Hausa, Fulani, Igbo Not Yoruba Problem. An X-ray Of Yoruba people.
My main reason for disagreement with Oduduwa Republic is the Oduduwa people themselves, my main concern is the Yoruba people. They need to be uplifted, they must be educated, enlightened and refined. Only a strong people build a strong nation. In a setting where most Yorubas are still poor, uneducated, this is what must be dealt with first. Our primary concern should be how to open the eyes of our people so they’ll be able to have a sound and sophisticated worldview. Without first building content into the majority of our people, we won’t be able to get them to do anything meaningful. We need to first create in Yoruba land the Human Resources that the whole world will be running after. Yoruba people need to become real human capital thanks to their intellect, their exposure, their skills, etc. Unfortunately, even in Yoruba land now, if you really want to get anything done, then you have to look outside to get the skills you need. Even the most patriotic Yoruba man will look to Europe and Europeans for his construction work, when he needs to fix his water system he will look for Togolese or Beninese. Even if it’s an ordinary cook, housemaid, or gateman you are looking for, most Yorubas won’t employ their fellow Yoruba people, not because they don’t love them, but because they are not skilful. These are the issues we must deal with, we need to first make our people competitive in all areas of Nigerian real estate. We need to bring them out of massive ignorance and superstitious, then build them into a strong and civilised people. Once we attain this level of human development for Yoruba people, then our quality will speak for us. The lack of quality is our biggest problem right now, it’s not the need for a new flag, or geopolitical identity, Yoruba people need internal transformation of their character and values first of all.
Contrary to this, with the emergence of Oduduwa republic, who are those that will be the citizens? Are they not the current Yoruba people? The so-called “area boys” of Lagos, are they not part of Yoruba people who will go with you? What will happen to them? Or we think they will become saints overnight? What will you do with the Yoruba money ritualists? In my own personal opinion these money ritualists are as bad as the Fulani kidnappers.
The thugs at Ibadan motor parks, are they not part of the Oduduwa people or are we going to reject them not to come into the new republic?
The armed robbers on Ondo highway and those disturbing Ijesha communities, who are Yoruba people themselves, are they not going to go with you?
The land-grabbers and “Omo onile” in Ogun State, and Lagos are they not going with you into Oduduwa? Or are they also Fulanis, Hausas and Igbos?
The kidnappers along Ekiti, some of whom are of Yoruba descent, are they not going to go into Oduduwa Republic or are you donating them to Biafra? What of the Yoruba thieves and kidnappers terrorising Lagos Benin road, where will you throw them? Hey, friends please begin to face reality. Don’t let problems and challenges be your motivation to starting a new country, great countries are not founded that way. Great countries are established on divine vision and foresight.
A Yoruba Republic will only be a worse version of the present day Nigeria. The lecturers in our Polytechnics, Colleges of Education and Universities, who are sleeping with students for grade, are they not going to be part of Oduduwa Republic?
You will not have Fulani and Hausa “ruling” you anymore but you’ll still have to deal with same issues. The same politicians ruling you today are also Yoruba people and they’ll continue to do so, or are you going to kill all your elites so you’ll have Oduduwa Republic?The ritualists and killers who are using people for money in Osun and across Yoruba land, are they not going to go with you as Yoruba people?
If we have Yoruba people amongst the above listed categories of Nigerians, who then is spoiling Nigeria, is it only Fulani, Hausa or Igbo? Who are the people that will build this new Yoruba nation that some people are talking about? What is the plan to reform Yoruba people? Are we intending to build a great nation on the assumption that the Yoruba people are better than everyone else? In their thoughts, only Igbos, Fulanis and Hausas are bad people? That is a fallacy.
If you think that Yorubas are going to become changed people overnight, I will tell you not to be too quick to think so. For more than five hundred years, Yorubas have been killing and maiming each other, even before the Europeans came to our land.
The loss of Ilorin in present day Kwara state is as a result of the never ending struggles among the Yorubas. The story of Afonja and Aalafin Aole is still there for all to read and gain wisdom. The Fulani Alimi’s son only took advantage of the situation to grab Yoruba land, then pledged allegiance to Sokoto Caliphate. Yorubas have not even recovered from that situation in nearly 200 years. If Yorubas are so great why don’t you show that greatness by first returning Ilorin to Yoruba fold. Even that small challenge Yorubas have not been able to surmount talk less of the problems of a brand new nation. Please my Yoruba brothers and sisters don’t let us think too much of ourselves than we ought to. We are not saints and we are not a super power either. If your faith is in the juju powers of audacious individuals like Sunday Igboho, let him go demonstrate his prowess by returning Ilorin first before facing Nigeria. Where was Sunday Igboho when Babangida stole the votes of Nigerians and jailed the Yoruba hero Chief M.K.O Abiola? He claims to get his so called powers from his forefathers, if I may ask where were his forefathers when the British took control of the entire Yoruba land. Where was their charm when the Fulani Muslims overran the old Oyo empire for decades turning a majority of the empire into Islam in the process, today a major part of Yorubas proudly call themselves Muslims without remembering how they were subdued and subjected to accepting that religion by their oppressors.
Some Yoruba secessionists like to brag about their ancestors and their mighty black power. The question is what did these powerful men in the history of Yoruba land did with these their power? History has it on record how these powerful Yoruba kings and chiefs were killing their own people and selling them off into slavery, using their fellow Yoruba people for sacrifice. If the Yorubas have not changed in more than a thousand years, what makes you think that Yorubas will change now? No they won’t, people don’t just change because time has passed, no people change only when their values change, when they embrace a new set of principles to build their lives on, when new understanding, new knowledge is intentionally imputed into them. This is what we need to take our time to impute into our Yoruba nation first before we dream of being a world beater.
Many of our present day secessionists are nothing but a bunch of romantics who are simply dreaming of an utopia Yoruba nation. They talk of Yorubas ruling themselves as if it’s not the same Yorubas ruling them now. Do you have an idea of what Yoruba nation was like when Yorubas last ruled themselves without the constraining power of other nationalities within Nigeria? It was catastrophic, because our people have the propensity to dominate and subjugate their less fortunate citizens and subjects to the domination of their rulers. Hence till now in Yoruba land, you have to prostrate to greet a king, elder or anyone who is seen as superior to you. It is now widely accepted as a virtuous side of Yoruba culture. In the real sense it’s easy to see that it’s a class thing, it’s the superior that is elevated in our culture, the inferior class has to be subjugated. The truth is that when the masses finally achieve their so called independence they won’t be the ones to “enjoy it”, it’ll still be the same bunch of privileged Yorubas just as they are right now in the present Nigeria. Our Yoruba society even before Nigeria was and is built on the celebration of the powerful and mighty and the oppression of the weak.
It’s there in the anal of history that it was colonialists and the emergence of Nigeria that cautioned the culture of oppression in Yoruba land. The rulers and kings even went to the extent of sacrificing fellow human beings, fellow Yorubas to please these powerful kings and rulers and their gods. I’m narrating these stories to open the eyes of those dreaming of Yorubas ruling and managing their own resources. Especially those elites campaigning for restructuring, I don’t believe them a bit, I know better because I’m a student of history. What these few elites want is to once again be in charge of the resources of western Nigeria, where they the elites will continue to dominate and distribute the wealth of the masses among themselves, meanwhile the poor masses will keep on prostrating and cheering them on for a drop of a few goodies. The poor man will keep on being poor, they’ll keep being subjected to submission and abject poverty. The powerful and the educated elites will keep the poor man’s children as their drivers, housemaids, gatemen, etc. Listen, when next you hear of restructuring, know they are not talking about you ordinary mortals, they are talking about their pockets, not yours. Hence my position is in agreement with that of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, he didn’t call for restructuring, he rather called for RECONSTRUCTION. Listen to him “There is an urgent and massive need for moral and spiritual reconstruction: the kind which will help to demolish morbid desire for naked power and domination and ensure justice, equity and fair play for all.” Obafemi Awolowo. This genius son of Yoruba knew what the real issue was amidst his people and indeed the peoples of Nigeria, it’s that same morbid desire of the few elites to dominate and exercise power over the less privileged. Most of Nigerian elites unfortunately are not a bit interested in justice, social equity or equality with themselves. Hence Awolowo called not for restructuring but for RECONSTRUCTION of our morals and values.
As Awolowo so am I. I’m for reconstruction of our belief system, our values and character, not restructuring of resources to fill the pockets of the few ruling elites.
500 years ago, Yoruba leaders and elites, kings, Chiefs and Monarchs were busy killing their fellow tribesmen, taking possessions of their lands and selling their people into slavery. Today, same is still happening. While slave trade may have been abolished, what is happening today in Yoruba land is no less a form a slavery. Our governors are not from the North, neither are they from the East, they are fellow Yorubas, so what has stopped them from repeating the good works of Awolowo? But rather governors go and governors come yet the lifestyle of ordinary Yoruba people only get worse. It is unfair and cowardly to blame it only on the Nigerian nation or on the North. Does Nigeria stop any of our Yoruba leaders from improving the lives of their people, does Nigeria stop them from developing their own economy, does Nigeria stop them from taking care of the poor among them? No, it’s simply the same pattern of oppression of the poor by the rich which has always been in our society still playing out. Instead of Nigeria stopping them from growth and development it’s rather the opposite Yorubas are now sharing and benefiting from the commonwealth of all the tribes in Nigeria. The governors unfailingly go to Abuja on a monthly basis to collect their share of the national cake. If Yorubas are as powerful, let them first reject the monthly allocations and allowances coming from Abuja. Let them prove their strength to us by doing what Awolowo did, let them use their own resources to develop their states first. Let them make their individual states into a Singapore, or a Hong Kong then we shall believe that the Yorubas are too sophisticated to be in Nigeria.
Have you not heard of Yorubas coming back home from Europe and once they get back home, they get killed or robbed by their own relatives? Sometimes, it is their own tribesmen who plan for them to be kidnapped. At other times, relatives squander the money that their relatives abroad sent to them for completion of certain projects, all the whilst deceiving the relatives abroad that the project is being done. All these evils can be found in Yoruba land, So let’s stop playing the hypocrisy card that Nigeria is our problem, no we ourselves are our own problem, and the problem of Nigeria too, alongside all other tribes in Nigeria.
Dear Yoruba man and woman, your people and even blood relatives are the ones committing all these atrocities against you and others in diaspora. Your own blood are the ones cheating you. It is your own family that is striking you. Until recently, those killing you as Yorubas were not the Hausas, nor are they Igbos, only recently the Fulani menace came up. Where will you put these your relatives once you have this your new republic? Are you going to send your own family away from the republic?
What makes you think that other nationalities in Nigeria are responsible for the evil against you in Nigeria is because you still have them around. The moment the so-called strangers are gone, you will see how your own relatives are no better.
The politicians and their children that have been robbing and embezzling money in the Southwest won’t they also be in Oduduwa Republic? Won’t they be the reincarnated leaders in the new nation? Where will you put them?
All the internet fraudsters, scammers and “419s” that are Yorubas, are we going to export them to the east or deny them the Yoruba national passport? Do you know that a vast number of students in Southwest Nigerian Universities are involved in either cultism, “419”, internet scamming, or ‘Yahoo Yahoo’? These are the youths of your new Yoruba nation. Just take a look at the vast number of current Yoruba youths and guess what the future of Oduduwa Republic will be like? As a matter of fact, these youths, many of whom have no direction at the moment will form the majority in the new nation. Are these current youths the ones that you are going to take with you to build a new nation? Who will they become? They’ll become your kidnappers, your fraudsters, and your killers, hence what we need is reconstruction of our values, the content of our character and restore our Omoluabi virtues. Chief Awolowo is absolutely correct on this one.
This explains the urgent need for us to stay within Nigeria and collectively solve our pressing problems. Nigeria’s problems are not unsurmountable, the real problem is that as Nigerians, we lack the collective resolve to solve these problems. At every slight challenge that plagues Nigeria, every region begins to threaten secession as if that is a ready made solution. Nigeria’s problem is like being in a marriage where there is no commitment. Do couples divorce with every challenge? Unless there is a commitment to stay together and resolve all our problems together we will continue to wander in wilderness. Wisdom says we either stay together as a prosperous country or we all perish as fools.
My grouse with religious opportunists who parade themselves as religious leaders is well known. Now, majority of the religious leaders who over the years I have called out for their atrocities in the name of God are fellow Yoruba people. Many foremost Pastors in Nigeria are Yorubas. With the atrocities of these so called Bishops, Pastors, and clerics which are well known, I cannot fathom all of them being together in a small nation such as Oduduwa Republic. The weight of falsehood, lies, corruption, and deception that will be on a small country like Oduduwa Republic will be unthinkable. Where will all these religious cabals go? Will they not remain in Oduduwa Republic? These men that have torn Nigeria apart with lies from the pulpit, living extravagantly and lavishly in the face of poverty, will they not continue their trade along Lagos-Ibadan expressways? Or are we going to send them to the North if the new nation is declared? What will become of the fate of our people and the new nation when they start deceiving the people and taking advantage of them with new intensity? Will you get rid of them and say, “we want a new country without you people”? Are they not your fathers in the Lord, yet doing the very same thing the rulers and kings of Yoruba land are renowned for over the centuries. It is still the same culture of the big man oppressing the poor and ordinary citizens right in the church, using the name of God to do it in fact. Nigeria as bad as it seems now is still a huge deterrent to the otherwise excessive oppression that could have been going on in Yorubaland. What Yorubas need is not a separate republic, and it is not restructuring either, those will only benefit the few elites and rulers like before and as it is now. What we must call for is in the word of Obafemi Awolowo a “reconstruction” of our values, and character so the whole world will come to know that yes, we are “Omoluabis”.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CHURCH AND NATION
By DR. SUNDAY ADELAJA
