(Text of Press Conference On The State Of The Nation Held In Abuja on March 4, 2010)- Gentlemen of the press: The alleged return of President Umaru Yar’adua under the cover of darkness on February 23, 2010; and the refusal by his handlers to allow any person, including the Acting President, access to him has further demonstrated the deep contempt the cabal that has hijacked the president to hold the nation to ransom has for the rest of Nigerians. That no one has seen the President over a week after he was smuggled into the country has also exposed the clique around him as a band of liars who have been feeding the nation with falsehoods in the last 100 days. Or how come that a man who was reported to be undertaking 25 minutes of daily aerobics suddenly returned home and cannot address Nigerians or spare a minute to meet with the man who was holding forte for him while he was away?

Had we not been vigilant, they would have continued to lie to us by using his name to issue all sorts of directives which the ailing President is not privy; like a spokesman who did not see or hear a word from him trying to play on our intelligence.

Two major developments in the last 72 hours have shown that we would be greatly mistaken to assume that we are dealing with rational people who would follow the path of reason and save the nation from a needless crisis:

1) The 36 Governors met on Tuesday night to formally announce their membership of the cabal and setting themselves against the people of Nigeria through their resolution that the state of uncertainty in the country should continue by not bringing the Yar’adua saga to a closure. And to show the Governors as the most self -serving group in the land today, they pushed for the next general elections to hold in January 2011 in order to jettison the Uwais report which stipulates six months before handover in order to retain the status quo of manipulation of the electoral process;

2 The Executive Council of the Federation shamelessly bowed to the to the blackmail of the Governors as they met on Wednesday without discussing the Yar’adua health situation which would have led to the invocation of Section 144 of the Constitution as widely expected by Nigerians beyond the useless "report" of a jamboree committee that went to Saudi Arabia on wild goose chase.

The SNG views these acts as direct affronts on our dignity as a people and an audacious challenge of our will to resist impunity. We are being told that what we think or feel amount to nothing for as long as the cabal thinks otherwise. We are already the laughing stock of the world and all those who are not inured from shame cannot be comfortable that this childish game of hide-and-seek is going on in the name of a polity that we belong. We must bring this to head without further delay. Every day that this goes on further diminishes us as a people and makes us look like subjects in a banana republic.

WAY FORWARD

Our patience has run out as a nation as there is limit to how far a country can survive on good luck. If we want to retrieve our country back we must do the needful. To this end we have resolved to settle for these irreducible minimum:

1. A constitutional resolution of the anomaly of an invisible President co-existing with an Acting President constantly undermined by the cabal by the invocation of Section 144 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria without further delay;

2. Urgent electoral reforms with a wholesale implementation of the Uwais report as the benchmark to restore the integrity of the ballot box so that never again shall we be governed by a set of officials with dubious mandate like those who have taken us through 100 days of the theatre of the absurd;

3. In furtherance of the above, the Acting President must urgently come up with a Harmonisation Committee on what the Senate and the House of Representatives are doing on the Uwais report;

4. A non-partisan transitional cabinet of the brightest and the best from all corners of Nigeria must be put together by the Acting President to chart a new course for the country while the Presidential Advisory Committee can remain truly advisory as the nation requires new thinking and new thinkers; and

5. Immediate implementation of the PUBLIC PROCUREMENT ACT signed into law in 2007 by Yar’adua but which has yet to be implemented because of the sustenance of the corrupt tendencies associated with the weekly award of contracts by EXCOF.

CALL TO ACTION.

It must be stated that the position of the Save Nigeria Group is that the entirely of the crises we are facing in this country today came about from lack of true and accountable leadership at all levels of government. To redress this issue, Nigeria must be given the right to elect their leaders through the institutionalization of a functional and transparent electoral reform process. We must have the choice to determine who governs us.

For now, in demonstration of our readiness to show in concrete terms that we mean that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, we are rolling out graduated measures to retrieve our country from the cabal. The first in the series is a mass movement to convey the feelings of Nigerians to the next meeting of EXCOF in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on Wednesday March 10, 2010.This shall be a prelude to other forms of nationwide civil disobedience measures to put a final closure to the shenanigans of the cabal and enforce electoral reforms to ensure that we are no longer dealt with in the old ways.

We extend fraternal calls to all social formations in Nigeria and all our country men and women for cooperation in the just struggle to save Nigeria, change it and make it great. We are in for a sustained and focused struggle to end the second slavery. We do not promise that this road will not be rough; it’s just that there is no other way if we are committed to salvaging our country. But one thing we are absolutely sure of is that victory is certain.

And for the umpteenth time we appeal to men of the armed forces to allow the interplay of democratic forces to resolve whatever vis at stake as we are resolved that a military coup will not be tolerated in our country again.

Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

FOR SAVE NIGERIA GROUP:

ENGR.BUBA GALADIMA MR YINKA ODUMAKIN MALLAM SALIHU LUKMAN

MR OSITA OKECHUKWU MR MIKE IGINI MALLAM TANKO YUNUSA