Lagos-based lawyer, Dele Farotimi, has stated that the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organization, Afenifere, was not founded for Yorubas but for Nigerians.
He also called on Nigerians to support the organization in its journey for a better country.
Farotimi said the late former leader of Afenifere, Ayo Adebanjo, fought for a good country, played his part and left the earth.
Speaking at his 97th posthumous birthday, on Thursday, the chieftain of Afenifere, Farotimi, advised Nigerians to imitate the virtues of late Chief Adebanjo.
He emphasized the need for Nigerians to heed the advice of the former Yoruba elder and organize to solve the country’s problems.
His words: “It doesn’t matter what part of Nigeria you’re from. Those who fought before me eminently have made clear to you, Afenifere was not founded for the Yorubas. It was founded for Nigerians. It was founded to save us from ourselves. We are asking you that just as we made ourselves available as a platform in 1993, if you look at where we are today, you shouldn’t need us to tell you that there is a critical need to come together again, find common purposes as Nigerians, because that’s where we are today, and then look for a way out of where we are.
“Chief Adebanjo spent his life, the better part of his life, over 70 years of that, committed to this ideal. He never walked away from it. All the time that we were busy bellyaching about what was happening to us, the late 2020, 2021, I remember, and I can still hear Baba’s voice in my head: ‘Hello, organize, go and organize yourselves”.
“He was constantly telling us about the need to organize ourselves. What we’ve done today has been done in his memory, but he has played his part and he has left. What we do with the charge he has left behind is entirely up to us, but what we as Afenifere are offering you today is an opportunity to work with us, to find common ground, to find common purpose, so that we might all save ourselves from where we are today.”
