“Today the Yorubas do not speak with one voice any more like it was during Pa Awolowo’s time. There is the Afenifere Renewal Group led by Tinubu and Chief Bisi Akande. There is Ilana Omo Yoruba led by Professor Banji Akintoye and Professor Wale Adeniran and Igboho Oosha. There is the Yoruba Elders Congress and the Agbekoya Group and the OPC headed by Gani Adams and the other Groups too many to recount.”
If Pa Adebanjo, a distinguished lawyer was in any doubt about what to do before committing the whole Yoruba Southwest to any candidate or whether to still put that decision on hold until the political cloud is clearer, he should have sought the advice of his fellow Ogun State citizen in Yemi Osinbajo the Vice President who had navigated similar troubled waters when his boss President Buhari was so sick that rumors went around that he had actually died in London and was flown out to be buried in Saudi Arabia without his wife or any member of his family or Government in attendance which sounded like a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury.
It turned out to be a big lie foisted on Nigerians by Nnamdi Kanu. There was no Jubrilla from Sudan. Some cynics and lunatics still believe till tomorrow that a body double is still the Buhari still gallivanting all over the world while the whole country is on fire.
Young Yemi Osinbajo did not go ahead to declare himself the President of Nigeria. He still remained loyal and faithful running every major decision he took as Acting President by his boss even on his sick bed in London.
In spite of that loyalty, that has not stopped his Caliphate boss from using Osinbajo and dumping him when it mattered the most and to secretly settle for a consensus candidate in Ahmed Lawan, his fellow Fulani to be his successor while clandestinely knocking the heads of too many candidates from the South namely Tinubu, Osinbajo, Kayode Fayemi, Amosun, Rotimi Amaechi to run against each other while putting his Fulani last card joker close to his chest until 24 hours before the APC Convention in Abuja.
The APC today would have been better served if Yemi Osinbajo were to be their flag bearer. He would have been a more effective antidote to a Peter Obi.
Buhari had created that wedge in Yoruba solidarity to reduce the Whole Southwest to a House of cards. Osinbajo is young and brilliant and cannot be intimidated by Peter Obi.
The only person Buhari had confided in, in dumping Osinbajo and throwing the Yoruba in total disarray was his handpicked APC Chairman Abubakar Adamu another smooth operator and major player in the Fulani Agenda for Nigeria.
How Ahmed Bola Tinubu aka Amoda Ogunlere had managed to emerge the APC flag bearer in a landslide victory was a miracle left for the gods to unravel but the credit had to go to the 14 APC Governors who had masterminded the unexpected turnaround and coronation of Tinubu as the flag bearer at the APC Convention.
If Tinubu now goes on to lose to another Fulani major player in Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, it would be clear to all and sundry that the Northerners led by the the Caliphate Buhari and his Fulani Oligarchy of Nigeria have landed where they had wanted to be from the “get go” not to relinquish power to anyone but a Fulani “born- to-rule” as always.
The Fulani are far more astute and strategic and far more matured politicians than the rest of us in the Southern half of Nigeria as eloquently reminded us by Revd. Chigbu Moses in one of his comments I have seen.
The development has only reaffirmed the status quo ante Bellum of “everybody for himself and God for us all in Nigeria” meaning that the Arewa would support another Fulani in Atiku and the Igbos would support Peter Obi while the Yorubas would have no other choice than to support Tinubu
Then the Minorities of Nigeria in the South/South and the Middle Belt now become the swing vote and the beautiful Bride to be wooed by the 3 dominant Geo- political Zones of Nigeria.
This would simply mean that nothing has changed in Nigeria and that all we are doing is merely circling the wagons and moving two steps forward and four steps backwards which is retrogression if you see what I see.
That is one reason that Pa Adebanjo should have consulted with Pa Fashoranti before making his pitch for Peter Obi.
Pa Fashoranti remains the last substantive Leader of the Afenifere Group whose notice to resign or retire has necessitated making Pa Adebanjo the Acting Leader until Pa Fashoranti’s resignation is finally ratified to bring a final closure to the process.
One of them endorsing Peter Obi and the other endorsing Tinubu opens the Yoruba endorsement to ridicule by the two remaining dominant groups of Nigeria and that is not where the Yorubas need to be to be taken seriously.
I repeat that it is painful to watch what is currently going on in the House of Oodua.
It is true that the old Afenifere is no longer what it used to be under his founder the great Pa Obafemi Awolowo and Pa Adekunle Ajasin and Pa Abraham Adesanya but the body still remains a force to reckon with, nonetheless,in Yoruba Affairs and solidarity.
It leaves a sour taste in the mouth,however, that the Group is now polarized, factionalized and fractured now that two of our most respected leaders are openly at loggerhead, washing their dirty linens in the market place and exposing the fragility of the Yoruba Unity we so much need and crave for our political survival and self-actualization in the Nigerian Commonwealth.
Today the Yorubas do not speak with one voice any more like it was during Pa Awolowo’s time. There is the Afenifere Renewal Group led by Tinubu and Chief Bisi Akande.
There is Ilana Omo Yoruba led by Professor Banji Akintoye and Professor Wale Adeniran and Igboho Oosha. There is the Yoruba Elders Congress and the Agbekoya Group and the OPC headed by Gani Adams and the other Groups too many to recount.
The prognosis is not looking good at all for Yoruba solidarity at this point, if the truth be told and sad to say.
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