Presidential candidate of the defunct National Advanced Party (NAP), Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, yesterday asked the Presidency to drop the planned centenary celebration of Nigeria's amalgamation.
Braithwaite, who spoke as guest lecturer at this year's Jesus Carnival, 37th Diocesan Anniversary of Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion and 170th year of Christianity in Egbaland, urged Nigeria's leaders to use the occasion of her centenary to destroy the nation's last inglorious relics.
The rights activist, who described such a celebration as a disgrace to the present generation, urged Nigerians to take their destinies in their hands, stressing that the reality of the amalgamation is bond to expire in 2014.
He said: "Instead of clinking glasses of champagne celebrating and venerating a bad history of enslavement, this generation should use the occasion of the nation's centenary to finally destroy its last inglorious relics and simultaneously birth a modern and progressive nation."
In what also appeared as reiterating the calls by many Nigerians for the convocation of Sovereign National Conference (SNC), Braithwaite said that the reality of the 1914 amalgamation, both in legal and political context, is deemed to cease when it assumes 99 years except the people concerned voluntarily agree to its terms and modify them.
He predicted that whether or not the current administration buys into the imperatives of a Peoples Conference to agree on the national and political direction of Nigeria, "the current generation would themselves surely, hopefully in an orderly, but firm manner, resolve this core issue of their own destiny."
Braithwaite also called on the leaders to learn from the on-going revolutions in Egypt, warning that "the charade and fraudulent elections contrived willynilly, per se is not a guarantee of security of tenure of office for an unfit and insensitive government."
