By Akinwale Kasali

As the 2023 General Election gathers momentum, the need to mobilize and sensitize electorates have taken center stage, prompting  the Alliance of Yoruba Democratic Movements, AYDM, to organize a two day Conference with the theme: 2023 election and the future of Yoruba, held in Lagos. The Conference was to navigate the future of the South West and the need to participate actively in the forthcoming election.

Chairman of the Group, Adewale Adeoye, a veteran Journalist, pleaded with the people of the South West and Yoruba in other States of the federation to mobilize themselves and vote en mass in the 2023 General elections to prove their numerical strength to attract political and economic development to the region.

Adeoye, in his opening remark, admonished the electorates from Yoruba speaking states to mobilise and show their numerical strength and have a say in the Government and not stand aloof and continue complaining unnecessarily.

“We want our people  to show their determination to use their votes to determine their future.We want our people to use their votes to raise political consciousness.We want the areas formerly known as Western region  to overwhelm the rest of the country through massive participation in any electoral process,so that we can assert ourselves as one indivisibile people”, he said.

The Group,  a coalition of 111 Pan-Yoruba Civil society organisations, lamented that the country is facing one of the most difficult moments since 1960.

“We face internal, external and international threats to our livelihood. We are afflicted by poverty, lack of jobs, deprivations, exclusion and worst still, degradation of our environment, our stream, our mountains, our valleys, our forests and our livelihood; externally. We are at the mercy of marauders, terrorists, kidnappers, villainous spirit gengsters that have surrounded some of our towns and villages, in the West, East, North, and the South, including our sea shores”, Adeoye said.

He stressed further that those forces are not only for domination but are bent on exterminating the race and take over our ancestral home.

Speaking further, he said the future of Yoruba people to a large extent depends solely on what the people want, lamenting the past year voters apathy that dominates South West political culture due to largely disconnection between the Yoruba ruling elites and ordinary folks.

Decrying the voters apathy that the nation has witnessed in elections over time, Adeoye said there is need for a none state actor intervention to create an electoral paradigms shifts.

Lending his voice, former Secretary of National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, Ayo Opadokun, noted that the Yoruba race took the future of the race and that of the country seriously and came up with Oodua Development Council which was launched in year 2000. He described the body as a pacesetter for other ethnic nationalities who set up their sectional movement after it, charging the younger generation of Yoruba to consider, request and insist that aspirants who would soon be coming to them should respond to where they stand on the Yoruba agenda.

The elder statesman added that Yoruba had an agenda and plan to move forward the Yoruba speaking states, occasioning the establishment of 18 committees to take care of issues that affect Yoruba nation, maintained that neglect of federal system of government was responsible for the retrogression of the country, recalling that progress and development were recorded in the First Republic because the government was run on the tenets of federalism.

Opadokun, who recalled that the Yoruba Agenda had since 1994 been harmonised under the Chairmanship of the

Late Professor Adebayo Adedeji and equally harmonised with that of the Traditional Rulers at meetings “conveyed at the Ogbagba Court of the Awujale of Ijebu land when we thought that General Sani Abacha was going to organise a truly representative assembly of Nigerians to discuss and resolve the National Question,” asserted that the most germane item was the Yoruba Nation’s categorical demand for a return to Federal Constitutional Governance.

“We have always stated with clarity that Nigeria secured its Independence on a Federal Constitution Governance that was negotiated by the different ethnic nationalities and their political leaders.

“There was no time where Nigerians consented to, nor agreed with, the Unitary and Central Government that was imposed on us by military governments by decrees since January 15, 1966. And Nigeria has since then been governed unitarily and centrally till date, in spite of popular, credible and sustained categorical demands for a return to the negotiated Federal Constitution that recognises the fact and reality that the geographic and political space created by the imperialist Great Britain composed of heterogeneous people with over 350 ethnic nationalities with their different languages, religions, cultures, customs, traditions, artefacts, folklore, mores, morals, etc,” he said.

Speaking further, Opadokun said that Federalism, as was practised in the First Republic, assisted the various Governments not only to be responsible and responsive to the electorates’ yearnings and aspirations, adding that it guaranteed justice, equity and fair play, as well as the protection, defence and consolidation of the rule of law as the basis of Government policies.

He used the forum to pay tributes to Chief Obafemi Awolowo and other outstanding forebears who left their footprints on the sands of time.

While calling for the observance of a standing ovation in honour of the distinguished and outstanding forebears, the NADECO chieftain recalled that Awolowo, as the first premier of Western Nigerian, along with his distinguished colleagues, ran the most responsible, responsive, transparent, productive and creative government that became the pacesetter of all public services in the First Republic.

He added that Awolowo and his team clearly wrote their names in gold and cannot be forgotten so easily.

“They operated in education, Medicare, business, Judiciary, media, the professions, and (much more relevant for this gathering) the political and Human Rights activists who even paid the supreme sacrifice for the little space they succeeded in creating for our current efforts to navigate our today’s existential crossroads,” Opadokun stated.

Opadokun maintained a return to Federal Constitution Governance was the popular demand by Nigerians, as there was no time when Nigerians consented to, nor agreed with the Unitary and Central Government and, therefore, urged to ensure they vote aspirants that believe in the restructuring of the country, noting sadly that the way the country was structured now was warped and the need to make it better was imperative.

Speaking further, Olatokunbo said that any aspirant that seek the vote of the race in 2023 should be asked if he or she support the Yoruba agenda before they give them their vote.

Opadokun maintained that  neglect of federalism system of Government was responsible for the retrogression of the country,adding that progress and development were recorded in the first Republic because the Government was run on the tenets of federalism.