Yoruba Council of Elders bemoans deaths by suicide, hunger
*Calls for restructuring
BY IDIBIA GABRIEL
Worried over the growing misery in the land, some Yoruba leaders under the aegis Council of Yoruba Elders have risen to bare their minds on the need for urgent reforms in the politiy.
In a communique released by the group and signed by Dr Victor Taiwo, the General Secretary and Lanre Ogundipe, the Publicity Secretary, the group is expressly asking that the adoptions at the 2014 Confab constituted by the Goodluck Jonathan led government be urgently implemented to save Nigeria more deaths from insecurity and hunger.
According to the communique, the group said: ‘Some of the issues discussed at both meetings bordered on the following premises:
“ECONOMY:*
We reviewed the state of the economy and it is very lamentable that the suffering the masses are passing through is fast becoming unbearable so much that the rate of deaths by suicide due to hunger and hopelessness is quite unprecedented in the history of this country.
“INSECURITY:
A lot of reports reaching our office on daily basis regarding the effect of the renewed Fulani herdsmen attacks on our farmers, the ravaging of our farmers’ plantation fields, the abductions of our people for ransom by bandits and the indiscriminate killings of our people most especially in Ondo and Oyo states respectively have become a sort of nightmare to us.
“It was a kind of relief for us when we witnessed reduction in the menace immediately after the government changed hands in May, 2023, but quite unfortunately what we are witnessing now is resurgence in a high profile.
“It is also an understatement to say armed robbers are literally on the rampage in the land.
“RATE OF INFLATION ON FOODS AND GENERAL GOODS AND SERVICES:
The rate at which inflation on foods and general goods and services is sky rocketing is very much disturbing to the nerves so much that deaths by hunger are no more news to the ears.
“NON-EMPLOYMENT OF THE MASSES:
The rate of unemployment in the country has literally become paradoxically a norm and terribly alarming. So, out of sheer hopelessness for our youths at securing employments, they find solace or alternative means of survival in yahoo businesses, kidnapping of their fellow citizens for ransom and several other criminal activities.
” ELECTRICITY CATASTROPHY:
What we discovered to be the chief instrument of economic elevation and goods and services productions is the regular supply of electricity which has become almost a mirage in the country.
“THE FUEL MATTER:
For all that is obvious, since the so-called fuel subsidy was removed by the government, the loop effect has been too much telling on the general economic life of the people. And yet all efforts by the government to ease the hardship have not effected any positive change in the lives of the people but rather excruciating agony.
“UNAFFORDABILITY OF HEALTH CARE SERVICES:*
Without any gainsaying, Nigeria does not have any credible instrument of statistics to record deaths and the agents of deaths in this country. But for that, the rate of deaths by the people’s unaffordability to access good health care services due to lack of fund to pay in the hospitals and the right medical instruments with which to treat the patients in the hospitals would have adequately gauged the number of deaths in this country. This is very lamentable and highly depressing.
“While the masses are dying of inaccessibility to good health care services, our government’s public servants for mere headache travel abroad at ease for medical treatments.
“First and foremost, we want to use this occasion to congratulate our own President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on his eventual victory over all trials to become the 16th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. May your time be eventful and bring succour to our people.
“Now, as the new voice for the Yoruba people of Yorubaland, we cannot feign ignorance of the cries our people are inundating us with on daily basis. What is, therefore, the way out for our people in Yorubaland suffering in the midst of plenty?
“While we appreciate the efforts of our kinsman President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the helms of affairs in Nigeria today towards turning things around, all thanks to Nuhu Ribadu, one of the mouthpieces of the President, who made us to know that the liabilities this government inherited is humongous.
Needless to say, as a truism we are all witnesses to the accumulated governmental heaps of rots over the decades that have sent this country to the goal in which we all agonise today. The issue now is; for how long will the highly progressive and intellectual Yoruba people who have all it takes to rise beyond the sky with all the boundless human and natural resources God has endowed us with suffer the hopelessness eating us comatose? Hence our resolve that Yoruba people must begin to think outside the box on the ways out of the extant quagmire for the betterment of our lives.
“Thus, what we arrive at at the meetings in question is the renewed call for the restructuring of the country so that we can begin to harness our intellectual and other resources endowed us with by God to give a better life to our people as we so had in the era of regionalism when Obafemi Awolowo proved a god to the people of Western Region before Thomas Aguiyi Ironsi came and turned us to beggars for monthly allocations at the centre which is our main bane today.
“Now, we of this COUNCIL OF YORUBA ELDERS (CYE) have determined to change the tide for the total turn-around of our situation by clamouring anew for the restructuring of the country whose agitation President Tinubu was very much a part of before he became the president.
“We, therefore, resolved that the only way out of the geo-political bastardy and economic menace we are battling with in the country is the restructuring of the country whose renewed efforts we are launching out today.
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“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, this one thing we request of you:
In the year 2014, the then President Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated the 492-member Nigeria’s National Conference to determine or negotiate the continued existence of Nigeria which some silly minds regarded as non-negotiable. The Confab was headed by the then Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi, and deputized by our own star man Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi. About N10 billion was said to have been sunk into the charade. Wait a minute; is it truly a charade? Yes, that was how former President Muhammadu Buhari saw it which was why he swept the report under the carpet. But do the members of the Confab agree to Buhari’s position? We do not think they should.
“This is why the Council of Yoruba Elders is now calling on all the delegates of Yoruba extraction who took part in the Confab to rise in unison, excavate the report, put it on the table for us to examine and see how much it will benefit the progressive Yoruba people.”
The group further made a call on about 100 distinguished personalities of Yoruba extraction, to rise and champion the course for a new nation.
“We, therefore, call on the patriots to re-position themselves for the challenge of forming a mass body of committee for the restructuring of Nigeria on behalf of the Yoruba people”, it said.
