Since our independence, we have been treading the path of infamy because of Northern greed to conquer and colonise and turn us into willing slaves of their stock. We have been living with recurring nightmare of bloodbaths through Northern inordinate entitlement mentality to Southern Nigeria resources that feed their ego, worldview, and humanity.
From the 50s what had dominated and shaped us as a nation had always been political violence, coups, civil war, assassinations, police brutality, jungle justice, judicial murders, oppression of the poor, banditry, Boko Haram, and kidnappings. This path of sad trajectory had been marked by the Northern colonialist agenda and our confused and uncoordinated resistance to their state capture.
We had the 1953 Kano pogrom unleashed as a reprisal for the booing of Northern leaders by Lagos crowd over Chief Anthony Enahoro’s motion in 1956 for self-governance. We had the Tiv uprisings of 1960 and 1964 against the tyranny of the Fulani in their midst. Also, in 1962, the Western Nigeria Crisis was Northern inspired. The 1964-65 Fulani-rigged elections which triggered the UPGA’s Operation Wetie of late 1965 snowballed into the January 15, 1966 coup, which then led to the September 1966 pogroms to today’s murders, rape, kidnappings, herdsmen banditry and nationwide insecurity.
The 1967-1970 civil war was to consolidate the Northern military conquest of Nigeria as their entity. Since the end of that inglorious and genocidal war, extreme Northernisation of Nigeria started as an experiment first under Murtala Mohammed coup of 1975 in which he quietly removed Southerners in Federal Public Service and replaced them with mostly Northerners.
The February 13, 1976 Lieutenant Colonel Buka Suka Dimka coup was a rejection of Mohammed’s extreme nepotism in his shortlived administration. The 1983 Muhammadu Buhari’s coup was staged to preempt a seemingly loss of power through the scheduled National Party of Nigeria rotation of the presidential candidacy to a Southerner. Maddened by the senseless distortion of our national character by the North, Major Gideon Orkar staged a coup on April 22, 1990. What made his coup so unique was the summary exorcising of the North from Nigeria. Alarmed and troubled by such affront, the North rose and crushed Orka within hours of his coup.
On June 12, 1993, Chief MKO Abiola, a Yoruba politician, won a nationally recognised free and fair election. A Northern inspired leadership under General Ibrahim Babangida annulled that victory. That political heist led to many assassinations, imprisonment, rebellion and unrest until leadership fell into the hand of another Northern maximum leader, General Sanni Abacha.
From 1993 until his assassination in 1998, Abacha’s ethnocentric administration went full circle. Yoruba leaders were hunted, and majority sought refuge as exile in foreign lands. On the July 7, 1998 Chief Abiola died under the regime of another Northern leader, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, in mysterious and questionable circumstances. From the classical period, Northern vision of Nigeria had been one of feudalism, caste system, apartheid, and master to servant relationship.
In 1992, late Maitama Sule, an unrepentant and unhinged Fulani politician, exposed Northern Nigerian project through an apartheid classification of what was expected of each tribal region. To the narrow vision of Maitama Sule, Yoruba in Nigeria must stay within their natural gift of diplomatic messengers, the Ndigbo are classed as technicians and traders and Fulani as the rulers of both.
Today, Nigeria’s political appointment landscape has not shifted from this primordial dominant mentality as we continued to see its provocative resurgence under President Buhari. The Chief Justice of Nigeria is Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed from Bauchi State. The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice is Abubakar Malami from Kebbi State. The Minister of Finance is Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed from Kaduna State, the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, is from Katsina State, the Minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono is from Kano State, Minister of Education Adamu Adamu is from Bauchi State and Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouk, is from Zamfara State.
Minister of Petroleum is President Muhammadu Buhari, Chief of Army Staff is General Attahiru Ibrahim from Kaduna State, Chief of Naval Staff is Rear Admiral Anwal Zubairu Gambo from Nassarawa State, Director of Department of State Services is Yusuf Bichin Magaji from Kano State, National Security Adviser is Babagana Monguno from Borno State, Commandant of Nigerian Defence Academy is Major General Sarham Jamilu, Secretary of the Federal Government is Boss Mustafa from Adamawa, the Chief of Staff to the President is Prof. Ibrahim Agboola Gambari from Kwara State and Head of Police College is Deputy Inspector General of Police Danmallam Mohammed from Katsina State.
We also have a constellations of other embarrassment to national character in the recent appointment of Abdulrasheed Bawa as Head of EFCC who is from Kebbi State, Comptroller General of Immigration Service is Muhammed Babandede from Jigawa State, Commandant General of Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps is Abdullah Gana Muhammadu from Niger State, Executive Chairman of Federal Inland Revenue Service is Mamman Nami from Niger State, Comptroller General of Nigerian Customs Service is Colonel Hameed Ali from Bauchi State, the Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority is Hadiza Bala Usman from Kaduna State and the Inspector General of the Nigerian Police Force remains Mohammed Adamu from Nasarawa State. The Comptroller-General of Prisons is Ahmed Ja’afaru from Kebbi State, Minister of Police Affairs is Alhaji Maigari Dingyadi from Sokoto State and Minister of Communications and Digital Economy is Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim from Gombe State.
Not forgetting the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission is Mahmood Yakubu from Bauchi State, FCT Administrator, Mohammed Musa Bello, is from Adamawa State, Director General Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency is Dr. Bashir Jamoh from Kaduna State, the Registrar-General and Chief Executive Officer of Corporate Affairs Commission is Alhaji Garba Abubakar from Bauchi State and the Chairman of National Population Commission is Hassan Bashir from Bauchi State. Most of the permanent secretaries are now populated by Fulani.
Yoruba being the most marginalised tribe in Nigeria watch as a minority Fulani tribe controls our seaports of Apapa and Tin Can Island. We watch as the Fulani tighten their hold on the judiciary, the military, the Police, the air force, civil defence, taxes, immigration, prisons, finance, electoral body, agriculture, and digital economy.
Minority Fulani of probably 10 million people now controls the Yoruba nation that is over 60 million. Any society with this lopsided and unjust pillaging of privileges can never see peace and progress. This collection of Northern privileges is nothing, but the worst form of insult and extreme rape on One Nigeria and federal character. Had the leaders of West, East and Middle Belters knew or had a glimpse of what was to come, they would have resisted committing to one Nigeria which today has reduced these three component partners into third class slaves. In 1962, the Northern provocateurs instigated crisis in Western Nigeria. Obafemi Awolowo’s resistance against the Northern plan to render the West desolate led to a trump up charge against him. He was tried and imprisoned.
By 1999, the Northern hegemonies had fostered a lopsided federal structure legitimised through the 1999 constitution – a thoroughly offensive document – that allows the Fulani to dominate and exploit other Nigerians under the pretence of democracy. Since 1999, the Northerners have resorted to all kinds of makeshift measures to hang on to power, at times ruling through their members, and at other times through “their proxy” from the Northern minorities or loyal lackeys from the Southern Nigeria.
In 1992, the late Chief Anthony Enahoro canvassed for a Sovereign National Conference to fundamentally restructure Nigeria. That rescue mission morphed into PRONACO which campaigned vigorously for a replacement of the 1999 constitution, a pseudo-democratic parchment designed to allow a permanent Northern domination and exploitation. Today, and in line with that vision, we have Pa Ayo Adebanjo, Prof. Banji Akintoye, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Prof. Pat Utomi, Yinka Odumakin and many other prescient patriots beating the drum of restructuring, but the Fulani have been dismissive.
The new phase of President Buhari’s dedication to tyranny, extreme ethnocentric and religious agenda, lawlessness, cluelessness, silence in the face of marauding bandits, abhorrent nepotism, support for police brutality and diversionary tactics should now compel the Yoruba to fight these emerging separate nationalities battle to the finish. Now that the Yoruba have known the hidden dynamics that had dominated power in Nigeria from the 1950s, we must present a common front to defeat and get rid of this recurring pandemic.
The current controversy about banditry and kidnapping which superbly fingered the Fulani as the main perpetrators have received all kinds of tacit support from the Presidency to state commissioners of Police who have refused to arrest, arraign and mete out justice on the Fulani criminals roaming illegally in Yoruba and Ndigbo forests.
Fulani criminals are becoming untouchable, no matter their bloody crime across Southern Nigeria. Yoruba traitors in uniform are now fully at work defending Fulani criminals and punishing Yoruba who apprehended them. Iskilu Wakili’s capture has left a sour taste in the mouth of any right thinking Yoruba. This demented, ageing extortioner who had committed heinous crimes against the Yoruba humanity was captured alive. He was cared for and handled with utmost sensitivity. According to Sunday Oluwole, the Oyo State Coordinator for Oodua People’s Congress, three of his men who arrested Wakili were summarily detained by a Yoruba DPO called Ajayi Mark, acting on order from above.
Yoruba police officers in Oyo State are now desperately working round the clock to serve the interest of Fulani over and above their own people. This is the Yoruba curse that needs deliverance!! If Wakili were to be a Yoruba kidnapper captured in Gombe forest, his captors in the North would have chopped his body like a cow destined for the abattoir!!!
Against the above background, the election of 2023 is a huge joke. There are many political clowns in the South West who could not care a hoot for the liberation of the Yoruba and their dignity. Their cosmic mission is greed, self-interest, and power. As I write, blind followers of Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu are preparing for his ultimate dream – to rule Nigeria. Jokers!!! Abdulrasheed Bawa, the new Chairman of the Economic and Finance Crimes Commission, is about to deliver an atomic bomb on the bunker of the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
We should remember that Fulani commodify power and they create and distribute this power within their tribe. What happened to Abiola is about to visit Tinubu. Like Abiola, Tinubu has set too much faith on naira power. He should remember the riposte of late Umaru Dikko to Abiola – democracy is not for the highest bidder! The die is now cast. Yoruba Obas, elders, intellectuals, Yoruba in diaspora, warriors and activists must unite to reverse the unmerited gains of Fulani since 1950s.
Fulani know that the Yoruba are well endowed and could fight and win. We must fight and return the South West to a path of honour, greatness and prosperity. We must reject the insulting stricture that classifies the North as the husband and South as the wife. Again, we must resist the ethnic profiling of Yoruba as messengers. Since 1960, the South have been holding the cow by the horns while the North have been doing the milking. Enough is enough. Otoge!!!
