Former Osun State Governor Chief Bisi Akande warned yesterday that the nation was drifting towards despotism and lawlessness under President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch.
Akande, who was the Interim National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), urged Nigerians to resist the spate of impunity and power tyranny under the Federal Government.
Akande spoke yesterday in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, in his remarks as chairman at the inaugural lecture of the Dauda Adegbenro Foundation Memorial Lecture, in honour of the late former Premier of the Western Region, Chief Dauda Adegbenro.
The APC chieftain noted that Jonathan had been fanning the embers of division along religious and ethnic lines through propaganda.
He accused the President of persecuting the Yoruba and using impunity to impose leaders on the Southwest.
Akande said: “We are back in a similar era of using the regime of impunity in Jonathan’s Federal Government to impose unwanted individuals as leaders in each of the states in Yoruba land.”
In his speech, titled: Adegbenro Fought Against Regimes of Impunity, the former governor traced the origin of imposition of leaders on states by federal authorities to the political crisis that swept through the Western Region in the 1960s.
Akande described Jonathan as an ingrate who marginalised the Yoruba race during the National Conference, even when the Yoruba spearheaded the struggle that led to his emergence as President under the “doctrine of necessity” at a time reactionary forces were against him.
He said: “Apart from marginalising the Yoruba in all constitutional appointments of his government, Jonathan’s trait has always been to persecute the Yoruba leaders who he perceived to have contrary views to his own.
“Jonathan’s first and most significant act of ingratitude to the Yoruba was when he maliciously arrested and prosecuted unjustifiably Dimeji Bankole and Senator Bola Tinubu.
“No government has ever disrespected the Yoruba as the Jonathan administration. But it is yet morning because a few of us with our followers are resolved to continue the struggle for a just and democratic Nigeria; more importantly, for a Yoruba nation that can stand up against discrimination, nepotism and power tyranny.
“His other acts of ingratitude include divisive propaganda to cause disaffection among various ethnic nationalities and religious divides with a view to undermine the security of Nigeria.”
The statesman also accused the President of working against the formation of APC, by making its registration difficult.
He added that the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) going into alliance with other parties to form a stronger opposition, the APC, neither meant abandoning the Southwest nor looking for undue favours from the North, as the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) were not ruling at the centre.
He said: “No one can accuse the ACN leaders of cringing or for undue clinging to northern leaders for selfish material gains by securing the merger of opposition in Nigeria because federal power was not in the hands of the northern leaders of ANPP and CPC when the merger op opposition parties was enacted.
“APC, in good faith, merely acted in keeping with non-discrimination against public demand that all opposition parties, including the parties in the Southeast, Southsouth and those of the North generally, should merge to confront PDP in power at any democratic election.”
