From Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
A self-determination group in Yorubaland, Oodua Redemption Alliance (ORA), under the leadership of Victor Taiwo, has called on Christians and Muslims to embraced the struggle for self-determination for the Yoruba people.
He said the call became necessary in order to have a united front for the campaign, and to prevent religious marginalisation, peradventure the Yoruba nation comes to reality.
He gave the charge in a speech, entitled: “Towards the Prevention of Future Crisis of Religious Marginalisation in the Yoruba Socio-Political Setting,” which he delivered during a meeting with the Yoruba Islamic leaders, yesterday, in Ibadan, Oyo State.
According to the ORA president and founder, “there is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria was planted by the European colonialists who came to divide us (Africans) among themselves as slaves purely for their economic purposes without any consideration of our cultural, ethnic, language, social and compatibility differences.
“These factors have eventually formed the base on which Nigeria was founded which have eventually culminated in the current ethnic, economic, political and social crises we are battling with in the country today.
“The climax of the absurdities eventually led to the consciousness of developing various ethnic fronts in Yorubaland as in other regions for the struggle of identity and self-determination of which this writer is a pioneer.
“Along the line of the group’s developments in Yorubaland, some odious signals began to beam along the line in the name of allegation of religious marginalisation. On June 26, 2018, one of our Islamic activists held a press conference directly alleging the marginalisation of the Muslims in the formation of Yoruba groups like Afenifere and Yoruba Council of Elders with strong assertions.
“And for all I know about Afenifere and for all I know about Yoruba Council of Elders of which I was the mastermind, I knew the allegations were purely unfounded in that nobody brings Yoruba organisations together on the basis or religion. Rather, people join freely on the basis of free will and personal interest. Glad that I quickly came up to tackle the looming menace which might have snowballed into a big religious crisis in Yorubaland.
“My discovery along this line is that Muslims are the least involved among the adepts of other religions for reason, which I am yet to comprehend. Some patriotic Muslims must have realised this my discovery that they chose to establish a predominantly Muslim organisation for the Yoruba cause when they came up with an organisational identity known as MAYON under the leadership of Akeem Oladogba, whose tentacles have spread across the world. But in spite of the efforts of these patriots, the realisation is that the percentage of the Muslims’ involvement in the project is still as low as five percent.