Nigeria could face an existential threat if the 2023 general election goes ahead without the country being restructured, the Yoruba Summit Group (YSG) has said.
The group disclosed this in a communiqué issued Thursday at the end of its meeting on the State of Yoruba Nation in Nigeria.
A chieftain, Mogaji Gboyega Adejumo, signed the communiqué.
According to the group, Nigeria is currently on the precipice and requires honest conversations about its future to survive.
The communiqué read, “The preponderance of permutations for 2023 presidency, zoning, selecting, rather than addressing the nature of the Nigerian union, the dilapidated structure of the farcical federation, never known to Federalism, this unitary unworkable morass;
“We, the Yoruba, observe that all these will only lead to the kind of chaos never before seen and experienced in history.
“We, the Yoruba nation, therefore, reject the holding of a general election before restructuring Nigeria fiscally and structurally.
“With the granting of licenses for prospecting for gold in Yorubaland, we are aware of the dangers banditry, kidnapping and sundry criminalities this portends.
“The Yoruba nation has noted with great interest, the creation of the Amotekun security network in the South-West states.
“We extend our warmest felicitations to the governors who have started in earnest to fulfill the task of filing the huge gulf of various serious insecurity issues plaguing our region.
“We, hereby, call on states yet to put this structure in place to do so in earnest. The Yoruba do not forget.
“Therefore, for this moment and for a future uncertain, for posterity and the prescient nature of our wisdom in foretelling a coming catastrophe, as was wont of our late sage and leader, Papa Obafemi Awolowo, we, the Yoruba, have come to this irreducible, irreplaceable conclusions;
“That the ship of state is veering off precariously into a precipice, and that Nigeria is at the very edge of political subsidence.
“We are persuaded that nothing short of restructuring can save this country. Any attempt to go ahead with elections in 2023 without addressing the issue of restructuring would spell doom for Nigeria.”