The Nigerian nation and its actors have been contemptuous of our desire to resolve national questions through dialogue and civilised consensus. Rather, government has erected institutional process that turns a deaf ear to what the people have demanded through the conference. That hollowing out had been our recurring decimal till today.
Governors Rotimi Akeredolu, Kayode Fayemi and other Fulani imposed South Western politicians cannot speak for the Yoruba people. Akeredolu cannot tell Yoruba in Ondo State how they want to be governed. Yoruba lands are colonised by Fulani armed blood suckers. Yoruba sons and daughters are jobless. They sit on okada at the juncture of all our streets. They are full of fury and anger at the very corrupt system that had forgotten them and turn them into motor park touts – agbero.
The monstrous, corrupt, and wicked animals we call Nigerian politicians have been walking over our sons and daughters with impunity. The politicians have turned our able-bodied youths into hoodlums. In compromising, Governor Akeredolu is returning to elitist folly. In calling Yoruba agitators frustrated, Governor Kayode Fayemi is shipping into executive shame. All Yoruba politicians who are benefitting from the system have lost touch with the current Nigeria’s social and political barometer. In Professor Banji Akintoye and Igboho Oosha, determination and courage have merged; truth and mobilisation have solidarized.
Nigeria has disappointed Nigerians. When would it be fixed? Who will fix it? Must agitators for self-determination be eternally accused of treason? In 2014, Scotland had a peaceful referendum. As early as this year, a series of recent surveys in Scotland are backing the breaking up from the UK with as high as 57 per cent of the nationalists demanding a fresh referendum and threatening to hold a ‘wildcat’ vote if Mr Johnson does not give permission.
On 28 January 2021, Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, had to travel to Glasgow to consort and persuade Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, in an atmosphere devoid of rancour. He persuaded Scotland to remain in the union.
British Army was not sent in to harass, intimidate, arrest, or kill Nicola Sturgeon. Like Sturgeon, Igboho Oosha has inalienable right under international law, equity, and justice to fight for the interests and defend his people against Fulani genocide if the Fulani imposed Yoruba governors are overawed and powerless to do so.
On his part, Professor Banji Akintoye has been packaging the self-determination question with professorial dignity, humility, legality, and due process. He believes that Yoruba agitation must be bloodless, intellectually rooted and legally grounded. He has argued that the right of self-determination is a guaranteed right in every nation across the world. That is the reason why Nicolas Sturgeon is yet to be detained. That explains why Scotland is still forging ahead and stubbornly demanding for independence without the British Army issuing threatening statements against the wishes of the Scottish people. What kind of political ponzy scheme do we practice? Where is the freedom for the nationalities to ventilate their dream and aspirations? Why do we accommodate blockheaded tyrants in Nigeria?
In response to any threat from the government, governors and political jobbers, Akogun Tola Adeniyi the Chairman of Council of Yoruba Global Alliance has wade in saying, “We want to assure our Yoruba compatriots that we are working, but quietly, strategically and tactically just like the masterminds behind those devouring Nigeria have remained anonymous without vainglorious and attention-seeking noisemaking. Yoruba fighting forces, like in the tradition of soldiers all over the world are the ones who should do the chest beating to showcase their conquests.”
“We are convinced that Nigeria is already at war, and we are also not deceived by the shenanigans of those who embrace terrorism and cuddle banditry and seek to impose Stone Age mentality on all those who still erroneously believe there is a country called Nigeria. Yoruba Global Alliance a.k.a Egbe Ominira sympathizes with our fellow African cousins in Sokoto, Zamfara, Kaduna, Borno and other states north of Rivers Niger and Benue who are being daily plummeted by pampered and officially emboldened terrorists, most of whom were imported into their territorial space by officialdom.”
We have come to the end of snobbish fatalism that wrings the hands and proclaims that Nigeria is indivisible. Everything of human creation has a life span. Everything created by man can be divided, changed, modified, or removed by the same human agency – slavery, colonialism, feudalism – they were all systems of human imagination.
They came to an end. The Nigerian 1999 constitution has reached its sell by date. Nigeria, as one nation, has also reached its sell by date. Its wealth serves the interests of few politicians and cronies against the poverty of the majority.
What has been exerting our division is President Buhari’s constellation of political extremism that relates to neofascistic tendencies like empowering Fulani bandits, Miyetti Allah, freezing the accounts of protesters, banning protests, provocative nepotism and ethnic privilege that provokes our daily visceral rage and drives us into our ethnic cleavages.
It is this haunting political castration that drove Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo to declare himself as the leader of the new “Biafra de facto customary government” citing “injustice and marginalisation” on the Igbo found in various zones of the country as the reason for his aspiring for a “better life for his people.” Igboho Oosha, like Asari Dokubo, has seen Nigeria as a nation of deep inequality, iniquity, and injustice. Igboho Oosha has come to discover that the Nigerian state, by its nature and orientation, only exists to defend without compromise, the interests of the dominant class (Fulani) while the rest are held down by fear, intimidation and gun totting, heavily partisan armed forces.
In our fear, Nigeria will remain a nation of idiots ruled by idiots. What matters in life is not what you want but how badly you want it. We must not fear. The Yoruba nation must not fear. Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. Fear breeds lack of action. Lack of action breeds lack of experience. Lack of experience breeds ignorance. Ignorance breeds fear. And fear makes one afraid to do the very thing that would be beneficial to you, to your children and unborn generation.
Nigeria has entered a crisis moment and we need courageous men and women to navigate and move us forward. David Ben Gurion the founder of Israel and its first Prime Minister observed: “courage is a special kind of knowledge, the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible with courage”
In conclusion, I will echo the courageous word of Akogun Tola Adeniyi, “Yoruba sovereignty is not negotiable, on course and irreversible.”
Concluded
END
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