Marginalisation: Jonathan has betrayed Yorubas goodwill ... Senator Femi Okunronmu is the Secretary-General of Afenifere and a member of the Yoruba Unity Forum. Today, he is not comfortable with the marginalisation of the South-West in the Goodluck Jonathan administration. In this interview with FEMI OYEWESO in Abeokuta, he bares his mind on the spate of corruption in the polity, merger of opposition parties and other salient issues. Excerpts: The Yoruba people are complaining that President Goodluck Jonathan administration is marginalising the race. Do you share this belief? Yes, you know I’m part of the leadership of the Yoruba Unity Forum and we had a press conference in Ibadan last Wednesday, documenting for the benefit of Jonathan, the extent of Yoruba marginalisation. In fact, it is going beyond marginalisation to the point of as if they are trying to excise us from Nigeria. I will start with a few specific examples. First, as everybody knows, because a lot of people have been saying it; if you look at the first to the 15th position of the topmost hierarchy of power in Nigeria, there is no Yoruba there. And that is bad because we are not there; it is bad because that also have effects throughout the government because these are the people from where all the other powers flow. They are the ones who appoint people to all the boards and corporations; they are the ones who appoint all the various agencies of government. That is where all the positions are shared. So, the Yoruba man is not where they are sharing all the positions, how can he be well taken care of? That is why it is now that in the whole of Jonathan’s administration, Yoruba have been pushed to the back seat. If you look now beyond those 15 topmost positions in the hierarchy of power in Nigeria; go to the finance and economic sector of the country; before, they say some people control the political power while some control the economy. But now, it is the same people that control everything. In the finance and economic sector, we have identified 36 different agencies that control the finance and economy of this country. Out of those 36, only three (3) of them are headed by Yoruba. That is one out of 12 which is eight per cent and Yoruba are about 28 to 30 per cent of the total population of this country. Not only are we 28 to 30 per cent, but this percentage is just for about the most educated people, learned in their chosen professions; finance, engineering, medical and other disciplines. Yet you have these educated segments pushed aside in terms of the control of the financial and economic direction of Nigeria. Then look at the security agencies; we have identified all the security agencies and not even the small one was headed by any Yoruba man out of more than 12. The judiciary and all the agencies that are trying corruption, we identified all of them and only one Yoruba out of about 13 or 14 of them. So, in every area of governance, we are marginalised; we are just not there at all. Because of these, even Yoruba in service are being persecuted everyday because they have nobody at the top to fight for them. When Nigerians know that there is nobody to fight for you, they tend to kick you anyhow. That was what happened at the Ministry of Aviation when the Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Stella Oduah decided to sack all the Yoruba anyhow. And she just sacked them and appointed Igbo persons. We documented all these even in all the agencies as well; even election related agencies, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Population Commissions (NPC), Yoruba are not there. In every sensitive area of government, Yoruba are not there! Would you now say that President Jonathan has been fair to the Yoruba race? Fair? What we have been saying all these while is that he is not fair. In fact, he has been treacherous to us because the Yoruba went out of their way to support him to become the president. Beginning from the period when late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was sick and he was not allowed to be sworn in as acting President. A lot of Yoruba activists led demonstrations and marched on the National Assembly to pressure on it and that was what forced the National Assembly to declare the Doctrine of Necessity that made them to pronounce Jonathan as Acting President. He owed his Acting Presidency to the Yoruba radicals and activists and that is number one. Secondly, when he decided to run for the presidency of Nigeria, he received the enthusiastic support of the Yoruba, especially the Awoists and the Yoruba Unity Forum. It was people like me that wrote out leaflets, handouts and took up radio announcements, saying that this was Awolowo’s prophesy coming true. We said Awolowo during one of his campaigns in the 1983 general elections in the South-South actually predicted that not before long, an Ijaw man would become president of Nigeria. We sat upon that that Awolowo had predicted that and that the Yoruba must support that Awolowo’s predictions. We all supported him. So, we campaigned for him. During one of the campaigns when he went to Ibadan, he made some political gaffs where he was criticising the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) governors and called them rascals and that nearly backfired. So, when he saw that the horizon was negative, he sent some delegations to Ikenne to come and meet the Yoruba leaders. Again, we assuaged their feelings and said “well, don’t worry, we will assuage our own people” and we assuaged and urged them to vote for Jonathan. So, we did everything to support him. In the actual elections, everybody knew that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could never win in Yorubaland, so we voted against PDP in the legislative election but when it came to the presidential elections, we voted for Jonathan. In what way can you show love for somebody more than that? Already, the tendencies were clear that we were not for your party; we were not for PDP but we were for you. So, we showed our love and affection for him by voting him as our president. When election results started coming out, it was Yoruba results that gave his election credibility because people who were declaring 99 per cent; everybody knew that they were rigging elections in those places. In some places where he won 98 per cent, those could not be real figures. But in Yorubaland where we had authentic voting, he won close to between 60 and 70 per cent of the votes in Yorubaland. Those were real elections. That was in fact, what gave his election international credibility that yes, people really voted for him. Are you saying that the president mismanaged the goodwill that made the Yorubas voted for him just like someone has said? He betrayed us; he betrayed the goodwill of Yoruba people. If that is the case, what then is the way forward? Well, the way forward is to continue to tell him to his face that you can fool a man once, but the man will rarely be fooled if you fool him the second time. We won’t tell him this so that it doesn’t look as if we are threatening him but just like our adage says; “inu l’oko eye n gbe”, meaning that what we will do remains in our minds. But we shall keep reminding him of how much we supported him. If he continues to marginalise us and take us for granted, and treat us as if we are not part of Nigeria, then we will wait for him. Femi Okunronmu Secretary General of Afenifere
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 16:05:06 +0000
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