Yoruba youths set to hold mass rally for Buhari

A pan Yoruba youth group, Yoruba Progressive People’s Congress (YPPC) has said it will not allow the likes of the former president to ruin the current good relationship being enjoyed between the Yoruba people and President Muhammadu Buhari.

The youths therefore said it plans to hold a nationwide mass rally to show the President that the Yoruba people are solidly behind him.

Addressing journalists in Lagos, Elder Amodu Pelumi, president of the group said it is clear that the intention of the former president’s open letter is to create a friction between President and his vice president who currently is the highest office holder from the Yoruba people.

He said it obvious that the former president has no desire to relinquish the leadership of the Yoruba political class to his successors as he constantly sees in himself a perfect man to whom all must perpetually prostrate in pursuit of political endorsement.

He said, “Whatever his incentives are for writing that statement, we see it as a deliberate attempt to undermine Yoruba leaders that have emerged since he left office.

“This presents several unpleasant options: He does not want Yoruba leaders on the national scene to become more influential so he is attacking the government in which they serve so that they will appear irrelevant; Obasanjo is desirous of bringing down national leaders of Yoruba ancestry so that he can install pliable yes-men that answer to him;

“Obasanjo wants to attract attention to himself to inflate his political value in the southwest ahead of general elections so that he will get patronage.”

Pelumi added: “Furthermore, the quality of leadership Professor Osinbajo is providing places him on trajectory to becoming the Awolowo of our time and for the former president who had deluded himself with the pretext of being the greatest Yoruba leader alive, this is a medicine too bitter for him to swallow. It does not help that he hates Awolowo, the Vice President’s mentor with all his life-blood.”

He therefore urged the former President to desist from his tear-him-down approach to seeking relevance. He said Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is representing the Yoruba interest superlatively and neither him nor the government in which he serves is in need of anybody.

He accused the former leader of trying to use Coalition for Nigeria as a backdoor to the politics he publicly announced to have retired from.