VON DG begs NDA, MASSOB, IPOB to embrace dialogue

The Director General, Voice of Nigeria,
VON, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, weekend, appealed
to separatist groups in the country to embrace
dialogue and support President Muhammadu
Buhari in his efforts to rid the country of
corruption.

Okechukwu spoke in Enugu at a reception
organized for him and Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama by their kinsmen
under the aegis of Ekeh Progressives Forum,EPF.

Delivering a speech titled, “True Federalism:
Panacea or Placebo to Nigeria’s Paralysis; Eke
Town as a Case Study,” at dinner organized as
part of the reception, the chieftain of All
Progressives Congress, APC, blamed greed and
corruption for the gross inequality.

Speaking before an audience which included
former Vice President, Alex Ekwueme and
former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, the VON
boss recalled that President Buhari had in his
2015 Chatham House, London speech, vividly
described this gross inequality in the country as a
tiny island of the affluent in the ocean of misery.

“Corruption in all its ramifications, not just the
fleecing of the state fund, includes petty human
frailties like jealousy, hatred, stereotypes and
prejudice. We shall return to these two opaque
pages of the same epitaph of greed and
corruption, a commonly misunderstood theme.

“These two opaque pages may help us to show
that ethnicity and religion play less crucial roles
in our dysfunction than greed and its grandson,
corruption. Ethnicity and religion are more of
the tools of scavengers and predators. It would
amaze us to look closely at our communities,
local council areas and zones. We are most likely
to find that they are the victims of the
cankerworm called corruption.

“Consequently, an honest and pragmatic
assessment would surely expose the popular
sentiment of True Federalism as an innocuous
medication to a paralysis engendered and
poisoned by the fangs of corruption. The
narrative will also show how ethnic merchants
and bigots exploit our weaknesses to advance
themselves at the expense of the same tribe or
religion for which they claim to fly their flag,”
Okechukwu said.

He said that the same corruption was equally
responsible for the paralysis in his Ekeh
hometown, which shares the same ancestral
history, 99 percent Catholics and one Wawa
dialect, but yet seriously divided.

Okechukwu, however, traced the debate on true
federalism from the pre-independence era, to
when it exploded in the 1990s as an unintended
consequence of annulment of June 12
presidential election and championed by the
National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) through
PRONACO, its constitutional conference arm.