The Custodian of the Throne of Oduduwa, the ancestral father of the Yoruba speaking people worldwide and foremost Royal Father, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, on Thursday said that his people do not want to experience any other war.
Specifically, he told President Muhammadu Buhari that his people want peace.
The monarch spoke with State House correspondents after meeting with the President at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, stressing the need to silence the worrisome drum of war sounding loud across the country.
He said he that he came to speak to the President on behalf of traditional rulers towards improving security situation in the country.
In his words: “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 and 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 and the President has given good directives to security chiefs including the IG to visit all traditional institutions in the south west.”
Oba Ogunwusi said that everything must be done to put all security agencies to good use and work with the locals to separate the bad eggs, stressing: “We shouldn’t keep over hyping war and we still want to keep the peace in the south west. We don’t want anarchy.”
According to him, 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.
“What is important is for the youths not to take laws into their hands, killing and causing violence. The drums of war is resonating loud and we are very worried.
“We need more federal apparatus to defend ourselves. Reinforcement from federal government.
“We understand more than anybody. We don’t want war and we want to work with Government to bring peace
“We are not saying all Fulanis are bad, it’s about the bad guys working under the name of Fulani.”
