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By Chinelo Obogo
National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), Afenifere and other pro-democracy groups have urged Nigerians to rise up against the leadership failure in the country.
While criticising the reliance on the 1999 Constitution (which it described as flawed) to administer the country, the groups urged ethnic nationalities to intensify their self-determination pursuit as it was enshrined in the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and 1998 African Charter of Peoples Rights.
NADECO Secretary, Ayo Opadokun, said the organisation would intensify its campaigns against the lopsided federal structure that has continued to confer undue advantage on a section of the country to the detriment of other component units. Afenifere leader, Ayo Adebanjo, said the defective structure does not engender trust and peaceful coexistence of the country, urging stakeholders to intensify the battle for restructuring and true federalism.
The NADECO and Afenifere chieftains stated this during their tributes at an event held in Lagos for the deceased former military governor of Lagos State, Admiral Ndubusi Kanu, who was a NADECO leader.
Prof. Adebayo Williams said NADECO and Afenifere have unfinished its battles, saying the nation has been retarded by the ravaging virus of leadership failure. Lamenting that those who fought for democracy had been sidelined, he called for what he described as festival of leadership renewal.
Paying his tributes, Opadokun recalled that Kanu was hounded, humiliated and dehumanised by the Abacha military regime with his residence in Lagos and Ovim, Abia State, searched by soldiers who found nothing incriminating with him.
