KWARA CENTRAL 2023: Group cautions Against Division of Ilorin Emirate unity for political Reasons

The Concerned Ilorin Emirate Indigenes have cautioned politicians within the community against pursuing any course that can threaten the brotherhood and harmony of the community.

The group whose members cut across all the Five Local Government Areas of Ilorin Emirate (Asa, Ilorin East, Ilorin South, Ilorin West, Moro) in a statement made available to the public by its Secretary, Mallam Ahmad Durosinlohun opposed the separate statements credited to Joint Ilorin East and South Community Development Associations and Concerned Ilorin West Stakeholders on their agitation to zone Kwara Central Senatorial seat from Ilorin West to other local government areas in the district, describing it as strange, unconstitutional and a plot to challenge the peaceful coexistence of the people of Ilorin.

“It has been brought to our notice that a Joint Community Development Group led by one Mallam Abdullahi Sulu-Gambari as well as another purported Concerned Ilorin West Stakeholders led by Abdulhameed Oladipupo-Alli, a former TIC Chairman of Ilorin West, alleged that the Ilorin West has occupied the Kwara Central Senatorial seat for many years whilst instigatingly protesting that other Local Government Areas — Ilorin East, Ilorin South and Asa — have been marginalized.

“To us like every other ” _Dahiri_ ” – thoroughbred indigene of this community, we find such disturbing desperation by the two groups as political tact to threaten the Ilorin West people’s right to their constitutional franchise, and a deliberate attempt to bastardize democracy, causing greater instability in the guise of contentious undemocratic power shift arrangement that cannot be found written in any page of the Nigerian constitution. Such fragmentation call is as well alien to our beautiful Emirate and therefore unacceptable. It is against such tendencies that the 9th Emir of Ilorin, Late His Royal Highness, Alh. Mohammad Sulu-Qornain Gambari was initially aversed to the division of the then Ilorin Local Government.

“It, therefore, becomes imperative to reiterate that zoning the ticket of the Kwara Central Senatorial seat as being agitated by the groups is against the provisions of the 1999 Constitution as amended.

“We are stating it unequivocally that, Ilorin is a united entity, and LGAs are a mere administrative arrangement. Thus, we can’t afford anything that will mar, threaten, damn, challenge and break that generational bond as bequeathed to us by our forbearers. A typical Ilorin indigene can lay claim to many LGAs within the Emirate conveniently and truthfully do so. A person may at the same time be from Asa or Moro and be Ilorin South, East or West and vice versa, that is how agglutinated we are in Ilorin. Examples are many. The current APC Chairman in Ilorin South, Hon. Hakeem Jaji can claim Ilorin West if he so desired for any reason. Do the agitating groups realise that the people of Isale-Oja/Okekura axis and Alanamu/Ita-Ogunbo were only separated from being the same Local Government by Pakata/Oja-Oba Road?
The incumbent Senator representing the District, Dr Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe may also claim rightly to be from Idi-Isin, Akanbi Ward V of the Ilorin South Local Government where his ancestral land is, without any challenge. So, this divisive political claim needs to be stopped to avoid disunity, disarray and chaos in the Ilorin Emirate.

“It’s no doubt that the incumbent Senator has been up and doing since he got the mantle of power. He has pulled the bull by its horns and has left no stone unturned. It’s only enemies of progress and people with no love of the Emirate city at heart that will say he has not been fair in situating his developmental programmes across and within his jurisdictions.

“No part of the constituency has been left behind in any aspect. He is making sure the path of development is felt and this is why we have NHIS and NAFDAC offices in Ilorin South, Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Budo-Egba and the proposed Federal College of Education, Afon in Asa as well as the proposed Federal College of Agriculture earmarked for Oke-Oyi, the headquarter of Ilorin East.

To speak of his other interventions in education, water, power, employment and empowerment opportunities, findings reveal that they are evenly distributed across the four (4) Local Government Areas. The mobile clinic he recently facilitated will serve the 5 LGAs of the Emirate, donations and other supports he is rendering to several Ilorin-centric sociocultural groups are not specifically for Ilorin West indigenes but the totality of Ilorin Emirate descendants.

“These among others are enough indications that Senator Oloriegbe deserves the seat again and a sign of someone who understands the Emirate well and doing all that is necessary to put the Emirate in a strong position among other districts throughout the country.

“We, therefore, call on our brothers from the remaining three LGAs desiring the Senatorial seat to eschew politics of division for the sake of unity and the growth of our dearest Emirate.”

E-Signed
Mallam Ahmad Durosinlohun,
Secretary