The President and Chairman in Council of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, Mallam Mukhtar Zubairu Sirajo has urged the Presidency to address the reasons behind several agitations by different ethnic groups in Nigeria and not to arrest agitators.
He said such arrest was a mere scratch on the surface of myriads of problems bedevilling Nigeria.
Sirajo stated this at a memorial lecture for O.W. Udoh on “Strengthening Nigeria’s Unity Through Effective Strategic Communication, held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
Sirjalo who identified Nigeria’s problems to be poor leadership challenged the people to ask questions on government affairs and charged the federal government to be more serious in addressing the nation’s woes.
He maintained that a good number of people privileged to be in government have no business in governance, adding that the call for disintegration would not be the solution to the problems rather a call for good leadership.
Buttressing his point, the NIPR president said even if Nigeria is fragmented into many countries; any of the countries which is unfortunate to have poor leadership will still experience the same fate Nigerians are experiencing.
He also identified poor and lack of strategic communication as other factors affecting the growth of Nigeria, disclosing the plan by NIPR to host a national conference to tackle security and integration.
“This country is well endowed in Africa. There is nothing that would form the basis for development that you cannot find in this country. The best ingredients for development are the people. But, we have not been fortunate with the kind of leadership that has been steering the ship of this country.
“A very significant percentage of the people that call themselves leaders have no business anywhere near leadership. If they were leaders in the true sense of the word, we would not have been in the quagmire that we are into today. The leaders have always led for their own class and that class is just a vain representative of what Nigeria is.
“If you take a look at our leaders when they come together to pursue their common interest, Niger Delta does not feature, North West does not feature, nothing else feature apart from that interest that they commonly unite to pursue. The only time you hear them complain is when one of them is surcharged. That is when they all retire to ethnic groups,” he stated.