By Kayode Emola

There is an Ilaje adage which says, “Mè a fi ówò ohi jù wè ilé bàámi:” “I won’t use a left hand to point at my father’s house”. Traditionally, Yoruba are proud of their heritage, which is why the Yoruba culture has endured thousands of generations, and is waxing stronger still.

When Kemi Badenoch won the contest to become leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party in the UK, many of her Yoruba kinsmen did not congratulate her wholeheartedly, because of the way she had denigrated the country of her parents. Many people thought Kemi’s rejection of Nigeria was a denial of her heritage.

There were very few Yoruba who, like myself, came to her defence. The truth is, she fully embraces her roots, identifying truly with who she really is. In Yoruba parlance, she would be referred to as “Òmó okó,” meaning a true child of her father.

Kemi’s recent spat with the Vice President of Nigeria puts the record straight as to where her allegiance lie. She showed that Nigeria and its corrupt leaders are not worth standing up for, and that her loyalty belongs to her Yoruba heritage. In so doing, she has done a great service to, not only herself and her family, but the entire Yoruba people, and we must appreciate this.

Most of us who hold Nigerian citizenship view it as a symbol of the oppression that prevents us from identifying who we truly are. It entangles us in an identity crisis that we would prefer to not have to face.

For the best part of two years, I have tried to educate people that I am not Nigerian but rather a Yoruba man from West Africa. It is so frustrating when many people ask you where that is on the map, and you must try to explain what should be naturally identifiable.

Yorubaland is geographically bigger than England and Wales put together, with a population that surpasses the combined populations of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Yet even though Wales and Scotland are within the country of the United Kingdom, they are recognised as individual nations with their own lands and language.

How much more then should the 60 million Yoruba trapped in Nigeria be able to freely identify as Yoruba, instead of being lumped with peoples of other nationalities? This is the very crux of why Yoruba must become an independent sovereign nation, allowing us to choose our own national identity and destiny as we see fit.

Kemi Badenoch’s recent interview with the Spectator, where she claims she is a Yoruba and not necessarily a Nigerian, clearly shows a woman of virtue who understands the true meaning of identity. I believe that our kinsmen who are holding fast to a country that offers them nothing good are doing a great disservice to their Yoruba heritage.

They should realise the lesson taught by millennia of history, that civilisations can and do go into extinction. The attempts to impose a Nigerian consciousness onto our Yoruba psyche is designed to make us forget who we truly are. Even though the Yoruba civilisation has endured thousands of years, it still risks becoming extinct if we don’t hold dear to what we have.

It is therefore pertinent to note that our goal of disengaging from the country called Nigeria is to protect our Yoruba identity from loss by voluntary commission. I encourage my fellow kinsmen, both at home in Yorubaland and in diaspora, to promote our Yoruba identity and have less to do with the Nigerian nomenclature.

I ask every Yoruba citizen to begin to work hard towards the achieving of a sovereign Yoruba nation. The more we promote our Yoruba identity, the further we distance ourselves from Nigeria and its corruption. In so doing, we can foster a healthy environment for our people in a country that is truly our own.

Oodua a gbe gbogbo wa.

By Kayode Emola

Following the recent pronouncement of the United States of Biafra USB) in Finland by one wing of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), a lot of people are asking when Yoruba nation will come to fruition. The good response is that what happened in Finland, as laudable as it is, is a complete jamboree.

Firstly, to critically analyse what happened in Finland, the Igbo nation that has only 5 states in Nigeria was able to come up with 40 states of Biafra. This goes to show that the people behind this charade are not deep thinkers but very shallow-minded and are only playing on the gullibility of the innocent Igbo people.

Secondly, people will see through the lies of some few people in the Biafran struggle perpetrating themselves as the leaders of IPOB. Their purported 40 states of Biafran are nothing short of usurping other peoples’ land and declaring it as a Biafra nation. This goes to show that these people have not learned anything from history about what made the late Ojukwu lose the Biafran Civil War between 1967 – 1970

Thirdly, prior to the declaration, their supposed leader claimed that they had amassed an enormous amount of firepower to confront the Nigerian army on 2 December 2024. This claim has since proven to be lies and deception used to deceive the unsuspecting public.

I can go on with so many reasons why we should not draw conclusions or parallels between the Yoruba nation struggle with the Biafran struggle. However, time will not permit me to do justice to that. What I would rather focus on with our Yoruba people is to set out the path for the emergence of our Yoruba nation and hope that those who can discern it will understand and follow.

The path to self-determination is a hard one and only a few will find it and for those who find it, only a few will be ready to walk on that path. The majority will be served by emotions and feelings therefore missing the mark. The path to self-determination requires meticulous planning, and after much planning, then comes the implementation stage.

As it stands, there are too many voices in the room, thereby preventing adequate planning. This has sometimes made the Yoruba people feel that there is no strategy with which the self-determination struggle is being pursued.

Therefore, I want to take this medium to explain to our comrades that there is serious planning going on as to how best to achieve the Yoruba nation without shedding any innocent blood. Once the planning phase is complete, we will then move to the implementation phase. It is at this implementation phase that tensions will become heightened, and people will begin to see actions.

Following the implementation phase, we will be able to decide with the other nationalities in Nigeria how we want to separate. That is assuming the implementation phase doesn’t lead to confrontation with the Nigerian state. If it does lead to confrontation, the Yoruba nation must be adequately prepared to protect its borders and citizens and the supply of goods and services to maintain the new state.

It is when all these have been achieved that Yoruba nation will come. Without all these ingredients, countless amount of declarations will not bring about a Yoruba or Biafran nation. It is the reason why I said earlier in this piece that the actions of the Finland-based Biafran group were a jamboree that should not be taken seriously.

I will urge our people to be vigilant and steadfast in our journey to nationhood and our quest to sovereignty. We are nearly there but we still are not there yet. Preparations to get to that stage will take us at least about a year from now to mobilise and get our people ready.

It is something that must be done meticulously, and serious planning must be put in place with the end goal in mind rather than the starting point. We must plan to succeed and therefore set high bars and targets for ourselves. Our successes must be equally measured along the way to ensure that we do not falter when it matters most.

It is when we are ready to go through this journey that we can truly from our hearts of hearts say the Yoruba nation will come. If not, I am afraid, we may be jumping to the gonging band that has nothing to offer, thereby becoming artists performing a jamboree event.

The Yoruba nation’s struggles call for serious minds to come together to execute the plans of delivering the Yoruba sovereign nation to the Yoruba people. Therefore, this task cannot be left to the fainthearted, or else it may take us longer to get to our promised destination. I pray and hope that God will bring together a team that will deliver this herculean task for the Yoruba people sooner rather than later.

We have seen that Nigeria has nothing good to offer its citizens other than wanton poverty and deprivation. Therefore, we cannot afford to waste time thinking that going the way of the Finland-based Biafran group will deliver to us a Yoruba nation. We need to be focused on the right path we currently are and put our hands to work so that we can get the desired result of a sovereign Yoruba nation.

By Kayode Emola

Nearly three years since Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, we are still nowhere near a reasonable solution to the conflict. The breadth between Russia and Ukraine’s red lines seems to be widening with each passing day with no sign of convergence, yet, as innocent people die every day, the world merely watches.

The only hint of a meaningful resolution is the shaky promise of the US President-elect, Donald Trump, that he will end the war in one day. How this is to be achieved remains as yet undisclosed, whilst countless numbers of lives continue to be wasted, and critical infrastructures destroyed.

Who is going to pay for the rebuilding of Ukraine? The country is in disarray today compared to when the war first started. Ukraine was urged on by their Western allies to fight the Russians, despite no assurances that they would be able to win the battle. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people were conscripted on the hope that Ukraine would succeed in pushing the Russians out of their territory.

This failed to materialise, leaving Ukraine worse off, despite the picture painted by Western media of their success on the battlefield. A recent opinion poll by Gallup suggests that public opinion in Ukraine has, for the first time, shown a slight majority in favour of ending the war, even if it means ceding territory currently held by Russian troops. This must therefore raise the question, why did they trust their Western allies who encouraged them to pursue conflict? When in the end, every country has got their own problems to solve.

One may wonder if the plethora of promises from countries such as the UK, France, Germany, etc., are enough to bring Ukraine back from the brink. Does “as long as it takes” hold any water, or is it just more sloganeering to assuage the politicians’ consciences?

Military battle is not just an issue of mere rhetoric, it is hard graft requiring skills, patience, perseverance, and a lot of money. Ukraine lacks some, if not much, of these and that is why they are paying a high price for it.

In our own homeland, the situation for the Yoruba nation is not dissimilar. Many of our people are disillusioned as to what the future holds for them. They feel the government has abandoned them, and as a result they have resigned themselves to their fate. For millions of our people, hope is a word that no longer has meaning for them. They don’t know if there is light at the end of the tunnel, or just an endless circle of illusion.

Life in the country is becoming harder by the day, yet the government looks the other way with apparent unconcern as if nothing is happening. How can the political class rule the people without a conscience? Where has their humanity gone? And where is the compassion? These are some of the questions begging for answers.

We Yoruba must learn from the mistakes of the Ukrainians, understanding that we need to choose our own path for ourselves. For far too long, we have allowed other nationalities to decide our future. It is time to correct such aberrations.

We need to understand that our self-determination struggle is no-one else’s fight but is ours alone to bear. We must approach it tactfully, but maintaining the sheer determination and resilience that it requires and deserves. We cannot afford to rely on the benevolence of other countries or individual peoples to get us out of the trap in which we find ourselves.

Nigeria is irredeemable, and those of our people still hoping that one day things will change for the better have well and truly buried their faces in the sand. Nigeria is a forgone conclusion, the extant question no longer being one of whether, but rather of when. Knowing this, anyone still borrowing money in the name of “the people” will one day be forced to answer to the innocent children they fail to educate.

We must now stand together as a united people devoid of any external influence, forging our own national destiny rather than allowing the direction of our journey to be dictated to us by other nations. We are a people endowed with rich culture and tradition, one which we must protect and not allow to die with Nigeria.

Let us be brave in rejecting the suffering inflicted on our people by those who should know better. We must ensure that we do not place our reliance on any other nation to free us from the shackles of neo-colonial slavery in which we find ourselves but that we stand firm on our own strength and resilience as a people. We must rise up like the brave warriors we can be, and fight for that which rightfully belongs to us. By God’s grace, we will win the battle.