The Federal Government has warned against talks about the country’s division.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo gave the warning yesterday at the Eid el-Kabir lunch at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
The vice president said Nigeria’s unity was God-ordained.
He said: “Our energies and resources shouldn’t be spent again on debate about division. Our manifest destiny is to be a great nation, not to be a nation where we are talking about division. We must focus out time, our energies and our resources on being that a great nation that God has called us to be.
“I think we have started building that country already. Despite all the noise that we hear, all that noise is part of the building. Everybody knows that you cannot have birth without noise. No woman delivers a baby without some noise and without some pains. What we are hearing today are the noises and the pains of that great nation that God is about to give birth to.”
Osinbajo said he was confident that the nation would remain united ‘because I am convinced that God’s plan and purpose for Nigeria is that we would be the preeminent black nation in the world.
“This is a nation that will show forth in culture, in technology and in commerce, God’s investment in the black race. This is why today some people say four blacks, some say five, one must be a Nigerian. That is not a mean attainment at all. That nation that God has in mind is a diverse nation; diverse in resources, in ideas, in opinions.
“This is the type of country that God has ordained. Where we have diversity of opinions, diversity of ideas. People saying their own things here and there. But, he has also planned that this country will remain together, and that we’ll be a nation that is gifted just as we have the oil, the gas, and the most arable lands than most continents,” he said.
Osinbajo said President Muhammadu Buhari was unable to attend the event because he was celebrating sallah at his country home in Daura.
The vice president said the significance of the Eid el-Kabir celebration was the willingness demonstrated by Prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son.
He asked all Nigerians to realise that they must make sacrifices “necessary to attain the destiny that God has brought unto our people.”
