Attahiru Bafarawa, former governor of Sokoto State, has reacted to the agitation by the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB.
He warned against use of force against the agitators and advised government to dialogue with the group.
”When Obasanjo was in power, he had the challenge of Sharia in the North but when he found out that Sani Yerima was the mover, all advice was given to Obasanjo to deal ruthlessly with Yerima but Obasanjo turned down that advice and invited Yerima as his son and he was able to manage that crisis”, he told Vanguard.
”After he left, Yar’Adua came and the Niger-Delta militants were all over the place. He too invited their leaders and he sat down with them at the Villa and they discussed the way forward. Now Buhari has come with his own, he needs to apply the same measures other leaders used to quench the fire.
”Dialogue is the best way out of the IPOB crises. As a democrat, you must do things in a democratic manner because we are no more in a military era.” Bafarawa, however, said the PDP will throw APC out of power if the party goes into the 2019 general elections together.
He said Nigerians were tired of the Buhari government and that the 2018 bufget will be the last the administration will present.
”I must say that those who reposed hope and trust in this government are members of the All Progressives Congress, APC. Maybe because I do not have any hope in this government and because I knew there was not going to be any change, I am not surprised about what is happening.
”So whatever has happened, I am not moved because I did not vote for APC, so I do not have any hope in the APC government. It is those who put their hope in APC that are heart-broken right now.
“There could not be hope when you brought people you were not sure of and asked them to join those who were doing things rightly. It is like mixing a dirty mud water with clean water. So, there is no difference between APC and PDP because the same people who killed the PDP moved in again to join the APC.
”So that is where the problems started, if they allowed the original members of the APC to continue without bringing the PDP to join us then, APC would not have derailed.
”The current government is finished. Why do I say so? The budget they are going to present for 2018 is the last budget they are going to present before they will leave. In the 2017 budget, they have not done anything. Nigerians can testify to the fact that they have not seen or felt any dividend of democracy from this government.
”So, when they present their next budget, nothing much should be expected because any serious government should have performed in the first two years of its administration and the third year is for finishing the projects while the fourth year will be for campaigns.
”This is the third year of this government and we have not seen anything they have done or any completed project. As far as I am concerned, this government has not done anything they will use to campaign to Nigerians.”
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