The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO), has urged socio-political groups in the country to play more unifying roles in upholding the national unity than resort to divisive politics that could adversely affect the country.
BMO gave the advice in a statement signed, jointly, by its Chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary, Cassidy Madueke in Abuja on Thursday.
“BMO has urged socio-political groups in the country to heed President Muhammadu Buhari’s advice and play more unifying roles than resort to divisive politics that could adversely affect the nation’s unity.
“It is worried, what now seems like a gang-up by leaders and elders across the country to polarise the country,” the organisation said.
BMO also said that these elders had in recent times been making unguarded statements that could further widen the nation’s fault lines.
“We have a situation on our hands where people who are, by all standards, elders and also leaders in their own right and who have benefitted from a united country, but are stoking the embers of tension in the land.
“So, it is gratifying to see the President calling them out in the aftermath of a call by a factional leader of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) Prof. Ango Abdullahi on Fulani herdsmen to relocate from Southern Nigeria.
“There is no doubt that the Professor and his colleagues in the shadowy Nigerian Leaders and Elders Forum (NLEF) have, even before the 2019 elections, been engaged in scare-mongering, all in an effort to ensure the election of their preferred Presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar.
“So it is amusing to see these same people under the umbrella of Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum accusing one of their own of making ‘unguarded and reckless’ comment when that is actually the stock-in-trade of their group,” it stated.
According to the organization, it is against this backdrop that Nigerians should view Buhari’s advice to these socio-political groups to stop heating up the polity.
It added that various socio-political groups should put a stop to the circle of ethnic jingoism they had been spreading in the name of commenting on security issues.
