Insecurity: Femi Adesina Slams Northern Elders Over Call For Buhari’s Resignation

Posted by Nwa Diokpa Featured, Latest Headlines, News Across Nigeria Saturday, April 16th, 2022

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has berated the Northern Elders Forum for enjoining President

Muhammadu Buhari to resign due to the manner he handled the insecurity challenges in the country.

According to Adesina, in an article he published on his Facebook page claimed that the NEF position was due to the members’ frustration after they were not included in the regime of President Buhari.

Adesina alleged that NEF was filled with people with “self-seeking individuals” who had thought they will get the better of the regime after Buhari’s electoral victory in 2015.

He wrote, “The point of interest today is the hackneyed calls on President Buhari to resign over the country’s security challenges, the latest coming from a so-called Northern Elders Forum (NEF), a group I’d once described as “Generals without troops.

“The Forum is largely made of angry, bitter, self-seeking individuals, who had thought they would be leading President Buhari by the nose when he emerged in 2015.

In fact, key personalities in the group made strenuous efforts to be part of the administration. When they didn’t succeed, they became adversaries.

“It is on record that NEF had always opposed the Buhari administration since its gambit failed, and before the 2019 presidential election, it openly endorsed Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party as next President.

“And that completely vitiates whatever position the Forum adopts today. It is partisan, bilious, by no means neutral. It is from a self-serving standpoint.”

He also agreed that although there were issues of insecurity globally and that the President was doing his best in securing Nigeria and Nigerians.

Adesina continued: “Between 2009 and 2022, there were at least 271 mass shootings in United States of America, resulting in 1,518 people killed, and 980 wounded.

Just this week, there has been the Brooklyn Subway Shooting, in which at least 23 people were critically injured.

“In all these, did you hear calls for the resignation of any American President? It is on record that last year was the deadliest in a decade, in terms of mass shootings.

“Have you heard of calls for the resignation of President Joe Biden by a caterwauling band? No.

“Every life is important. No single life should be taken wantonly. Not in America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and definitely not in Nigeria. And when challenges occur, as we currently have, it should not be turned to a leaky political umbrella, from under which you hide to express hatred and malice.

“That is what is happening in Nigeria today. Individuals, groups, organizations, political parties, who had been against President Muhammadu Buhari, and who had been given bloody noses at the polls, are now using the smokescreen of insecurity to vent their spleen.

“We failed to oust him through the ballot box, let’s run him out of town by another means. Let’s instigate the country against him. But majority of Nigerians know better.”