Leaders of the Yoruba nation have declared that regional autonomy is the minimum and irreducible demand of their people from the ongoing national conference.
This was contained in a document sent to delegates at the conference. The document titled “Regional Autonomy…or Nothing” was also yesterday in Lagos circulated to journalists at a press conference addressed by a coalition of Yoruba nationality groups led by the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG).
Declaring the Yoruba position, Tokunbo Ajasin, son of the late Chief Adekunle Ajasin, former leader of the Pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere and erstwhile governor of Ondo State, said the Yoruba people have a lot of hope in the conference to redress the current anomalous structure of the country.
Ajasin, speaking on behalf of the coalition, berated the Northern leaders who were said to have claimed that 80 percent of the country’s land mass belongs to the North and that it was the money from the North that was used to develop the oil sector.
”We are therefore baffled at the take-it-or-Ieave-it attitude of delegates from other ethnic nationalities, particularly the Northern delegates who circulated a document full of fallacies a few weeks ago. Those fallacies have now been exposed by the facts and figures contained in the publication we are unveiling today,” he said.
Ajasin made it clear that the Yoruba would have no choice than to walk out of the federation if the conference failed to accede to what he said is the minimum demand of the Yoruba people.
“It is inconceivable that northern leaders are the ones leading the campaign against devolution of power and restructuring of government. If any region needs a stronger federating unit with greater capacity to provide education, health, security, wealth creation and other social amenities, it is the North where strong links exist between the level of poverty and conscription of innocent youths into extremist tendencies. It appears Northern leaders are not concerned, and indeed have no plan for the teeming youth from the region, as long as they are able to continue clinging to their hold on power,” he said.
Ajasin said the demand represented the wishes and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the Yoruba people gathered from different fora over the years.
