Nigeria is a country divided along the Christian dominated south and the Muslim dominated north with its north-eastern part witnessing daily attacks from the Boko Haram insurgents.
Senator Ojudu, said this after he delivered a lecture at the first anniversary of The Gazelle News, an online medium, in Lagos Friday evening. The event also saw the honouring of two members of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Sanai Agunbiade and Adefunmilayo Tejuosho, as the best performing legislators in the male and female categories respectively.
Ojudu urged the President to sit tight and return the country to peace instead of gallivanting around a country on fire.
He said: “sitting back and watching this man carrying campaigns to the churches makes me scared. It is wrong because he is supposed to be a President over everybody in the country no matter the religion, but what we see is that he is politicising religion.
“Why would you go about subtly inciting a religion against the other? He should not be doing that particularly with all the problems we are having now.
“The president must take things more seriously than he is doing now. He is busy visiting states, visiting churches to campaign while Nigeria is burning.
“Let him sit down and work hard and ensure that this country is brought together. But the way it is going now, if this thing (insecurity) is not arrested, then we are all in danger.”
In the face of the many constitutional ‘sins’ committed by the President and his cabinet members, the senator denied that the upper legislative chamber has been docile.
According to him, the senate is not a security arm of government and that it has played its part so far concerning the country’s challenges.
“We are doing whatever we could to ensure that Nigeria gets it right. We may not have done enough yet, but we will get there.
“Again the duty fully lies on the President of this country to take the bull by the horn. He has the responsibility as the Commander-In-Chief and has to enforce the law.
“Those in the executive who have all it takes to protect Nigerians must do so and that is why many of us have been calling for state police,” he added renewing calls for the introduction of state police.
“The governors must be empowered to handle security in their states, let them recruit those who can work. You are in Abuja and want to keep security in Ekiti, Yobe and Maiduguri, how do you do it?
“Nigeria is too big to be secured by just one person. He can keep his Nigeria Police Force to take care of federal offences while states handle theirs. In America, even universities have their own police, local counties have theirs. So there’s no way you can commit crime and go free,” he stressed.
Concerning the criticism that the All Progressives Congress, APC, was admitting those from other parties it had considered in bad light, Ojudu noted that there is no party fully made up of saints and there’s none fully made up of sinners.
He further explained that in politics, a party brings all manners of people together, but what guides them is a body of ideas and manifesto which show the road they must follow.
“For as long as the manifesto shows the particular way to do things, every other person, whether rogues, robbers, saints, pastors, must queue behind,” he said.
The senator, who had earlier spoken about the challenges of online journalism in Nigeria, called on all online media practitioners to come together to form a body for self-regulation before the government would come up with regulations that may end up censoring their activities.
For details, he cited a bill seeking to censor the social media currently before the National Assembly and which stipulates a fine of N5 million or a prison term of seven years for anyone who intentionally propagates false information that could threaten the security of the country or that is capable of inciting the general public against the government.
He said: “those in the online media must come together and form an association to ensure self-regulation before the government would wield the big stick. If they don’t come together early enough, they may give the government the opportunity to censor them.”