Some 130 Pan Yoruba groups have met in Lagos with a call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the National Assembly to restructure the country before the 2027 Presidential elections.
The meeting was attended by delegates from the old Western Region comprising Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Delta and Edo, the groups. Yoruba and Itsekiri groups from West African countries also attended the historic event.
The first day of the conference drew over 800 delegates while the second day is dedicated to the Working Group on Security and livelihood in the region. Observers at the event were ethnic and socio-cultural groups, South-South Congress, Middle-Belt Indigenous Peoples Congress, Hausa National Congress, (HNC) and other groups from South East.
The Guest Speaker, Adewale Adeoye spoke on Democracy, Peoples Power and Livelihood in the South West. He called on the people to rally round to defend democracy as mobilise for the restructuring of the country.
The group also said that the next President in 2027 should come from the South adding that anything short of power rotation is a recipe for disintegration of the country.
“Since 1960, the North has ruled Nigeria for 46 years while the South has ruled for only 20 years. Any attempt by the North to produce the next President is unacceptably and will be resisted,” the groups said.
In the communique issued after the event and signed by Popoola Ajayi, Rasaq Arogundade, Taofik Adeyemi and Alice Asoropa under the banner of Alliance for Yoruba Democratic Movements (AYDM), a coalition of 130 groups and community based organisations spread across the South West, the groups said the most important challenge facing the country is restructuring to avoid a slip into anarchy.
It said the crisis in the Middle East occasioned by the attack on Iran by Israel and the United States is being exploited by radical extremists in Nigeria to carry out their agenda of terror.
It alleged that some leaders of the old Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) are the chief suspects in the current campaign of terror being intensified across the country.
“The current Federal Government is dealing with economic, political and military wings of terrorism in Nigeria. The terrorists have economic and ideological funders masquerading as elected and unelected politicians and statesmen. It’s one single scourge with the single aim of gaining power to turn Nigeria into a theocratic fielfdom. The problem with terrorists mindset is that they take actions without thinking twice. They want to destroy the political, cultural and economic foundations of Nigeria. It is within this vortex that the President Ahmed Bola Tinubu is operating, ” the statement said.
The groups also said DISCOS, especially Ikeja Electric has become the No 1 enemy of the South West due to its gross incompetence, savage exploitation of the people and its determination to stunt industrial development of the South West
The groups condemned the recent coup attempt, warning that any attempt to topple democracy will spur unprecedented crisis. They called for the speedy trial of the alleged coup plotters, saying if found guilty, they must face the full weight of the law, including death to serve as deterrent to future coup adventurists.
“We submit that the coup was nothing but an ethnic agenda,” they said.
To avoid future recurrence, the groups called on the President and the National Assembly to speed up the immediate creation of state police and the restructuring of Nigerian security architecture which should include the decentralization of the Nigerian Defense Academy, (NDA), Nigerian Military School, Zaria and the Airforce training commands into four regions, two in the South and two in the North.
“Nigeria needs to transform from a garrison state to a truly democratic country reflecting the country’s diversity and plural civilisation. There is no time to waste. This is an historic step that should have been taken more than 50 years ago,” the group said.
The groups said they condemn “what appears like the cold complicity of a section of the Fulani elite including the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III , Sheik Ahmad Gumi, Abubakar Malami, Mallam Nasiru El-Rufai, Malami among many others who have refused to speak against the on-going genocide, but instead, employ rhetoric that tends to support the terrorists or provide ideological shield for them.”
