Afenifere Rejects President’s Second Term Bid

Yinka-Odumakin

• Berates Tinubu for backing Awo’s ‘enemy’

The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, said wednesday that it has rejected President Muhammadu Buhari/Yemi Osinbajo’s presidential aspiration, and the political activities of the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu, ahead of the general election.

Reacting to a purported endorsement of President Buhari’s re-election bid in Ibadan, Oyo State, by a group led by Ayo Fasanmi, under the guise of Afenifere, the National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin, said the highest Yoruba umbrella body is not supporting the APC candidate due to his actions against the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

The body also dissociated itself from Tinubu and Osinbajo, stating that “the godfather of this fake group is of course Bola Tinubu, who was made governor by Afenifere in 1999, when the real man was not known.”

According to Afenifere, “mainstream Yoruba reject Buhari not only for his humiliation of Awolowo, our founding leader by the Gestapo invasion of his home as a military tyrant and the locking up of his successor, Pa Adekunle Ajasin, even when no corruption was brought against him; but also because his rule has been unmitigated disaster for the Yoruba, who have lost precious lives to Fulani herdsmen. This group of people has Buhari as their grand patron and not one of them has been brought to book.

“Life has become unbearable for Yoruba and all Nigerians under Buhari administration, and his second term (God forbid) will be hell on earth for our people. We are committed to the restructuring of Nigeria, and we shall be naming the candidate we believe can give us a working Nigeria under Federalism in a few days.

“Finally, we tell Tinubu’s followers that we don’t deny them the right to support Buhari. If they call themselves South-west Miyetti Allah, it worries us not. They should stop the fraudulent claim to Afenifere.”

The group said it was left with no other option than to publicly denounce those it tagged ‘Tinubu Followers’, who while assembling in Ibadan abused the name of Afenifere the way Yahoo boys do on the internet claiming to be what they are not and engaged in fraudulent activities.

Odumakin added, “We, ordinarily, would not respond to a gathering of historical renegades but for the sake of the unwary, who may have been confused by the nefarious action of these impostors.

“We say without equivocation that minus Senator Ayo Fasanmi who had a past connection with Afenifere till 2003 and Senator Olabiyi Durojaye, who is presently an employee of Buhari, all the others at the summit, including Prof. Yemi Osinbajo who have never been known in Afenifere.

“If these are Afenifere, they would never have gathered for Buhari’s endorsement in any part of Yorubaland on a day the The Nigerian Tribune, the legacy of Awolowo, who is the founder of Afenifere, was being re-launched.

Afenifere added that the disdain of this group for Awo’s legacy is exemplified by the fact that Vice President Osinbajo was in attendance, saying here is a man married to Awo’s granddaughter; but has absented himself from Awo’s remembrance activities for over three decades.

The group said the vice president had never been at any Afenifere’s meeting for once in his life and has busied himself in recent years, tearing Awo’s thoughts into pieces to impress his masters that he is married into Awo family but did believe in his school of thought.

“That a man who calls himself a Pastor would be found among impersonators for cheap political ends confirms the question mark put on his integrity by Al Jazeera Television in a documentary on his perfidious role in Pfizer’s destruction of scores of lives in Kano in an illegal guinea pig operation.

“Osinbajo got a court order to stop the airing of the documentary by AIT in 2015. We now know that character deficit cannot be fixed by any court declaration; just as the Pastor’s collar cannot make up for character deficit’’, the pan-Yoruba group further stated.

Talking about Tinubu, the spokesman of the group argued that “since Afenifere asked him to bring his certificates to Pa Onasanya’s house in 2000, which he has not done so till date, following the scandals around him, he has worked overtime to ensure that Yorubaland is not settled to get back to authenticating the false claims around every aspect of his life.

“These are the leaders of Buhari’s backers in South-west today who are claiming to be Afenifere, the way their paymaster claimed schools he never attended from primary to university”, Afenifere added.