Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media to President Muhammadu Buhari, has clarified his comment that it was better for people to surrender their land or get killed.
He spoke on Wednesday on an Arsise TV programme anchored by Reuben Abati.
Adesina, who stood by his comment, said: “Twist and slams. You know you can take a small part of a video to also justify what you want to achieve. You won’t take the totality of what the speaker said.
“There is the totality of what l said which l stand by and that was, ‘anybody that has land, talking of states not even individuals – any state that has land and offers it, the federal government will take it and build ranches.’
“It is a coalition of willing people but anybody that says ‘we don’t have land,’ as Benue had said, some other states also said ‘we don’t have land,’ it is not by compulsion. It is not by force. But then, l now recalled what Obasanjo said when he came out of jail.
He said ‘it’s better to be a farmer on the soil than under the soil’ and l then said, ‘okay, those who said we don’t have land, is it not better to be alive on your land than to be dead because you chose to hold on to land?’ So, that is the totality of what l said and l stand by it today, tomorrow and any day.”
Reminded that Nigerians were unhappy with that comment, Adesina said that was so “because some people took the latter part of what l said and began to share it out of malice and ill will.”
On government ‘silence’ on the alleged certificate scandal involving the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, Adesina said: “When you said the government has done nothing, that is not quite right because nothing means nothing.
“Something had been done, which the Minister of Information told the country. NYSC is looking into it. NYSC is the relevant agency to look into it and when it has concluded its investigations, it will come out and tell us its findings.”
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