Twitter Ban: Stop Heating Up Polity, Falana Tells Buhari

Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), has warned President Muhammadu Buhari against heating the polity with his recent comments on insecurity in the South East.

Speaking at a security summit in Lagos on Tuesday, Falana blamed President Buhari for being insensitive to the plights of Nigerians, noting that his said tweet was uncalled for.

He said: “I read the tweet by the president, which is causing controversy. The context is to the effect that we fought a civil war and the president took part in that war. I thought the president was going to apologise for the errors of that war, and that the government has not carried the aggrieved people along, since the war, in the affairs of our country, and the members of the ruling class have shattered their dreams of this country. Instead, the tweet was the opposite.”

Falana, however, said the president was wrong to dismiss members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) calling for separation.

He said: “If they believe one Nigeria has not served them well and has imposed injustice on them, your duty as a government is to explain to them and make them see a brighter future. But, when a government arrogantly talks down on the people, there is a problem for that country.”’

“Our children know nothing about the civil war, because history has been taken out from the school syllabus, and so for young people, who are attracted to war and preaching the gospel of hate, they have never been taught about the evils of war. Young men and women in the South-East have not been made to realise what people went through during the civil war.’

“So, what the president should have done was to find a way to embrace them and find out how to resolve their grievances through persuasion.”