>
Yoruba rights activist, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho has been described as a symbolic depiction of leadership failure in a suggestive and almost deliberate complicit abdication of responsibility by those saddled with the assignment as well as a representation of many things, part of which is the emboldening many other community resisters of oppression.
The founder of Akin Fadeyi Foundation (AFF), Mr Akin Fadeyi, stated this on Friday, during a Zoom meeting discussion on the topic ‘Herdsmen, South West and Nigeria leadership,’ with media and members of the civil society.
He said that there is a resistance building and the government does not seem to be aware or is aware but stranded within a myopic cocoon of ethnic prejudice.
According to him, the President must face a fact that there has been a sweeping and systematic liquidation of other people’s territories by unhinged suspected Fulani Herdsmen who are the President’s own people, adding that the president must ask the question; “how do Foreign nations who lead the pack in global cow-ranching business get on with this business without slaughtering their own people?”
“There is a thick dark cloud of calamity around us but we are also being gas lighted into alternative realities. Perhaps we should ask then, that how many of our government leaders can travel to their villages anytime of the day, unescorted and pass nights there? And while they enjoy state protection, what happens to the poor who cannot even go to farm? I feel compelled to address us on the ongoing crisis between the Fulani herdsmen and other tribes in the country, including the Yorubas.
“I am not speaking as a tribalised Yoruba man, I am speaking as a Nigerian who made friends across the divide and still believes in the beauty of our diversity. If we situate Nigeria within the concept of Thomas Hobbes Theory of a nasty, brutish and short life, then it is safe to say Nigeria is already headed in the direction of total chaos and of course, anarchy. This anarchy and seeming oppression of a people by another set of people within the same nation, in a country already besieged by hunger, unequal distribution of wealth and impoverishment, threw up the symbolism of resistance that Sunday Igboho represents,” he said.
Fadeyi stated that those who call the President “Baba” and lack the temerity to call him out are not doing him any good because misguided loyalty is cancerous as it gradually eats into the consciousness of the self-acclaimed “loyalist” as he keeps imagining himself a patriot, adding that patriotism is not reckless imprudence but is measured by a heart that loves the nation and recognises its responsibility as rights holders within a social contract that binds leadership as Duty Bearers that must be held to accountability.
“When you brand a worship idol out of a nation’s power holder, you have burnt patriotism and embraced servility. What we’re seeing today is the effect of not just bad governance, but also that of enabling aye-sayers. This is why government’s spin doctors are quick to demonize and incriminate the media and civil societies as “heating up the polity.”Isn’t it sardonic that this administration that rose to power through a well-orchestrated media machinery is now tagging the media the enemy of the nation?
“This gas lighting is a disingenuous conduct of a government that circumvents the truth, fails to take responsibility for its errors and must attempt to steer you away from questioning facts is completely alien to its mouthed integrity,” Fadeyi said.
“On April 13, 2011, when you wept over the state of the nation in your quest for power at the international Conference Centre, Abuja, will you say you have turned the country around and made it safer after power was granted you from past six years till date? What are you making of your legacy? Are you capable of rising over ethnic sentiments now and protect all Nigerians?”he questioned Buhari.
Fadeyi stated that after taking over, the constitutional mandate of the president is to be leader of all, adding that: “When Miyetti Allah leaders rascally issue threats against their host communities, this Presidency plays deaf. But the moment anyone pokes at the herdsmen, this Presidency abandons everyone that voted it and embarks on vocal hemorrhage. How suddenly did President Buhari forget that for three consecutive periods, he contested Nigeria’s Presidency through the CPC platform but lost, until he forged an alliance with the South West? Why is the same President now carrying on like a President of the Fulanis instead of President of Nigeria? Why does a President that never speaks to the nation except we literally drag him to do so in moments of national crisis, always find a hasty voice to ward off justified salvos against cow herders who are jeopardizing other races right to existence and he actually does so, characteristically within 24 hours? Are we really citizens of the same country?” Fadeyi asked.
He concluded that good leaders take personal responsibility in crisis, no matter how much of these lie outside their control, align team focus and establish periodically evaluated metrics to monitor their own performance.
“Good leaders create a culture of accountability, and stay alert and aligned on effective dashboard of priorities. A good leader will unite this nation and not divide it. President Buhari should jettison his conscious or unconscious bias and demonstrate leadership now, before he goes into history as the last leader to preside over the affairs of a united Nigeria,” he said.
Akin Fadeyi Foundation is the initiator of Corruption Not In My Country aimed at unlocking the capacity of Nigerians to identify corruption and shun it and the FlagIt App which is designed to enable Nigerians report corruption and COVID-19 messages to spread the awareness of a deadly pandemic.