Tinubu criticizes Prof. Akintoye on a personal agenda assertion for the 2023 president.

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for president, rebuked Prof. Banji Akintoye, the leader of Ilana Omo Oodua, for saying that his desire to become president in 2023 was motivated by personal gain.
Akintoye, the leader of the Yoruba Nation movement, claimed in a statement that Tinubu’s desire was driven by “personal interest” rather than the interests of the Yoruba people.

He pledged not to support Tinubu in the elections of 2023 and said he was running at the wrong moment.

Akintoye’s claim was refuted by Bayo Onanuga, director of media and publicity for the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council.

We’ve been made aware of a regrettable and contentious statement attributed to Professor Banji Akintoye, in which his group threatened to secede the South West of Nigeria from Nigeria.

We assume that the separatist idea is mostly Akintoye’s idea as Yorubaland has not held a referendum on whether to remain in Nigeria or not.

We want to caution him against pushing our nation into a crisis or creating another Rwanda.

We believe the professor’s broad charge that Aswaj Bola Ahmed Tinubu is merely pursuing his own interest in seeking the president of Nigeria is unjustified.

“We hasten to say that Asiwaju Tinubu is acting in this way because he is willing to provide unwavering service to Nigerians and because he firmly believes that all men and women, regardless of their ethnicity and religious beliefs, can find happiness and personal fulfillment in a strong, united, and prosperous Nigeria.

In part, Onanuga’s statement read, “Most of the issues on the structure of our federalism raised in Professor Akintoye’s statement have been adequately addressed in Asiwaju’s Action Plan with his promise to address some of the problems afflicting our federalism and his will to make the states more viable as federating units by devolving more powers to them.”