Presidency 2023: APC Governor sponsors Yoruba group against Afenifere

A governor of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the southwest has been linked with the sponsorship of a Yoruba irredentist group, Yoruba Nation Agitation, led Prof Akintoye to purportedly  counter the rejection of the APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and endorsing Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party. The southwest APC governor whose identity is being shielded by the beneficiaries of the political patronage, was alleged to be funding the Yoruba Nation Agitation which had surreptitiously formed a committee to lobby the elites in Southwest Nigeria and mobilise support for Tinubu in Yoruba nation  for the 2023 elections.

The world leader of the Ilana Omo Oodua, the leadership organ of the Yoruba Nation Agitation, Prof Banji Akintoye, was alleged to have assembled a team to persuade Yoruba professionals to support the APC presidential candidate, Tinubu, in his presidential ambition.

It was revealed that the Committee, identified as Elite Mobilisation Initiative (EMI), has as chairman, a medical doctor in Ado-Ekiti, Adebayo Orire.

Orire is Chairman of Ekiti-State Chapter of Tinubu Support Group (TSG), and a close associate of Tinubu.

The EMI team inaugurated in Cotonou, Republic of Benin.

The organizer, Akintoye, had mandated Orire to reach out and enlist all the elites in Yoruba land in the self-determination agitation.

It was revealed, thereafter, that the main goal of setting up the EMI is to network the Yoruba elites and convince them to oppose the Afenifere, which leaders had declared support  for  Peter Obi, Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party.

It would appear that the EMI may constitute an external structure of Tinubu’s campaign organization.