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Afenifere upbraids Buhari over 2023 census, calls for stoppage

By Adewale Momoh, Akure
28 April 2023   |   1:22 am
The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, has faulted the move by the Federal Government to conduct the 2023 national census at the tail end of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.

census

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• Tasks judiciary on speedy conclusion of election petitions

The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, has faulted the move by the Federal Government to conduct the 2023 national census at the tail end of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.

The group said that the insistence of government to conduct the exercise showed insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians, particularly with the trauma caused by banditry and the pockets of violence recorded during the 2023 general elections.

Afenifere, which stated this in a communiqué after the end of its monthly regular meeting held at Isanya-Ogbo, Ogun State, the country home of its leader, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, said that with the flop recorded during the general elections, the administration could not be trusted with the headcount of all Nigerians.

The communiqué, signed by Adebanjo and the group’s Secretary-General, Sola Ebiseni, stated that the exercise, to which over N100 million had been committed, should be halted, describing it as a wasteful adventure.

Also, Afenifere considers the request of Buhari for pardon “by those he might have hurt along the line of his services to the country” as rather short in statesmanship, with the demand that such apologies be extended to all Nigerians.

According to the group, Nigerians have been traumatised, especially by the pervasive insecurity, and “marooned in an economic quagmire that, in the last eight years, has rendered life most uninspiring, nasty, brutish and short.”

“It is rather shameful and painful that the President would celebrate, as an achievement, the purported containment of insecurity in Abuja, where the sovereignty of the nation has been wantonly challenged by terrorists,” the group lamented.

It, however, appealed to the judiciary to ensure that “all petitions in respect of the presidential election are timeously and justly resolved before the end of the tenure of Buhari administration as the only way the confidence of Nigerians in its intervention may be earned.”

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