The Yoruba intelligentsia on the platform of The Yoruba Leadership and Peace Initiative (TYLPI) is to hold a crucial retreat, in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, to discuss the unity and progress of the race in Nigeria.

The scheduled retreat with participants drawn from all southwest states and others, including Kwara, Kogi and Edo States, and all parts of Nigeria and the Diaspora where Yoruba are spread, will hold at the Conference Hall, Lead City University, Ibadan, on Thursday.

According to a statement signed by Mr Folu Olamiti, spokesman for the group, Yoruba leaders, captains of industries, those from the academia, students, market men and women, artisans and other professionals had been invited to partake in the retreat.

The event, according to the statement issued on Tuesday, will focus essentially on ways and means of fostering the unity of the Yoruba with intent to forge a common endeavour among the people in line with the aspirations of the race progenitors.

The statement said that with the outcome of the retreat, TYLPI would be in a good stead to network with other similar groups and like minds to spearhead advocacy on promotion of good neighbourliness among the Yoruba and the sound leadership, which it said the southwest required to attain a new height in Nigeria.

It said that TYLPI has always been inclined towards reviving education, which it noted had always given the Yoruba an edge as an ethnic group, as well as promoting economic and cultural advancement of the people at all times.

It said participants at the retreat would have the right opportunity to espouse ideas and suggestions meant to revive the fast dwindling Yoruba heritage through which it noted the Yoruba ethnic group had been reputed as the pacesetter for others in Nigeria.

TYLPI, a non-partisan, non-political and non-religious group, had before now had held series of meetings on its core objective of forging a common endeavour among the Yoruba, while the idea of the retreat scheduled for Thursday is part of efforts to widen its horizon both locally and internationally.

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