Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, chieftain, Chief Bode George, has appealed to Nigerians, irrespective of their ethnic or religious leanings, to desist from the ongoing clamour for disunity.
He described as wrong, the activities of Biafran young crusaders, the young Arewa reactive promoters of disunion and the Yoruba presumptive withdrawal into a fanciful Oduduwa Republic.
Expressing his views on the state of the nation in a press statement issued in Lagos on Thursday, George said he was talking not as a politician, not as a PDP man, not as a Lagosian, not as a Yoruba man, but as a Nigerian and as a patriot.
He added: “I talk to you today as one who fully believes in the Nigerian dream. I am a committed Nigerian. My commitment to the Nigerian Nation cannot wobble. On this platform I hold, on this platform I reside faithfully, this is my promise, this is where I stand.”
He therefore appealed: “We must all step away from the abyss. We must all sheathe our swords. Enough of this unrealistic war clamour. Enough of these provocations of national destabilization.”
The press statement reads further: “It is true: There is indeed no perfect Union. A nation is always a work in perpetual rebuilding and reformation. A nation is never a finished product. There are always rough edges. There are always areas of rectifications and amendments.
“ But the ills of a society are not to be cured on the fields of war or the muddled recourse to the wielding of the cudgel.
“Nigeria as a Union has existed for 103 years since the 1914 momentous amalgamation of the North and South. Sure, we are all disparate and very diverse people with unique culture, with unique languages and with unique values and varied historical beginnings.
“But our strength and our invaluable profile as a nation lies in the collective totality of our size and in our various normative cultural portraits.
“We must talk to each other. We must listen to each other. We must encourage an appreciation of each other’s unique asset.
“There is no strength in disunity. There is no value in the rupturing of our national fabric.
“I do not say that there are no problems in the present composition of our union. But I insist that these problems are not unresolvable. The perceived wrongs and the inequities in our national union must be resolved on a roundtable and never in the trenches.
“The last civil war which provoked millions of deaths and incalculable destruction both in physical and in the moral psyche of the survivors must never be repeated again. The American Philosopher, George Santayana told us that “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” We must never repeat the darkness of our past. We must move forward with truth and certainty.
“There is no single nation in the history of the world that has survived two civil wars. We must stop and reflect. We must halt all these desperate agitations for mushroom ethnic colonies. The balkanization of our nation will not bode well for anyone. The former Yugoslavia and the defunct USSR are classic examples of ill-conceived peripheral pigmy states that can hardly survive on their own. Is this really what we want?
“ The greatness of America and Canada are invariably reflected in their diversity and in their enriching plural identities. For instance, the Continental United States, from the freshwaters of the New England states to the Redwood forest of Northern California, from the Allegheny mountains of Pennsylvania to the thickets and the swamps of Louisiana, America is a huge sweeping ambience of variegated norms and practices wherein a unifying national portrait of excellence, fairness and equitable fixity has emerged.
“Yes, the American collective value did not develop overnight. It was like a planted seed, well nurtured, consciously cultivated before it emerged and grew to a matured, sustainable presence.”
