Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, has cautioned the elites to stop fanning calls for the nation to break up, stating that professors may be left with no option than to work in bakeries in neighbouring Togo just to survive, if that happens.
Speaking in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria on Wednesday, April 21, the minister said, “Our challenge is more with the elites, not with the common people. Go to the remotest part of Nigeria today, you will see Nigerians from different tribes, culture and religion living together peacefully. Elites ought to take the lead in cementing the unity of the country, but when the elites start preaching tribal hatred, people believe them because they think they know better.
“Nigeria accounts for 70 percent of West Africa’s population and if Nigeria should disintegrate today, we are going to overrun Benin Republic, Togo, Niger and other neighbouring countries. The elites will suffer more because some professors could be working in bakeries in Togo just to survive. We saw it happened when the Liberians came here during their civil war. It is in their own enlightened interest that they should work to fix Nigeria. Many of them have more than one passport — American, British, Irish — and at the first crack of trouble, they are gone”.
