The Committee Chairman of the Citizens’ Summit for National Integration, Peace and Security, Dr. Ike Neliaku, has said that the call for the disintegration of Nigeria was due to underlying unresolved issues.
Neliaku stated that the group, under the National Institute for Public Relations (NIPR), had conducted a research that showed that a healthy number of Nigerians would rather live together “as Nigerians” than see the country dissolve into fractions.
He shared this with journalists, disclosing that the group, since inception, had consulted with Nigerians across regions over the state of the nation, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
Neliaku said, “The outcome of our consultations and deliberations appear very clearly that a greater percentage of Nigerians believe in preserving the integrity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The question that we have to ask ourselves is: ‘if Nigerians want to stay together if Nigerians love Nigeria if Nigerians will want Nigeria to remain, what then is the problem?’
“Our findings revealed that if certain issues that have formed the fundamentals of agitations across the country are resolved, Nigerians will prefer to live together as Nigerians.
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“If matters that have caused certain misconceptions, misunderstanding and distrust, are taken care of by leadership across board, Nigerians will prefer the option of staying together and building a strong, viral and formidable nation in Africa.
“From our findings, the NIPR believes that Nigeria is too strong to disintegrate and we as professionals are committed to making the Nigerian project work.”
Neliaku added that the group would tour states across the nation – described as a “dialogue series” – that would peak in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city for a national summit that would be held in November.
He said, “The NIPR has offered her platform being a very credible, non-partisan, neutral organization whose mandate is to promote relationship building, relationship mending, reconciliation, and so on.
“Our various committees have turned out a clear pathway which can give us what we desire to have in rebuilding the process of our nationhood.
“This is not an event, it is a process. Therefore, we are starting in October from the state, through the state consultative fora, to the zones, for the zonal dialogue series, then come to the nation’s capital for the national summit which will be in November.”
