Yoruba leaders more plainspoken than Igbo leaders—ECA’s scribe

Sam Egburonu

THE Secretary of Eastern Consultative Assembly (ECA), Evangelist Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko, has commended Yoruba leaders for their forthrightness, especially the way they responded to the Presidential delegation that consulted with some regions after the EndSARS protests.

Comparing the response of the Yoruba leaders with that of the Igbo leaders in the Southeast, Ugochukwu-Uko said Yoruba leaders are more forthright than Igbo leaders. Giving as an example, the responses of the two during the recent presidential visitations, Uko said Igbo leaders failed to hit the nail on the head, while their Yoruba counterparts said the truth.

According to Uko, “The hunger and anger that rule the land as a direct result of an unwieldy unitary structure foisted by the military, forecloses any future for the teeming populations, as none of the 36 states is viable, economically, to absorb the great army of angry unemployed folks frustrated and crippled by the bizarre structure run on monthly allocations from the central government.

“As a result, the EndSARS protests, the very first early signs of what is to come, so frightened and scared our leaders to the sad and unintelligent conclusion that gagging the social media is the solution to our problems. This is unfortunate and shameful.

“But that is not the big problem. The real problem is that the first zone visited by the Presidential team, the Southeast zone, refused to speak the truth to the government.

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“Governors, legislators, traditional leaders and clerics gathered at the Government House Enugu, but they only issued a terse empty communique dancing around the truth, but dutifully avoiding the truth, for reasons known only to them.

“On the contrary, the Yoruba leaders came to the rescue. When the same Presidential delegation moved to Lagos, the Southwest governors, traditional leaders, clerics and elders told them the truth the Southeast was too scared to tell them: that restructuring the country remains the only solution to our problems. God bless Yoruba leaders.”

Uko, who is also the founder of Igbo Youth Movement (IYM) added: “It is this consistent lack of forthright leadership in my region that has made it very difficult, if not impossible for the youth of my region to respect or look up to the pseudo leaders of my region.

“God bless Yoruba leaders for speaking the truth to the Presidential delegation. God bless Yoruba leaders for inspiring us all. God bless Yoruba leaders for standing up for truth and truth only.

“With tears in our eyes we kneel down and pray to God Almighty to touch the hearts of leaders of our zone, to learn from Yoruba leaders that truth alone heals the land; truth alone will earn you the respect of the younger generation; truth alone will bring peace.”

“The truth remains that 99 percent of the troubles plaguing Nigeria can only be solved through reconstructing the polity to true federalism and power devolution of the First Republic and nothing else.”