Kwara: Moro People Cry Out, Urge Governor To Redress Their Pathetic Plight

By Steve Oni, Ilorin

Leader of the Kwara state House of Assembly in the Second Republic, Chief Wole Oke, has decried the marginalisation of the people of Moro local government area, particularly the non recognition of their traditional rulers by the state government, saying the world has gone past the era and age of feudalism still being exhibited in the state.

It would be recalled that the people of Moro local government area are still being subjected to the whims and caprices of the Ilorin Emirate Traditional Council by the powers that be, despite a subsisting court judgment, not appealed by government or anybody, declaring that Moro local government is not part of the Ilorin Emirate Council having been given a separate local government.

In a statement, Chief Wole Oke said Chief Mohammed Woru’s reference to the people of Moro local government as “slaves and conquered people and that towns and villages in Moro LGA are satellites of Ilorin Emirate” were more of diatribes than anything one can consider decent enough deserving of any reaction, saying “I am hard put to ever think that this claim or assertion could ever be put down by any knowledgeable historian.”

He added that, if Moro LGA were truly populated by ‘migrants from Ilorin’ as claimed by Woru, Moro LGA today should not be having a population preponderantly origins Yoruba who account for about 99 percent of the total population of the area.

Chief Oke said the traditional rulers of Shao and Jebba were graded chiefs alongside the Emir of Ilorin right from the colonial days, wondering why some people in Ilorin Emirate in connivance with government would revert and cancel the legitimate Grade Three titles given by the state government to the traditional rulers of Shao and Jebba to perpetrate feudalism and lordship of the Emir of Ilorin over the people of Moro LGA.

He has therefore appealed to Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq to right the wrong, “listen to the people of Moro local government area and consider righteously the issue that has become a matter of great concern and the major subject of discussion today among the people. This is a struggle that has spanned close to five decades.”

Chief Oke drew the governor’s attention to how the two traditional rulers in the area had been graded and degraded by successive governments, saying governors who degraded them did so to satisfy certain obnoxious interest to perpetuate their subjugation by the Ilorin Emirate Council.

He said: “Your Excellency Sir, the courage and the political will to ensure that justice is done to the cause of the people of Moro should be mustered, fastened to faith in God, the just One.”

Chief Oke said the governor should now the people of Moro to continue to be psychologically traumatised having been stigmatised with ‘the moniker and label of slaves” which they are not, adding that it is the inalienable right of the people to be free from all forms of bondages, particularly ‘from this imposed foreign traditional rulership system’.

Urging Governor AbdulRazaq to do the needful by restoring and upgrading the two degraded royal fathers of Shao and Jebba, he said more traditional chiefs across the five districts of the local government area should be recognised and graded appropriately.