The General Secretary of Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, Chief Sehinde Arogbofa, has declared that the report of the National Conference is not against northern interest.
He said this against the backdrop of report that some Arewa leaders wrote the President Muhammadu Buhari not to implement the confab report on the ground that it is anti-North.
Arogbofa spoke with journalists in Oka Akoko, headquarters of Akoko Southwest Local Government area of Ondo State after his installation as Asiwaju Oka, by the monarch of the town, Oba Adebori Adeleye, on Saturday.
He said there were many northern leaders, who were delegates to the conference and who contributed to all the decisions that were taken at the conference.
He noted that all the decisions that were taken at the confab were all in the interest of the unity and development of the country.
Arogbofa added, “This Arewa people you are talking about, I don’t know about them but leaders from the North were present, and in all the decisions we took at the confab and all the decisions were taken by consensus and they were there unless maybe Arewa is now telling us that highly placed Nigerians like Alhaji Coomassie, Tanko Yakasai, some of their former governors too, are not from the North; but they know that they are good northern people.
“So, to say something different now is just a usual way in this country; once they have a new government, people start destroying and backing out from their initial decisions which is not good.
“We took over 600 decisions on issues affecting this country and there was no single day we voted that we did not all agree. Do they want to tell me that somebody like the Lamido of Adamawa, the Emir of Ilorin are not northerners?
“I think it is Nigerian psyche that once a government is out of office, we start destroying that government; we can’t move forward with this. I am not saying that all the decisions we took would be implemented but most of the decisions are good for us and the government should look at them and accept that they are good.” (Punch)