• Urges govs to rise in unity, speak against ploy
• Afenifere didn’t endorse Tinubu’s second term bid, says group

The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, has expressed concern over what it described as a coordinated attempt to de-market Nigeria on the global stage.

The organisation, which frowned on the development, lamented the disquiet at the “increasingly” calculated manoeuvres by certain persons towards imperilling the cohesion of the country, as well as discrediting the administration of President Bola Tinubu within and outside the country.

In a statement by its National Organising Secretary, Kole Omololu, the foremost Yoruba group, while calling on state governors to urgently unite and counter the narratives damaging the country’s reputation, emphasised that the situation, if left unchecked, might cause them to suffer for it, particularly in the international community.

Afenifere said that the recent de-marketing of Nigeria and misrepresenting the country at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States (U.S.) was a grievous affront to the values that ought to underpin national aspiration.

HOWEVER, a group, Afenifere Diaspora USA, yesterday, dismissed a report on the purported endorsement of Tinubu’s second-term bid.

It stated this in a statement titled: ‘Afenifere Diaspora USA cautions Omololu Abagun and his co-travellers,’ co-issued by its Chairman, Prof. Sikiru Fadairo and its Secretary, David Adenekan.

The group, worried by the development, cautioned against the misrepresentation and impersonification of Afenifere’s identity in a statement issued by Abagun.

“Now that we have buried the ashes with a befitting state burial for a great icon of democracy, Ayo Samuel Adebanjo, it is time to truly unmask the masquerade to dismiss every iota of falsehood and misrepresentation of the identity of fact. Afenifere is under one umbrella as intactly left behind by Adebanjo of blessed memory.

“There is no Abagun and his co-travellers in the pyramid structure of Afenifere, including in all the structures of Afenifere in Diaspora.

“This is truly a disclaimer based on organisation structure and representation of leadership,” the group declared.