The Senior Elders’ Forum (SEF) of the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE) has said the continued agitation by the South-East to produce the next president of the country will remain an “illusory ambition” until the current configuration is restructured.

The elders, who spoke through a former National President of YCE, Dansaaki Samuel Agbede, stated this, yesterday during a chat with journalists in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

Agbede said the socio-cultural organisation did not oppose a south-easterner becoming president in 2023. He said emphatically that the grievous blunder by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to snub the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s overture in 1959 to team up together as one indivisible entity, would continue to haunt the Igbo until a renegotiation is made.

Agbede said: “The problems we are having today are history of 1959 when Nigeria was put on the table for creation, direction and administration. Elections came, no party won and Awolowo for the West saw the writing on the wall.

“He (Awolowo) went to Enugu with his team to see Nnamdi Azikiwe that they should team together at the crucial moment. Awolowo went to the extent of telling Azikiwe that he (Awolowo) was ready to cede the Prime Ministership to him and that he (Awolowo) would be contented with the Minister of Finance. Azikiwe considered it and gave him a seemingly positive answer and they came back home, only shortly after, Azikiwe went to his boss in Kaduna. That was the end of any other restructuring of configuration of Nigeria and that was how they ceded power to the North.

“That is where the North got hold of power till the present day. The North was appreciative and they named that Abuja Airport after Nnamdi Azikiwe because it was Azikiwe, on a platter of gold, who gave them the power, which the same South-East is now trying to wrest. Is that possible?”

Agbede, who said the YCE senior elders would never buy the idea of Afenifere supporting a South-East presidency when there is Yoruba man jostling for the same position, said: “How would it sound in the ears of Oduduwa that our own son who is a Vice President will be left and we now vote for another person? If we do that, it means the way we have been marginalised since 1959 will still continue.

“That is why we have decided in YCE that we cannot leave the waist of our own son who is in dire need of decorative beads empty and decorate the waist of another.”

When asked if denying the South East the access to the presidency would not stoke fire for segregation, he said, “that is everybody’s business. That is why we are saying let us sit don and talk about this whole thing because we are different nations birthed together in 1914. I don’t know who gave them (North) the knowledge to say let us put this down and sign for 100 years. It had a limitation. It has expired.”

“Nobody is talking about it except now that some elders, like Afe Bablola are just waking up. We are not the same and I don’t know how you will now glue us together. It is a political slavery. The East undid themselves. They can’t wipe out history.”

“For as long as we practise this mode of democracy in Nigeria, it is impossible. Another thing is that they(South East) can’t agree with themselves.

On the rumour that former President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan would be defecting to the ruling APC, he noted, “Jonathan is breaking a world record of being a president defecting from his own party to another party. He left his own party who made him the president of Nigeria and ran to the opposition party. Who does not know that there is something under the carpet? Whose interest is he trying to protect?

“When people are foreseeing an unpalatable future for Nigeria, they know what they are saying because the ominous signs are clearly manifesting. The ominous signs cannot give anybody hope of predicting peace and harmony for 2023.

Insisting on his earlier stance that general election might not hold, he restated, that those who have been clamouring for positions in the 2023 election, will soon know that it is a mirage.

“The presidency of South East is a mirage. The history of Nigeria would have been different now if the South East had not snubbed Awolowo’s overture. So, with this present arrangement, they are just deluding themselves unless they decide to come down to unite with all other zones in the South as one united group to sit at a table and re-renegotiate that amalgamation.”
“I credit Jonathan, as lousy and corrupt as his government was, he made an effort in 2014 which is the year the amalgamation expired, but what became of it. They went to Abuja for a mere jamboree, collected millions of naira and came back home. We are still swimming in the political abyss of uncertainty and insecurity”, he claimed.

“The signs of sanity are not surfacing on the horizon and we can just pray that something will happen that will make the whole thing to be doused with peace. I sympathize with the East, I don’t say they should not become the president, the Afenifere people from the South West are backing them strongly so also is Edwin Clarke”.
YCE differs from Afenifere on South East presidency

“But, we members of the Senior Elders of YCE, are not necessarily following Afenifere agenda because Afenifere is a social political organization and YCE is a social cultural group. When Falae was aspiring to be president, that was when all of them engaged in the mother of betrayal. That was how YCE emanated. The YCE and Afenifere have hadly harmonized their agenda in political spectrum”.

“During the second term of Obasanjo, the Afenifere said they would never support him and they didn’t but made peace with East to support Falae. Today, they are now paying back what South East did for them by supporting Falae then. But, YCE sees things differently”, he concluded.