By K. OKUNOMO

THERE is this Yoruba saying that “it is not acceptable that highly revered elders in a community will lack the capacity to assuage the neck pain of a new born child”. This proverb is very germane to the following discourse. We Yorubas are known to demonstrate an enviable level of religious tolerance such that our communities have become haven for people from other parts of Nigeria facing religious persecution. 

This, I have witnessed severally, while growing up. However, recent events and the concomitant mute indifference by the elders alluded to in the foregoing proverb, is foreboding, contemptible and capable of stoking an unending conflagration in Yourba land. I have attempted in the past to advance a seemingly justifiable reason for the nefarious activities of these people, but yet to achieve that goal. 

How else can this be categorised or considered, if not the height of imbecility? I am actually referring to the recent demonstration, by people I consider miscreants and misguided elements of the society on the supposedly lopsided appointments of commissioner-designates by the Lagos State Governor, which was allegedly skewed in favour of Christians. This is uncalled for, ill-motivated, unnecessary, irrelevant and an attempt to portray the Governor in bad light. It appears that the people in question have lost every sense of rationality, decency and decorum. It must be made unmistakably clear that an attempt to plunge the Yoruba nation  into needless religious wars will serve nobody any good.

The assault to the unity of Yorubas began subtly in the early years of the clueless, Buhari’s Regime, owing to his deliberate and overwhelming ambition to subjugate Nigerians to Fulani hegemony. They strategically engaged an ignoble Yoruba Professor who, despite his intellectual capacity, failed to decipher their hidden agenda, and ridiculously carried out the assignment with unparalleled zeal and unbridled enthusiasm, such that he single-handedly declared opposition to the emergence of any Christian presidential candidates of Yoruba extraction. 

He went ahead to nominate some Muslim politicians he considered veritable replacement for Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the event of his incapacitation or disqualification. He posseses an uncanny hostility, a deep-seated animosity towards Christianity, most especially his own people who profess or have sworn allegiance to the Christian faith.  He has this incredibly ravenous propensity to censure anything associated with Christianity impulsively. He gives you  an impression of a person who is exclusively allergic to Christianity. This is calamitous and preposterous.

When it became obvious that his own people were haunted, maimed, decimated and their communities ravaged, farms destroyed and reduced to internally displaced persons, IDPs, in their own land which eventually snowballed to the Sunday Igboho’s  rebellion for the emancipation of his people, the odious, the Professor witnessed all these atrocities against his own people but voiced no opposition to them but rather looked the other way. His debased mind chose his own religion over his own flesh and blood which is characteristic of the Islamic fundamentalists that he unarguably represents.

He has forgotten that this same people annulled June 12 election, clearly won by a Yoruba Muslim, who was eventually killed with brazen impunity to prevent the actualisation of his dream, to become the President of this British contraption called Nigeria (Yoruba Roonu!).  The irony of that pogrom or catastrophe visited on our people is that the perpetrators were never selective in their destruction. The adherents of all religions were collectively victimised. When a particular community in Ogun State was subjected to the virulent attacks of the Fulani herdsmen, the vigilantes successfully repelled these vicious and barbaric attacks. It was almost immediately, a full truckload of soldiers, following a direct order from above returned the perpetrators to the community with a view to consummating their genocidal agenda on our people.

Furthermore, the Yorubas in the diaspora were systematically targeted for assassination upon returning to the country. One particular incident was that of an Ondo State lady, who came from London for her mother’s funeral. She was murdered in cold blood. The Yoruba Muslims who were sheepishly supporting these Fulanis knew these and were unperturbed.

 In 2021, the bandits having secretly infiltrated the forest of the South-West, strategically positioned themselves inside the Catholic Church in Owo town   and ruthlessly massacred 50 worshippers both young and old. The Fulani perpetrators are yet to be apprehended till this moment. Where were these misguided protesters? The carnage at that time was not unconnected to the vociferous insistence by the Governor of Ondo State that power must shift to the South, for which the ultimate beneficiary is a Yoruba Muslim. Pa Fasoranti’s daughter was next in line. Some also abducted Chief  Olu Falae. 

The list is endless. The crisis continued unabated until the end of the presidential primaries where the issue of Muslim-Muslim ticket became pronounced. The majority of Christians in Nigeria felt this was an anomaly or aberration as it would be disadvantageous to them and would in no way contribute positively to the fragile unity of the country. However, in spite of glaring opposition by the powers that be, against the candidacy of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he emerged victorious through the unflinching support of Yoruba Christians. No Yoruba Christian mobilised miscreants or political thugs to Alausa against a fellow Yoruba man.

 We the Yoruba Christians have always maintained civility, tranquility, exercised restraint even in the face of extreme provocation by the adherents of other religions. It is sad and disheartening that such people never considered this kind gesture worthy of reciprocation.

The point being made here is, that there is a gradual encroachment on our cherished culture with a view to engendering polarisation along religious lines and to foist on us the belligerence and bellicose idiosyncrasies of the Fulanis with the ultimate objective of subjugating us, rendering us as tenants in our  father land and permanently  subservient to the Fulani caliphate.

The latter is leveraging on the gullibility and docility of the Yoruba Muslims and they are apparently succeeding. The time to call these people to order is now for the sake of our land and posterity. What the Fulanis could not achieve in the past through jihadism, they are now surreptitiously pursuing that through overt subterfuge with the Yoruba Muslims as mere pawns and collaborators. 

YORUBA  ROONU! 

*Okunomo, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Asaba