Following the success recorded at the post confab summit held in Akure, last week, another edition of the programme has been scheduled to hold in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on Thursday.
The event is billed to hold at the Premier Hotel in the ancient city. It is with the theme: ‘‘2015 Elections and the Yoruba Nation.
Yoruba delegates to the 2014 national confab and leaders of the extraction had converged on Akure, the Ondo State capital, last Thursday, for a post confab summit where President Goodluck Jonathan was endorsed for a second term in office for the primary reason of implementing the report of the confab.
Participants at the summit were unanimous in insisting that the only genuine change the nation craved for now was that of the constitution and not of personality at the helms of the country’s affair.
They, therefore, resolved to work assiduously to ensure that the confab recommendations got translated into concrete realities and thus threw their weight behind President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election.
The convener of the summit and governor of Ondo State, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, said the basis for the summit was to call for the implementation of the confab being the only solution to the challenges confronting the nation.
Mimiko posited that the confab report, when implemented, would create room for each state to have its own constitution, its own police force, its own prison service, create its own local governments, build its own airports, seaports and railways.
Dr Mimiko said in addition “in the economic domain, solid minerals that had been the exclusive preserve of the federal government since independence, have now been brought to the concurrent list.
“States can now create employment and develop at their own pace. With all that, it liberates everybody, it opens up the political space”.
For these reasons, he stressed, “in a rational and reasonable society like ours, I don’t expect anything less than the enthusiasm in wanting to implement the report.”
He said he believes that the President, who set up the conference, wanted a transformed Nigeria adding that the summit is only reacting to the call of the National Confab delegates that the people of Nigeria have great roles to play in implementing the report.
The governor noted that those sceptics who alleged that the Confab was a ruse and a Greek gift and that delegate were on a jamboree have been proved wrong.
Notable Yoruba personalities in the region present at the Akure summit included Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Senator Femi Okunrounmu, Dr Kunle Olajide, Dr Fredrick Fasehun, chairman Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN); Chief Gani Adams, coordinator of Odua Peoples Congress (OPC); Afenifere Secretary, Yinka Odumakin; Professor Dupe Olatubosun; Minister of State for Works, Dayo Adeyeye, amongst others. (Tribune).