Beg Biafra Agitators To Stay, There’s Enough Cake To Share, Obasanjo Tells FG
Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo[/caption]
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Thursday, urged the Federal Government to engage those agitating for the sovereign state of Biafra in a dialogue that will resolve the issue.
Obasanjo, who said this at a Biafra conference in Abuja, cautioned the government against worsening the situation at hand.
The former president further blamed the problem on the country’s lack of a national leader from onset.
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“We never had a national leader. Our leaders at the beginning were mindful of their regions. That is our problem till today,” he said.
“I have maintained that the young officers who struck in 1966 were naive but there was some element of nationalism in some of them. Be that as it may, it set us back.”
“The language used in the war did not help matters, the people on the Biafra side called us vandals and we called them rebels,” he said.
“We thought we would end the war in three months, but it took us 30 months, and the federal side nearly lost it.
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“Civil war is more difficult than fighting in a foreign land because we are fighting to unite.
“Even a soldier of mine who tried to rape a woman… I had to chase him with a gun. He did not succeed in raping the woman, and I did not have to gun him down.
“Some of the people agitating for Biafra today were not even born then. They don’t know what it entails,” he said.
”But I think, we should even appeal to those saying they want to go, we should not tell them to go, we should make them understand that there is enough cake to share. We should massage Nigeria just like in a love relationship.”
