Yoruba elements in Kwara State are ruing the absence of a visible leader, who will glue them to their kin and kith in the Southwest geo-political zone of the country.
Already, the Yoruba in the state no longer attend the meetings and functions of ‘Egbe Afenifere’, a Yoruba socio-cultural organisation that unites the ethnic group spread across nine states of the federation.
Afenifere was formed as a socio-cultural organisation for the Yoruba in Nigeria, with the late Abraham Adesanya as its leader and the late Bola Ige as his deputy.
When the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) political party was formed in 1998, it took the Afenifere agenda as its official manifesto.
Some leaders of thought within the group in Kwara, under conditions of anonymity, said Afenifere had long gone into extinction due to the alleged absence of a visible leader, who would form a rallying point for the people.
Cornelius Adebayo, former civilian governor of the state and former Minister of Communications, was the last known leader of Afenifere in Kwara.
Adebayo often made major pronouncements on behalf of the people with soul-lifting speeches that would assert their identities as Yoruba despite being grouped as people of North Central geo political zone.
In an interview with The Guardian in Ilorin, former Secretary of Afenifere in Kwara, Stephen Wole Oke, described the development as abysmal and a sullen experience, which required and urgent intervention.
According to Oke, there is no more Afenifere structure in the state, as the last meeting of the association was held some 15 years ago when he was serving as the secretary of the group.
He, however, assured the Yoruba across 12 out of the existing 16 local councils of the state of his readiness and those of other leaders of thought in the state to rejig the activities of the Afenifere in Kwara “whenever the occasion so demands.”
