2015: ‘Don’t encourage those predicting Nigeria’s disintegration’

A former Minister of Mines, Power and Steel Development, Alhaji Sarafa Tunji Isola, has warned Nigerians not to play into the hands of some American researchers, who had predicted that Nigeria would disintegrated by 2015.
He made the call while speaking at the Annual Distinguished Personality Lecture of the Graduate Students of Political Science,

University of Ibadan, entitled “Party Politics and the Survival of Democratic Government in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.”
Isola said for the nation to shame its enemies, there was the need for stringent laws against political thuggery, rigging, and political killings as another general election was fast approaching.
He said: “This prediction has been shifted to 2030. Whether it is today or tomorrow, the nation must not play into the hands of its enemies. If some external interests or powers want Nigeria to disintegrate, we must do our best to ensure this does not happen.”
According to Alhaji Isola, “if a man sets trap for you, he can’t carry your legs into the trap.”

He added that the formation of political parties in the country, as at present, was still “strangulating democracy in Nigeria.”
“Since 1999 when the Fourth Republic began with the end of military rule, Nigeria has been struggling to sustain and consolidate its democracy. President Goodluck Jonathan administration has been striving to ensure free, fair, peaceful, secure and credible elections because elections constitute the heart or engine room of democracy.”
He said the absence of solid principles and ideology has enabled politicians to move from one party to another, adding that “all these and more have had far-reaching effects on democratic governance in our fatherland.”