Some socio-political and socio-cultural groups in the country, yesterday, urged former President Olusegun Obasanjo to logically look at the problems of Nigeria and come up with viable solutions instead of sounding as if he is trying to please a certain region or people.

The groups, which include the Middle Belt Forum, Afenifere, and Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN), berated Obasanjo for his comment that pre-independence regionalism is the bane of Nigeria’s disunity.

Obasanjo had said that despite the uninspiring situation of things in the country, he remains an incurable optimist about things turning around for good for the country “as long as we can look back as a country and correct the mistake of the past.”

The former President also blamed regionalism as practised before obtaining Independence in October 1960 as the foundation of the country’s prolonged lack of cohesion, adding that “the truth is that at Independence, Nigeria emerged with three leaders and so it is a situation of three countries in one ever since.”

Director-General of DAWN, Seye Oyeleye, in his response, said: “I just can’t understand the mindset that anyone would come up with that the regionalism we operated in the 50s and early 60s is the cause of our disunity in 2024. To me, it’s like turning logic on its head in the sense that the most interesting progress this country made was when it had a regional government.

“Obasanjo must have made the comment based on his antecedent as a military man, which is to command and control. The mistake we are making is that unity does not mean that we forget our differences.

“Nigeria’s problems today stem from Decree 34.”

Also, President of the Middle Belt Forum, Birtus Porgu, said that Obasanjo should have advised his northern visitors and friends to be favourably disposed to the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference rather than emphasising the current 1999 Constitution.

In his reaction, former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olabode George, urged the former President to start encouraging his friends from the North to see the need to embrace the 2014 national conference recommendations, which according to him, addressed all the problems the country is passing through today.

He disagreed with the former leader that regionalism as it was practiced under the Republican Constitution was the cause of Nigeria’s current disunity. Spokesman of Afenifere, Jare Ajayi, said the bane of Nigeria’s progress was not regionalism but unitary system, which the erstwhile benefited immensely from.