However we must never forget who and what we are- proud sons and daughters of Odua that share an ancient and noble heritage and that come from a long line of innovators, great warriors and noble emperors and kings. Unlike some other nationalities that reside in the Nigerian state, the 50 million people that make up the Yoruba nation can trace our ancestral roots and heritage for many centuries back. We know that we existed as a distinct and clearly defined race as far back as 3000 years ago and we were loved, honoured and respected by many all over the Middle East, the Sudan, Egypt and north Africa for our numerous contributions to science, the arts, religion, philosophy and all manner of human endeavour.

We must never forget and we must never sacrifice that noble heritage or that concept of who and what we are on the alter of a new Nigerian state where we are, more often than not, envied, despised, held down, held back and cheated by so many others that do not understand and cannot poosibly fathom our ways. Worst still some of our very own have begun to espouse the ungodly philosophy of the mongrel nation where they regard themselves as being Nigerians before being a Yoruba. Such people despise and seek to demonise those of us that are Yoruba nationalists even more than any non-Yoruba seeks to do. They are the enemy within- misguided souls that have forsaken their noble heritage and racial foundation for a pittance and that have been hopelessly seduced by the Nigerian dream of a harmoniuos, peaceful, happy and functional multi-ethnic and multi-cultural state which is simply an illusion and which does not exist. Such a state exists only in their minds and in the minds of those that sought, and failed, to establish it.

FEMI FANI KAYODE

We must not only guard against those from outside our shores that covet our land and that happily proclaim that even one inch of Yorubaland is “no man’s land” but we must also guard against the misguided few from within our own ranks that seem to agree with them. Such people are the enemy within. They are filled with more error and poison and are more dangerous than any outside aggressor or indeed the snake that tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There is nothing more pitiful and repugnant to me than a self-hating Yoruba man who joins forces with outsiders to disparage his or her own. As far as I am concerned such people are to be pitied and are hardly ever worthy of a response.

The good news is that they are very few of them in our ranks and the overwhelming majority of our people have fully espoused the Yoruba nationalist philosophy and imbued the Yoruba nationalist spirit. It is that spirit and that majority that will keep the flag flying, that will keep our hope alive and that will lead us into the glorious future that the God of Heaven, who alone rules in the affairs of men, has promised us. This is an eternal covenant and it shall not be broken. The vision may tarry but it shall not fail, for it is for an appointed time. As surely as night follows day, God shall honour His word, He shall grant us our hearts desire and He shall liberate us from the cruel chains of the Nigerian state which seek to hold us in eternal bondage and perpetual servitude. Our hope and glory reside in our own hands and in the power of our God. We must take that glory and live forever in honour because it is ours to take. We must pray for it, fight for it and stand for it or we shall live forever in eternal shame.

Permit me to end my speech with a few words about the war that took place and broke up the eastern European nation of Yugoslavia into 5 different countries in the 1990’s. For many years before that war broke out many saw it coming because the country, much like Nigeria today, was badly divided on religious and ethnic lines. Many called for a sovereign national conference to settle their differences at the time or for a peaceful and orderly break up of the nation along ethnic lines but the die-hard centralists and unitarists, led by the all powerful dictator Col. Broznan Tito, silenced their voices and, more often than not, locked them up and gave them long sentences in jail for expressing their desire to break up the Yugoslavian state. Every single one of the 5 major ethnic groups that made up Yugoslavia, except for the Bosnians (who happened to be muslims), began to prepare for war and to stock up massive arms catches and stock piles long before that war eventually broke out simply because they all saw it coming.

The Bosnians however always hoped for the best and they were by far the most open, accessible, accomodating, friendly and tolerant of all the ethnic groups in Yugolavia at the time. They allowed the Serbs, Croats, Kosovars and Monte Negrans  to live in their territory without molestation and they regarded themselves as Yugoslavians before being Bosnians. It even got to a point that some Serbs were claiming openly that parts of Bosnia was actually Serbian territory simply because so many Serbs had moved there and contributed to it’s development. Sounds familiar? Yet the Bosnians did not complain because they believed that their liberal and accomodating disposition was a mark of civilisation and they refused to accept the aggressive nationalist philosophy that the Serbs and the Croats in particular had wholeheartedly espoused.

They behaved in the same way that some of our own Yoruba brothers and sisters have insisted on behaving in Nigeria today regardless of what is going on around them and despite the continous provocations and insults from those that are not from our land. They continued to believe that they were safe in their artificial world where nationality or tribe had no meaning and where all that mattered was that they were Yugoslavian.

Sadly they were also plagued with a set of weak-minded, intellectually-defective, cowardly and visionless political and military leaders who could not muster the courage to accept the unfolding reality and who failed to appreciate the fact that the manifestation of weakness simply attracts aggression. They did not learn the basic lesson of statehood and history which is that in order to avoid and deter war you must prepare for it.

When Tito died and the civil war eventually broke out the Bosnians paid a terible price for their lack of foresight and understanding. They were slaughtered like flies by all the other ethnic groups for a long period of time and they were not in a position to defend their own people because they had no arms, they had not prepared for war and there was a United Nations arms embargo put in place which prevented anyone from supplying arms to them. They were literally sitting ducks as their civilian population and women and children were slaughtered before their very eyes or raped and taken into slavery. It was so bad that after some time the U.N. was compelled to lift the arms embargo just so that the Bosnians could acquire weapons to defend themselves and their people. They lost so many and this was the terrible price that they had to pay for their indolence and their lack of understanding of what was unfolding in their nation long before the war broke out.

It was a failure of leadership on the part of the Bosnian intelligensia, elite and political leadership who were so eager to prove to the world and to their fellow Yugoslavians that they were good liberals that always put the interest of Yugoslavia before their own interests as Bosnians.

This was regardless of the fact that no other nationality in that country thought that way or did the same thing. It is my prayer that the Yoruba people and the leadership of the Yoruba nation learn the lessons of Bosnia and do not make the mistakes that the Bosnian leaders made before the war broke out in Yugoslavia in the name of liberalism or anything else. If they do we will all pay a terrible price and may God forbid that.

No matter what lies ahead for Nigeria, we the Yoruba must be ready and we must be in a position to defend the people of the south west and their interests in the event of war or conflict. Let me make this clear. This is not a call for violence because I do not believe in violence and I abhor bloodshed. As a matter of fact I am a pacifist by nature believing more in the power of the intellect than the power of the gun. However I do believe in the right of self-defence.

We must not, in the name of liberalism, generosity or accomodation, be found wanting in this respect. We must find the courage to accept the reality of the Nigerian situation and in order to preserve the peace and ensure the security of the Yoruba people and defend our illustrious heritage we must prepare for the very worse and indeed any eventuallity. If we were to do anything less than that our forefathers and our children would never forgive us and our people will pay a terrible price.

It is left for groups like yours to spread the word and to get the message across to our people and to our leaders. As Iago said in Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, ”tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus” and as Cassius said in ‘Julius Caesar’, ”the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings”. God bless the sons and daughters of the Kurunmi Front, God bless the yoruba people and God bless Nigeria. Shalom.

Femi Fani-Kayode delivered this speech at the event organised by leaders of the Yoruba Nationalist Group, The Kurunmi Front, on 17th September 2013.