How Yoruba representative is Afenifere?

By Bashir Adefaka

I belong to a whatsapp group administered by a leader of Yoruba Land but definitely not one of those that the people who claim to represent Yoruba would consider qualified to be member of the group they form themselves into, Afenifere.  He however surpass all that they do as he too is a qualified professional and achiever in all the ramifications of an achiever.

On the group, on Thursday, a link of a media report of submissions by some of the Afenifere leaders at a Yoruba Koya event was posted.  This will be talked about in the course of this piece as we read on.

Of a surety, that informed the prompt for me to write this short response, which I have copied to be reposted as a newspaper article that is hereby reproduced for The DEFENDER to publish.  My response started by appreciating another post by the admin which saw an Aniete Etim Odonbong from Akwa Ibom (and I call him a Calabar in the article) making more sense to the Nigerian Project than some of us the acclaimed most educated part of Nigerians.  I moved on:

Thank you Otunba Sir, for sharing this piece with us. This is a Calabar man talking sense while those who impose themselves on us as Yoruba leaders are still busy inciting us against other tribes in the disguise of trying to be vigilant about foreigners from Mali, Senegal surrounding the Yoruba Land of Lagos.

Before I end this comment, if Senegal, Cameroon and Mali are the foreign intruders they are talking about, where in Cameroon do they have an Emir? Where in Agege do Senegalese occupy in large number to now warrant an Emir emerging in Agege?

Let the question be asked, Afenifere leaders are the people fanning these embers of war. They say they are Yoruba leaders. How do they determine the membership of that Afenifere that the only fight we hear and see them fight is either against Hausa but not Igbo or collaborate with CAN against Islam and Muslims to the extent that they even prefer to tolerate paganism over tolerating their Muslim brothers and sisters?

Why are these Afenifere leaders not having doing-well  Yoruba leaders like Otunba Abdul Lateef Owoyemi, Prince Bola Ajibola (SAN), Pa S.O. Babalola OON, etc, on membership of the group? Does it mean nobody has ever raised this bigotism to Afenifere or that when it was raised to them they dismissed the need to address it?

Now, the anti-Buhari campaigns and struggles going on in Nigeria are led by Yoruba and Afenifere is the leading force being deployed. The spokesman of Afenifere, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, is a PDP who never saw any good thing in Buhari. In Ekiti, his wife was the only observer who saw violence and ballot snatching until we started hearing it in the media weeks after the observers and media on ground on July 14 Ekiti election had reported that the Ekiti election was most peaceful outing by INEC and security agencies in recent times. These were the same people who took hundreds of million Naira from Jonathan and PDP to compromise a Papa Obafemi Awolowo’s son-in-law becoming Vice President in support of an Ijaw (I have no  problem with Ijaw) who shared all Nigerian fortunes between his tribe and Igbo for six years.

It surprised to see that Dr. Tokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu attended an Afenifere meeting with Obasanjo simply because they wanted to create impression that the Fulani man in power is their problem as Yoruba people thereby working hard against even Awolowo’s own son-in-law to be Vice President again in 2019.

Finally, please, for how long do we continue to believe that Afenifere represents our collective Yoruba interest over all that I have raised above? They are giving us the impression that Papa, Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade is part of them. I have refused to agree. Although all effort to have a media chat with the former Chief of Defence Staff has not yielded results as he never gave an appointment, I do not believe the effort to rubbish a retired military General being part of all of that.

As a bonafide Prince of Yoruba Land and journalist, who does not want the race to be rubbished, I have decided to pour all of these concerns which have been necessitated by two posts above: Afenifere leaders in the Yoruba Koya report and the post about Nigeria question by Aniete Etim Odonbong from Akwa Ibom which was reposted by the admin of the group in question.

Thanks to our Babas in the house as I await your address of the issues raised.

That was the piece that I posted and which I have decided to make available through more serious media like this for the benefit of more Yoruba people of interest in making Yoruba race great and better.

*Adefaka is a media practitioner in Lagos.