Oodua Nation: Afenifere lambasts South West govs

Tamarauemi Ebimini

The Pan Yoruba Socio- Political Group, Afenifere, has lashed out at the chairman of the south West Governors Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu, on his statement that agitators of Oodua nation should perish the thought.

Recall that Akeredolu, had at the launch of Emblem Appeal to flag off the 2023 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Celebrations, vowed that states in the Southwest will not allow any agitation that will scuttle the sacrifices of the Nation’s heroes.

The governor had declared that “Those clamouring for Oodua nation will not succeed. No sit-at-home order will be tolerated in any state in the Southwest.

But, the Secretary General of Afenifere, Chief Olusola Ebiseni, in a statement issued in Akure, the state capital, said that statement credited to Akeredolu ” unfortunately confirmed the scarcity of statesmanship in our clime particularly faced with the lust for political power.

The statement entitled, “Akeredolu: Between Equity And Opportunism” reads “We have no problem with the Governor playing to the gallery, as a glorified Chief Security Officer, urging that security forces clamp down on any person or group whose activities he interpreted as capable of disintegrating the Nigerian State because we are no less patriotic and committed to its continuing corporate existence.

“We are also in the same boat with him that “this country is very important to some of us” and the recognition that agitation and protests are rights protected in a democratic society.

“Our worry however is that Akeredolu, even as the Chairman of the Southern Governors Forum, would not,  in deference to that high pedestal, wean himself from petty politicking which sacrifices equity needed for national peace and cohesion in preference of crass opportunism.

“Truth be told, there is no region of Nigeria where the elite including the ruling class in Government has been able to determine the methods adopted by agitators or succeeded in  checkmating  the effects thereof.

“So, let Akeredolu not boast of any capacity to dictate the method adopted by the Yoruba agitators or seek to set the rest  of Nigeria against his  Ndigbo colleagues or the entire South East in his unhidden separatist agenda of securing undue advantage for his party and region in the quest  for the Nigerian  President of Southern extraction.

“We state for the umpteenth time, that the true and real recipe for peace and continued corporate existence of Nigeria, ipsofacto, is an arrangement  that will guarantee regional equity and not an ‘emi lo kan’ philosophy in the mode of King Louis’s l’état c’est moi.”

The group declared that “there lies the solution to separatist agitations and not self-serving sanctimonious pontifications.”