You Came Too Late, Afenifere Tells President Jonathan

Pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, on Sunday described the visit by President Goodluck Jonathan to the South west as belated and that his effort to persuade the Yoruba people to support his re-election campaign is already too late.

In a statement by the publicity secretary of the group, Kunle Famoriyo, it described the ‘Yoruba Progress Summit’ which held last Friday as an afterthought and a fruitless effort to smuggle the President into Yoruba land through crooked means.

“For the past five years under his administration, Yoruba people have been deliberately marginalised and schemed out of national reckoning, especially in terms of key appointments and opportunity to partake in key sectors of the economy,” the statement said.

“We are surprised that President Jonathan believes the position of the Speaker, over which he has no control, is enough to atone for the deliberate marginalisation in key appointments, over which he has control”, it added.

The group said the Yoruba people do not need a Progress Summit, as it noted that they already have a progressive culture founded on democratic and egalitarian values.

“What Yoruba nation needs is how to be delivered from the retrogressive forces imposed on us by the Nigerian state”.

“The Yoruba nation was well ahead in terms of development until the forced union called Nigeria began to steal our institutions from us”, it said.

Afenifere, however, advocated the return to regional government through the decentralization of powers and a return to parliamentary democracy, saying that it is the best form of governance.

The group drew a premise from the incident that happened in Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, where President Jonathan and Governor Fayose of Ekiti state were booed by the students of the institution, saying that everything that happened at the summit was a facade as proven by the students.