By Olufemi Oni, Ilorin

Yoruba in Kwara state, under the aegis of ‘Kwara Yoruba Forum’, has called for the immediate implementation of the Recommendations of the 2014 National Conference, saying the 1999 Constitution (as amended) does not adequately guarantee and take care of the interest of all the ethnic nationalities.

Addressing a press conference in Ilorin, the Kwara state capital, spokesman of the Forum, Chief Jaiyeola Omotosho, added that: “Failure to address these issues with sincerity of purpose, Kwara Yoruba would have no option than to wholeheartedly support Yoruba Self Determination, Yoruba Nation or Oodua Republic, come what.

“There is no doubt that a lot of the problems plaguing Nigeria as a country have to do with the ill-conceived 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates into one country which can be better described as a forced rnarriage.

“One dangerous concomitant effect of that forced marriage was for Kwara, a substantially Yoruba speaking State which found itself in the Northern Nigeria, as a
minority ethnic group, having severed it from its source and origin, the Yoruba Nation.”

In respect of Kwara State, Omotosho called on the state government to mediately restore the dignity, honour and paraphernalia of Yoruba traditional institutions in the Ilorin
Emirate, including Asa, Moro, Ilorin West, Ilorin East and
Ilorin South by grading and upgrading them like their
counterparts in the other Local Governments of the State.

Besides, it urged the state government to implement forthwith
the two subsisting Court judgments “already won by the good
people of Moro which excludes them from Ilorin Emirate.”

In addition, Omotosho urged the state government to put necessary
machinery in motion for the immediate creation of Local Council Development Areas, with
particular reference to Ifelodun, Asa and Moro Local Governmnent Areas which constitute some of the
largest Local Councils in the Federation.

End