THE head of the Yoruba sociocultural organisation Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo has said that the North cannot decide for the rest of the country who the next president should be.
Adebanjo stated this yesterday while he delivered a speech yesterday during a public lecture titled “Nationalism and nation-building in Nigerian history” at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs at Victoria Island in Lagos.
He said, “It was said that the South-East must come to negotiate with the North because politics is a game of numbers. My case is – and I told people yesterday – the case for the East is not to beg for a favour; it is their right. Yet, each time I hear that they should go around because the North has the population, what fraudulent population? You can’t sell that to me.
“They tell us to work together but unfortunately because they now have produced a president at the helm of affairs, they say ‘no one can become president except you come to the North and unfortunately, some southerners have been brainwashed that they can’t do anything except they bow to the North. I don’t believe it.
“What right has the North to dictate who will become our president? We were brought together not by peace, not by agreement, they forced us together and we agreed, so to continue to live together in peace must be by agreeable terms. The East has the right not because he is Igbo but because it is in Nigeria. The principle of Afenifere is on ideological basis and principle of rightness, inclusiveness and not any sentiment.”
On his part, the National Director of Publicity of the Northern Elders Forum, Dr Hakeem Ahmed, said, “Some Nigerian political leaders have said Nigeria’s unity is non-negotiable. I don’t know who these people are, but I can tell you they are not of the North and they are not related to the NEF.
“Nigeria’s unity is negotiable. You either negotiate it because nations are very fragile and very delicate and you have to nurture them and pay attention to their need or they break and we are at that breaking point.”
The guest lecturer, Prof. Jide Osuntokun, lamented that since 1966, Nigeria had struggled to find a method to balance the regional desire for autonomy under a national structure.
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