Groups flay Gbajabiamila over comment on southern agitators

• ‘Why I doubt Yoruba survival as a nation’
• Okogie blames politicians for rising insecurity

The Coalition of Yoruba self-determination groups, yesterday, chided the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, over his comments on the southern agitators.

In a statement made available to The Guardian in Ibadan by the Secretary-General of the coalition, Dr. Steve Abioye, the groups tasked the Speaker to advise his paymasters to put machinery in place for the implementation of the 2014 conference report.

The groups said the statement by Gbajabiamila was not only reprehensive, but as well raises the question whether the Speaker is a real Yoruba son.

SIMILARLY, a Yoruba group, O’odua Progressive Union (OPU), yesterday, chided the Federal Government over its comment on the Yoruba Nation agitators.

The group, however, urged the Federal Government to address the various security challenges in the country, and leave the agitators alone.

The group, speaking against the backdrop of the recent attack by the Federal Government on Yoruba nation agitators for keeping association with the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), said it is most unfortunate for the Federal Government to threaten to judge the Yoruba nation agitators by the company they keep.

MEANWHILE, the first son of the late Alhaji Lamidi Adesina, one-time governor of Oyo State, Dr. Ayobami Adesina, has expressed doubt over the sustainability of the proposed Yoruba Nation, hinging his argument on the inability of two states in the geo-political zone to efficiently manage the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) together.

Adesina said it was a shameful thing for the two Yoruba-speaking states of Oyo and Osun not to be able to manage the institution together, adding that he felt embarrassed when he saw his compatriots jubilating when the two states stopped managing the affairs of LAUTECH together.

IN another development, the former Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, His Eminence, Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, has described the level of insecurity in the land as shocking, equating the situation with the late Sonny Okosun’s song: “We want to know who owns the land.”

He said Nigeria appears to have been taken over by terrorists, who Nigerians identify as bandits, herdsmen and Boko Haram.

Okogie stressed that it would be highly dangerous to separate politics and morality and that politics without morality is nothing but banditry.

According to him, it is unfortunate that there are people who believe that politics has nothing to do with morality. The fact that this belief is often put into practice largely explains why we witness all sorts of absurdities in politics today.”