Be conscious of Nigeria’s corporate existence, monarch tells Buhari

The Tor Sankera 1 of Benue State, Abu King Shuluwa, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to be circumspect in the handling of the herdsmen’s killings, saying they were posing a great threat to the corporate existence of the nation.

The first class chief, in an open letter titled, Re: Go And Accommodate Your Compatriots, advised the President to go beyond his inner circle in unravelling the root causes of the menace and other challenges besetting the country.

Shuluwa said: “Even as you have stated that you would take your time to think over issues in order to get a clear picture before acting, I urge you to consider that taking actions over issues when the victims become corpses does not help the living. There is too much grieving (tears) in Benue State under your watch Sir. People can only contribute positively to your good ideas/policies for a better Nigeria when they are alive and healthy.

“Your Excellency, you have always been considered by Nigerians as an honest, prudent, just and a disciplined leader. It is based on this that you were overwhelmingly voted for.

“However, your utterance, silence, actions and inactions seem to corroborate a preconceived mindset, understanding, default reflex and impulse that is characteristic of an ethnic defender/champion rather than a statesman/chief security officer of a nation made up of many nationalities.”

The monarch said he had chosen to bring the happenings to the attention of the President because ‘in an unjust society, silence is a crime.”

He continued: “If our refusal to accept cattle colony or whatever it is called has earned us the status of being an ‘unaccommodating people’ by the President, then it means you are indirectly telling the world that you value cows more than human beings, as Aishatu Duku of the House of Representatives clearly stated on the floor of the chamber.”

Saying Buhari was being misled by some of his security aides on the Benue situation, Shuluwa maintained that the act is motivated by selfish ends.

He queried:”How can the Chief of Army Staff; National Security Adviser; Minister of Defence; Chief of Air Staff, Director-General of the Department of State Services; Inspector-General of Police; Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency; Minister of Interior and Commandant General of Civil Defence be unable to see what other Nigerians are seeing?”

The monarch further said: “Curiously, it does appear as if they are more sympathetic to the herdsmen’s cause to the detriment of the bigger Nigerian population.”

Shuluwa said the correspondence was to reawaken Buhari’s consciousness to the political developments in the Benue State and change his worldview of the Tiv people, whom he said, their hospitality was being taken for granted.