The Afenifere leader, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, said Nigeria’s political independence and unity were negotiated in the 1950s.
Adebanjo in an interview with Punch on Friday was reacting to a nationwide broadcast by President Muhammadu Buhari to mark the country’s 61st Independence Day celebration.
During the broadcast, Buhari, in his usual speech, declared that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable.
The 93-year-old Afenifere leader who described Buhari as ignorant about Nigeria’s unity and was talking nonsense, said he was a small boy in the primary school when the unity was negotiated.
According to him, in 1953 when the North opposed the call for Independence and rather advocated ‘Araba’ (secession), Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe convinced the northern leadership headed by Ahmadu Bello, to negotiate the terms of their unity and ultimately their independence from British rule.
Adebanjo said, “He (Buhari) is talking nonsense. These are the kinds of things that cause trouble.
“How can the President of a multinational, multilingual and multi-ethnic society say the unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable? We negotiated the unity of Nigeria in 1954 before independence.
“The 1960 Constitution was a product of negotiation that arose from the London constitutional conference.
“Of course, I can’t blame him (Buhari). He was still in primary school at that time, so, he couldn’t understand. He should go back to the records.
“Before the constitutional conference, the country was being run as a unitary government and that was what caused the crisis.
”When we got to that conference, Chief Awolowo re-educated them that you cannot run the country as a unitary system. It was at that conference that Nnamdi Azikiwe was converted to federalism and when he returned from that conference, Azikiwe, at the airport, declared that federalism was imperative. It was in the Daily Times of 1954.”
