Afenifere seeks apology from Ali over remarks on Yoruba

[TGD]

 A YORUBA socio-cultural group, Afenifere, has cautioned former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Col. Ahmadu Ali (rtd), over his uncharitable comments about the Yoruba people.

Afenifere demanded that Ali should retract the statement and tender apology immediately for calling the Yoruba ungrateful and that they are another character because they (Yoruba) would not worship former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

In a statement Monday, National Publicity Secretary, Yinka Odumakin, said the attention of Afenifere has been drawn to an interview granted by Ali to a newspaper (not The Guardian) where he made uncharitable comments about the Yoruba people.

Odumakin noted that the grouse of Ali against the Yoruba people is that they would not worship his god (Obasanjo) and as such, demonised them as "...the Yoruba people who are totally ungrateful kind of people in this country... the Yoruba are another character".

Afenifere said such remark against a whole people is totally unbecoming of Ali "whom we thought should be a cultured man having come from Igala Kingdom that has centuries of civilisation behind it.

"We ordinarily would have ignored his vituperations but for two reasons: given his profile as a former chairman of the ruling party and a failed aspirant to the chairmanship of its Board of Trustees (BoT), the unwary may be tempted to assume that the words he spoke came from a wise man who is highly informed and secondly, he has touched on a deep cultural value of the Yoruba people's appreciation."

Afenifere said the Yoruba people value an appreciative spirit to the point of criminalising an ungrateful person in the saying "an ingrate is not different from a thief. They also link continuous blessings to appreciation of past ones.

"From the above, it is crystal clear that Ahmadu Ali has no lesson to teach the Yoruba in the art of gratitude and his uncouth remark only portrays him as ill-mannered and foul-mouthed."

He continued: "For Ali and those who think like him, Yoruba don't venerate mere positions but rather leadership through service to the community. This explains why the Yoruba adore Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who contested the highest office in the land three times and lost and resent Ali's hero who occupied the same office three times!

"The difference is that as Premier of Western Region, Awo used the resources of the region to banish ignorance through free education, eliminated diseases through free health, introduced television culture to the Yoruba even before France, made Yoruba to aim for the sky by building the 25-storey Cocoa House in Ibadan, among other imperishable."

Odumakin said in contrast "the years Ali's hero spent as leader of Nigeria institutionalised corruption, which deepened poverty for all Nigerians, including the Yoruba. The poverty index in Nigeria was 45 per cent in 1999 and jumped to 67 per cent in 2007 in spite of unprecedented oil earnings in the same period. The culture of begging that was alien in Yorubaland became pronounced under the leadership of the man Ali wants Yoruba to worship."

He added that in all the 11 years Obasanjo spent as president, Yoruba can point to nothing in their region that rivals the least of Awo's achievements. That is why they have no gratitude for such a man positioned to give quality leadership to his country but left it worse than he met it because of personal failings."

He said Ali is free to build a shrine for his god in his Igala Kingdom but he would never be the one to choose a hero for the Yoruba.

"And talking of gratitude, is there anything the Yoruba owe Ali? They remain "grateful" to him in memory of Akintunde Ojo and other promising students who were murdered in cold blood during 'Ali-Must-Go crisis of 1978, when Ali was Obasanjo's Education Minister", he added.



The Guardian