Professors May Work In Togo Bakeries If Nigeria Breaks – Lai Mohammed

The Federal Government has admonished Nigerian elites to stop fanning the embers of disintegration, saying they will bear the brunt more if the country breaks up.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, gave the admonition in Abuja when he featured on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) flagship interview programme, NANForum.

The minister appeared on the platform specifically to discuss the fallouts from the Town Hall Meeting on National Security organised by the Federal Government on April 8 in Kaduna,

Mohammed said one of the resolutions at the event was the need to build elite consensus on peace, unity and the indivisibility of Nigeria,

“Our challenge is more with the elites, not with the common people.

“Go to the remotest part of Nigeria today, you will see Nigerians from different tribes, culture and religion living together peacefully.

“Elites ought to take the lead in cementing the unity of the country, but when the elites start preaching tribal hatred, people believe them because they think they know better,’’ he said.

According to Mohammed, it is in the interest of the elites to ensure that Nigeria remains as one country because they will suffer the consequences of disintegration more.

“Nigeria accounts for 70 per cent of West Africa’s population and if Nigeria should disintegrate today, we are going to overrun Benin Republic, Togo, Niger and other neighbouring countries.

“The elites will suffer more because some professors could be working in bakeries in Togo just to survive.

“We saw it happened when the Liberians came here during their civil war.

“It is in their own enlightened interest that they should work to fix Nigeria,’’ he said.

Mohammed said the elites should take a cue from the likes of a renowned historian, Prof. Ade Ajayi, who posited that “you need more energy to break Nigeria than to fix it.”

To buttress his position on religious tolerance, unity and indivisibility of the nation, the minister gave two instances of his personal experience.

“I have been living in GRA, Ikeja, Lagos, for almost 25 years and during annual Eid-el-Fitr and Eid-el-Kabir, we, the Muslims always have our open prayers at Arch Bishop Vining Memorial Church belonging to Anglican Communion.

“There was a particular year, Eid-el-Kabir fell on a Sunday when the venue will also be used for the usual Christian service.

“With this development, we all agreed that we should come very early to pray so as not to disrupt the church service.

“To our surprise, the management of Vining Memorial Cathedral rescheduled their own Sunday service to 12 noon after we would have left the place.

“I have not seen better example of religious tolerance in Nigeria,’’ he said.

The minister also gave the example of his home town, Oro, in Kwara State where he said he holds the annual Ramadan lecture at the Muslim praying ground.

He said during the annual event, he would invite renowned preachers to talk about the virtues of Islam and distribute items for the needy and the people in general in the community.

“There was this particular year, the management of the Muslim praying ground said they were going to renovate the place and we should look for another venue.

“I approached my local chief that I will move the programme to Ilorin for that year because of the challenge of venue.

“The chief, however, said there was another suitable venue which is the premises of St Andrew Catholic Church in the town.

“For three consecutive years, we held the Ramadan lecture in the church premises without any problem,’’ he said.

The minister stressed that ethnicity and religion were being exploited by elites and some criminal elements to destroy the peace and unity in the country

He challenged Nigerians not to allow the elites to set the country on fire.

“Many of them have more than one passport, American, British, Irish, and at the first crack of trouble they are gone,” he said.

He said most of the promoters and sponsors of the last EndSARS protest ran out of the country when the crisis escalated.