*’He Is Living Manifestation Of Oduduwa Spirit’
By Stephen Gbadamosi, Ibadan
Founder of One Love Family, Satguru Maharaj Ji, has appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to grant amnesty to Yoruba nation agitator, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, who is on self-exile, so he can return to Nigeria.
Maharaj Ji pleaded with Tinubu to grant the agitator presidential pardon so that he could return from where he is taking refuge.
Adeyemo left the country after security operatives invaded his residence in Ibadan, Oyo State, during the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government on suspicion that he was allegedly involved in gun running.
He was subsequently arrested and detained in Benin Republic, but was, thereafter, released in March 2022 to access medical services on the condition that he would not move out of the country.
In a statement signed by Maharaj Ji himself on Thursday, August 7, he pleaded that Igboho should be allowed to return to Nigeria in the interest of national unity and to move the nation forward.
He stated that the right time was now “for President Tinubu to use his presidential prerogative to effect the release of Igboho.”
The statement read, in part: “I urge President Tinubu, who was himself an agitator for democracy during the June 12, 1993 saga, to pardon Chief Adeyemo, because his agitation was solely for the security and development of the Yoruba South-West Nigeria region.”
Pledging his support for President Tinubu “in his bold quest to move the country forward through developing a democratic system and institutions,” Maharaj Ji said: “Perhaps you would all agree with me that the dwindling fortunes of this country have been deeply aggravated by the 1999 Constitution which was handed to us by the military, without the input of democratic representations.
“There is no gainsaying that this country needs an urgent rescue from the worsening socio-economic and security ailment of all time, and the first dose of the panacea to cure such crises must and should be the amendment of the so-called 1999 Constitution, which successive administrations lacked the political will to implement.
“I believe that President Tinubu is a brave leader who has all it takes to engage cerebral sociopolitical approaches to see to the amendment of the anti-progressive Constitution.”
According to him, “Igboho is one of the living spirit of Oduduwa himself and he speaks the mind of over 70 million Yoruba people throughout the world.
“Sunday Igboho remains an undisputed hero of the Yoruba people today, and that his actions are in accordance with the self-determination clause in the United Nations Charter.”
He said Igboho had come to fill a void created by those charged with the responsibility of defending their people in the face of both internal and external aggression.
“Adeyemo did not exceed the frontiers of the ancestral land of his forefathers. What he was determined to do was to guard his people, men, women and children against unprovoked attacks ruthlessly and brutishly unleashed on them and to ensure that conducive atmosphere existed for his people to carry out their legitimate businesses without series of indignities they were notoriously subjected to,” he noted.
Maharaj Ji said Igboho neither went out of his way to attack anybody outside of the Yoruba nation, nor did he issue terrorist threats to fellow Nigerians on regular basis, like the pampered “angels of officialdom.”
The statement added: “Chief Adeyemo is not a threat to any government or any institutions in Nigeria. All his actions are in the self-defense of his people. He should, therefore, not be demonised.
“Igboho is a defender of the defenceless and he is a metaphor for Nigeria. When we have agencies who appear nonchalant, what will come next is for non-state actors to take charge. It was because of this same crisis that led to the establishment of Amotekun but nothing seems to have been done and that’s why Igboho is having heroic acceptance.”
