National Confab: Proponents Of Nigeria’s Disintegration Free To Go On Exile – Aliyu

Babangida AliyuNiger State governor, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu yesterday told antagonists of Nigeria’s continued existence as one indivisible entity through their clamor for sovereign national conference with the intent to cause the disintegration of the country, to proceed on self exile.

Mr. Aliyu made this known at Government House in Minna, the state capital when he received the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Conference led by its chairman, Dr. Femi Okurounmu.

Affirming that Nigeria is not a “banana republic” where everybody imposes his will, the governor proposed that delegates to the conference should be drawn on the basis of local government representation with all 774 local governments of the country sending delegates.

He also suggested that government institutions should be allotted a slot of 100 delegates while the traditional institutions should have 37 delegates.

His words, “My argument has always been that you cannot have two sovereignties in a nation. It is either you dissolve those of us who now represent the sovereignty of this country, from the president to the National Assembly, from the governors to the state assemblies and indeed even the local government chairmen and the councilors.

“I am happy that those who do not understand in the past are beginning to understand that we cannot have a sovereign conference. We are not in a banana republic that you can just sit down and say what you want”.

Gov. Aliyu added that “Anybody who feels that he wants to get out, you are free to go on exile. If you do not want to be a Nigerian you can go and stay wherever you want, but you must not use the conference or any other thing to begin to think that you can dismember this country”.

He also berated those wanting to divide the nation across ethnic lines, insisting that never has there been a time when ethnicity became the basis to decide the fate of the nation.

-Daily Trust