…Group ready to be recruited to fight insecurity
From John Silas, Lagos
Chairman of the Oodua People’s Congress’s Board of Trustees (OPC-BOT), Honourable Wale Oshun, at the weekend led members and national executives of the organisation on a courtesy visit to the widow and family of its late Founder Dr. Frederick Fasehun, pledging that the legacy of the group’s Founder would be sustained.
Oshun said it became necessary to pay Mrs. Fasehun a courtesy visit in order for her to bestow her blessing on the newly constituted OPC-BOT.
While apprising her with the BOT’s plans to sustain the organisation, especially at this critical state of the nation’s life, Oshun, during the visit of Sunday 6th March 2022, observed that Mrs. Fasehun must be given due credit and recognition as a co-traveller with her husband during the struggle to enthrone democracy in Nigeria.
Former Chief Whip in the House of Representatives, Oshun is Chairman of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) and also Chairman of the newly-constituted OPC BOT.
Other members of the BOT present were Bashorun Kunle Adesokan and Comrade Jubril Ogundimu, OPC President, Otunba Wasiu Idowu Afolabi, the Secretary-General, Comrade Bunmi Fasehun, and the General Officer Commanding, Comrade Babatunde Adewale.
Afolabi, OPC President, said that the organisation would readily collaborate with the government to confront insecurity whenever it was invited to do so.
“We realise that if we cannot keep our environment peaceful, we too cannot live in peace,” he said. “As a result, OPC is ever-ready to play its traditional role of tackling any threat by anybody to security anywhere in the South-West.”
Welcoming the visitors to her home in Okota area of Lagos, Deaconess Iyabo Fasehun thanked Oshun and the other trustees for remaining steadfast and supportive of the organisation after the death of its Founder.
She however enjoined OPC members everywhere to operate in love for one another as that was the basis for her husband founding the organisation.
She said, “It was the love for the Yoruba race and Nigeria that made my husband found the Oodua People’s Congress to demand for the rights of every man and woman of Yoruba origin, as well as to ensure social justice for all Nigerians.”
While commending the new OPC executive and BOT for sustaining the legacy of Fasehun who died on December 1, 2018, she described the group as a pacesetter, recalling that it was after it was founded in 1994 that other regional and self-determination organisations sprang up.
Furthermore, Deaconess Fasehun said OPC must educate members to eschew violence, and that it must leverage on its huge size to remain united and lead by example.
Mrs. Fasehun, who last October adorned Afolabi with the insignia of office as OPC President, urged members of different factions to return to the mainstream under him, as this would be the wish of the late Founder who in his lifetime had appointed him Deputy President of the congress.
Fellow BOT member and former OPC Secretary, Bashorun Adesokan, said that the contribution of Fasehun to the enthronement of democracy in Nigeria could never be over-emphasised, and that history would be kind to the Founder for the role he played.
Ogundimu said: “The spirit of the Founder of OPC, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, can never die. It lives on in the group and in Mama as evident in the way Mama carried on to uphold the legacy of her husband.”
