Call For Yoruba Exit From Nigeria: Afenifere Dissociates Self

-Says Tinubu Already On The Right Path Of Making Nigeria Better For Everybody

The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural and socio-political organization, Afenifere, has described the call for the exit of Yoruba from Nigeria as undesirable, self-serving and unnecessary ‘at the moment at least’.

In a statement by the organisation’s National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Jare Ajayi, issued on Monday, Afenifere maintained that the problems bedeviling Yorubaland and Nigeria as a whole “are not merely because multi-ethnic groups make up the country. Rather, the country’s multivarious problems can be traced to lack of good governance.”

It would be recalled that Professor Banji Akintoye, leader of Ilana Omo Oodua and Mr. Sunday Adeyemo a.k.a Igboho, were reported to have jointly sent a letter to President Ahmed Bola Tinubu in which they want the President to within the next two months, set up a negotiation team that will midwife the exit of Yoruba people from Nigeria.

The duo (Akintoye and Adeyemo Igboho) in the letter to the President claimed:
“We have the honour to send to Your Excellency this important letter on behalf of the many millions of Yoruba people at home in Yorubaland in Nigeria and in the Yoruba Diaspora in almost all countries across the world.”

But Afenifere faulted the duo’s position on many grounds. First was on the reason adduced for the request to exit Nigeria which was on the basis of perceived marginalization that Yorubas are suffering in Nigeria. “There is no doubt that the lot of Yorubas can be better than it presently is. But whatever deprivation Yorubas may be experiencing today in the Nigerian nation is not due mainly to the fact that they are Yorubas. The deprivations they may be suffering could be traced to the general misgovernance that corporate Nigeria had been subjected to over the years if not decades. Meaning that marginalization, deprivation, injustice, misgovernance etc that Yorubas may be experiencing today is, if truth is to be told, not peculiar to Yorubas alone.

“We are not, by this submission, claiming that Yorubas are getting the best or should not be better served. Far from it. What we are saying is that it would be unfair to use the excuse of the deprivations in the land as an alibi to want to leave Nigeria. What we should clamour for is good governance that will enable every segment of the society to have a better lease of life”, Afenifere spokesman emphasized.

To underscore his point, the spokesman asserted that when, during the First Republic, the country Nigeria ran a semblance of true federalism in which each region was able to determine its own affairs, life was relatively better and the agitation for separation was not rife.