The Southern Forum has described the face-off between former President. Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan as an ill-wind that should be handled with great care by political centres in the interest of survival of the country.

The Forum's. Director of Media and public Communications, Honourable T. A.  Adebisi in a statement in Ibadan on Wednesday, urged the two leaders to sheath their swords to embrace the path of understanding and reconciliation.

According to the forum, the unguarded altercation of both leaders could not in any way be in the best interest of Nigeria. The Southern Forum was established by a Conference of Governors, legislators, political and cultural group leaders held in Enugu, Enugu State on December 19, 2005, and had successfully campaigned for an equitable distribution of the rulership of the country to give room to either the South and South East to produce the president at the completion of the tenure of Obasanjo.

"We are happy that this was eventually achieved with the Jonathan Presidency in 2011 election.," it said The Forum added that it had initiated a reconciliation move to realign the two leaders, saying that a meeting of its National Executive Committee due to hold soon will work out the strategies.

It said the move becomes necessary because "we cannot fold our arms and see the fruit of our struggle for equity, justice and fairness in the politics of the country frittered away by communication gap between Obasanjo and Jonathan."

The Forum noted that already some organizations and individuals who profit in confusion were already feasting on the disagreement to heat up the polity, saying that this cannot be allowed to continue. It therefore called on all people of goodwill to restrain themselves from being drawn by emotion to join the bandwagon on either side of the arguments in order to stop the denigration of our nascent democratic culture.

"We would not join issues with those agent provocateurs of discord who are already blowing beyond proportion the sincere word of a father to a son in their ulterior motive to exacerbate the simmering security crisis in the nation. "Rather we should do everything possible to salvage the country from the brink and