The presidency on Wednesday, told Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, that President Muhammadu Buhari is not responsible for the observed division in the country.
Femi Adesina, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, noted that Buhari inherited a “terribly” divided country from his predecessors.
The presidential media aide said this in response to Tuesday’s submission by Soyinka who agreed with former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s position that Nigeria is divided under the current administration than never before.
Adesina, while responding to Soyinka’s position on Nigeria’s division, said Nigeria had always been divided and there was nothing special about the comments made by Nobel Laureate and Obasanjo.
He said this on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ programme on Wednesday, noting that it is not possible for all Nigerians to see issues the same way.
Adesina stated, “Nigeria had always been divided. Always. Right from amalgamation in 1914, Nigeria has always been divided. Nigeria is an inconvenient amalgamation but we have worked at it and I tell you that there is no time in the history of this country that the country was not divided but then we had kept at it and we were trying to make it work.
“As of 2015, when President Buhari came, Nigeria was terribly, terribly divided; divided along religious lines, divided along ethnic lines; divided along language, divided hopelessly, terribly and that is the division that the President had been working at. But you see that a lot of people instead of letting harmony return to this country, thrive and luxuriate in widening the gulf. They play politics with everything.”
He added that while the government respects Soyinka, it doesn’t need to get worried about every criticism hurled at it.
