Elders applauds Buhari for sacking service chiefs

By Doosuur Iwambe

*Back Ohanaezes’ calls for review to southeast

Elders in the Northern part of the country has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for sacking to the service chiefs in the country and appointing new ones in their stead.

In a statement, the elders under the umbrella of Coalition of Northern Elders for Peace and Development (CNEPD),however, berated the president for excluding South East from the appointments.

The statement signed by their National Coordinator, Engr. Zana Goni noted that the president’s action against the people from the south east part of the country was inimical to the unity and one-Nigeria project of Nigeria’s founding fathers.

While reiterating their support for the Ohanaeze, the CNEPD called for the review of appointments
to reflect fairness, equity as well as the nation’s federal character principle.

The group which had relentlessly clamoured for the sack of the service chiefs over worsening insecurity in the country,overdue tenure and perceived low morale in the military following unnecessary tenure elongation for the security heads,thanked President Buhari for eventually taking action by relieving them.

“We completely throw our weight behind Ohanaeze Ndigbo on their position over the appointments of the new service chiefs.

We vehemently appeal to Mr President for a review of the appointments to accommodate our Igbo brothers from the South East region in line with the federal character principle of the country.

We are absolutely sure that taking this action will make the designers of our country happy where they are watching.

“We received with great excitement the news about the sacking of the former service chiefs of the country by President.

It is quite commendable that the president finally listened to the clarion call by Nigerians to that effect.

“However, the composition of the service chiefs greeted us with mixed feelings and sincere concerns.

We strongly believe that the list does not meet a fair list as it is lacking in fairness, justice, and equity to the south easterners”, it stated.

The group tasked the president not to take certain actions that will continually be used by Mr Kanu to ganner followers from the South East geo-political extraction, insisting that steps that would take Nigeria towards fault lines be avoided.

“We appeal to Mr President to have a retrospection over this his latest appointments and do the needful because we feel that if it is not addressed soon, people like Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB will certainly continually make supporters of APC and your admirers from the South East region laughing stock of your administration”, the statement added.

They added that President Buhari ought to have disappointed some of his critics that he doesn’t hate the Igbos as it’s widely insinuated, by appointing one of their sons into the nation’s security leadership.

“Though we believe it’s not late to correct this injustice. It is in this regard that we therefore appeal to the President to remedy this great injustice done to the south easterners.

“While we must state clearly that the appointment of service chiefs is the prerogative of the president as he can choose to appoint anyone from any zone, we wish to ask that what made the other geo- political zone more important than the South East?”

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On the other hand,the Northern elders called on Ndigbo to remain calm and continue their unalloyed support to the Buhari’ administration, saying the development should not shirk their beliefs in the Nigeria project as according to them,the situation would be remedied.

“We, therefore,call on Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the South East governors as well as the South East National Assembly Caucus to continually prevail on the people of the zone to remain calm and peaceful.

“They should continue to resist their fugitive son, Nnamdi Kanu and his outlawed group,IPOB and all their antics of cashing in on the development to draw followers to their fold to continue on his ignoble path of working against the Nigerian state,”they charged.