Leader of the Yoruba self-determination Movement, Ilana Omo Oodua, Prof Banji Akintoye shares his thoughts with DANIEL AYANTOYE on the group’s letter to President Bola Tinubu for the establishment of a negotiation committee for the Yoruba nation, among other issues
In a letter to President Bola Tinubu recently, your group asked for a peaceful breakaway of Yoruba people from Nigeria. What informed this decision?
We have studied the world situation concerning breaking away and so on, and we have found that the ones who approach their struggle peacefully and in a law-abiding manner are more likely to succeed. The others who fought and threatened their government and said nasty things about other people and the government are unlikely to succeed. So, we decided to follow the line that promises success.
Your group gave the President two months to set up a committee to negotiate the exit of the Yoruba people. What are the areas you expect the committee to look at?
When they invite us to negotiate, we will negotiate the things that will make it possible for us to leave (Nigeria) without any encumbrance. For instance, Nigeria has some debt. If we leave Nigeria, then some decision will have to be taken about how much of the debt would be allocated to the Yoruba. It has to be negotiated carefully.
Also, since there are assets, we will negotiate how much of those assets will go with us. There has to be an agreement to create friendly relations in the new Nigerian space. We pledged in our letter that we would make sure that our new country helped other people. We have looked very carefully, and we are ready to do it. Those are the kinds of things that we will have to settle with the negotiation committee.
But what if the negotiation committee refused to allow the Yoruba people to go, what will your group do?
If they say we should not leave, they have a right to say that. But we will tell them that their statement is not final. We will continue to seek other ways to leave.
Your demand came barely a few days after you distanced your group from the invasion of the Oyo State Secretariat by a group of camouflage-wearing persons. Why did this happen almost at the same time?
No, we were already preparing our letter; we’ve been working on those letters for months. Onitiri (Modupe Onitiri-Abiola) has this habit of eavesdropping and finding out that we are about to do something, and then she will do another to intercept our action. But we have decided not to let that bother us anymore. Whatever we plan to do, we go ahead and do it.
Some political analysts have described what they did as a treasonable offence. Do you subscribe to such a position?
They committed treason. She made a statement that she had taken over the government of Yoruba land in Nigeria. She brought somebody sworn in as interim prime minister known as Adele in Yoruba language, and she sent some boys to go and take over the government in Ibadan. All of that together amounts to treason.
Twenty-nine of them were arrested and remanded in the prison custody. Are you not concerned with what they are going through especially because they are supporters of the same cause?
I am concerned about the welfare of every Yoruba person, but they have handled their matter in such a way that we cannot help them. Treason is the highest offence under the law of every country on earth. When you commit treason, you have committed the highest offence imaginable in that country. So, we who are their people cannot help them.
But will you urge the government to probably temper justice with mercy and release them?
It is very risky to do that now. When the government is handling treason charges against some people, and you, their brother, father, and friend, are telling the government to temper justice with mercy, you don’t know what the reaction of the government is. So, it’s better not to mess around.
Will you say Onitiri-Abiola lacks the right to make such a declaration, even when she is one of your members?
Nobody has the right to make that kind of declaration; nobody!
Some have called for her arrest. Are you in support of that?
Let the law take its cause. I do not add to it and I do not subtract from it.
The son of MKO Abiola, Jamiu, in a recent interview, said the family was not in support of a Yoruba nation. Are you not concerned with the development?
I’m not concerned. Everybody has a right to be for or against the Yoruba Nation. That’s the right of everybody. What is important to me is what we are doing, I am also interested in what our chances look like. Our chances as of now look very good.
In the letter, your group said it had earlier sent a letter to former President Muhammadu Buhari while he was in office. Why did you think the letter was ignored by Buhari?
It was not ignored. We know that he received it and he expressed concern immediately he did, but a few weeks after, we heard that the posture in Abuja was that a major election was on the way and that was not the time to enter into a major thing we were asking for.
There are concerns about why the call for a Yoruba nation is coming again, especially since a Yoruba man is now the President. Did this not cross your mind at any point?
A President of Nigeria is a President of Nigeria. That’s all. I won’t say more than that.
But do you see him (President Bola Tinubu) possibly approving the breakaway of Yoruba people from Nigeria since he is currently in power?
He may not assent to it, but we need to make our case so that the international community will know that we want our country.
Some said the renewed agitation is targeted at the President. How true is that?
We didn’t fight Buhari, why would we be fighting our man? We’re not fighting people. We’re not fighting the government. We are just making a statement. Nigeria has become the kind of country we do not want to belong to anymore. That’s all. It has nothing to do with any person.
There appears to be confusion among Yoruba leaders because while you are advocating Yoruba Nation, Afenifere is calling for restructuring. Why is this so?
There is no confusion, Afenifere is calling for restructuring. It’s not entirely unreasonable because they say that when we lived in a region of our own, under Chief (Obafemi) Awolowo, we were prospering more than the rest of Africa. So, we want to go back to that. That’s not an unreasonable thing to say. However, we look a little deeper than that. We believe that if we were to return to the regions of the 1950s and we were managing our affairs, several things would be possible. One, we did not commit any offence in 1962 before the heads of Nigeria ganged up against us and declared a state of emergency in Nigeria in the southwestern part of Nigeria and put our leader in prison.
It was an entirely political thing. The British had helped the Fulani to rig the election of 1959. An election was coming in 1964. Would they be able to hold a man like Awolowo down and not be able to rig the election against him then? The answer is no; there was no way. The western region was too solid and powerful, and Chief Awolowo was leading the region of the west, and he was the best politician in the country. He had conducted elections in 1959 that nobody had ever conducted anywhere in Africa.
So, if he came back as ruler of the western region and as leader of the western region and he was to conduct the same level, the same highly sophisticated, powerful election campaign as he did in 1959, would the northerners be able to resist him? The answer was to disrupt his western region and disrupt his life before the 1964 election. And that’s what they did. What is our guarantee that that cannot be done to us again in the future? We don’t have a guarantee.
But won’t the restructuring be enough to solve all the issues bothering the country?
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We should restructure and go back to our regions. We were in a region when they did that to us. Why won’t they be able to do it to us again? Secondly, the Fulani are saying that they want to conquer all the non-Fulani nationalities of Nigeria, including the Yoruba. They want to convert their homeland into a Fulani homeland, and they are ready to fight the war for decades and even centuries to come. That’s their statement. I’m quoting them. Are we, the Yoruba, ready to stay in a country where people are fighting like that? Already, the fighting has cost us a whole lot of heavy losses. Our farmers have abandoned farming. Now, we are faced with a situation in which for years and years to come, we will be suffering a shortage of food, and food insecurity. Are we ready to continue like that? The answer is no.
We cannot continue in a country where the Fulani are killing, maiming and destroying and raping and kidnapping, and extorting ransom. They are still doing it today. Recently, people called me from a village not far from Owo (Ondo State); they said that the Fulani had destroyed their farms and now, they are here to destroy them. It happens every day. So, do we want to live with that for the rest of our time? How long can a nation stay in that kind of disruption before it finally crumbles? Nigeria is also crumbling in other directions. The economy has collapsed. The leaders of the economy had said that the economy had collapsed.
But many had said the economy collapsed before Tinubu’s emergence.
Yes, the former governor of the Central Bank, Soludo, said the economy collapsed before Tinubu was sworn in. He said it was like a dead horse that they were managing to keep, and make it look as if it was standing. The new Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun, also said the economy had collapsed, and that Nigeria had been borrowing money to run the government. We cannot continue to borrow money like that anymore because 98 per cent of government revenue is now expended on servicing debts. The consequence of that collapse is the increasing poverty among our people.
We, the Yoruba, used to brag that no Yoruba man would beg on the streets. Now, hundreds of thousands of Yoruba beg on the streets of our cities. All these point to disintegration. Now, it used to be said that on the African continent, school attendance is highest in Yoruba land, but now because of poverty, many families are no longer able to send their children to school. So, out-of-school children are increasing in exponential numbers in Yoruba land. Meanwhile, almost all our university graduates, a dynamic factor in any economy in the world, are leaving Nigeria. I have seen an estimate that says that about 11 million highly qualified Yoruba people have fled to other countries.
How well do you think that a Yoruba nation can survive splitting from other countries?
Leaving is the only way we can survive. We can run the best government on this African continent. Give us a few months, and we will be at our usual thing; running the best government on the continent. We have the capability.
In the letter, it was also stated that most of you don’t have confidence in the restructuring of the country. Why is this so?
Firstly, we had a region before. That’s what restructuring will give us now. It was taken away from us in 1962. How are we sure it won’t be taken away from us again? Secondly, the Fulani are coming and doing all sorts of horrible things to our people. Restructuring cannot stop them because they will still be Nigerians. We will all be Nigerians, and they are entitled to come to our land and do whatever they are doing there. Another group can come. In one single night, you could lose your region.
Part of the restructuring effort of the government is the directive for the implementation of the Oransaye’s report. Don’t you believe in that as well?
It’s not a question of what I believe or not. The Fulani said that Allah has given them all the homelands of all the peoples in Nigeria for them to conquer and turn into a Fulani homeland, that they have the mandate of Allah to go and conquer, and that they are ready to keep fighting this war of conquest for decades or even centuries to come. So, it’s not a question of what I think. It’s a question of what they say and it’s foolish for us to underestimate them.
The move to exit Yoruba people from Nigeria has been described in some quarters as undesirable, self-serving, and unnecessary. What is your take on that?
The people in the self-determination struggle are also saying that given all the explanations I have told you, the demand for restructuring; of a region now is unreasonable. In the final analysis, it is the numbers that will count. It is a family argument, there is no enmity. One section of the family is saying give us restructuring, another section is saying, no, we want to get out, give us our country. The young people, who are saying give us our country, are mostly educated youths, and they are the vast majority of people in Yoruba land. The educated young people from the age of 18 to 50 are about 70 per cent of the Yoruba population. So, if 70 per cent are saying, this is what we want, and the other 30 per cent or 20 per cent are saying that it is the other thing we want, who is likely to win?
Are you saying that Afenifere’s group is 20 per cent, while the group which is 70 per cent is with you in the struggle for a Yoruba nation?
These are educated young people. I had an interview with Dr Reuben Abati, four days ago and within 24 hours, that interview had been viewed by 62,000 people. These are the masses who want the Yoruba nation. They are happy. There is another column in that television station’s report where there were about 9,000 comments, and none of them commented negatively against the movement but all were positive. That is how to know what is happening. Three years ago, we decided to get people to sign the petition on this, and within four weeks, we had five million signatures. Which other body in Yoruba land can achieve that? Afenifere is our highly respected organisation, I am a member and one of the leaders of the group but I know that we cannot argue with these masses of young people. They hold the power of numbers.
If it is difficult for the Yoruba leaders to speak in harmony now, why do you think they will be able to speak and work in harmony even if the sovereign nation of Yoruba people is achieved?
There is no nation where all the leaders will speak in harmony. It doesn’t happen anywhere. Why are they asking you that it should happen among the Yoruba? No. Are all the leaders of America speaking in unison? Are all the leaders of Britain speaking in unison? Why are people demanding that Yoruba people do what the rest of the world is not doing?
With your agitation, are you in support of the Indigenous People of Biafra who are also demanding the same exit from Nigeria?
I am not in support of anything other than Yoruba self-determination.
You cited insecurity and the killing of Yoruba people by Fulani as one of the reasons why Yoruba must be allowed to go but the President has also promised that insecurity would be addressed. Don’t you believe him and why do you think separating will solve the problem?
How is he going to address it? Fulani people declared war on January 24 and 26. In their first declaration, they demanded the immediate release of the leader of the Miyetti Allah, Bello Bodejo, who was arrested for illegally creating a Fulani force. I quote, ‘We hereby demand for his release. We hereby give 72 hours’ notice, failure to release him, the Nigerian government will hear from us.’
One of the things said is that with the establishment of state police in all the states, the issue of insecurity will be tackled. Don’t you think this will work?
How many years will it take them to amend the constitution to create a state police? You have to amend the constitution to create state police. The President cannot just announce the creation of a state police. The constitution has to be amended and how long will that take?
Your group gave the President a deadline of June 15 to set up a negotiation committee. What happens if the President does not respond?
We will continue to do what people should do towards their president who refuses to answer them. That’s all.
Is protests part of those things?
We are entitled to have protests any time we choose to. That’s our human rights and nobody can take it away from us.
In recent times, your letters have been jointly signed by yourself and Sunday Igboho. Is the movement a kind of joint partnership?
It (the letter) is signed also by a few other people. We are the representatives of the movement. That’s how the movement wants it.
But who is the leader of the Yoruba Nation agitation?
I am the leader.
What is your take on the performance of President Tinubu since his emergence over seven months ago?
He inherited an awful situation, an economy that had collapsed. People were rioting on the streets and cursing. Members of the National Assembly were shedding tears in the National Assembly when they talked about poverty and the suffering of their people. That’s the situation. But he had the courage and assured Nigerians to entrust the nation to him that he would fix it. Yes, it can’t be done in a hurry. None of us can be foolish enough to believe that anybody can fix it in a hurry. But he has done several good things. There is no doubt about that. Maybe over time, he will be able to bring life back into the economy. But realistically, nobody expects that. That is not for keeps. After him, the Nigerian economy will go back downwards, as it was going downward before he came. There is no doubt about that. There is no assurance in Nigeria for a final fix to the economy.
If MKO Abiola and Chief Obafemi Awolowo were to be alive today, do you think they would demand self-determination for the Yoruba people?
I believe that Chief Awolowo will do so but I don’t know about Abiola. I don’t know much about Abiola’s thinking, but I know a lot about Chief Awolowo’s thinking.
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