Sagay, Fawehinmi, others slam Afenifere for misrepresentations over MKO Abiola’s honour

*Honouring Abiola not enough to win South West – Afenifere

*Buhari didn’t honour Abiola for South-West votes – Sagay

*When did Afenifere become a political party – Fawehinmi

*“ If you say Buhari has done this for votes, why didn’t you do it 19 years ago to win?”

*Yinka Odumakin, Afenifere’s spokesman, once warned against unfair profiling of Buhari to favour opposition

*Obasanjo’s ADC, Falae’s SDP currently powers behind Afenifere political agenda – Source

The supposedly pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, on Wednesday said President Muhammadu Buhari’s honouring of MKO Abiola is not enough for him to get the votes of South West in the 2019 presidential elections in the country.

The group said it will not support the president if he fails to restructure the country despite the honour done to Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12 1993 presidential election.

In swift reactions, Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itse Sagay, and the Patriarch of the Fawehinmi Dynasty and Arogbo of Ondo Kingdom, Chief Olusola Ademiko Fawehinmi slammed the Afenifere for so saying, as Fawehinmi, asked “When did they (Afenifere) become political party)?  I knew they would come out to say things like this, that was why I said it ahead of time in my interview on you published today that they are only working for their money and that they are no longer on the legacy left behind by Papa Obafemi Awolowo,” Fawehinmi said.

It is on record, it was gathered, that Afenifere was not with Buhari in the 2015 presidential election as they all publicly declared for PDP and Jonathan and since Buhari came to power they have openly teamed up with the IPOB elements and PDP alleged looters in frustrating the Buhari’s government.

Currently the powers behind Afenifere are Olusegun Obasanjo, Leader, ADC, and Olu Falae, Leader, SDP.  In 2015 Falae led SDP to work for PDP and each of them particularly Falae who took N100 million from the arms money was paid for doing so.

“To now say they will not support Buhari in 2019, where does that count?” A respondent, who spoke under condition of anonymity, said.

The Yoruba group, Afenire was slammed for its misleading disposition towards the honour done to the presumed winner of June 12, 1993 presidential election, Alhaji MKO Abiola by President Muhammadu Buhari, which has been widely appreciated as a masterstroke coming from unexpected quarters.

It would be recalled that after President Buhari had apologized to the Abiola family on behalf of the Federal Government on Tuesday in Abuja for the untold experience of the late winner as a result of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election results, daughter of the late politician, Hafsat Abiola, tendered an unreserved apology to President Muhammadu Buhari and his family for what former Ogun State Governor, Chief Segun Osoba, later explained to be her father’s involvement in the Babangida coup that toppled Buhari’s anti-corruption government (1984-1985).

Afenifere leaders who, according to our findings, had pretended to be demanding for immortalization of Abiola and declaration of June 12 as Democracy Day in Nigeria suddenly turned out – after those two demands had come to fruition by President Buhari – to now claim the bold decision made by Buhari, whose magnanimity to honour a man that once truncated his government which intended to take Nigeria from the grip of “unpatriotic owners” and return to its rightful owners the people of Nigeria, had done it because he wants the South West people to vote for him in 2019.

It was for this reason on Wednesday the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), said President Muhammadu Buhari did not honour the late MKO Abiola so that the South West can appreciate him with votes during the 2019 presidential election.

“Buhari did not honour Abiola to get the support of the South West. That was not his purpose. He did it to wipe out a long standing wrong,” he said.

In the meantime, the Patriarch of the Fawehinmi Dynasty, Chief Ademiko Fawehinmi, had earlier told The DEFENDER in an interview at his Ondo town, Ondo State home that the Afenifere of today are only working for their money.

In the interview published on Wednesday, Chief Fawehinmi, who reacted to the question on how some Yoruba leaders (Afenifere) are claiming they have not seen anything Buhari government has done in three years and so that they will team up with Igbo to either break up Nigeria or vote against him in 2019, said there is no need for the Afenifere’s complain.

He said, “But there is no reason for that.  I mean this is the best time for Yoruba in any government of Nigeria so far.  What else do we want?  We have got the Vice President, we got, power, works and housing, we got communications, we got health, we got finance.  And if the Yoruba don’t mess up, come 2023 if a Yoruba man comes out and wants to become President, the whole North will rise up and back him.  Of course, it pays them and this is what Bola Tinubu is working for.  But those who are agitating don’t know what is good for the Yoruba.  Ayo Adebanjo, Falae and others in Afenifere.  They don’t know.

“Afenifere was not a political party but a regional elders’ forum.  But now they have turned it to political party and they are the ones who choose who they want and lord him on the entire Yoruba race and then they will say, “This is not the way Obafemi Awolowo used to do it.”  But Awolowo had done his bit and he left his footprint on the sand of time, gold! “We can never forget him and his policies will keep coming to us always.  What did you do to improve on the existing legacies of Awolowo?  Go and ask them.  This is what Bola Tinubu saw and they will never see it.  They didn’t see because they didn’t want it.”

Chief Fawehinmi, appreciating the President Buhari’s decision against the position of the Afenifere, said, “The presidential honour has raised the entire Fawehinmi in Nigeria and in the Diaspora taller and we are proud!  We are happy! We are immensely grateful to Buhari.

Do not forget that Olusegun Obasanjo was there for eight years and PDP was solidly there for 16 years.  Nobody thought about it.  Those who must open their mouths to talk anything just to show they do not appreciate good intention, they call it a political game but I call it a political masterstroke!

“You can see the acceptance in the eyes of everybody so much that even some PDP politicians had unconsciously jubilated over it before they came back to their politicking senses and now they say it is a game gift. Haba! Just listen to this analogy: I was almost being amputated but somebody treated me.  And now they are saying he treated me just because he may tomorrow take garri from me.  And I say no, no, no.

“You see, there they are thugs and touts.  PDP!?  Unless they go and get another name for themselves and choose different characters completely, they are gone and have gone for good!  So, they are just like somebody, who is not a swimmer and, who falls into the river and he is trying hard to get out by holding on to anything thinking that it will help him, yet to no avail.  That is what they are.

“As for what President Buhari has done, he has done it right and he made us more civilized as Nigerian people because that election on June 12, 1993 was first and only of its kind in Nigerian electoral history.  It was like no election (compared to how politicians take elections today) because it was so free and fair and that man, Babangida, dashed that Hope ’93 and deprived Nigerians the opportunity to be ruled by the President they voted for.

“And this man now (Obasanjo) put there by a group of the same Babangida, who was there for eight years doing nothing, has been going up and down talking any how.  Is he the only person in that group?  Why is he not keeping quiet and allowing the man that God has put there now (Buhari) to do his own job?  Abdulsalaam is also there, up till now, have you heard him say a word?  Instead, he goes about appealing for peace everywhere.  That is an elder.  That is a good citizen of Nigeria!  Not Obasanjo, who is just only playing for himself because he wants to continue to be recognized as the only President of Nigeria while thinking that everybody else is a fool whereas, he is not fit to be a student of Obafemi Awolowo.  Not just that, Obasanjo made sure that he would never do anything in favour of Awolowo.  The same way he made sure that he worked against MKO Abiola’s presidency just because he wanted to protect himself.”

“To Buhari, I say we are grateful.  I am speaking as the Head of Fawehinmi dynasty today home and abroad and I cannot thank Buhari enough.  He made us proud.  The Fawehinmi has been a great name but Gani added 40 percent more to the name.  We cherished him.  We missed him in no small way.  Somebody says the President is doing it for votes.  Why didn’t you do it 25 years ago or 19 years ago so that you could also win votes?”

Yoruba Ronu earlier warned against Afenifere’s spokesman

Only last month, May 3, a Yoruba socio cultural group, Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum, called on its sister organisation, Afenifere, to call to order Mr. Yinka Odumakin, its National Publicity Secretary, over what it described as his unfair profiling of President Muhammadu Buhari.

In a statement obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday May 2 in Lagos, the Leadership Forum wondered why Mr Odumakin had continued without decorum to attack President Buhari.

The Forum stated that calling the President unprintable names was hardly a way of playing opposition politics, especially by someone of Odumakin’s stature.

“We have watched with great concern the role, utterances, and actions of Odumakin the spokesman to Afenifere.

“As an adult, he should be mindful of his descent into vulgarity in political matters,” the statement signed by Mr Akin Malaolu, the Forum’s secretary general, read in part.

Saying it cannot question Odumakin’s ambition as Afenifere spokesperson, the Forum insisted that Afenifere should however not be used as platform to belittle the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Indeed, his quest to help the opposition win 2019 presidential election is within his constitutional rights, but making mockery of the office of the President and of President Buhari is very unedifying,” the Forum said.

It reiterated that Odumakin must bear in mind that every right comes with corresponding duty.

“His choice of words on the President’s visit to the United States of America has fallen short of the edifying on some occasions.”

NAN, who refused to be dragged by the statement into repeating the unprintable names Odumakin called Buhari, reportedly tried to get the man accused of using Afenifere platform to advance the course of the oppositon party which he did for PDP in 2015 and perhaps ADC in 2019, we were told, could not get Yinka Odumakin’s reaction to the warning by Yoruba Ronu basically by tight schedule on his own side.

However, the Leadership Forum insists that the choice of words amounts to vulgar abuse and hate speech, which is forbidden by the Constitution.

According to the Forum, that Odumakin had been tolerated so far is testament to Nigerians’ quest for peace and respect for Afenifere.

“Odumakin is however carrying it too far and needs to be called to order. If that cannot be achieved at home, we as guardians of our culture and tradition are compelled to do so from outside.

“We hasten to remind him that part of the fall of the First Republic in 1966 arose from unguarded utterances of people in public limelight.

“We also recall the genocide in Rwanda, Kenya and Sierra Leone, which attended similar hate speeches.

“Nigeria has shed much blood. It is not in the interest of anyone who loves Nigeria to want to send Nigeria on that path.

“Odumakin would do well to listen, lest he continue to bring odium and ridicule not only to Afenifere and the Yoruba people but also to the good people of Nigeria,” the Forum said.

That was how the spokesman of Afenifere, who many have said is only playing the script of the group, as directed by opposition political interests, had been warned earlier before the latest vituperation by the organisation.