Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
The newly elected Yoruba leader, Prof Banji Akintoye, an academic, historian and writer, on Monday raised the alarm that some powers that be have been treating Yoruba race in Nigeria as slaves, saying the Yoruba must rescue themselves from the quagmire, insisting that they will fight with their ‘great powers’ and win.
He spoke against the alleged travails of the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, ahead of the 2023 presidency and the perceived hi-tech politicking between the northern and the southern parts of the country.
Akintoye, who served in the Senate between 1979 and 1983 during the Second Republic, raised the alarm on the sidelines of the anniversary lecture, entitled: ‘Yoruba: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,’ organised by the Yoruba Heritage Group International Forum, held at House of Chiefs, Parliament building, secretariat, Ibadan, to mark 126th year that Kiriji War that raged in Yorubaland for 16 years ended.
It was regarded as the longest civil war in the world, which started in 1877 and ended on September 23, 1893. It was one of the internecine wars in Yorubaland in the 19th century.
Participants at the 126th anniversary lecture said every September 23 is unique and by next year, it would be celebrated as a Yoruba National Day.
The lecture was also attended by dignitaries across various parts of Yorubaland, including a frontline historian, Prof Bolanle Awe; ex-Nigerian footballer, Chief Segun Odegbami; former Director of Military Intelligence, General Ajibola Togun (retd); former Managing Director of Daily Times of Nigeria, Chief Tola Adeniyi and convener of Yoruba Koya, Otunba Deji Osibogun.
Akintoye stated: “The important thing is for us to find out exactly what is happening, because all we are hearing is just like a smoke, but we don’t know where the fire came from. There cannot be smoke without fire, although we don’t know where the fire is but we can see the smoke all around.
“We have been hearing a lot of negative things about the vice president inside the Federal Government. So, whatever that might be happening to him now demonstrated that whoever that is not part of the people who control the Federal Government of Nigeria, is only allowed in the Federal Government on surveillance and tolerance. So, the person can be kicked out whenever they like.
“There are people among those controlling the Federal Government of Nigeria who have a lot of heavy questions to answer, but they were protected by the powers that be.
“Yoruba are in a terrible situation in Nigeria because all travails Osinbajo is going through shows that we Yoruba are now becoming like slaves in this country. So, we need to dig ourselves out of it.”
Our correspondent had reported on Monday that a plot to remove Osinbajo gathered momentum at the weekend, with some allegations against him dating back to when he was acting president in May 2017, when President Muhammadu Buhari was in the United Kingdom on medical leave, consequent upon Section 145 of 1999 Constitution (as amended).
Earlier in the lecture tagged: “The 1886 Yoruba Peace Treaty and Imperative Lessons of Yoruba National Unity,” Akintoye noted that “at this point in time when our nation and most other Nigerian nationalities have been reduced to the status of near-slavery in Nigeria, what ought to be the Yoruba nation’s manly response?
“A shrouded federal establishment controls almost all powers and resources in Nigeria, almost totally monopolising all command positions in the hands of one small nationality, continually seeking with impunity to seize more and more powers and resources, reducing the homelands of most Nigerian nationalities to disrespected, subdued and distressed peripheries in Nigeria, reducing the elected-state governments of most Nigerian people into impotent and timid leaders of their peoples, treating the citizens of the subdued nationalities who get to serve in the federal establishment as persons who hold their positions thereby sufferance and tolerance only, and, in all these ways, generating deeper and deeper levels of poverty, insecurity, instability and hopelessness in Nigeria.
“Above all these, in recent years, members of the small nationality that controls the powers and resources of the Federal Government have launched an invasion on the rest of Nigeria, threatening to kill, maim and destroy, and actually killing, maiming and destroying, and bringing large numbers of their non-Nigerian ethnic kinsmen to help them, in an ethnic cleansing campaign that is aimed at permanently seizing the land and other resources of all other peoples of Nigeria.
“In these conditions and circumstances, the masses of the people, youths, women and children of the large and resourceful Yoruba nation want to know what the leadership of their nation will do, and the peoples of the other nationalities of Nigeria, and decent people all over the world, want to know too.
“Therefore, the greatest and final question before the Yoruba people today is as follows: in the face of coordinated assaults on Yoruba farmlands, cities and towns and highways by the Fulani, will the Yoruba fail again to harness the enormous and variegated resources of power at their disposal for the defence and liberation of their homeland and their people?
“My in-depth knowledge and perception of Yoruba readiness today are clear and unambiguous. The Yoruba willfully and absolutely use their great power. They will fight and win. And they will set their homeland and their people completely free once and for all.”