The governor of Ondo State, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu, came under fire from the pan-Yoruba sociopolitical group Afenifere on Saturday for his remarks regarding the Yoruba Nation’s unrest.
The Yoruba Nation’s supporters, according to Akeredolu, the chairman of the Southern Governors’ Forum, are enemies of the state.
The statement was made by Akeredolu on Friday in Akure, the state capital, at the launch of the emblem appeal to kick off the 2023 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Celebrations.
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Mr. Sola Ebiseni, the Secretary General of the Afenifere, criticized Akeredolu’s stance on the local unrest, saying the governor was pandering to the crowd.
The statement was titled, ‘Akeredolu: Between equity and opportunism.’
The Afenifere statement read;
The statement credited to Governor Akeredolu of Ondo State at the launching of an emblem appeal to flag off the 2023 Armed Forces Remembrance Day, unfortunately, confirmed the scarcity of statesmanship in our clime particularly faced with the lust for political power.
We have no problem with the governor playing to the gallery, as a glorified Chief Security Officer, urging that security forces clamp down on any person or group whose activities he interpreted as capable of disintegrating the Nigerian State because we are no less patriotic and committed to its continuing corporate existence.
We are also in the same boat with him that ‘this country is very important to some of us’ and the recognition that agitation and protests are rights protected in a democratic society.
It further read;
Truth be told, there is no region of Nigeria where the elite including the ruling class in government has been able to determine the methods adopted by agitators or succeeded in checkmating the effects thereof.
So, let Akeredolu not boast of any capacity to dictate the method adopted by the Yoruba agitators or seek to set the rest of Nigeria against his Ndigbo colleagues or the entire South East in his unhidden separatist agenda of securing undue advantage for his party and region in the quest for the Nigerian President of Southern extraction.
