Presidency is arrogant, confused, Nyako insists

Some Socio-political groups in the South on Sunday berated the Adamawa State Governor, Alhaji Muritala Nyako, over his letter to the northern state governors.

Nyako, in a letter to the Northern Governors’ Forum, dated April 16, 2014, had accused the President Goodluck Jonathan administration of committing genocide against the North.

He had said that Jonathan was from Eastern Nigeria, which was responsible for killing the Northern elite on January 15, 1966.

But socio-political groups in the South, including Afenifere, Ohanaeze and the Niger Youth Parliament, condemned the governor.

In spate of this Nyako on Sunday insisted that the Presidency was confused.

Nyako said that the strategy being adopted by the government to fight the insurgency in the North-East smacked of a premeditated plot designed to decimate the North and northerners.

Director of Press and Public Affairs to the governor, Ahmad Sajoh, said this while responding to a response by the Presidency to his principal’s memo to his colleagues in the Northern Governors’ Forum.

He said, “Like we said yesterday, (Saturday) the Presidency’s response has shown that they are arrogant and confused. They arrogate all knowledge and wisdom to themselves alone.

“We hold the statements we released as true and challenge those who claim to have a sense of history to cut-off the use of jaundiced semantics to address the issues raised in this and several other documents before it.”

He said that by making false claims about the attack on Nyako which was never investigated nor ascertained, the Presidency was providing further proof that it knew more than it was willing to admit with respect to the brazen attack.

Nyako also explained that the statement on the supposed rescue of the abducted girls was enough to prove that that the Federal Government was not in control.

He reiterated that if the Presidency was not complacent about the killings in the country how come the President went dancing a day after several citizens were killed in Abuja.

However, the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere,  described statements credited to Nyako as reckless.

The spokesman for the group, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, in an interview with one of correspondents in Abuja, said that the statements by Nyako were unfortunate.

He stated, “That   a state governor,  a chief executive,  a former chief of naval staff in the country can be making such a careless, reckless and unguarded statement at this moment we are facing serious security challenge, is very unfortunate.”

Odumakin stated,   “Shekau (Boko Haram leader) yesterday (Saturday), claimed responsibility for Abuja bombing, saying the sect will bomb Abuja again. For a governor to say Boko Haram is a phantom, such a governor should be facing interrogation by now.”

Also, members of the pan-Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo,  said Nyako’s statement was indicting and targeted at causing chaos in the country.

A chieftain of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Mr. Chuks Ibegbu, said, “We expect him as a political leader to diplomatically sort his differences with Jonathan, rather than create tension and further worsen the security situation in the country.”

He said, “Accusing Jonathan falsely is very unfortunate. He is only distorting history. His statement is quite shocking.”

Ibegbu also said it was the northerners who massacred the Igbo people in 1966, “and not the other way round.”