Akintoye insisted that the agitation for the Yoruba Nation would not stop and that it would be achieved soon.
Yoruba historian and arrowhead of the struggle for the independence of the Oodua Nation, Prof. Banji Akintoye says Yoruba people contesting in the 2023 elections are doing terrible things to their families.
According to Akintoye in a statement released on Thursday, the presidential ambition of the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu is for selfish reasons.
“Our brother, Tinubu, you are fighting for yourself alone when your whole family is perishing. There is fire on our roof as a nation. It is unbelievable that any Yoruba man would do to his people what you are doing to our people now. You have been carrying around a video of an interview that I granted Alaroye in the campus of Obafemi Awolowo over two years ago.
“They asked me that if there was no struggle for self-determination and you want to recommend a Yoruba person for President of Nigeria, who would I recommend? And I said yes! If that is so, I would recommend Tinubu, without any hesitation. But that is if the times are right, the times are not right, you know, I do not endorse any Yoruba man, Tinubu or any other for any elected position, any position at all in Nigeria at this time.
“I stand fully and without looking back, with the Yoruba struggle for self-determination for our own country, for Yoruba nation now!
“That's the truth of the matter. Dear Tinubu, please don't deceive yourself. You cannot deceive our people. You think you can carry that kind of video around and deceive our people, our people are smarter than that. The world is watching you. Our history will judge that at a time when our nation needs to stand up and defend itself, you started to bring up an agenda.
“A personal agenda of your own before them. You are asking us to vote for you. We will not vote for you. Whether it is for the Presidency or the Senate or House of Representatives or whatever, we will not vote for you. We would have taken our country out of Nigeria by then. So, we advise you now to return to your people. I am advising you now, return to your people and wash your soul clean. You are doing a thing that is unpardonable.
“Tinubu, you are destroying the Yoruba future. You are creating a legacy for yourself that your children's children will be ashamed to know in the future. We ask you to return. You can still save yourself now and your future. We are determined to take our country. And I'm standing solidly with the young people who are running around trying to take their country. Oh! you might say they are fighting themselves, that’s what young people do everywhere. That does not mean that they don't want their country, they want their country.
“And the Lord God, the creator of All Nations, has given them that country, and very soon, the Lord will deliver their country into their hands. Then it will be their duty to settle down and begin to do for their people the kind of government that Yoruba people have been giving to their people from the beginning of time, a government whose objective is the improvement of the lives of the people of our nation.
“It will come. I have confidence in our young people. They will gather together and build for our people the most advanced country in the world. They will surprise the world. I have confidence in them. That is my message. And that's the message of the overwhelming majority of Yoruba people. I have no personal animosity towards any Yoruba person seeking election. But I am sorry for you. You are creating a legacy that your children's children will be ashamed to know about very soon in the future of the world. My advice? Turn around and come to support your people. This is the time to show that you are a man. You have men. You have the heart of men.
“I thank the Lord for what he has done for the Yoruba people abroad and now, people are stepping forward to support us. We will win our country very soon. And the name of God will be glorified in it.”
Akintoye insisted that the agitation for the Yoruba Nation would not stop and that it would be achieved soon.
He said, “I come with love this afternoon for all Yoruba people at home and in the diaspora, I am doing this program, specifically for our people who are not Yoruba but interested in our struggle for self-determination. People who are asking too many questions. We are now at a stage when most of our activities are concentrated on persuading most of the international communities to give its support to our struggle and we are succeeding considerably.
“Remember that we started mainly in 2019 and today, we have gone a long way in getting many international agencies and governments to be on our side. But they are asking questions and the questions need to be answered and I am answering now. You see many people among us who are prominent citizens of the Yoruba nation who are running around to become senators, governors, etc. in Nigeria. The international communities need to be informed about what is happening.
“The Yoruba people have decided that they want their own country. We have decided that since 2019 and there is no looking back. We want our Yoruba nation now. That is the decision of the overwhelming majority of the Yoruba. However, there are some of us who think they have done a lot for some political friends in Nigeria and they want to earn the benefit of it. One of them said, “I am the next person, emilokan.”
“But when Nigeria became independent, the first thing that the federal government did was to pull down our region. We were going too fast and they wanted to pull us back and push us down and they succeeded.
“Since then, our western region has been going further down. So now we have reached a point at which our educational system has lost standards. Our children are no longer learning at school, and many of them are running away to foreign countries to go and get good education.
“Our university at Ife, which we built at great expense, is being destroyed gradually by the federal government. There is an ongoing general collapse of infrastructures in Nigeria. We are suffering abominably. We don't have good federal roads in our region anymore. A former president of Nigeria, General Obasanjo said a few days ago, that to travel in the western region now is a great deal of pain.
“The federal roads are strangulating and destroying the economy of our region. Our university in Ife has been gradually destroyed. We can no longer teach our history in our schools. We can no longer teach our language in our schools. We have become an enslaved people in Nigeria. We cannot continue like this.”