By Mathew Dadiya, Abuja 

Perplexed by the rising threats of insecurity in the country, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, on Thursday, said that the South West region does not want to experience any other war. 

He said, “the drum of war is sounding loud across the country.”

The revered traditional ruler raised the alarm while speaking with State House correspondents after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The royal father said that he came to speak to the President on behalf of traditional rulers towards improving security situation in the country. 

He said: “How to improve security. I came to speak on behalf of other traditional rulers. The issue at hand in the south west is real. 

“The issue of insecurity, we that live in the remote and rural areas of the south western part of the country, most of the bushes are occupied by strange people am we decided to work with the government to fish them out.

“Everybody is beating the drum of war, we don’t want war, who can stand war, we want something better for our youths. 

“We should better use them for something good other than shouting war and anarchy. We don’t want that. 

“We told the President that and he is on the same page with us. Politicians should be careful not to throw things out of proportion. 

“We should make sure things are right. Mr  President has actually given good directives to security chiefs especially the IGP, they will visit each and every traditional rulers palaces that are very sensitive in south west with immediate effect, he is going to give that directives. “We need to work very closely with them and every other security agencies in the country. 

“We will all put them to use now, it is very important for us to put them to use and work with the locals. It is very important so that we can separate the corn from the chaff.

He said that everything must be done to put all security agencies to good use and work with the locals to separate the bad eggs. 

He further stressed: “We shouldn’t keep over hyping it and say what is next is war, no. We know what Mr. President has been saying about South Western part of the country for a long time, the peace and peaceful co-existence in the South West, we still want to keep that, we don’t want any war to happen, we don’t want any attrition, we don’t want any anarchy. So that is the reason why I came to discuss with him.

The royal father said that the President assured him that he will say his own side of the story on the issue of Ruga because ‘it is being taken out of context.’

“Another thing that he assured me before leaving which I will go and give back to much more experienced traditional rulers in the South West and our leaders across board is that he has assured that he will say his own side of the story about Ruga because he wants to let the world and Nigerians in particular know the true side of the story because it’s being read out of context. 

“So we should give him that opportunity to speak as the number one citizen of the country.

“What is important for me is the youthful exuberance nature of our youths in Nigeria for them not to take laws into their hands, go into all those places and start to kill and maim, we don’t want that..

“The drums of war is resonating too much and we are very worried.

You were qouted as saying that the South Westners should defend themselves, don’t you think that could be misconstrued as beating the drum of war?

“I mentioned to you that it is real we have wrong people in our midst so when we have wrong people in our midst how are we not going to defend ourselves, that is why I came here that in terms of defending ourselves,we need more federal government apparatus to defend us because we don’t want to be defenceless, it is very important. 

“It is about the mission of defending ourselves that I am here, we need reinforcement from federal government and I just mentioned to you that the President has said he will give directives to the IGP to go and see every nooks and crannies of our traditional institutions in South West and that would probably extend across the  entire country because he mentioned to me that he worked in North East and North Central discussing and working with the traditional institutions.

“So  for us to defend ourselves is for me to come here to meet Mr. President for us to have reinforcement.

“We understand our territorymore than anybody. We understand our territory very well. What is important is that everybody in the South West right now, we are all on the same page. We don’t want war and we want to work with Government to defend our land.

What do you say about stigmatisation of the Fulanis across the whole country?

“Well it is not about stigmatisation, it is about separating the corn from the chaff. “A lot of them are mixed up with the good ones. We are not saying all Fulanis are bad, it’s not only about the  Fulanis, it’s not only about them, it’s about the bad miscreants that are even hiding under the name of Fulanis. We want to try as much as possible to work with the government right now. 

They have all the security apparatus, they are meant to defend us, that is what we are looking up to now. We have to stand up and meet with Mr. President and he has given us a listening ear and you would see a lot of result going forward.”