• Tasks South-West Governors On Yoruba Youth Appointment
• Urges ‘Exemplar Service’ From Yoruba Ministers
The Oodua Consultative Forum (OCF) has issued a cease and desist notice to “traducers of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) and National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. who are out to discredit these worthy scions of the Yoruba Race to gain undue political advantage.”
President-General Worldwide, OCF, Prince Adebisi Oyemade, who made the call in a statement, stated that the Forum was concerned that “both Prof. Yemi Osinbajo and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu are coming under increased insidious attacks from quarters the OCF finds curious and which many public affairs experts have said were not unconnected with the 2023 presidential race and plots to shortchange the Yoruba Race in the contest.”
The OCF is a non-partisan umbrella body of all Yoruba in Nigeria and worldwide, which pursues the overall advancement of the Yoruba Race in Nigeria and wherever peoples of Yoruba origin are found around the World.
Also, the OCF has urged all governors in the South-West to appoint capable Yoruba youth into their cabinets and other posts in government in order to expose young Yoruba to the art of governance.
This is a “Yoruba imperative”, according to the OCF, because “Yoruba youth must be trained in governmental affairs to gain valuable experience and provide a steady stream of competent hands to take charge of Yoruba affairs now and in the future if our Race is to maintain its march to the pinnacle of human greatness.”
The OCF call might not be unconnected with the controversy generated by the recent nomination of 27-year-old Seun Fakorede as commissioner by Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State.
And, the OCF has charged all ministers of Yoruba extraction in the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration to render “exemplary service in the fine tradition of the Yoruba Race for which we are renown in history, especially through the great development strides of the Action Group in the First Republic and the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in the Second Republic under the legendary leadership of the late Yoruba Sage and Public Administrator Extraordinaire, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.”
According to Oyemade, “the OCF is dismayed by the recent whittling down of the functions and powers of the Office of the Vice President through directives purportedly emanating from President Buhari, which ordered Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to henceforth seek approval from the President before he takes decisions concerning government agencies constitutionally under supervisory purview of the Vice President’s Office.”
The president-general wrote: “The OCF is not unaware of subterranean moves by certain elements in the North to retain the Nigerian Presidency in 2023 after President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term.”
Referencing “the instructive ‘godfather’ Freudian slip by Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, recently in Lagos and the brazen call by the same Governor El-Rufai to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to shred the gentleman agreement of rotating power between the North and the South,” Oyemade submitted that “a Yoruba President must succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.”
The OCF stressed: “The North must not gorge the eye of its benefactors on the pointed edge of ingratitude as this is immoral and ungodly. President Muhammadu Buhari tried thrice but failed to clinch the presidency until the Yoruba Race supported his ambition through the gargantuan efforts of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2015.
“Again, the Yoruba votes ensured re-election for President Buhari in the just-concluded 2019 Presidential Election, yet through the labour and exertions of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The North, therefore must not only willingly admit that it has served out its constitutional two terms but it must unconditionally back the South-West and the Yoruba Race to produce a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
“The OCF condemns in totality the overt and covert attempt to malign Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has been working tirelessly and in line with due process for the success of the Buhari Presidency, and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu by Northern elements via campaign of calumny in the media and snide remarks against the Yoruba Race.
“By all parameters, the Yoruba Race deserves the Presidency in 2023 and if indeed the Yoruba Nation decides that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) or Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is our candidate for the Presidency in 2023, it behooves the North to support any of these illustrious sons of the Yoruba Race to clinch the coveted seat. One good turn deserves another.”
Buttressing its call for youth inclusivity in South-West governance, Oyemade wrote: “While the Yoruba Race reveres age and we defer to our elders in several spheres of private and public affairs, it is also our culture and tradition to give promising youth the room to prove themselves and garner experience in our communal affairs. Several Yoruba idioms, sayings, proverbs, etc attest to this.
“It is a veritable cultural practice which has served the Yoruba very well from the origin of our race to modern times. All Yoruba governors should embrace and actively pursue this age-long Yoruba cultural practice if the Yoruba Race is to continually renew its pool of leadership with fresh saps, young and experienced Yoruba sons and daughters who can hold their own now and in the future in complex official relationship with their peers from other parts of Nigeria and against the rest of the world. We enjoin Yoruba political gladiators to shun polarizing rhetoric in Yoruba Land. All hands must be on deck across all political parties for the peace and progress of the Yoruba Race.”
To ministers of Yoruba ancestry in the current Federal Cabinet, the OCF charges: “Ours is a Race of intellectuals, men and women of ideas, vision, industry and laser-like dedication to duty and any cause we take on. It is not by accident that the Yoruba Race gave Nigeria, Africa and indeed the Black World their first Nobel Prize Winner in Literature in the person of Prof. Wole Soyinka, way back in 1986. As Yoruba-ministers in the cabinet of President Muhammadu Buhari, therefore, you are the representatives of our Race. We enjoin you all to give your best to the Buhari/Osinbajo administration.
“We urge you to demonstrate to the rest of the nation and indeed the world that good governance is in the Yoruba DNA by discharging your duties to the Nigerian people to the best of your abilities. The OCF is confident that you are all worthy of your appointment as ministers and shall continue to support you to succeed in these great national assignments. The Yoruba Nation is behind you all as you serve the Motherland in good faith.”
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