Since Tuesday, May 9, 2017, Nigerians who have reacted to the news that ailing President Muhammadu Buhari omitted to mention that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo will be an acting president in his letters to the National Assembly on his departure on indefinite medical leave.
The president wrote that Professor Osinbajo would be “co-ordinating” national affairs in his absence, the use of words indicating insecurities by his inner cabinet.
Femi Fani-Kayode, a prominent thought leader in Nigeria, has reacted to this confusing omission by the ailing president by saying that denying Osinbajo his constitutional right to play the role of acting president is “insulting and dangerous”.
“The attempt by the corpsocrats to prevent the vice president from being acting president by referring to him in the letter to the Senate as a mere ‘co-ordinator’ is insulting and dangerous,” the chieftain of the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, said in a statement to The Trent on Tuesday.
He went on to deride the discrimination that Southerners and Christians endure in Nigeria saying that this episode is a good time for the country to re-examine its existence.
“It is time for us to decide: do we have a nation of equals or not? If not let us break it and go our separate ways,” he wrote.
“When you tell us that the vice president cannot be acting president even though the president is critically sick and on indefinite medical leave in a foreign country you are playing with fire. There are NO more slaves in Nigeria.
“To those that believe that we must stand strong for Osinbajo this is the time to do it.
“The attempt to deny him the right and role of Acting President by the corpsocrats is ominous and the implications are grave and far-reaching.
“They did it to MKO Abiola in 1993. They tried to do it to GEJ in 2010. They are doing it to Osinbajo in 2017,” he wrote.
The courageous opposition leader ended his statement with a question, “When will a southerner be treated as an equal by these hegemonists? When will this arrogance of power and modern-day apartheid stop?”
