SEVERAL Yoruba elder statesmen have reacted to the recent abduction of former finance minister Chief Olu Falae by threatening to secede from Nigeria if the ongoing harassment of communities by Fulani cattle herdsmen continues.
Late last month, Chief Falae, 77, was abducted from his farm near the Ondo State capital Akure, by armed hoodlums said to be Fulani herdsmen. Earlier this week, he was threatened again after a new set of herdsmen invaded his farm destroying crops as their livestock ran riot over farmland.
Following these incessant attacks and invasion of farmlands, notable Yoruba leaders held an emergency summit in Ibadan, Oyo State, yesterday threatening to review its status in the Nigerian federation. Their summit was titled National Insecurity and the Menace of Fulani Herdsmen in Yorubaland.
Presided over by former governor of the Western Region, General Adeyinka Adebayo, the elder summit warned that the Yoruba will no longer tolerate the present structure of the country, which they claim undermines self actualization of the people of the southwest. According to the summit, the failure to restructure Nigeria using the 2014 confab report might force the Yoruba people to review her place in a political arrangement that cannot guarantee the protection of her citizens.
Factional leaders of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC) Dr Fredrick Faseun and Otunba Gani Adams were unanimous in saying that the time to leave Nigeria and assert the sovereignty of the Yoruba people is now. Like others at the summit, they strongly condemned what was described as the invasion and killing of people in Yoruba territories by the Fulani herdsmen.
In addition, the summit cited incessant cases of rape, destruction of economic plants, the armed violence unleashed by the nomads coupled with the consequent cultural disequilibrium the displacement of people from crisis-ridden northern Nigeria has brought to communities in Yorubaland. It added that subsequent governments in Nigeria have come into power waving slogans that end up leaving the country worse than they met it.
Delegates demanded an immediate end to lawless nomadic activities in the southwest warning that any community who cannot establish ranches for their flock should retreat from Yoruba territories. Sponsors of the summit included the Yoruba Council of Elders, the Oodua Foundation, Afenifere and the Yoruba Unity Forum.
Some of the participants included the Oyo State deputy governor Otunba Moses Alake Adeyemo, who represented Governor Abiola Ajimobi; Sola Ebiseni, who represented the Ondo State governor, Olusegun Mimiko; Pa Olanihun Ajayi; Pa Ayo Adebanjo; Pa Supo Sonibare; Professor Banji Akintoye and Professor Toun Ogunseye, the first female professor in Nigeria. Others were Dr Fredrick Faseun, Otunba Gani Adams, Dr Kunle Olajide, Chief Shuaib Oyedokun and the former military governor of Lagos State, Brigadier Raji Rasaki.
However, the Afenifere Renewal Group and many other pan-Yoruba groups were, however, absent at the summit. Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, the former spokesperson of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign organisation, hailed the summit, warning that the southwest geo-political zone cannot be sacrificial lamb to any other in the country.
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