27th June, 2018
By Kazeem Ugbodaga
Professor of International Law, Akin Oyebode on Wednesday came hard on the government of President Muhammadu Buhari over uncontrollable herdsmen killings in some parts of the country, saying the president has failed Nigerians and that there is no basis for the government to continue to exist.
Prof. Oybode spoke with newsmen shortly after delivering a lecture at the 2018 Public Lecture/Book Presentation of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Lagos State Information Chapel, held at the Combo Hall, Lagos Television, in Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria.
According to Oyebode, Nigeria was now a failing State and that everybody must acknowledge it, saying that “Nigeria is failing state, although it has not completely failed, but it is failing and we have to quickly address that. They say when there is fire on the mountain, the children will run. Things are getting worse and worse in the country all hands must be on deck to safe Nigeria from total destruction. The statistics are very bad.”
The Professor of Law lamented that it was so embarrassing that incessant killings were happening in Nigeria that pride itself as the biggest black nation on earth and the giant of Africa, as the government could no longer safeguard the lives of the people.
“It is a great embarrassment for the Buhari’s government because the whole essence of government is to protect lives and property of our people. The government that cannot protect its citizens definitely has forfeited its reason for existences. So the Buhari government has its words cut for it that the world is watching whether Nigeria will live up to her billings as an important country in the world or a country that had collapsed; that is the blunt truth. Unfortunately, not many people want to say the truth because they are afraid of the power that be but some few people still have the courage to talk,” he said.
Oyebode accused the Buhari’s government of being self-righteous, saying that “salt will never declare itself palatable. It is until when one taste it that he would know. We are in a country where those in office pass vote of confidence on themselves, thereby depriving the people the rights to adjudicate the way they had been running things. Nigerians has been taking too much for granted and we have no excuse for the deterioration.”
On whether the killings were politically motivated, Oyebode said the Miyetti Allah had confessed and admitted that because some cows were rustled, that was the reasons for their action, saying that their response was most unfortunate, adding that “I believe that the leaders of the Miyetti ALLAH should be rounded up by now and tried as terrorist and ethnic cleansing and even genocide.”
“Now that the SERAP has taken the matter to the US council, I am scandalised that Nigeria could be brought before an international court. More so, Buhari is Fulani. His mother is a Kanuri from Borno State. It appears he is treating his fellow brothers with kid-gloves. The fact that he is a Fulani doesn’t mean he cannot stand for justice. People will obey him and respect him more if he cracks and descend heavily on the self confessed murderers.
“I don’t know any country where self murderers are giving pat on the back. It isn’t done anywhere. If you kill someone and admitted doing so, such person should face the music. In other climes, if one admitted to have killed someone, he faces the music.
“When they killed in Benue, that embolden them. They went to Plateau, but when the crisis in Ife between Yoruba and Hausa occurred, they rounded up the Ife people, including the monarch, took them to Abuja, we don’t know how many were arrested. Ife is not an Hausa city, but these Hausas themselves, invented Sabo, Sango in all the areas they are living in Yorubaland. Nigerians is treating people unequally. It is not fit and proper for some people to be declared higher than the law,” he said.
On what Nigerians should do in 2019, Oyebode said the choice was in their hands to choose whom they wanted, but noted “that people are talking, the Afenifere is talking. Obasanjo had to go and swallow his pride and went to meet Adebanjo, because he is looking for support, because Buhari has outsmarted him, and out-forced him with the declaration of June 12 and the MKO Abiola reprieve that Buhari implemented. Buhari scored a bull eye by that decision, but that is not enough.
“But the Yoruba people are wise, so clever and they understand politics that it takes more than recognition of June 12 for him to get a safe ride in 2019 and you know that it was the Southwest that made Buhari president. Buhari tried three times, he did not get it; but the southwest voted him in 2015, thanks to Bola Tinubu, but Bola Tinubu can’t pull it off again, because, people will say, you let us down the river the other time. They will say what did the Yoruba get the other time?”