Human rights lawyer Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) has lamented the possibility of Nigerians having to choose between current President Muhammadu Buhari and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for the 2019 general election, stating that it portends trouble for the populace.
Mr. Falana said this while making a contribution during a panel discussion at the ongoing Lagos Book and Arts Festival holding in Freedom Park, Lagos.
He urged Nigerians to make use of the internet in raising serious developmental issues as regards the future of the country.
The human right lawyer also took a swipe at Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State who he described as a ‘Trump’.
“We have a Trump in Ekiti. Somebody is going out there to eat boli with the people. Somebody who says [he believes] in stomach infrastructure, stealing all the money but giving people just some tokenism and he is being celebrated.”
He decried the rot in the Nigerian university system. “Where are the intellectuals in our universities?” he asked. “We now have ‘yahoo-yahoo’ professors. People are made professors now because of where the came from. It is not about your contribution to the intellectual enterprise. Now Vice Chancellor is elected on the basis of ethnicity.”
Mr. Falana also condemned spiritual leaders who are merely concerned about building a more religious home at the expense of other institutions.
“Most of the richest pastors in the world are from Nigeria, yet our people are getting poorer. If many of us had not attended mission schools built by the Catholics and the Anglicans… school and hospitals but what are we building now? What are our churches giving us? They are promising to build churches in every street. All the warehouses in Apapa built by Awolowo have all become churches and business centers.”