President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday warned those behind the agitation for the division of Nigeria through the Movement for Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) to steer clear, saying the corporate existence of Nigeria as a single entity is not a subject of debate and would not be compromised.
President Buhari gave the warning in Zaria at the investiture of the Obi of Onitsha, Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe, as the 7th Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria.
The President who was represented by the Minister of State for Education, Prof Anthony Onwuka, said the menace
of insurgency and actions of some people agitating for dismemberment of the country would be surmounted.
His words: “The country is currently facing challenges of insurgency and other forms of insecurity that have become a threat to Nigerians to live in their country and be educated in their country.
“The security situation in the country entails that every Nigerian must discharge his responsibility in bringing about peaceful coexistence. The menace of insurgency and actions of some people agitating for dismemberment of this country will be surmounted.
“I therefore sound a note of serious warning that the corporate existence of Nigeria as a single entity is not a subject of debate and will not be compromised.
“This administration will put in place sustainable programme which will put our education system back on sound track.
“The university should on their own part key in to the wave of change across the country. As pacesetters, the universities must avoid any corrupt practices.”
Earlier in his address, the new Chancellor frowned at the persistent fuel scarcity in the country.
“We spend unbelievable amounts importing petrol and subsidizing its retail price whilst our three refineries with adequate capacity to meet our national
requirement are literarily moribund, despite huge sums spent on endless turn around maintenance;; smaller and less endowed countries successfully operate their own refineries optimally and do not suffer scarcity.
“Nigeria is probably the largest importer of electric generators in the world despite our endowment with natural sources of energy, such as petroleum, coal, hydro and solar energies, and the huge sums spent by successive governments on the power sector. On the other hand, a smaller country, Ghana, takes gas from Nigeria and generates most of its electricity requirements.
“Our food import bill, spent mostly on rice and wheat, is about $22 billion annually, yet our country is blessed with vast arable land and a large population of young jobless people that can be usefully deployed to agriculture.
“Road construction in Nigeria is more expensive than most parts of the world, yet our roads are breaking down faster than we build them because the traditional mode for heavy haulage, namely, railways, pipelines and waterways, are comatose;; a trailer load of petrol from Mosimi to Maiduguri causes more damage to our roads than the value of the product being transported.
“A majority of our state governments have recently taken the so-called “bailout loans” for recurrent expenditure, meaning that future generations are being inflicted with the burden of the profligacy of the current generation,” he said.
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