Omoniyi Salaudeen
These are not the best of times for Nigeria, as too many troubles are rearing their ugly heads almost at the same time, and the government on its part appears to be overwhelmed.
In this interview, a respected scholar and leading voice in the Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Prof Banji Akintoye, reflects on the issues and painfully concludes with a damning verdict: “All the agencies of government have been brutalized and weakened so that if things begin to happen, Nigeria doesn’t have the power to stop the rot. They don’t have the power to stop the storm.”
Nigerians have been reacting to the letter written by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Muhammadu Buhari, warning against Ruwanda’s genocide experience. Would you say the alarm was genuine or misplaced?
It is not misplaced at all. It’s right. It’s a good thing that he is raising his voice at this time and raising it persistently because when all the records of this time are put together, when historians sit down and look at the evils of this time, Obasanjo will be one of the people that history will judge and say: ‘when he was president, he was not perfect, but when evils accumulated to a mighty storm in the land, he never kept quiet.’ It’s good for him; it’s good for the future. What we see today in Nigeria is a good example of how not to run the affairs of a country. The Buhari presidency is a strange thing. This is a man who was elected by the votes of all to rule Nigeria, but somehow, he came to the conclusion by himself alone or by the help of the close people around him that his duty is to help the Fulani alone even when the Fulani is trying to hurt every other person.
When Obasanjo earlier raised the issue of fulanisation, many people dismissed him as an alarmist.
(Cuts in)…I don’t think any objective person looking at what is happening in Nigeria now will doubt that there is a plan for Fulanisation of Nigeria. The Fulanis have arisen, they are threatening the rest of us; they say that they want to conquer the rest of us. I think it is something we should take very seriously. When the Federal Government is saying it is going to make land available in every state for the Fulani to establish RUGA, it is just a programme of assisting the Fulanis to actualize their agenda. There is no doubt about that.
So, what should the people in different regions do now?
It is obvious now that the Fulani will not relent. They won’t give up. If anybody thinks all this noise we are making is going to force them to give up, it’s a lie. They will not relent. Secondly, the Federal Government will not change its stands. The Federal Government will make sure that the Fulani can do what they are doing without too much confrontation with the law of the land. They go about armed and the police cannot stop them. As long as Buhari is president, the Federal Government will always assist the Fulani agenda. So, the big question then is: what do you do? And we have an answer to that from General Theophilus Danjuma (retd), who is one of the highest men alive today in terms of the history of the Nigerian army. He said the evidence at his disposal from his home in the Middle Belt is that the military who are in the scene, who come to the area where people are being killed in their large numbers, were not trying to protect the people being killed and that in some cases, it was all evident that they were colluding with the killers. He then offered a general advice to us: “Defend yourself. Those of you who are waiting for the Federal Government and security agencies to come and defend you will only die one by one.” That is a marching order for anybody who is sensible, who loves his own family, who loves his own people. Defend yourself, defend your land, defend your family, defend your mother and your father, defend the home in which you were raised, defend the village in which you were born and raised, defend your father’s farm. That is all that is left. We are reaching a situation in which a storm of bloodletting that could sweep over Nigeria is building. And it is going to be a storm of mayhem. That is why government doesn’t play with security. Everybody will do things that will protect his life. That is the truth of the matter.
This self-defence thing is what formed part of the conclusion of Obasanjo, warning of the dire consequences of it on the survival of the country as a people. So, is that the way to go?
Something hideous is hidden in all of that. Everywhere, it will be people against the Fulani. And that is a terrible thing. Nigerians will be killing the Fulani in self-defence. One of the nations among us will be in danger from all the rest of us. Is that a good thing to happen to our country? Even ordinary Fulani people who don’t take part in all these things, who have never held a gun in their lives, who are living in the bush and rearing cattle, will be attacked and killed. For me as a Yoruba man, that is a horrible thing to imagine. The foundation of Yoruba culture, our mythology, our history, our traditions, our religion, as a people dictate to us very clearly and repeatedly that we must be nice to the foreigners in our midst. It’s a horrible thing. There are Fulanis who have lived among us forever and who have never hurt anybody. Now, they will be in danger too.
Are you saying that the president is doing a disservice to his Fulani kinsmen by his approach to the whole issue?
It is a huge disservice to the Fulani. He is destroying the Fulani nation. By the grace of God, it will not happen, but he is taking steps that could destroy the Fulani nation.
From what you have said, the issue of self-defence is what is capable of destroying Nigeria as a nation. Will it not sound too alarming to say that Buhari may be the last president of Nigeria, if care is not taken?
Of course, yes. He could be. And it could all fizzle out in fire and blood that will stain the consciences of a lot of people for a long time to come.
What is the way to forestall the looming national disaster?
Obasanjo said it that we need to negotiate and I think we have reached a point at which we must yield to that and start some negotiation. I don’t care whether it is going to be national conference, we need to negotiate now. We need to sit in a conference and negotiate.
What would you people be talking about in your negotiation?
We will be negotiating whether or not we want to be in this country together and on what basis. We Yoruba, for instance, will say we cannot live in a country where they are killing people. We don’t kill people. It is not part of our culture. We don’t want to be forced to kill foreigners. If it is inevitable that we must kill foreigners among us, we don’t want to be part of it all. We have to make up our minds on what we want to do. Other nations too will go there and say their own things. But that is a very important thing for the Yoruba man.
Yoruba played a prominent role in the re-election of President Buhari. If at the round table, other ethnic nationalities look at the Yoruba in the face and say re-election of Buhari was your mistake, would you take it?
If they say that, they will be right because people among us who fought for him to win, are our children, they are our blood. We cannot say no they are not part of us, they are part of us. So, when people point fingers in our face and say you are responsible for all these disasters, we have to humble ourselves and say it is true. We have to accept that we made a mistake.
But those who led the region to make the mistake are not talking. Are they really perturbed by the killings and kidnappings that have become a huge concern to the stakeholders in the Southwest in recent times?
If you talk to each of them one by one in private, everyone of them feel as you do. I have been a teacher all my life and I am in contact with thousands of people on both sides, I have not met a single Yoruba person who is not opposed to this whole Fulani thing. I haven’t spoken to the highest ones like Tinubu, but I have spoken to others as high as you can guess. One of the people who you regard as the highest leader of the APC called me on his own about a year ago and said: “Baba, these Fulani people have taken over our land. They have driven our parents from their farms. We have to do something about it sir. We may have to train our young men to be farmers and soldiers so that when there is no trouble, they do their farming. When there is trouble, they fight.” I said ‘that is a brilliant idea.’ That was a very high leader of APC talking to me like that. So, there is no APC person who doesn’t feel what the rest of us feel. They may not be able to express rejection of Fulani openly for political reasons, or personal thing they are seeking which they don’t want to jeopardise. Whatever it is, it is understandable. That is what politics is all about. And it is not unique to the Yoruba. Our boys in Buhari’s government are not doing anything unique; they are doing what people do all over the world. But when you meet them and there is no politics, the truth is that everybody is opposed to this Fulani thing. We will never let one square inch of Yoruba land be given to any Fulani enclave. It will never happen.
Will it be right to attribute the current crisis to the infiltration of foreigners into the rank of the Fulani?
It was deliberate. Invitation of foreigners to come and help the Fulani is part of the agenda to Fulanise Nigeria. I am not one of those who talk without finding out. I have been to Yewa area of Ogun State, I have spoken to the people, I have seen some Fulani, they are not Nigerians. They don’t speak Hausa, they don’t understand English, but they speak some other language called Fulfude, which shows they are not Nigerians. I don’t take my information from other people. I have been to upper Ogun, you find the same thing there.
If the president accedes to a call for national dialogue, Afenifere as the true voice of Yoruba will want to represent the Southwest region. But chances are there that politicians in government may hijack the process when the time comes to do proper negotiation.
(Cuts in) Even if they say we are not the true voice of the people, we are a voice of the Yoruba. We can speak for the Yoruba nation, if we demand to speak for the Yoruba nation. Nobody can fault our rights to speak for the Yoruba nation.
The point being stressed here is the possibility of a small clique of people who led the Southwest into this trap assuming the power of negotiation for the Yoruba. Then, what do you do?
Then, we shall ask our people to speak up. Our people will decide. How many of them will dare come out now and say they are representing the Yoruba in this matter? They are free to share money in Abuja, but in this Fulani enclave in our land, they can’t speak for us. We are going to resist that except if we have held a meeting with them, agreed on what we want and what they want and ask them to speak for us.
Now that it has become obvious that insecurity has overwhelmed this government, what role is the Southern and Middle Belt Forum playing?
Nigeria will hear soon in another two or three weeks what the Southern and Middle Belt Forum says concerning this matter. I am one of their leaders; I know they are working on it.
Obasanjo mentioned it that the U.S Congress discussed Nigeria; the parliament in Britain also discussed Nigeria. Where exactly does the interest of these foreign powers lie?
The world is interested in the affairs of every country no matter how small. And when a country is as large as Nigeria with all the potentialities, the world is doubly interested. The United Nations has been making statements upon statements, troubling statements, about Nigeria. A few weeks ago, they made a statement that Nigeria has the largest number of out of school children in the world. That is a horrible thing. One of its reports also says Nigeria is one of the poorest and most unequal countries on earth. IMF says Nigeria’s debt profile is something to worry about.
In the face of all of these, another Boko Haram also appears to be in the making. El-zaky-zaky group whose activities were hitherto limited to ordinary street protest recently went and invaded the National Assembly with powerful arms.
(Cuts in) They are getting more and more confident. They are carrying out rehearsal for future insurgency. And they are getting support from outside like Iran because that is the place they could get support. Boko Haram is no longer just Boko Haram. Boko Haram and ISIS are working together. And ISIS has declared the whole of West Africa as an Islamic province-Islamic West Africa Province (ISWAP). Everything is getting bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper. In terms of troubles, Nigeria is at the peak of all the troubles we have ever had. We have never had it as deep and as big as we have it now. And there are people in the world who are saying it is not possible for a country that has dragged itself all this way down to find any way to drag itself back up again. Even in African countries, they look at us, they know that something bad is about to happen. And that is why they are rejecting and treating Nigerians like shit.
So, there is no country here yet?
It is not a question of government; there is no country here. We don’t have an entity that has an element of a country.
In order words, anything can happen before the end of the tenure of this administration?
Anything can happen. All the agencies of government have been brutalized and weakened so that if things begin to happen, Nigeria doesn’t have the power to stop the rot. They don’t have the power to stop the storm.