*COMMUNIQUE
Communique issued at the end of AFENIFERE General Meeting held on Tuesday 29th October, 2024 at the Isanya-Ogbo , Ogun State residence of the Leader, Chief Ayo Adebanjo.
AFENIFERE reviewed the unremitting distressing state of the nation’s social and economic situation under the President Bola Tinubu administration.
Meeting observed that the distressful condition of the country is exemplified in pervasive hardship, unflagging insecurity and incapacitating hunger.
Meeting noted the absence of official empathy respecting the people’s agonising situation.
Meeting has instead observed an unwearying policy enunciation astensibly aimed at compounding the woes of the people e.g the unabating fuel price hike.
Meeting further observed the cavalier conduct of state affairs in, for instance, the absence of any coherent or unequivocal programme on the part of the government and its party.
Meeting’s attention was drawn to an article published in the Vanguard news paper of 26th October, 2024 titled Is Tinubu settling scores? authored by a Dr Ugoji Egbujo respecting President Bola Tinubu’s sleight of hand or skillful deception in his conduct of state affairs.
Meeting noted that Dr Egbujo mischievously linked President Tinubu with AFENIFERE because he is Yoruba.
Meeting approved a wholly definitive response to the article. The response is produced hereunder.
Is Dr. Ugoji Egbujo being deliberately mischievous?
First, he knows that Tinubu is not Afenifere. He masquraded as one in 1999 and since 2003 has done everything in his power to divide and neutralise Afenifere in politics. He also knows that the Afenifere that has asserted itself as a socio-political group as true descendants of Awo’s politics supported in the last elections, not Tinubu but Obi. So why try and hang an Afenifere tag on Tinubu? He is Yoruba, but not an Afenifere. There is a difference.
Just as he is tagging Tinubu as Afenifere, he is also saying “don’t blame the Yoruba”. Indeed, just like not all Igbos supported the antics of Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan who surrendered his government to the antics of two of its most powerful officials to fill every critical office not commandeered by the SS with their Igbo kinsmen and women. It was so bad that Sen. Bode Olajumoke, a PDP foundation member took a full page advert in a newspaper early in the days of Jonathan’s administration, complaining about the shenanigan being orchestrated by Jonathan’s Secretary to Government who was reportedly scrubbing off Yoruba names from the list of potential members of the boards of parastatals and was replacing them with Igbo names. Yoruba marginalisation in Jonathan’s government became so scandalously bad that both Chief Bode George and Afenifere had to lead separate delegations to Jonathan to ask him to redress the obvious active discrimination against the Yoruba that was being perpetrated by those in his government, who may be, on account of his name Azikiwe, had decided to appropriate his government as an estate of their ethnic group! It took the looming elections of 2015 for Jonathan to wake up. By then, it was too late. Yoruba, who stood by Jonathan in his trying moments, had decided that Jonathan could not look after their interests. All his belated efforts to buy Yoruba leaders with money failed.
Dr. Egbujo also acknowledged that lopsided appointments were a hallmark of Buhari’s government. It was the same with all the military governments since 1983, which ultimately provoked the National Question debate under Babangida after the Orkar coup. Afenifere has provided the answer to the National Question: restoration of Nigeria back to a more devolved federation.
This is the only way to put a terminal end to these endless cycles of central government being seen as the turn Nigeria into the estate of any ethnic group or alliance of ethnic groups who rig themselves into power at the centre to the exclusion of other groups.
Afenifere invites Dr. Egbujo to join in the struggle to create a more balanced federation, for which Afenifere or its derivative has fought since 1951.
Afenifere remains the conscience of the nation and the refuge of the oppressed and marginalised as exemplified by its consistent advocacy, above any other political group in the history of Nigeria, for the right of all minority groups to self-determined regional or state governments through plebicite Afenifere had championed from the 1st Republic.
In the 2nd Republic when Shugaba, a Nigerian citizen, was deported for political reasons, it was UPN (a derivative of Action Group/Afenifere) that took up the challenge of NPN’s egregious violation of Shagaba’s rights, though he was not a member of UPN.
When Babangida annulled the 1993 Presidential election as Dr. Egbujo rightly acknowledged, again, Afenifere as an integral part of NADECO bore the brunt of Abacha’s despotic crackdown on democratic forces that tormented his government. Even Afenifere rejected the Shonekan Interim contraption, a cynical construction to hoodwink the Yoruba to abandon the principle of the citizens being the ultimate repository of sovereignty of the state expressed through regular free and fair elections on the altar of ethnic solidarity with Shonekan.
Afenifere still stands by its long-held principles and should not be associated with ethnic chauvinism. We remain the same political family that supported Obi in the last election and chose Chief Phillip Umeadi as VP nominee to Awolowo in 1979 and before then had S. G. Ikoku as Secretary of Action Group.
We remain the conscience of the nation and must not be associated with any group or group of persons, no matter their borrowed nomenclature with these prebendal appropriation of the nation wearing the veneer of an ethnic agenda. It has never led to the advancement of the people. These unjust grabbing of the commanding heights of power and the economy on the pretext of agencies of ethnic groups is fraudulent and must be rejected. How was the lot of the common Hausa/Fulani or the Northerner, on behalf of whom Buhari ostensibly ruled, transformed during and after his ruinous rule. Or how did the lot of the average Niger Delta or SS or SE citizen change with the chauvinistic rule of Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan? They were all prebendal games amongst the political elite.
Afenifere’s belief is anchored on building an egalitarian society, focused on providing the greatest good to the greatest number of citizens. Any government that fails these tests is not Afenifere, it may wear a masqurade that proclaims it is Afenifere, it may even be surrounded by Yoruba people who claim to be Afenifere but true Afenifere know that it is not Afenifere. Any government that does not speak federalism or act in a federalist manner like Afenifere, has no ideology, demonstrates no discipline or transparency in managing public funds and its leaders are wont to revel in outrageous self-serving extravagant lifestyles can not be Afenifere.
If it doesn’t look like a duck, doesn’t swim like a duck, and doesn’t quack like a duck, then it’s not a duck. Tinubu is Yoruba, not an Afenifere.
*HRH Oba Oladipo Olaitan, Deputy Leader
*Alade Rotimi John, Deputy Secretary General
