PUNCH
The pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, on Monday, dissociated itself from the agitation for the creation of a sovereign Yoruba Nation out of Nigeria.
It described the call for the exit of Yoruba people from Nigeria as undesirable, self-serving and unnecessary.
Afenifere, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Jare Ajayi, said Nigeria’s problems were beyond its multi-ethnicity or diversity.
Afenifere’s position comes about two days after the Yoruba Self-Determination Movement, led by Prof Banji Akintoye and Chief Sunday Adeyemo, alias Sunday Igboho, wrote an open letter to President Bola Tinubu, seeking a peaceful breakaway of Yoruba people from Nigeria.
In the letter, dated April 17, 2024, the Yoruba Nation advocates cited insecurity, particularly the killing of Yoruba people by armed herdsmen from the North as the reason Yoruba people should exit Nigeria.
They argued that Yoruba people have not been well fared in Nigeria, adding that their welfare would be guaranteed under a separate sovereign entity to be called the Yoruba Nation.
They called on President Tinubu to, within the next two months, set up a negotiation team to fashion out the peaceful exit of Yoruba people from Nigeria.
The letter by Akintoye and Igboho came one week after some masked agitators armed with weapons invaded the Oyo State Government House in Ibadan and attempted to hoist their flag on the premises of the state House of Assembly.
