Reject postings to North, group advises Yoruba corps members

A pan-Yoruba organisation, the Action Committee for Restoration of Oodua Sovereignty, has enjoined fresh graduates of Yoruba extraction to henceforth reject postings to Northern states for their national service.

The group’s President, Rt. Rev. Bolanle Gbonigi, gave the advice at a news conference in Ibadan, Oyo State on Wednesday.

Gbonigi, a retired Anglican Bishop of Akure hinged the advice on the killings of non-native corps members during the post-election violence in the North.

He also called on the National Youth Service Corps to urgently review its posting patterns to ensure that corps members were posted to states within their geopolitical zones.

The retired bishop said if that was not done, the NYSC might be accused of pre-meditated genocide against Yoruba graduates and other Southeners.

Gbonigi said the problem with Nigeria was that it has continued to be run as a unitary state in a multi-ethnic polity.

He said, “Rather than allow the various nations making up the country to manage their affairs in their political units with a union government to coordinate affairs on mutually agreed matters, everyone is coerced into a huge prison bearing the pretentious label of one Nigeria.

“The above anomaly is the source and cause of mayhem and bringandage afflicting our elections and it is also the major explanation for our inability to develop economically either in parts or as a whole.

“The violent intervals in the Hausa-Fulani parts of Northern Nigeria in the wake of the presidential elections rather than being the results of illiteracy, unemployment and drug addiction as some would like to make out, are to be explained by desperation for control of the central levers of power by the ruling class of the North with the active support of the Northern masses.

“That some prominent members of the aristocracy in the North-West were victims of the attack does not negate this position.”

Gbonigi, therefore, made a case for a proper restructing of the country.

He threatened to personally lead a revolution if public office holders refused to practise politics in the manner it should be done.

The cleric added that pressure groups would be formed to check such errant politicians.

-Punchwp_posts