The Presidency on Sunday night reacted to recent calls by individuals and groups for the restructuring of the country, describing such calls as unwarranted and unpatriotic.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said this in a statement made available to journalists.
The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, had on Saturday joined other prominent Nigerians to call on the Federal Government, led by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to urgently restructure the country to save it from breakup.
The cleric, who spoke at a symposium alongside the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi; former Governor of Cross River State and former presidential aspirant, Donald Duke and a former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, warned that it was either the country restructured as soon as possible or it broke up. “You don’t have to be a prophet to know that one,” he added.
But Shehu described such calls as “recurring threats to the corporate existence of the country.”
The statement read, “The Presidency responds to the recurring threats to the corporate existence of the country with factions giving specific timelines for the President to do one thing or another or else, in their language, ‘the nation will break up.’
“This is to warn that such unpatriotic outbursts are both unhelpful and unwarranted as this government will not succumb to threats and take any decision out of pressure at a time when the nation’s full attention is needed to deal with the security challenges facing it at a time of the COVID-19 health crisis.
“Repeat: this administration will not take any decision against the interests of 200 million Nigerians, who are the President’s first responsibility under the constitution, out of fear or threats especially in this hour of a health crisis.
“The President as an elected leader under this constitution will continue to work with patriotic Nigerians, through and in line with the parliamentary processes to finding solutions to structural and other impediments to the growth and wellbeing of the nation and its people.”
PUNCH