A former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo has asserted that Nigeria is currently more divided than it has ever been after the 2023 general elections, stressing that the country needs healing.
He advocated national reconciliation in order to enhance the healing needed for national peace and cohesion.
Obasanjo said this on Thursday at the Yaradua Centre in Abuja during a book presentation, ‘The Unending Quest For Reform: An Intellectual Memoir’ authored by Dr. Tunji Olaopa.
The ex-President’s comment comes about two days after a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Muhammed Sanusi, said Nigeria is currently more divided than it was during the civil war between July 1967 and January 1970.
Read Also: Ekweremadu: Obasanjo Writes UK Court, Pleads For Clemency
Obasanjo had on Wednesday written to the Chief Clerk of the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London, making a case for clemency for former deputy Senate president, Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Beatrice, who was recently convicted for organ harvesting in the United Kingdom.
In a letter dated the 3rd of April, which was obtained by Africa Today News, New York, Obasanjo said while Ekweremadu’s action was condemnable, it was, however, important to take cognizance of his contribution to Nigeria’s development, his good deeds, and the plight of his ailing daughter in meting out punishment to him.
The Old Bailey Court in London had found Ekweremadu, Beatrice, and a medical doctor, Obinna Obeta guilty of conspiring to exploit a 21-year-old street trader from Lagos, with intent to provide his kidney to Sonia (Ekweremadu’s daughter) in an £80,000 private transplant at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
Obasanjo, who said he had known Ekweremadu for over two decades appeal to the court and the government of the United Kingdom to be magnanimous enough to temper justice with mercy and let punishment that may come to the lawmaker take their good character and parental instinct and care into consideration.