Connect with us

Opinion

Voice of Emancipation: When Silence is Not Golden

Published

on

By Kayode Emola

It is often believed that silence is golden, but this narrative is not always true. If there is no preparation for the aftermath a calamity that has befallen a people, it is definitely bound to happen again because the people fail to take precaution. In a situation of unpreparedness, silence may become stupidity as one runs the risks of encountering the same misfortune that has already befallen him.

When Buhari became President of Nigeria and his Fulani kinsmen unleashed terror on the indigenous of Nigeria, all hell was let loose as it was every indigenous nation in Nigeria versus the Fulani people. Yet, the Fulani people hardly spoke anything but kept at what they knew how to do best. At the time, the noise from the Yoruba nation activists around the globe was deafening and the Nigerian government felt the heat, so much so that Buhari when he was leaving office could be seen visibly angry in himself.

One would have thought that the momentum with which we the Yoruba people clamoured for an independent Yoruba nation would have accelerated when a Yoruba man became the president of Nigeria. Alas, instead of steadfast activism until freedom is established, the enthusiasm from a lot of people fizzled out like a pack of ice block.

What could have caused this eerily silence, does it now mean many Yoruba people believe in Nigeria only if a Yoruba man is the president. How come the majority of our people clamouring for Yoruba nation are just happy to sit back despite the atrocities happening in Yorubaland. Or are we blind to injustice happening to our people if the person occupying the presidency in Aso rock is our tribesman.

It will seem our silence in this regard is not golden but stupidity if we fail to plan seriously on how to get Yoruba nation out of Nigeria. When Buhari was president, no Yoruba organisation or state government dared talk of the word security for our people or setting up security outfit to protect our people without backlash from the presidency. This is despite the Fulani people parading Hisbah police as their preferred police of choice in Northern Nigeria.

The Hisbah police were so emboldened that they even arrest the Nigerian police for drinking alcohol in the North, despite Nigeria not been declared an Islamic nation. The Hisbah police had powers to arrest traders who sell alcohol in places like Kano, Jigawa, Sokoto and many of the core northern states.

It is in this feeling of superiority that the Fulani people are now thinking of creating an exclusive Fulani vigilante group to police the entire Nigeria. This is a step too far and we Yoruba must rise up now to create our own people’s militia that will defend our people and their possessions.

This is not the time to be pacifists when our people are been slaughtered in their hundreds and entire communities being displaced in Yorubaland. This is the time to make the world understand that except a peaceful dissolution of Nigeria happens soon, a catastrophic separation is inevitable.

The Fulani are feeling hard done because their man is no longer at the helm of affairs of Nigeria. They do not care the repercussions of their actions as all they ever wanted is power even though they do not know what power truly mean or how to handle it.

The time is ripe for a Yoruba security outfit that can protect our people and defend our land. We must not wait for the Fulani to create a vigilante group before we know that we also need security for our people. Every Yoruba person needs to feel safe in their home irrespective of their status or wealth.

The security of lives and properties is the primary duty of government; however, the Nigeria security apparatus is not set up to protect the citizens. They are rather designed to oppress the very people they were supposed to protect.

Therefore, our Yoruba leaders and elders must know that they owe our people a duty of care. We must do everything within our power to ensure that the lives and properties of our people are always protected if that means that we must strengthen our existing indigenous vigilante groups or create a new outfit that is fit for purpose.

As we cannot rely on the Nigeria security apparatus to protect our lives and property in Yoruba land, it is inevitable that we the Yoruba people must do everything within international law to protect the lives and properties of our people to avoid mass exodus of our people from their ancestral homeland.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Opinion

The End of a Political Party

Published

on

By

By Obianuju Kanu-Ogoko

It is deeply alarming and shameful to witness an elected official of an opposition party openly calling for the continuation of President Tinubu’s administration. This blatant betrayal goes against the very essence of democratic opposition and makes a mockery of the values the PDP is supposed to stand for.

Even more concerning is the deafening silence from North Central leadership. This silence comes at a price—For the funneled $3 million to buy off the courts for one of their Leaders’, the NC has compromised integrity, ensuring that any potential challenge is conveniently quashed. Such actions reveal a deeply compromised leadership, one that no longer stands for the people but for personal gain.

When a member of a political party publicly supports the ruling party, it raises the critical question: Who is truly standing for the PDP? When a Minister publicly insulted PDP and said that he is standing with the President, and you did nothing; why won’t others blatantly insult the party? Only under the Watch of this NWC has PDP been so ridiculed to the gutters. Where is the opposition we so desperately need in this time of political crisis? It is a betrayal of trust, of principles and of the party’s very foundation.

The leadership of this party has failed woefully. You have turned the PDP into a laughing stock, a hollow shell of what it once was. No political party with any credibility or integrity will even consider aligning or merging with the PDP at this rate. The decay runs deep and the shame is monumental.

WHAT A DISGRACE!

Continue Reading

Opinion

Day Dele Momodu Made Me Live Above My Means

Published

on

By

By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

These are dangerous days of gross shamelessness in totalitarian Nigeria.
Pathetic flaunting of clannish power is all the rage, and a good number of supposedly modern-day Nigerians have thrown their brains into the primordial ring.

One pathetic character came to me the other day stressing that the only way I can prove to him that I am not an ethnic bigot is to write an article attacking Dele Momodu!

I could not make any head or tail of the bloke’s proposition because I did not understand how ethnic bigotry can come up in an issue concerning Dele Momodu and my poor self.

The dotty guy made the further elaboration that I stand accused of turning into a “philosopher of the right” instead of supporting the government of the day which belongs to the left!

A toast to Karl Marx in presidential jet and presidential yacht!

I nearly expired with laughter as I remembered how one fat kept man who spells his surname as “San” (for Senior Advocate of Nigeria – SAN) wrote a wretched piece on me as an ethnic bigot and compelled one boozy rascal that dubiously studied law in my time at Great Ife to put it on my Facebook wall!

The excited tribesmen of Nigerian democracy and their giddy slaves have been greased to use attack as the first aspect of defence by calling all dissenting voices “ethnic bigots” as balm on their rotted consciences.

The bloke urging me to attack Dele Momodu was saddened when he learnt that I regarded the Ovation publisher as “my brother”!

Even amid the strange doings in Nigeria of the moment I can still count on some famous brothers who have not denied me such as Senator Babafemi Ojudu who privileged me to read his soon-to-be-published memoir as a fellow Guerrilla Journalist, and the lionized actor Richard Mofe-Damijo (RMD) who while on a recent film project in faraway Canada made my professor cousin over there to know that “Uzor is my brother!”

It is now incumbent on me to tell the world of the day that Dele Momodu made me live above my means.

All the court jesters, toadies, fawners, bootlickers and ill-assorted jobbers and hirelings put together can never be renewed with enough palliatives to countermand my respect for Dele Momodu who once told our friend in London who was boasting that he was chased out of Nigeria by General Babangida because of his activism: “Babangida did not chase you out of Nigeria. You found love with an oyinbo woman and followed her to London. Leave Babangida out of the matter!”

Dele Momodu takes his writing seriously, and does let me have a look at his manuscripts – even the one written on his presidential campaign by his campaign manager.

Unlike most Nigerians who are given to half measures, Dele Momodu writes so well and insists on having different fresh eyes to look at his works.

It was a sunny day in Lagos that I got a call from the Ovation publisher that I should stand by to do some work on a biography he was about to publish.

He warned me that I have only one day to do the work, and I replied him that I was raring to go because I love impossible challenges.

The manuscript of the biography hit my email in fast seconds, and before I could say Bob Dee a fat alert burst my spare bank account!

Being a ragged-trousered philanthropist, a la the title of Robert Tressel’s proletarian novel, I protested to Dele that it’s only beer money I needed but, kind and ever rendering soul that he is, he would not hear of it.

I went to Lagos Country Club, Ikeja and sacked my young brother, Vitus Akudinobi, from his office in the club so that I can concentrate fully on the work.

Many phone calls came my way, and I told my friends to go to my divine watering-hole to wait for me there and eat and drink all that they wanted because “money is not my problem!”

More calls came from my guys and their groupies asking for all makes of booze, isiewu, nkwobi and the assorted lots, and I asked them to continue to have a ball in my absence, that I would join them later to pick up the bill!

The many friends of the poor poet were astonished at the new-fangled wealth and confidence of the new member of the idle rich class!

It was a beautiful read that Dele Momodu had on offer, and by late evening I had read the entire book, and done some minor editing here and there.

It was then up to me to conclude the task by doing routine editing – or adding “style” as Tom Sawyer would tell his buddy Huckleberry Finn in the eponymous adventure books of Mark Twain.

I chose the style option, and I was indeed in my elements, enjoying all aspects of the book until it was getting to ten in the night, and my partying friends were frantically calling for my appearance.

I was totally satisfied with my effort such that I felt proud pressing the “Send” button on my laptop for onward transmission to Dele Momodu’s email.

I then rushed to the restaurant where my friends were waiting for me, and I had hardly settled down when one of Dele’s assistants called to say that there were some issues with the script I sent!

I had to perforce reopen up my computer in the bar, and I could not immediately fathom which of the saved copies happened to be the real deal.

One then remembered that there were tell-tale signs when the computer kept warning that I was putting too much on the clipboard or whatever.

It’s such a downer that after feeling so high that one had done the best possible work only to be left with the words of James Hadley Chase in The Sucker Punch: “It’s only when a guy gets full of confidence that he’s wide open for the sucker punch.”
Lesson learnt: keep it simple – even if you have been made to live above your means by Dele Momodu!

To end, how can a wannabe state agent and government apologist, a hired askari, hope to get me to write an article against a brother who has done me no harm whatsoever? Mba!

I admire Dele Momodu immensely for his courage of conviction to tell truth to power.

Continue Reading

Opinion

PDP at 26, A Time for Reflection not Celebration

Published

on

By

By Obianuju Kanu-Ogoko

At 26 years, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) should have been a pillar of strength, a beacon of hope and a testament to the enduring promise of democracy in Nigeria.*

Yet, as we stand at this milestone, it is clear that we have little, if anything, to celebrate. Instead, this anniversary marks a sobering moment of reflection, a time to confront the hard truths that have plagued our journey and to acknowledge the gap between our potential and our reality.

Twenty-six years should have seen us mature into a force for good, a party that consistently upholds the values of integrity, unity and progress for all Nigerians.

But the reality is far from this ideal. Instead of celebrating, we must face the uncomfortable truth: *at 26, the PDP has failed to live up to the promise that once inspired millions.*

We cannot celebrate when our internal divisions have weakened our ability to lead. We cannot celebrate when the very principles that should guide us: justice, fairness and accountability,have been sidelined in favor of personal ambition and short-term gains. We cannot celebrate when the Nigerian people, who once looked to the PDP for leadership, now question our relevance and our commitment to their welfare.

This is not a time for self-congratulation. It is a time for deep introspection and honest assessment. What have we truly achieved? Where did we go wrong? And most importantly, how do we rebuild the trust that has been lost? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, not just as a party, but as individuals who believe in the ideals that the PDP was founded upon.

At 26, we should be at the height of our powers, but instead, we find ourselves at a crossroads. The path forward is not easy, but it is necessary. We must return to our roots, to the values that once made the PDP a symbol of hope and possibility. We must rebuild from within, embracing transparency, unity and a renewed commitment to serving the people of Nigeria.

There is no celebration today, only the recognition that we have a long road ahead. But if we use this moment wisely, if we truly learn from our past mistakes, there is still hope for a future where the PDP can once again stand tall, not just in name, but in action and impact. The journey begins now, not with *fanfare but with resolve.

Continue Reading

Trending