By Kayode Emola

Last week Friday, we saw how the Trump team humiliated the Ukrainian president in the oval office before an international audience. After that bitter encounter, the Ukrainian president had no option than to leave the white house and immediately headed to the UK.

The Trump team were very adamant that the Ukrainian president must sign minerals deal before any form of negotiation. Trying to drive a hard bargain, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that there must be security guarantees before any of deal can be considered.

Alas, the US president was not keen to negotiate, his was an order that must be followed to the letter. Sign the deal and the rest can come later, he even openly said that the Ukrainian president does not have any cards in which to play and cannot dictate the terms.

Trump went on to say that should the Ukrainian president not sign that deal; he was playing with World War III. Was Trump serious about pushing the world into another war or is he just using it as a threat to force the Ukrainians to the table. Only time will tell, but as far as Donald Trump is concern, the US has invested heavily in the Russia/Ukraine war, and it is payback time now.

To be frank, people should ask the Ukrainian leadership how they intend to win the war despite not been able to get any of the land Russia took from it since the beginning of the conflict despite receiving over $300bn in aid from the US, Europe and other allies. Where has those monies gone into? Is the Russia/Ukraine war a make belief or an avenue for some people to cash out.

Some prominent US commentators like Scott Ritter has stated that the US doesn’t need minerals deal with Ukraine. That doing minerals deal with Ukraine is a favour to the Ukrainian government just for them to save face. In his recent broadcast, Scott stated that the US has already done a deal with the Russian government worth $7tn and that this is the direction the US is heading towards.

We know that Trump has stated on numerous occasions that he is no longer interested in funding NATO. Trump believes that NATO has outlived its usefulness, and the world should move to more economic alliance rather than a military alliance. No wonder Trump is slamming tariff on any country that the US has a trade deficit with.

Some few days ago, Trump suggested that nuclear powers should start thinking of denuclearisation of their arsenals. If this is followed through, then Trump would have made history as the president who changed the world’s direction towards peace.

Not many people knew that the current trajectory of the world was not sustainable. America alone owes over $35tn and rising with no intention or means of paying back, yet it continues to accumulate debt on a large scale. If that trend was not halted or reversed, it risked sending the world financial markets into a complete meltdown somewhere down the line.

Should that happen, only countries with strong economic base will be the ones with any means of withstanding a shock from such a global meltdown. Hopefully, if Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) can reverse the downward trend of America, then the world may have a chance to withstand any future financial crisis.

We Yoruba need to understand that in international diplomacy, no country will stand up for us if we continue to let our heritage go into ruin by the Nigerian government. We have lost our economic base built in the 1950s by Chief Awolowo and his team and now we are about to lose our existence and land.

We need to understand that the Ukrainians relied on the US government to help them fight and win their war with the Russians without adequately preparing for the war themselves. Despite several warnings over several years before the Russian invasion in February 2022, the Ukrainians did not take the threat of an invasion serious until a full-scale war started.

We Yoruba must not through ignorance let our guard down like the Ukrainians and end up where we do not expect. The Ukrainians downplayed the threat of losing their lands to the Russians and ended up in a war they weren’t prepared for. Despite all they have lost in the war, they are now going to cede their mineral resources to the US in the name of finding lasting peace.

If NATO were to be disbanded or Russian being allowed to join the alliance and with no real enemy in Europe to war against, then the Ukrainians fight against the Russians would have been for nothing.

I hope and pray that our Yoruba people would not wait for us to get to the stage where we are at the brink of losing everything before they react. Most Yoruba are not good at anticipating what is to happen in the present time let alone predict what is to happen in the future.

We need to double our effort in future proofing our Yoruba economy and put on our thinking cap to know that the world is changing rapidly so that whatever happens, we are not left behind. We must be prepared to face the daunting challenges that stares us in the face and be ready to confront it with the courage that it deserves and pray that God in His infinite mercies will grant us the grace to succeed.

By Kayode Emola

Last week, we witnessed another kidnapping of one of our Yoruba son enroute Lagos to Abuja. This was not just another kidnapping as it was the youth leader of the revered Afenifere Yoruba Cultural group. Just to put it in context, Afenifere is the foremost Yoruba group that speaks on behalf of the Yoruba people since the days of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

However, since the Alliance of Democracy led by Tinubu destroyed the Afenifere group, it has since lost it potency on the Yoruba matter. Today, it is a pity that the Afenifere cannot take a stand whether to unite and fight for an independent Yoruba nation, a restructured Nigeria, or a regional government.

Until such time that the Afenifere makes up their mind as to their direction of travel, we on the Yoruba self-determination struggle will continue to unequivocally ask for our independent Yoruba nation. We believe it is our moral duty to demand from the Nigerian government our inalienable rights to self-determination as enshrined in Article 1 of the United Nations Charter.

This is the only sure guarantee to lasting peace in our Yoruba land and our future prosperity. We cannot afford to continue in this state of anarchy in Nigeria and pretend as though the country is working for the benefit of all.

Video of the released Afenifere Youth leader was widely circulated in social media. However, the release was not without the parting of huge sums of money to the kidnappers. The monies paid to the kidnappers will then go on to purchase more sophisticated weapons to continue in their dastardly act of kidnapping where they await their next victim.

I do not know how much was eventually paid as ransom to the kidnappers before he was released but their initial demand was ₦100M equil $67,000 to be produced within 3 days. If we on the Yoruba struggle had called on the Yoruba people to raise $100,000 to support our local vigilante, it may take us forever to come up with one-tenth of such resources.

Whilst I am happy that my brother Ojajuni has been freed from the kidnappers den, I believe strongly that this is the time for us to act decisively. We each need to reflect of the current situation of insecurity in our environment and ask ourselves what can we do to stop kidnapping in Yorubaland.

We need to be better prepared to tackle this issue of insecurity in Yorubaland and ensure that this ugly incidence do not repeat itself. Every community in Yorubaland need to come together to form a community defence team to tackle this menace. They need to link their defence team with their neighbours to ensure that when one community is attacked, the next community is ready to rise up to the occasion in solidarity.

It is only when we come together in unity that we can achieve a meaningful result in terms of tackling the menace of insecurity. No one community can achieve success on their own without the support and solidary of the next.

We must all come to a place where an attack on one is seen as an attack to all and everyone must rise to the occasion. If we continue to think that the attack on our fellow Yoruba citizens does not concern us, then the day it will be our turn, there may be no one left to help us.

Above all, we must begin to earnestly work together for the greater good of our Yorubaland and the liberation of our people. Without the total liberation of Yorubaland from Nigeria, these sort of events will not be totally eradicated from our land. I am taking this opportunity to call on everyone who cares that this is the time for us to double our efforts in our self-determination struggle, God willing, we will come out victorious in the not too distant future.

By Kayode Emola

Earlier this week, I watched a video where President Tinubu was addressing a conference and promising an uninterrupted power supply by 2027. In his remarks, the President stated that he will deliver an uninterrupted power supply to Nigerians before the 2027 general elections by any means possible. If he fails to do this, he claims he should not be voted back in those elections.

My question is how many of President Tinubu’s promises in the past has he kept? Tinubu and his predecessor Buhari are the ones who promised to make $1 equal to ₦1 within four years of the former’s presidency in 2015. Today, $1 is over ₦1,500 and nowhere near coming down soon.

President Tinubu, during his campaign in 2023, stated that he would hire fifty thousand Nigerians into the Army to tackle insecurity. As of today, I don’t even think the Nigerian army has hired up to ten thousand people a few months into Tinubu’s second year in office.

We must not forget that our Yoruba farms and village settlements are being surrounded by terrorists hibernating in our forests waiting to unleash the worst mayhem mankind has ever witnessed on the Yoruba people. Yet we sit on our hands waiting for the day the government will come to our rescue.

Except President Tinubu is promising to give free fuel to every Nigerians to power their generators at home, he should not make promises he can not keep. There is no way the president can provide uninterrupted power supply to every nook and crannies in Nigeria without critical infrastructure.

The president, in his one-line political sloganeering of uninterrupted power supply, should not be his priority. Rather, he should focus on a sincere roadmap to delivering an uninterrupted power supply. This roadmap will serve his credibility very well rather than trying to win a popularity contest.

Without any concrete evidence of activities going on to improve the electrical installations and distribution networks, there should be no bold promise of uninterrupted power supply. As we speak, some communities in Southern Ondo Senatorial District have not seen electricity for over a decade. Most of these communities rely on generators, solar panels, and other heat sources to generate electricity.

The president’s bold promise of providing uninterrupted electricity in 2027 is offensive to people who know this is another election gimmick. The fact of the matter is that the president is only concerned about his political future in 2027.

He may direct the electricity board to maintain a façade during the election period by providing electricity in some areas, making the people think that he is fulfilling his promise. When it is just to win the votes of the people who will be neglected once he secures a second term.

As Yoruba, this is clear evidence that President Tinubu is not concerned about the plight of an average Yoruba person who bears the brunt of his harsh policies. Tinubu is more concerned about his own political future and would do anything necessary to keep him power.

Many of our elderly people may not survive this current hardship going on in Yorubaland. Therefore, it is high time we came together to unanimously demand our own Yoruba nation. It is our duty to do this for the coming generations as we may live or die to regret the loss of our ancestral home to strangers. It is time to be bold and to take a stand, and as for me and my household, we will stand with the Yoruba nation.