The reason former President Olusegun Obasanjo shunned the 60th Virtual Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, has been revealed.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that a group, the Muslim Lawyers’ Association of Nigeria, MULAN, had asked the NBA to remove Obasanjo and Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State from the list of speakers at the event in protest of the removal of Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai as speaker.
The group, in a petition, said they opposed to Obasanjo and Wike speaking at the conference because they have allegedly committed the same offence El-Rufai was accused off.
Confirming his principal’s absence from the conference, Kehinde Akinyemi said that the former Nigerian leader did not attend or speak at the conference. He, however, refused to reveal why Obasanjo boycotted the event.
“Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was obviously not at the conference but I don’t know why he did not attend the event,” Akinyemi said.
However, it was learned that Obasanjo was advised by the organisers not to attend the event due to the controversy that his inclusion generated.
We should not deceive ourselves that, the Nigeria state is working. We are so divided in this govt more than ever before. What we see playing out in NBA is an iceberg of what will happen therein. The north play politics in everything against any northerner. I don’t see anything wrong for NBA to withdrew Gov Rufai invitation that will warrant northern lawyers to form parallel association. Former president Obasanjo is a man of intellectual capability who knows the onus of divided association.
There is serious problem in this country. Everything now has religious coloration. No tolerance whatsoever. How I wish we have another Nigeria where governance will be totally divorced from religion. Appointment to offices now depend on what religion appointee belong to. No wonder many atrocities are going on because narrow minded people will soon begin to ask what religion does the candidate belong to. Religion should not be our problem but when leaders deliberately incite one against the other pretending not knowing the evil they are doing, how will there not be religious war? God is not evil, and if one that claims knowing God is using religion as a cover up, then he/she makes the religion irrelevant to peace.
It is right and proper to put this religious divide squarely on Buhari. He had been a bigot for a long time but it only came to a head now. If we go back to memory lane, when the same Buhari was head of State, he deliberately had Tunde Idiagbon a fellow muslim as a vice/deputy but nobody cared. Left to Buhari, the Vice President today should be a muslim. The end of the country is in sight. How long shall the rest of us continue to hold the horn while others continue to take away the milk? On their side, it is an agenda but it will fail woefully.