President Muhammadu Buhari has said that ethnicity and religion are no issue in Nigeria but the people are the problem of  Nigeria. 

Mr Buhari, who has been heavily criticised by the Nigerians for his lopsided appointments that favours northern Muslims above their southern counterparts, made this statement at a meeting with members of the Muhammadu Buhari/Osinbajo (MBO) Dynamic Support Group on Wednesday, his spokesperson Femi Adesina said in a statement. 

“Our problem is not ethnicity or religion, it is ourselves,” Mr Buhari said, claiming that his fellow northern  Muslims denied him justice on three different occasions when he challenged presidential election results of 2003, 2006 and 20011.

“After my third appearance in the Supreme Court, I came out to speak to those who were present then. I told them that from 2003, I’d spent 30 months in court. 

“The President of the Court of Appeal, the first port of call for representation by presidential candidates then, was my classmate in secondary school in Katsina. We spent six years in the same class, Justice Umaru Abdullahi. 

“My legal head was Chief Mike Ahamba, a Roman Catholic and an Ibo man. When the President of the court decided that we should present our case, my first witness was in the box. 

“Ahamba insisted that a letter should be sent to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to present the register of constituencies in some of the states, to prove that what they announced was false. It was documented. 

“When they gave judgment, another Ibo man, the late Justice Nsofor, asked for the reaction from INEC to the letter sent to them. They just dismissed it. He then decided to write a minority judgment. That was after 27 months in court. 

“We went to the Supreme Court. Who was Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN)? A Hausa-Fulani like me, from Zaria. The members of the panel went in for about 30 minutes, came back to say they were proceeding on break. They went for thee months. When they came back, it didn’t take them 15 minutes, they dismissed us. 

“In 2007, who was the CJN? Kutigi. Again, a Muslim from the North. After eight months or so, he dismissed the case. 

“Again in 2011, because I was so persistent, Musdafa, a Fulani man like me, from Jigawa, neighbor to my state, was CJN. He dismissed my case. 

“I’ve taken you round this to prove that our problem is not ethnicity or religion. It is ourselves,” Mr Buhari said. 

Last September, Peoples Gazette exclusively reported how the State Security Service, under the headship of Yusuf Bichi, conducted a secret recruitment of 535 northerners  and 93 southerners. 

The Gazette had also in an exclusive report  in December, detailed how President Buhari engineered a desperate and sectional move to edge out Moses Jitoboh, a southerner, from becoming the next Inspector General of Police after Mohammed Adamu.

Section Seven of the Nigeria Police Act 2020 had positioned Mr Jitoboh, 50, as the only qualified officer to become the next inspector-general out of all the 24 AIGs currently in the Nigeria Police Force. 

However, Mr Buhari illegally appointed Usman Baba Alkali, ignoring the provisions of law.