Following last Sunday’s endorsement of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu by the leader of the pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, Pa Reuben Fasoranti, and several South West leaders, the Patriots Roundtable have aligned with the position of the Yoruba leaders.
The Patriots Roundtable, a pan-Nigerian platform, is a unique platform created for the purpose of intellectually driving an agenda focused mainly on the indivisibility of the country and the essence of proven character.
In a statement titled, ‘Fasoranti’s choice is our choice’, and signed by its National Coordinator, Prince Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu, the Patriots Roundtable said: “We are not surprised with the pivotal decision of Chief Reuben Fasoranti, leader of Afenifere, who stands in firm nobility of purpose; stern and steady; true to himself, true to his people and true to a great ideal. He has chosen to embrace his own. He has chosen to embrace the Asiwaju. It is the right thing to do.
“Like all enlightened partisans in the political fray, we at the Patriots Roundtable acknowledge the old aphorism that all politics is local. One must start from home. One must first be defined by local reckoning. Without a recognition from your home base, the politician is without value, without a necessary wider substantiation.
“Chief Fasoranti has given the Tinubu presidential ticket this deserved home based approbation which is necessary to galvanize the larger national embrace.
“We take cognizance of the fact that the Yoruba Patriarch and the Leader of Afenifere is a man of principled, decisive candor.
“Chief Fasoranti is a leader who is woven in a rare moral gravitas that no money can purchase, that no power can intimidate into untoward complicity.
“At 96, the old patriarch seeks no transient fortune or the tinseled parade of a purchased fame. He has long earned his conscionable leadership in the grapple with autocrats and tyrants who once held Nigeria in the firm grip of iron serfdom.
“Fasoranti is a study in emblematic quiet strength; persistent and unyielding, defiant of those who will steer the fortunes of the Yoruba people to a narrow, provincial, unproductive goal.
“Despite the overt harassment, the subtle threat, the intrusions of those who pretend a total grasp of wisdom, Fasoranti defied the prejudice of the hour. And he held to the popular ideal in the confines of Yorubaland.
“Emboldened by ancestral necessity, wizened by that truth which encourages a cultivation of what is close, of what is dare and near before reaching into the peripheral quarters, he has chosen wisely by reaching into the recesses of custom and tradition. Again, he has chosen his own.
“We agree with the revered old school master. When others are honoring your son, do you turn away in weird disapproval, rejecting the honor, flinging it into the mud? Of course not. You seize it with both hands.
“To move this nation forward, to entrench balance and democratic continuity, the APC governors and leadership who zoned the Presidency to the South are no fools. And when the outcome of the presidential primary favors the Southwest specifically, a genuine leadership does not avert his gaze looking into the wilderness. You claim it.
“This is exactly what the Akure declaration is all about. Fasoranti’s choice is our choice. It is a natural recourse. You seize what is thrust upon you. That’s the Tinubu’s presidential ticket. We urge everyone to do the same for a more progressive, inclusive Nigerian union.
“It is time we move away from the dark politics of retrogressive inclination. It is time we move away from the politics of personal enmity, destroying the bridges of a unifying nation. Let’s come together in genuine patriotic amity from furthest reaches of the savanna to the shores of the mighty Atlantic in renewed hope to make Nigeria great again”.
