Voice of Emancipation: How to Achieve Yoruba Sovereignty (Pt. 1)

By Kayode Emola

There have been many calls for a wide variety of solutions to Nigeria’s multi-national problem, ranging from restructuring to Sovereign National Conference (SNC), to the dissolution of Nigeria. Yet these all fail to account for the painful but inescapable truth that Nigeria is not working. If this helpless African country has no other way out, then dissolution is the inevitable only solution.

The only way to create a viable pathway for the Yoruba people in Nigeria is to understand how we got here in the first place. It is no secret that Nigeria was created not for the benefit of the indigenous people, but for that of the European colonisers. As we can only find a route out of this mess by understanding how we got into it, I will take us down memory lane to visit a few of the global events that led to our colonisation.

Life as we know it depends on trade, so trade has been an ongoing phenomenon for millennia, from the family circle to commercial circles. After the abolition of the slave trade, the nineteenth century world was hungry for a new commodity that could be traded on a commercial scale. Africa, the greatest casualty of the slave trade, also had a large proportion of the world’s natural resources. It therefore became the answer for sourcing whatever new commodity was to be traded.

It became clear that whoever controlled the land – and its people – would automatically control its resources; therefore a new kind of partnership must be formed. Although commercial slavery had ostensibly been abolished worldwide, this did not stop the Europeans from encroaching on the African continent looking to control its resources. Meanwhile, the Africans themselves were too embroiled in their internal skirmishes to see the true danger: the Europeans scheming to take control of our lands and bountiful resources.

The Germans were heavily involved in West Africa, giving loans to farmers in exchange for agricultural produce. The French were capturing territories from North to West Africa, whilst the Portuguese and Spaniards were heading towards the southern half of Africa.

But it was the British who made a major breakthrough in 1861, when they forced the signing of a treaty of protection by Oba Dosumu in Lagos. This heralded the beginning of what would become the large conglomerate of Nigeria.

Once Lagos was under the protectorate of the British, they went on looking for further territories to sign similar treaties, either willingly or forcibly. These tactics were widely employed by the nineteenth century European colonisers, until nearly all of Africa was controlled by one European superpower or another.

Africa’s misfortunes continued when David Livingstone, who was searching for the source of the River Nile encountered River Zambesi. This discovery would completely change Africa forever. Although Livingstone did not complete his project, the Welsh American Henry Stanley continued in his trail and got the work completed.

After Henry Stanley completed the project started by Livingstone, he sought for an European monarch or businessman to invest in his the project. Meanwhile, the king of Belgium Leopold who had sought to buy Papua New Guinea from Queen Victoria and was met with a resounding No by the British monarch found the ultimate prize he wanted in acquiring the Congo for himself.

When the news of an uncolonized part of Africa got to Leopold, he was quick to invite Henry Stanley to a banquet in Belgium. It was during this banquet, king Leopold employed the services of Stanley to get the Congolese land for him thereby putting Belgium among the list of European colonisers.

One thing led to another and king Leopold persuaded the European colonisers to hold the Berlin conference of 1884. This is where the African land will be officially shared to avoid animosity among the Europeans who themselves cannot agree on what land they held as protectorate.

Meanwhile, Britain who had concerned themselves with the coastal part of the present-day West Africa began to make an inroad into the hinterland lands of Ghana and Nigeria. By the 1900, Britain had entered a secret deal with the French on how to amicably share the Yoruba lands in present day Nigeria and the Republic of Benin, together with how the Northern Nigeria will be ceded to the British government.

At this time, the present day Nigeria was not what it use to be as the boundary of Nigeria as at 1900 ended in what is today Middlebelt of Nigeria. It was not until around 1905-1906 that the Hausa and Kanuri lands of present day Nigeria were incorporated into the British protectorates.

Once the Yoruba land and people have found itself trapped in this big conglomerate called Nigeria and the ruins it had become, our people now find it difficult to detangle themselves from this colonial structure. The challenge is now decolonising our minds for complete freedom which we shall discuss in subsequent series.