Afenifere tackles Akeredolu for opposing Yoruba Nation agitation

The pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, has slammed the Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, over his remark on the Yoruba Nation agitation.

Akeredolu had on Friday urged the promoters of the Yoruba Nation agitators to rethink.

The governor, who spoke at the launch of the Emblem to flag off the 2023 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Celebrations in Akure, declared that the people of South-West would not allow any agitation to destroy the legacies of the nation’s heroes.

He stressed the importance of Nigeria’s unity and insisted no sit-at-home order similar to the one imposed on the South-East by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), would be tolerated in any state in the region.

However, in a statement issued on Saturday by its Secretary-General, Sola Ebiseni, Afenifere berated the governor for playing to the gallery.

It added that Akeredolu’s statement was lacking in statesmanship and national conciliation.

The group noted that only an arrangement that would guarantee regional equity would ensure Nigeria’s corporate existence.

The statement read: “The statement credited to Governor Akeredolu of Ondo State at the launching of an emblem appeal to flag off the 2023 Armed Forces Remembrance Day, unfortunately, confirmed the scarcity of statesmanship in our clime particularly faced with the lust for political power.

“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.

READ ALSO: ‘IPOB’s menace will not be repeated in South-West,’ Akeredolu cautions Yoruba nation agitators

“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.

“ In short, his vituperation on that occasion was most disastrously bereft of statesmanship and national conciliation.

“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, 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.

“Incidentally, those who fought the civil war truly shed their youthful blood and have seen all about Nigeria, are now in the vanguard of the national movement not only for Southern but in the quest for the requisite equity are in the queue for the Nigerian President of South-East extraction.

“There lies the solution to separatist agitations and not self-serving sanctimonious pontifications.”

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