Afenifere asked Buhari to summon courage and face the challenges before him as a ‘General and statesman’.
By Emma Ogbuehi
The pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, on Friday, reminded President Muhammadu Buhari that he was a General and must not chicken out of office.
The group asked Buhari to summon the courage to finish his tenure, noting that it was too late in the day for him to throw in the towel.
Buhari had, while receiving some governors of the All Progressives Congress, legislators and political leaders at his residence in Daura, Katsina State, on Monday, described his seven years in office as “tough” saying “I am eager to go.”
But Afenifere described the President’s statement as “laughable … for a man that has seen it all both as a military ruler and democratically-elected leader of his people.”
This was contained in a statement by the organisation’s Secretary General, Dr. Sola Ebiseni, titled, “Buhari, do not resign: Still enough time to clear the Augean Stable.’
Ebiseni noted that it was Buhari’s stock in trade to always lament instead of providing solutions to the nation’s myriad problems.
The statement read, “It was not clear the real import of President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement when he described his seven years in office as tough and that he was eager to go. His assertion of the toughness of the assignment is rather amusing for a man that has seen it all both as a military ruler and democratically elected leader of his people.
“Like he has done in the last seven years on vital national issues, the President merely lamented the six months strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities without proffering any solution or giving any assurance on how soon the youths of this country would return to school.
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“Notwithstanding, the laughable self-assessment of surpassing his predecessor in the provisions of infrastructures and the somewhat juvenile nostalgia of having not visited his hometown in one year, the Daura lamentation is both an admission of incapacity and failure, the natural consequence or effect of which is to take a bow and relieve himself of further torment by a duty of mutual disaster to the labourer and more so to the farm owners.
“It is his stock-in-trade to merely lament mass killings of the people by terrorists who have become most emboldened and unruly in his seven years so far.”
Afenifere also asked the President to summon the courage and face the challenges before him as a ‘General and statesman’.
“All the instruments and facilities to do this are present in the reports of the 2014 National Conference and the El-Rufai Committee on True Federalism. The task is not as daunting, even if as filthy, as the Augean stable.
“It takes the herculean spirit and ingenuity, which he summoned by diverting the course of two rivers (Confab and Rufai reports) to clear it in one day.
“Do not resign, Buhari. Summon the courage of a General and statesman and clean the Nigerian Augean stable. History beckons; not another time is feasible,” the statement added.
