Governors of the 36 states of the federation on Wednesday had a meeting with the Acting President Professor Yemi Osinbajo and resolved that the unity of the country is sacrosanct and non-negotiable.
The meeting was convened by the Acting President as part of consultations to resolve agitations for secession by Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the ultimatum by some youth groups for Igbo to leave the northern part of the country.
Speaking to State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, Governor Abiola Ajumobi of Oyo state, said the governors do not want the country to become another Rwanda or Somalia, hence the need to address the root cause of agitations – poverty, unemployment and hardship.
“It has been unanimously that the unity of this country is sacrosanct, is non-negotiable and we have all agreed to work together to educate people. Any time you have agitation, usually there will be poverty, there will be unemployment, there will be hardship, so we should address fundamentally these areas of poverty, unemployment and hardship.
“Nigerians are by nature a united people, nobody cares whether you are from the north, south or the east. There unity must be there and we cannot play with the unity of this country. The consensus has been that there must be unity.
“The message is for Nigerians to work more together and collaborate. We have more to gain when we are united. We cannot afford to break, and anybody is thinking of that he is wasting his time and we will not allow it, not in this country. All of us are unanimous about that,” he said.
Ajumobi appealed to the media to concentrate on stories that unite the citizens rather than sensationalism, saying that everybody is a looser should the country break out in war.
“To you the media look for what unites us and not sensations news. If we fight everybody will lose, have you ever seen a country that fought civil war and remain the same? we don’t want to be another Rwanda and Somalia and all these places. The government is doing its best,” he said.
