Standup9ja: Calls for Buhari’s resignation insensitive –
Okupe
It's very embarrassing and insensitive the way some
Nigerians are making unsavoury comments about President Muhammadu Buhari’s
illness, former Senior Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan, Dr
Doyin Okupe, has said.
In a statement on Friday, Okupe said though he's not a
supporter of Buhari, it's embarrassing how some Nigerians "outrightly
deride him, wish him dead as if they themselves are not human."
"Sickness and ill-health many times are not things you
can blame individuals for and certainly not deride them about. Both young and
old do fall ill and death certainly is not exclusively restricted to the old,
or young, or rich, poor or powerful," the ex-presidential aide said.
He said the political implication of President Buhari's
health "is neither simple nor straight forward, in a country as complex
and convoluted politically as Nigeria."
He said political leaders must bear in their minds that
since the return of democratic rule in 1999 in the last 18 years, the southern
part of the country has occupied the position of President for approximately 14
years while the North has had only four years.
"This calls for sensitive and careful navigation and
negotiation to uphold equity, justice and fairness, if our country must
maintain political stability, without which our nation can hardly make
progress," Okupe said.
Okupe said the northwest should produce the president in
2019.
He said: "this
type of political concession is not all together new to our politics. In
1998, because of the perceived injustice to the people of the southwest, the
political class resolved through an unprecedented concessionary arrangement to
allow only the southwest to present presidential candidates so that head and
tail the southwest would produce the president.
"It was not constitutional but it was also not against
any law. It was politically right and expedient and it brought the country
together.
"We must desist from wrongfully using death and
unforeseen happenstance to cheat ourselves politically or administratively.
Only honesty, sincerity of purpose, genuine love for one another, fairness and
equity can make us get to the promised land together and peacefully."
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