By Prince Justice Faloye

It is the height of political absurdity to use ethnicity, religion or spirituality in politics as seen with the All Progressives Congress,APC. It started with a Muslim-Muslim ticket.

It later advanced to the use of fake Bishops to fool Christians.

Yoruba culture is deep with dual ramifications in the physical as well as spiritual realms.

In the physical realm, the Oro rites were to scare away Igbo and other immigrants. It was just a voter suppression act to be challenged in court. However, it was invoked to have far-reaching devastating spiritual effects.

Oro is a kind of collective exorcism. It is a cleansing rite to rid the host of bad spirits. Catholics and other Christians, as well as Muslims exorcise bad spirits. However, this particular Oro rite was aimed at ethnic cleansing for selfish political motives. With the presidential election lost, but shabbily rigged, knowing it couldn’t stand judicial scrutiny, a diabolical political scheme in human history was launched. The plan was to ultimately provoke an ethnic crisis if nullified, blaming it on Igbo and the push for Oodua nation.

Immediately after the fake presidential results were announced, APC launched a propaganda to turn the Yoruba against Igbo.

It was public knowledge that there was to be spiritual warfare.

However, since it takes two to tangle, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour thwarted the plan.

A coalition of Yoruba self-determination groups consequently vowed to protect everyone across the 13,250 polling booths, being partners in the quest to free Yorubaland from the stranglehold of one man for the last 24yrs.

At the last minute, GRV backed off and told them to step down. A whole lot of groups were disappointed and believed he had been bewitched since it was unthinkable to go to an election without local security. But the logic was if they had been unleashed, the clashes would have resulted in hundreds of deaths, which would have been painted as an Igbo attack. It would have been a case of a duel.

It has become more obvious that it was far more than the governorship contest because even after the elections, APC has ramped up the tribal hate speeches exponentially.

Why? Even though Peter Obi was majorly a Yoruba candidate advanced by Afenifere and the likes of Obasanjo based on equity and justice of rotational presidency. APC’s propaganda machine paints it as Igbo imperialism.

The propaganda became ridiculous as APC’s ‘Lagos is no man’s land policy’ of the last 24yrs, called Gedegbe Leko Wa in Yoruba, was blamed on Igbo.

It was a policy that made Lagos distance itself from Amotekun, Oodua Republic or any Yoruba collective agenda. The aim of the anti-Igbo rhetoric and scaremongering that Igbo want to take over Lagos is to agitate Yoruba to a point that when the courts see the obvious rigging and cancel his stolen mandate, he would provoke ethnic cleansing across Yorubaland.

We can’t look the other way while one man destroys our collective destiny. Some believe his Ogun (brutal force) will rust like iron in seawater (Olokun). If Gbadebo was reluctant to engage in spiritual and physical war for his governorship bid, as a true son of Lagos, he can’t look on while innocent Lagosians suffer for political reasons. The problem is that the Oro has been unleashed like a genie in the bottle, and it might be too late too little to prevent an apocalypse in Yorubaland.

*Faloye writes from Lagos