The Insight by Lateef Adewole
On Sunday, I had a long and intense discussion with a senior brother and friend. Since the beginning of this year, we have not talked on phone, and for some months before then. That must have explained the length of that tête-à-tête. Our discussion dovetailed into the state of the nation and how things have turned in Nigeria. He expressed this concerns despite the fact that he lives in the United States of America. He pointedly asked me what I thought about the agitation by some Yoruba people for a Yoruba nation.
I have been confronted with this question many times in the past few weeks since the agitation gained traction. Many friends and readers have asked for my opinion about it, for which I told them that I reserved my comment and was still watching events as they unfold.
In the past few weeks, I took a break from writing about the endless issues that bedevil Nigeria on daily basis, just to get my sanity back. That was why I wrote about other things as they affect our society. Sincerely, it was almost impossible to go blank on Nigeria.
I did my best to watch less news on television, read less about happenings online and offline, and the rest. However, except one shuts down completely, one could not be freed from contracting the “Nigerian virus of bad news”. Everywhere you turn, there is one devastating story or another; If bandits (that should be declared terrorists) are not abducting school children, they are killing people. If they are not burning down an entire village, they are kidnapping travellers. It is really overwhelming.
That my brother was a “die-hard Buharist” while he was in Nigeria. I could remember series of his defence of President Buhari and his campaigns for him in 2014-15, in many discussions we had then. He remained reluctantly optimistic till 2019. When I asked why he had remained silent for a long time now, especially throughout 2020 on our social media platform, he told me how disappointed he has become with the president and his administration. That was unbelievable to me based on his antecedents.
There have been serious agitations by some groups in the South-West region for a Yoruba Nation or Oduduwa Republic, as the case may be. They went ahead to declare it last week. There was even a currency specimen for the new republic circulating on the internet. It is called “Fadaka” (Fad for short). It stands for Silver in English language. One flag, purported to be that of Oduduwa Republic, was even hoisted somewhere in Surulere, Lagos, in the dead of the night. People woke up to its spectacle.
![Igboho begins awareness in Lagos](https://i0.wp.com/www.chronicle.ng/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Igboho-awareness-2.jpg?resize=300%2C228&ssl=1)
All these have dominated national discuss since last week. Would anyone blame the people pushing the agenda? Not really. Is that the best way to go about it? That may not be. Has the opportunity for a better alternative been provided for people to air their views? Not much. Should people be availed such medium to express their grievances with the current situation in the country? Affirmative.
The current agitation for Oduduwa Republic was catalysed by the recent crisis of vacation orders and the likes, issued to criminal elements disguising as herdsmen in different forests in the South-West region. They were said to be of Fulani extractions. Those orders came about from the frustration of the people who are the victims.
For years, people cried to their political leaders and governments without response. As the attacks by the criminal herdsmen gradually escalated, they kidnapped people on the roads, in their homes or on their farms and demanded ransom. They killed those who could not pay. They invaded farmlands with their cows, destroying many months and years of other people’s sweat and livelihood in their wake. Those who challenged them were murdered in cold blood. Women and girls were raped. Indigenes were displaced. But what did the governments do? Nothing. The people became helpless, distraught, hopeless and desperate.
The intervention of Chief Sunday Adeyemo, popularly called Sunday Igboho was so timely that people called it “God-sent salvation”. People embraced it and the ball was set in motion. In no time, from giving quit notice to the killer herdsmen, it moved to giving orders to northerners to vacate the Yorubaland. It graduated to the Yorubas wanting out of Nigeria (secession), and here we are now, a declaration of Oduduwa Republic.
All that happened, along with the directive by the Ondo State governor, Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu, that all people illegally occupying the state forest reserves to vacate there and get registered as a way of curbing the criminal elements disguising as herdsmen, while they commit heinous crimes and use the forests as safe haven. What was the reaction of the Federal government and Northern leaders? Disappointing.
The response from the Federal government and the rhetorics from the northern leaders and groups, criticising the Ondo State governor miffed many Yorubas. It looked like all that have been happening were orchestrated and that the northerners were in support. Or why would anyone in their right senses criticise efforts by some people to provide better security for themselves? This was the same way the Federal government and the northern elders and groups reacted when the security outfit, Amotekun, was established to counter the same insecurities last year in the South-West. Did they prefer that the people of south-west should continued to be killed like flies as we have seen?
With such dispositions from the Federal government and northerners, how would anyone expect many Yorubas to feel or what they should do? Keep quiet? That is impossible. The gentility of a tiger is not the sign of cowardice. That the Yorubas have been accommodating, tolerating and peace-loving as obvious in the demography of the South-West region, so as to ensure peaceful co-existence of all Nigerians from different ethnic groups, should not be misconstrued for weakness. Many who thought so must have had a rethink and found out they thought wrong, following the events of the past weeks. The Yorubas remained the stabilising ethnic nationality in the Nigerian state. I can say this unequivocally.
I have also read accounts of many groups who disagreed with those clamouring for Yoruba nation. The position of some of them is largely influenced by religion. They felt the agitation is against the president who is a muslim and muslim north. That’s ludicrous. What has this got to do with being a muslim or otherwise? Did those killers in south-west ask for their victims’ religions before being kidnapped or killed? How many have been freed because of the religion they practise? Did the herdsmen choose the farms they destroyed based on the religion of the farm owners?
Would there have been all these agitations across the south, not only south-west, if the federal government, in whose hands are all the security apparatchiks, has lived up to its responsibility of protecting the lives and properties of the citizens, which happens to be the first duty of the government? The lack of sincerity on the part of government has fuelled all these. I put all the blames at the feet of President Buhari, who was elected to discharge this responsibility but failed woefully in this regard. Such disappointment led to the withdrawal of many hitherto hard-line Buhari supporters that I know personally. They felt let down. Many who are bold now speak up to criticise the president and his government. Others simply kept quiet and withdrew from public commentaries. It is that bad.
On the part of the agitators, I have observed many misdemeanours. With all due respect to many distinguished members in some of the groups, they are mishandling the issue and allowing some members to derail such genuine agitation by going about it the wrong way. While some of the leaders claimed it will be intellectual fight to actualise their dream-nation, there are younger elements whose bloods are hot, and only spit fire and brimstone. Worse still, they are not ready to even listen to or accommodate dissenting opinions to what they believe or are doing. That’s a wrong foot forward. Some of them even resorted to threats to the lives of opposition to them, from the same Yoruba nation they claim to be fighting for. That is not the ways of the “omoluabis”. We think before we act!
I laughed whenever I hear how many of them, too young to be alive during the civil war of 1967-70, call for war. As Yorubas will say: “t’omo o ba ba itan, a ba aroba” (If a child did not witness history, he would hear narrations of it). Some of us who were not born in 1967 have read extensively about the Nigerian civil war. “Ogun o ri b’iyan, ogun o ri bi eko” (war is not like eating pounded yam or solid palp). As narrated from different sources, that war was not what anyone should wish for their enemies. Many of the tell-tales were chilling!
I am aware that Sunday Igboho is a “warrior” in traditional sense, given his involvement during Ife-Modakeke war. But I am sure he too would never wished for such experience again. Only the start of war is known, no one knows when and how it will end. He might have been fortunate to survive that war but hundreds of his compatriot “warriors” must have died, as well as many innocent people. Would he wished for such to happen again on a more massive scale? Wars in the 60’s to 90’s are playthings when compared to now. We are in 2021. We can see how insurgency alone has devastated the country.
The government of the day should tread carefully in handling the issue too. I read where the new Chief Of Army Staff (COAS) threatened to deal with Igboho and Asari Dokubo. Such statements could aggravate an already bad situation. Many wondered how much has he and the army dealt with marauding fulani bandits that have taken over the whole of the northern region. They operate so brazenly, days and nights, without any fear. Sheikh Gumi has exposed their identity and locations, so, no one can feign ignorance of who they are and where they are located anymore. Let the COAS go and deal with them first and leave those who have not carried guns to be handled more diplomatically.
All that is happening is in line with what J.F. Kennedy famously said in 1962 and I quote: “those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable”. When the country is at the precipice like this, with everything going south, increasing poverty, hunger, illiteracy, dilapidated health facilities, collapsed infrastructures, worsening economic conditions, capped with unprecedented level of insecurity, yet, the government does not want to heed the call by the people to restructure the country, despite that it is not working as presently constituted, this is what you get.
Historically, the Yorubas have never been people to call for breaking up of Nigeria. Restructuring for a better and more equitable country and effective governance, have been where the region stood for decades. Unfortunately, those who used to champion the call for restructuring then while in the opposition have suddenly jettisoned it when they got into power. They now struggle to explain it away, despite being one very important issue they canvassed to hoodwink the Yorubas in 2015 general elections. That’s human beings for you.
It is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war. All wars almost always ended on the round table. So, why not start from there now? Those who have perpetually opposed restructuring the country to become a functional state because the anomalies benefit them should have a rethink. They will also lose in any event of complete break-up due to war. There is need to enthrone equity, justice and fairness among all ethnic groups that make up the country, if we are to continue in this union. There is need to renegotiate the terms of such togetherness. “Monkeys cannot be working while baboons will be chopping”.
As things stand, there is no way southern region will stop agitating for self-determination, resource control and secession, as seen from a Yoruba group just like other groups from the South-east and South-South. There is great inequity and injustice against the south right now. How could only the north heads all the arms of government; the executive, legislative and judiciary? Southerners are said to be more educated but all heads of the judiciary and large majority of judges appointed are from the north, as worsened by the recent appointment of judges to the appellate court. Minister of Justice and AGF is also from the north.
In the security, how could only the northerners hold about 14 of the 16 positions in security matters; C-in-C, Minister for Defence, Police Affairs, Army, Navy, Police, DSS, NSCDC, Immigration, Customs, NSA, NIA, DMI, NDLEA and we say the country belongs to both north and south? The north has no oil in commercial quantity as at today but that sector is dominated by northerners. From the Minister of Petroleum, to the GMD NNPC, the heads most of its subsidiaries and refineries, DPR, PEF, PPPRA, PTDF and so on.
![Nigeria's service chiefs](https://i0.wp.com/www.chronicle.ng/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Nigerias-service-chiefs.jpg?resize=300%2C168&ssl=1)
The north has no direct access to water but most of the agencies dealing with it are headed by northerners, starting from the Minister for Water Resources. Heads of NPA (under Transport Ministry) and many of its sections, NIMASSA (a southerner was actually replaced by another northerner), many heads of Customs and Immigration at the ports are northerners. When we have this kind of lopsided appointments in favour of the North in critical sectors, what do we expect people from the south to do? There will be agitations like this of course.
Restructuring, which will also leads to creation of state and community police for improved security and electoral reforms through necessary amendments have become imperative. The constitution should be amended to give room for referendum and plebiscite to be conducted by any aggrieved group of people at anytime. Force cannot and should not be used to keep people in any union. There is the tendency by the people currently in power at all levels to oppose proper restructuring for fear that they might lose the powers they currently wield. But, that will be their undoing. They could be consumed if the bubble bursts.
I appeal to all to calm down. Governments at all levels should live up to their responsibilities, especially the federal government, with regards to the security and safety of the citizens. This is the biggest cause of the agitations. Running an inclusive government that recognises the significance of other ethnic groups apart from the north and accommodating them is critical at this time. Nepotism should never be the major criteria for appointments as this administration has been accused of. The time to act is now. It’s better late than never!
Lateef Adewole is a political analyst and social commentator. He can be reached by email lateefadewole23@gmail.com or via WhatsApp +2348020989095 and @lateef_adewole on Twitter, Lateef Adewole on Facebook