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Nigeria’s Unity Negotiable; Insecurity Worse Under Buhari Than Civil War – Yoruba Elders

The elders added that the Yorùbá are resolute in their “fierce determination to pursue vigorously our own chosen destiny to be free men and women, and never to be second-class citizens in our own land and space.”

Pan-Yoruba elders have lambasted the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in the country, saying it has allowed insecurity, kidnappings and killings to fester – a situation they say is worse than the 1967-1970 civil war.

The Pan-Yoruba elders stated this in a communiqué issued at the end of their meeting on Wednesday in Mapo Hall, Ibadan, Oyo State, stating that the unity of Nigeria was negotiable and the Yoruba could not belong to an unfair system which had failed in securing of lives and property and put a tribe above the others.

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The elders added that the Yorùbá are resolute in their “fierce determination to pursue vigorously our own chosen destiny to be free men and women, and never to be second-class citizens in our own land and space.”

The communiqué, which was signed by Mogaji Gboyega Adejumo, partly reads, “Today in Buhari's Nigeria, the ship of state has veered dangerously off course, and heads almost irreversibly towards jagged rocks of destruction. Insecurity has reached such an abyss that hundreds of people are kidnapped in broad daylight with impunity.

“The Yorùbá are convinced that Nigeria is on the verge of a catastrophic calamity, of potentially greater magnitude than either the internecine conflict of 1967 to 1970 or the brazen disenfranchisement of 1993.

“The Yorùbá announce their exhaustion with this government’s obsession with lies and denials of truths and facts. Farmers-herders clashes are denied despite photographic evidence of massacres and eyewitness reports of mayhem. Terrorists roam the land in the garb of herdsmen, killing, raping, kidnapping and maiming, with little or no reaction from constituted authorities. A high-ranking government official declares that bandits are not criminals. 

“The forests of the Yorùbá are sacred, untouchable, and out-of-bounds to terrorists. May the curses of all our forefathers hold to account all who attempt to cede even one inch of our forests to any ranch or settlement for the use of foreigners, despoilers, ruiners, ravagers and desecraters of our forests.

“The Yorùbá distance themselves from the oft-repeated untruth that ‘Nigeria's unity is non-negotiable’. This is nothing but a falsehood. Be it known, now and ever — ‘The unity of Nigeria is highly negotiable.’ If we cannot be happy together, then let us find peace and joy, apart. Nigeria can only remain Nigeria if all parties agree to deal equitably with each other.”

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