The Yoruba Progressive People’s Congress is holding a mass rally across the nation in solidarity with President Muhammadu Buhari, and to send the message that the Yoruba nation is behind him.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo in a letter on Tuesday hammered the president and his APC government on various issues, including nepotism and clannishness.
Amodu Pelumi, president of the group said Obasanjo’s open letter is capable of creating friction between Buhari and his vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, who currently is the highest office holder from the Yoruba people and the jead of the administartion’s economic team.
“Whatever his incentives are for writing that statement, we see it as a deliberate attempt to undermine Yoruba leaders that have emerged since Obasanjo left office,’ the group said in statement.
It also stated that the open letter is capable of bringing down national leaders of Yoruba ancestry to irrelevance so that Obasanjo can install those who are loyal to him but disloyal to the general interest of the Yoruba nation.
“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 from those who may support his line of thought even with money.”
The group noted that the quality of leadership Professor Osinbajo is providing places him on trajectory to becoming the “Awolowo of our time,”a “reality Obasanjo finds too difficult to accept.
“It does not help that he hates Awolowo, the Vice President’s mentor with all his life-blood.”
A group up north sprang up earlier today, also planning a mass rally in support of the president whom, it believed, Obasanjo sought to rubbish with the open letter.