Obasanjo preaches dialogue with Biafran agitators

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By Olusola AJIBIKE (Abeokuta)

NIGERIA: FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo has advocated holding dialogue with the agitators for an independent state of Biafra.

Obasanjo said at the Biafra conference held in Abuja last Thursday, that Nigerians must handle the country with care, saying that holding talks with the aggrieved Easterners is the best way to go, just as he lamented that the country since independence lacked national leaders.

“We never had a national leader. Our leaders at the beginning were mindful of their regions,” he said, adding: “That is our problem till today.”

‎The ex-President stressed: “I have maintained that the young officers who struck in 1966 were naive, but there were some elements of nationalism in some of them.  Be that as it may, it set us back.”

While speaking on the Biafran war, Obasanjo said: “The language used in the war did not help matters, the people on the Biafra side called us vandals and we called them rebels.”

“We thought we would end the war in three months, but it took us 30 months, and the federal side nearly lost it,” Obasanjo stressed, adding: “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,” the ex-President also said.

Obasanjo maintained that some of those demanding for Biafra now lacked an understanding of what such call entails.  “Some of the people agitating for Biafra today were not even born then. They don’t know what it entails,” the former President declared.

He further 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.”

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