By Sunday Ani and Scholastica Onyeka, Makurdi
Pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, has said its decision to back the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, is based on principle of justice.
Secretary General of the group, Chief Sola Ebiseni, who stated this on a television programme monitored in Lagos, yesterday, said it took Afenifere more than a year of rigorous debate to arrive at the decision to back a candidate from the South East.
Reacting to those who said Pa Ayo Adebanjo, its chairman, was speaking for himself, Ebiseni said it was a collective decision of Afenifere and not that of Adebanjo.
He said the same reason that disqualified the north from aspiring to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023 after his eight-year reign also applied to the South West and South South having produced Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, respectably as presidents.
“When you mouth equity, you don’t disembark; it takes you to the very end which is justice. So, the same principle that precludes the North from still having the presidency after eight years of Buhari is the same principle that precludes any group from the South from having it when there is still another group that has not had it which is the South East. So, Afenifere’s support was based on the principle of justice.”
He said Afenifere was in support of a country where every group would have a sense of belonging. He said even political parties themselves, from 1999 till now, have incorporated the zoning arrangement, where after the North has had power, it returns to the South.
He dismissed insinuations by some people that Afenifer’s position was anti-Bola Tinubu’s aspiration saying, “the Nigerian presidency is not a personal bead of the Yoruba; it is the bead of every Nigeria. So, if it is the turn of the Yoruba to have the bead on the waist of their child, Afenifere will fight for it. We did it during the NADECO not just because Abiola was a Yoruba man, but because we thought that was justice. Come to think of it, how will anybody have any misgiving about Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Afenifere? He is a member of Afenifere, and one of the most respected Nigeria of Yoruba extraction. Afenifere’s support for Obi has nothing to do with personality. It is a matter of peace in the nation.”
Meanwhile, the Labour Party presidential candidate has suspended his campaign to visit victims of flood disaster and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Benue State.
Obi, yesterday, visited Daudu IDP camp and flood victims at Rice Mill in Makurdi.
Addressing the victims, Obi said: “The flood is not an accident. It was meant to happen. It was something the Federal Government could have controlled but they failed to do something.”
He said he suspended his campaign to go round the country, to sympathise with those displaced and in IDP camps.
He said Benue State should not be suffering from flood as it was already battling with other humanitarian crisis like herders/farmer clashes.
“So I have come to identify with the victims in my own little way…This is a huge loss on Nigeria. These are people who would have been back to the farms and producing the food that we eat today. Because of that we have food inflation and that is why I say that if you give me the opportunity of serving you, this situation will never occur anywhere in the country. If I become president, I will bring a permanent solution to the problem.”
Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Professor Anthony Ijoho, SAN, who conducted Obi round the areas, thanked him for coming to identify with Benue people emphasising that he was the only presidential candidate that has come to visit the people.