Tunde Ajibulu, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Wednesday said President Muhammadu Buhari should dialogue with respectable leaders in the South East to find a lasting solution to the current agitation in the region.
He however disagreed with those asking the president to dialogue with Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) saying Kanu who is currently in hiding after the Operation Python Dance exercise in Abia state is a lily-livered charlatan and opportunist.
It will be recalled that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had advised President Buhari to dialogue with Kanu.
The former president in an interview with the Newsweek Magazine, had said there is nothing wrong in having a discussion with the aggrieved group.
According to him : “I don’t see anything wrong in that [Buhari meeting with Kanu]. I would not object to that; if anything, I would encourage it. “I would want to meet Kanu myself and talk to people like him, people of his age, [and ask:] ‘What are your worries?’ Not only from the southeast but from all parts of Nigeria.”
However, many Nigerians said it is hypocritical of Obasanjo to call for dialogue, a measure he didn’t take during his tenure as President especially as regards Odi in Bayelsa and Zaki Biam in Benue state.
Ajibulu, who spoke in an interview with sources, said “Desperate times calls for desperate measures. These are real desperate times, we must crush charlatans attempting to destabilise and sow division in our country”.
“With all due respect to President Obasanjo, I believe he is right to an extent. I think President Buhari has to dialogue but that must be done with respected and distinguished people in Igbo land; not with riff raffs like Kanu.
Who is he? What is he? What are his antecedents? He is a lily livered charlatan and opportunist who has started showing his true colours” he said.