RELIGION IN OUR YORUBA NATION’S LIBERATION STRUGGLE – MESSAGE TO ALL YORUBA PATRIOTS
This message is for millions of Yoruba people at home and in the Diaspora who are involved in the struggle for the sovereign and separate Yoruba nation, to all Yoruba people at home and in all countries of the world. We came to the decision to write this letter because of some disturbing information reaching us about growing fears about religion among some of our Yoruba people.
It is very surprising that fear about religion is showing up among some of our Yoruba people in this final stages of our Yoruba nation’s struggle for self-determination. It is immeasurably surprising because the whole world knows us Yoruba people as the most religiously tolerant and accommodating people in the world.
Every known scholar studying African society in the world today says that about us.
Here are a few of such scholars. Two highly respected scholars who recently did a major research on Nigeria for the Government of the United States of America, Gerald McLoughlin and Clarence Bouchat, wrote in their report that we Yoruba are a model of religious coexistence in the world, and that “Muslim, Christian and animist Yoruba dwell peacefully, not only in the same cities, but in the same households”.
Another scholar, an amazing professor of London University who spent most of his academic life studying our Yoruba nation, Prof. J. D. Y. Peel, wrote a lot about our Yoruba nation.
In 2015, just before he died, he published a special research article in which he wrote that we Yoruba people are the most religiously tolerant people in the world, and that we are very proud – and deservedly proud – of it. Then he gave the world the following memorable statement, “The tree which has yielded the poisonous fruit that we see in Boko Haram can never grow in Yoruba soil” – meaning that the religious extremism, intolerance and endemic religious violence in Northern Nigeria can never spread to Yorubalannd.
But Prof. Peel went further than that. He gave us Yoruba people a serious advice. He advised that we Yoruba must see our culture of religious tolerance and harmony for what it is – namely, a high quality cultural achievement, an achievement in which we surpass all other nations, an achievement with deep roots in our most ancient culture, a great gift to humanity, a wonderful possession that we Yoruba must never let anybody or anything take away from us.
These are the things that the world knows about us Yoruba. That is what we are. Even former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, grand patron of the Fulani agenda of conquest of all non-Fulani peoples of Nigeria, could not resist acknowledging in a public speech in 2019 that, among all the peoples of Nigeria, we Yoruba people are the best at separating our religion from our politics.
And there are non-Yoruba Nigerians who sincerely admire our culture of religious tolerance and harmony. One of these, a prominent Igbo leader, Dr. Pius Ezeife, former Governor of Anambra State, stated in a newspaper interview in 2013 that we Yoruba are the “epitome of proper management of religion in society”, and added that all persons of good will should help to ensure that religious extremism never spreads to Yorubaland.
Our Yoruba Nation’s Solemn Resolution and Pledge
In short then, when, by the grace of God, our sovereign Yoruba nation comes into existence soon, no person or group of persons can generate in our Yorubaland or in any part of our Yoruba nation, any kind of religious extremism, or any insults or threats or violence against any other citizens because of their religion.
In the whole world, nations make laws to uphold and protect their cultures. That is why laws differ from country to country, and why an act that is lawful under the laws of one country may be a serious crime under the laws of another country.
For us Yoruba, the culture of religious tolerance, accommodation and harmony is a major part of our national culture. Therefore, the laws of our sovereign country will protect the right of every person to hold, practice and promote the religious faith of their choice; and the laws will provide serious penalties for religious discrimination, religious insults, religious threats or religious violence.
Major Tool for Achieving Prosperity in Our Nation
Religious harmony is not merely our culture. Religious harmony in our land, and the peace and stability that it will help to uphold in our country, are great tools for achieving rapid and all-round progress and prosperity of our country. This rapid and all-round progress and prosperity for all our Yoruba people is the cardinal reason why we, millions of Yoruba people, have been fighting doggedly and tenaciously for a sovereign country of our own. It is the reason why we are determined to separate our Yoruba nation from the ever-deepening poverty and insecurity of Nigeria.
We are fighting for all our Yoruba people. If there are any of our beloved Yoruba people who do not yet clearly know or understand why we have been fighting for our Yoruba nation and for our separate sovereign country, here is a brief statement of our reasons.
Throughout our history, we Yoruba have never lived in the kind of horrific and ever-increasing poverty in which we are being compelled to live in Nigeria. At the climax of this poverty in these last months of 2023, most of our Yoruba people are in danger of perishing. Most of our families cannot feed themselves and their children. Food prices are sky-rocketing daily, so much so that most of our people can no longer afford adequate food for themselves and their children. Even the traditionally inexpensive kinds of food (such as gaari or loaves of bread) have now become too expensive for many of our people. A food like rice has become the food of only rich people.
Because of the abnormally and astronomically high price of gasoline, many of our people who own cars can no longer use their cars. On the city streets where heavy traffic used to be the norm, motor vehicles are now regularly few.
Because of the excessively high price of gasoline also, many of our people who own electric generators for powering their homes or their small businesses can no longer use them – and Nigeria’s supply of electricity is ever terribly and is becoming poorer and poorer.
Because the Fulani, whom the British imposed on Nigeria at independence and who have become more and more the controllers, despise and fear Western education, the quality of education in public schools has deteriorated seriously in all parts of Nigeria. Yoruba parents, ever determined to send their children to school, are determinedly finding money to send their children to private schools where the quality of education is still better. But the private schools are responding to the current situation by greatly raising their fees, thereby making education too expensive for most Yoruba parents. And therefore, now, for the first time since Yoruba people started Free Primary Education in the Western Region in 1954, out-of-school children are growing in number in Yoruba society.
Hundreds of thousands of our Yoruba youths, most of them educated and many of them university graduates, roam the streets because there are no jobs. There are no jobs because the economy of Nigeria has essentially been crushed by decades of incompetent governments, by unspeakable and destructive public corruption, leading to the gradual crumbling of Nigeria’s infrastructures, the failure of countless businesses, and the flight of major foreign businesses from Nigeria to other countries. It is now (mid-2023) common knowledge in Nigeria and worldwide that Nigeria is more or less bankrupt and that Nigeria now expends 98% of its government revenues to service debts. For over two decades, countless thousands of educated Yoruba youths have been fleeing annually to other countries for jobs. Hundreds of thousands of these, lacking the means of getting visas to other countries, take the risk of going abroad as illegal immigrants. Many are choosing to try to reach Europe through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea, and many of these are regularly perishing in the desert and the Mediterranean Sea.
Many who manage to make it to other countries as illegal immigrants cannot legally earn a living there and must survive by living as slaves – or as prostitutes. Yoruba people, both legal and illegal immigrants, are found today in every known country across the face of the earth – including the most obscure countries, the smallest and most isolated Sislands, and even the most desperately poor countries.
Many of our bright and strong men and women who remain at home are forced to go into various strange crimes. Very many women are going into prostitution or street begging. Many men and women are going into internet worldwide crimes, even with the encouragement of their parents. Large numbers of youths are forming criminal and murderous cults. For rituals that are supposed to yield money, many are killing their friends, their girl friends, their wives, their parents. Even highly placed citizens are engaging in crimes – some Obas are fraudulently selling community land to foreigners, high public officials are stealing the public money that is under their control, lower public officials are forcing citizens to pay bribes for the smallest official services, police officials are engaging in acts that amount essentially to robbery or street begging, etc. Yoruba persons serving in the Nigerian public service are compelled to throw away their Yoruba ethos and to adopt Nigeria’s sordid immorality. Honesty, reliability and trust are vanishing in our land and our whole nation is going through the process of moral collapse. In many parts of our homeland, many persons who cannot see any possible path ahead are committing suicide.
To add to these terrible conditions of our people, masses of armed Fulani herdsmen and militias have been relentlessly attacking all parts of our Yoruba homeland since 2015. These have come relentlessly destroying farms and villages and other assets of rural life, killing our farmers and farmers’ wives and children, raping our women, kidnapping people and extorting large amounts of money as ransom. There are no official estimates of the number of our people who have been killed by these Fulani terrorists because the Nigerian government shows no interest – and because the Nigerian government is even surreptitiously supporting the Fulani terror. An unofficial estimate has it that as many as 29,000 of our people have been killed. Almost all our farmers have been forced to abandon farming altogether, with the result that food security is seriously imperiled in our land.
Another people, the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria, from their Igboland in which almost everything of value has also been devastated by the Nigerian experience, are coming in unrestrained numbers upon us with their own brand of unrestrained conduct and threats. The reason they are able to do all these is that we and they sill belong in one Nigeria.
The flight from Yorubaland in Nigeria has, in the past few years, extended to Yoruba people of all classes – young and old and even aged, men and women, educated and not educated. A small but persistent stream of these Yoruba people is flowing to neighboring West African countries in a desperate quest for economic survival and for security. Also, increasing numbers of educated Yoruba people who have settled into distant countries of the world are coming back home to Nigeria for the purpose of taking their old parents back with them to the countries where they have found residence.
What all these devastating conditions – the serious economic failure, the generalized suffering, the escalating insecurity, the creeping moral collapse, the insensitivity of rulers and leading citizens, and the flight of Yoruba people to distant and neighboring countries abroad – sum up to is that our Yoruba nation is breaking up – yes, breaking up very fast. We Yoruba must stop the breaking up. We must revive and rebuild our nation’s economy. We must restore security and orderliness to our homeland. We must control immigration to our land. And the only way we will be able to accomplish these things is to have our own country separate from Nigeria.
In our sovereign separate country, we Yoruba can quickly achieve change and prosperity. We are gifted with the capabilities for such accomplishments. It is those God-given capabilities that have made us the most educated people in Africa, that made our Region’s economy in the 1950s the fastest developing economy in Nigeria and Africa, that made us the most urbanized and most civilized nation in Black Africa many centuries before the coming of European colonial rule.
Yes, we can accomplish the urgently needed changes and the return to prosperity – but it is impossible for us to do so in Nigeria. To begin to do it seriously, we must have control of our country. We must have our separate sovereign Yoruba nation.
This mighty task of liberating and rebuilding our Yoruba nation is a task for all of us Yoruba people. Our religions cannot obstruct it. Those who are now fighting for our nation’s liberation at home and in the Diaspora, those who are quietly seeking diplomatic support in various countries of the world for our Yoruba struggle, those who are secretly putting together the plans for the revival of our nation’s economy and security after the liberation, are a mixed bag from all religions – Muslim, Christian, Isese, and any others. The same will be true of the men and women whom we will have to push forward to give us the services of government after we have secured our sovereign country.
And, absolutely, no religion will be able to interfere with the task of giving our Yoruba people the high quality of government that our nation deserves, and the high quality of development, progress and prosperity. We Yoruba are fighting for the final destiny of our Yoruba nation now, and nothing can stop us.
IN THE STRUGGLE FOR OUR SOVREIGN YORUBA NATION, THERE IS NO GOING BACK OR EVEN LOOKING BACK. EACH OF US IS NEEDED NOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE STRUGGLE. EACH OF US WILL BE FULLY FREE AT ALL TIMES TO HOLD OUR DIFFERENT RELIGIONS, AND THAT WILL REINFORCE THE MORAL FIBER OF OUR SOCIETY. BUT RELIGION CAN NOT, AND WILL NOT, HURT OR OBSTRUCT THE PROGRESS OF OUR STRUGGLE OR THE PROSPERITY OF OUR NATION. IT IS TIME NOW FOR ALL YORUBA RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN ALL RELIGIONS TO ARISE AND GIVE ACTIVE SUPPORT TO THE LIBERATION OF OUR YORUBA NATION FROM ITS DISASTROUS INCLUSION IN NIGERIA. THE DAY OF OUR YORUBA NATION’S GREATNESS IS AT HAND.
The following few of us, from among leading Yoruba Muslims, Christians and Isese, humbly represent the millions who authorize and send this message:
1. Prof. Wande Abimbola (Isese)
2. Prophet Joseph Gegeoju (Christian)
3. Chief Imam Abdulraheem Aduanigba (Muslim)
4. Araba Ifayemi Elebuibon (Isese)
5. Rt/Rev. Daniel Ayodeji Akomolafe (Christan)
6. Imam Abdul Rasaq Ali Adelani Adeleye (Muslim)
7. Apostle/Prophet (Dr.) Z.B.Adeboriota (Christan)
8. Dr. Prince Akintunde Ayéni (Isese)
9. Imam Abdul Akeem Saka (Muslim)
10. Pastor Emmanuel O. Agboola (Christian)
11. Chief Tajudeen Olanrewaju Bakare (Isese)
12. Sheik Morufudeen Olowu (Muslim)
Prof. Adebanji Akintoye.
SENDER
