By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
National leader of the Pan Yoruba Socio political organisation, Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo has declared that Afenifere members are not anarchists, nor sessionists,
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday on the state of the nation, Chief Adebanjo declared Afenifere members “are democrats “, and that the organisation is ready to lead the Yoruba nation to demand substantial restructuring, before the 2023 general elections.
The Afenifere leader while emphasizing that Nigeria ” is not only negotiable, it is evidently dying”, stated that the time has come to restructure Nigeria before the planned 2023 general elections in the country in order to restore Nigeria to its roots and original agreements, shall go a long way in shaping the position.
” We are not anarchists, we are not sessionists, we are democrats . We recognize that there is a democratically elected president in Aso Rock. We are not asking for Buhari’s resignation, and since the National Assembly has not seen fit to impeach him, he remains the president of Nigeria until the 27th of May, 2023 “, he said.
Chief Adebanjo added, ” let it be heard loud and clear; Afenifere shall be leading the Yoruba nation to demand substantial restructuring, before any fraudulent elections might be held in 2023, and the response of the Buharist regime to these equitable demands for restructuring the country along federalist lines, in order to restore it to its roots and original agreements, shall go a long way in shaping the position of the Yoruba people in the future”.
” But it is the considered position of Afenifere that he urgently constitutes a Government Of National Unity, charged with the sole task of seeing to the restructuring of Nigeria, in consultation with the Nigerian peoples. The Buhari regime has no plans for any elections in 2023, and this statement is not a difficult proposition to establish, once the parties to the debate, are fully seized, of their faculties. Anambra should be useful in establishing this obvious fact.”.
Chief Adebanjo noted ” in spite of deepening disappointments, the Nigerian Press has stood as, perhaps, the last and only beacon of hope in that realisation. I have invited you here today, therefore, as partners in that shared vision so that, through you, President Muhammadu Buhari and other political actors, blinded by ambition, may see the need to fix Nigeria before the imminent eclipse of her horizon”.
Speaking further, Chief Adebanjo said, ” Nigeria is dying. To be sure, the Nigerian state that was negotiated before independence in 1960, the one that was birthed and named on the 1st of October 1960, is long dead.”, adding, ” it was mortally wounded in January 1966, and was then slaughtered in July of 1966. Its funereal obsequies were held between 1966-1970″.
“The Frankenstein that was cobbled together in place of the dead nation that was agreed, has survived this long on the back of repression, lies, illusions, and outright delusions. But Buhari has finally killed it by his endless arrogance, the manifest incompetence, and the vile ethnoreligious agenda, with which he is dangerously strangle the insufferable Frankenstein.
” In the 93 years of God’s special Grace of my life, over 70 of which I have relentlessly spent in the struggle for a united, civilised, prosperous and federal Republic of Nigeria, and I have waited for some time in the departure lounge of life, and I owe it to posterity, to speak unalloyed truth to unconscionable powers, and to clarify the position of my people, the Yoruba of the Nigerian state, so that whenever I might be recalled home, it shall be said of me, that I not only did my bit, I indeed said my bit, and the position of the Yoruba people and Afenifere, were clearly and succinctly enunciated.” Chief Adebanjo stated, ” the Nigeria that was agreed, is one that was deliberately Federal in structure. The Nigeria that was AGREED, was by design, based on a parliamentary system of governance. The Nigeria that was agreed, was one that recognized the rights of the federating regions, to nationhood within the ambit of the FEDERATION that was birthed”.
” The Nigeria that was agreed was not a perfect place, but neither is anything constructed by men, and the proof of its imperfections are embedded in the tragedies of the civil war that buried it. I am constrained by the limitations of time to adumbrate, and I shall fast forward to the emergence of Abdusalami and the transition to civilian rule in 1999. It was the position of Afenifere and NADECO, that there existed an urgent need to convene a Sovereign National Conference of the ethnic nationalities that have become known as Nigerians. Afenifere’s position has not evolved.
