By Kayode Emola

This week, on June 12th, Nigeria celebrated democracy day for the second time this year, not without drama. However, drama aside, was it really worth it fighting for democracy?

What would have happened to Nigeria had General Abacha not died? Would the economy be this bad? Would there have been even more martyrs than died already in Abacha’s regime, hell bent on killing anyone who stood in his path? All these questions beg for answer that we may never truly know.

However, what we do know is that democracy, as it’s conducted in Nigeria, is a killer. It sucks the life out of the country, turning leaders into mere puppets as it destroys the economy. This is the harsh reality to which Nigerians are being forcibly awoken. A country where the general populace must accept without complaint price increases whenever the government officials seek more money to steal, but where these same people have to go on strike innumerable times before their salaries can be so much as considered for an increase.

During the democracy day celebrations in 2000, Bola Tinubu, then Governor of Lagos State and now President of Nigeria, told a crowd of supporters that he believes in Yoruba nation, that Yoruba nation is the only solution to the people’s problem. Two decades later, the Nigerian economy has repeatedly demonstrated that unless we get out of Nigeria, the worst is yet to come for the Yoruba people.

The truth is, Nigeria’s problems didn’t start today; so anyone thinking that any solution, other than total dissolution, is deluding themselves. Unless we accept this reality, we may as well continue this charade, as though merely chanting “Democracy” will put food on our tables.

Countries like Yugoslavia walked this destructive path and it didn’t end well for them, with the eventual dissolution of the country in 1992 following a brutal and bloody war. We can continue to pretend that Nigeria is one indivisible entity, but the reality is that Nigeria is not, has never been, and will never be a united country, no matter how hard the beneficiaries of the crooked country try to make us to believe.

It would be of greater benefit to everyone if we work towards a round table discussion on the future of the country, rather than allow the forces of nature to overtake us. Have we ever asked ourselves why the military always took the reins on Nigeria’s affairs? It is because Nigeria can never function as a unified entity, so the only way to hold it together is by military force.

Every single politician is only seeking to benefit themselves, their families and their cronies. This is why none of the political actors ever try to implement sustainable development structures that will make the Nigeria people prosper, because wider sharing of the wealth among the general populace would result in less for the politicians to keep for themselves.

When our leaders do think of building infrastructure, it is only so that they appear to be doing something, with no intent to create benefit for the people. They appeal to the World Bank, IMF and any country willing to grant them loan, so that they can co-opt the money for themselves. This is the reason that Nigeria is in such a pathetic state.

If democracy were the solution to Nigeria’s problem, then 25 years after military rule ceased the country ought to be showing signs that it is on the path toward economic freedom. However, the reality is: the currency is on its knees, the majority of the youths are unemployed and the only solution the government offers to the people is patience.

Patience is a virtue, but it doesn’t put food on the table and it doesn’t pay the bills. Our people require real work and a decent living wage to take them out of poverty, not sympathy. Our people need to know that deceiving ourselves that Nigeria will be great again is futile. It can never be, so unless we dissolve the country, we will merely be vainly championing a democracy that will never solve any of the country’s problems.

Therefore, there is only one option left for us as a people: to be determined in our heart to get something better. We must, as Yoruba, pull ourselves together and ask for our own independent nation. Any other solution proposed will be no more than sticking a plaster over a heavy brain injury – we know it cannot work. Either we continue living in impoverished delusions of democracy; or else pour our energies into advocating for Yoruba independence, so that we can build ourselves a strong future in a nation that is our own.

By Kayode Emola

This week in Nigeria, many of the essential services like electricity, water supply and many others were shut down due to the nationwide strike. This should not be a surprise to any observer of the economic situation in Nigeria. For all intents and purposes, Nigeria is bankrupt, run by criminals who will not give it up so far as the people continue to let them.

When President Tinubu was sworn in on May 29 2023, he was quick to remove fuel subsidy, float the naira on the exchange market but forgot to increase workers wage that has remained flat at ₦30,000 pcm (equi $20 in today’s exchange rate) since 2019.

That singular action of the president should have made the people living in Nigeria guessed accurately the direction of travel of the president and the country. Nigeria, a country of over 220 million people deserves better government and should expect to get nothing less. However, it has a docile population who accepts any rubbish thrown at them by their leaders rather than fight for their rights.

I wonder why it has taken the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) this long to call for an overdue industrial action. They had thought the people in government will give ears to dialogue but alas they have realised now that the men in government don’t care if everybody dies so far as there is still money to loot from the treasury, they are fine.

I hear a lot of people especially in the diaspora saying that the minimum wage of ₦494,000 (equi $330) is too much and that the NLC should be realistic and accept something in the region of ₦150,000 (equil $100). For me this is repugnant and hypocritical as this argument and claim that it will cause inflation does not hold water.

Firstly, the National Assembly members has less than 600 representatives and they have voted for themselves billions of naira that far surpassed the salaries of all Nigerian workers put together. I believe that the allocation going to the National Assembly should be reduced to minimum wage so that we can start the argument afresh.

Truth is every worker in Nigeria from the President to the least person in Nigeria should be put on a salary scale according to their grade level. Once that is done, anyone found corruptly enriching him/herself from the public purse or collecting bribe should be handed not less than 10 years imprisonment or life sentence depending on the severity of the crime. If this can be done, then we can say that Nigeria is being govern fairly and the demands of the unions are unreasonable, if not those advocating for a lesser minimum wage are the true enemies of Nigeria.

In addition, if we look at the Nigeria GDP per capital, it estimates that the average individual should take home nothing less than $2,449.59 (equil ₦3,674,385 per annum). If we divide this figure by 12 months, then we should get somewhere around ₦306,198.75 pcm (equil $205). So, I don’t see the reason why the workers salary should be sacrificed on the alter of inflation when the politician’s salary is protected.

It just shows that the Nigerian government do not care about the welfare of the people of the country and if that is the case, the it is high time we re-visited the sovereignty question. We don’t need to pretend that Nigeria is not working and that the country needs a complete overhaul, we just need to be bold to be able to say it.

We should not just say it, we should match our actions with words and take every necessary step to achieve true freedom for ourselves where the politicians are not just enriching themselves and leaving the masses dry. We should be bold to take concrete actions that will liberate our people rather than sit down to judge the poor Nigerian workers who themselves are merely surviving rather than living.

By Kayode Emola

Some Yoruba patriots will argue that Nigeria is a dead carcass waiting to be buried, and we, the Yoruba people are the ones still delaying the burial to our detriment. For many of the major ethnic nationality that make up Nigeria, they are only there to get whatever benefit they can using the name of the dead country.

Truth be told, we the Yoruba people have been the ones sustaining Nigeria since its creation and we continue to do so till date without the majority of our people realising it. Yet we have been the ethnic nation at the receiving end of many economic woes bedevilling the country.

In 1914 when the northern & southern Nigeria were amalgamated, the Yoruba south made over £4 million in revenue and the entire north made only £100,000 for the same period. We had a surplus of over £5 million in reserve and the majority of our people lived a good life. The British took our surplus money to build the Eastern railway network which helped them in transporting coal from Enugu to Port Harcourt harbour.

Our resources were also used to build the railway network in the north, education and other infrastructures that they enjoy today. All these should not have been a concern had Nigeria worked properly but the British people who built Nigeria never intended it as a country, it was just a trading post. This was advised to the Yoruba leaders when we sought independence around the 1950s that it would be better if we took our Yoruba nation out of Nigeria.

Your guess is as good as mine, they refused the advice and we are all paying the price of a failed Nigeria experiment. Nigeria has become a country where you only benefit from what it has to offer if you know someone in government. Poverty and deprivation run deep in the land and we Yoruba that use to be givers have now become beggars in our own land with many families not able to feed themselves like they use to before.

Despite all these numerous challenges facing the people of Nigeria, all the president of Nigeria and the national assembly can think of is how to revert to the old Nigerian National anthem from independence. This is such a shame that people who said we cannot revisit the sovereignty question of Nigeria from independence are comfortable to go back to the old Nigerian anthem. I wonder what benefit an anthem will do for the ordinary man on the street who doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from.

Afterall, there was no national anthem before the British came and our ancestors lived a far better life than we are in this 21st century. We the Yoruba people must decide whether we want to continue in this shamble called Nigeria or we bury this dead giant once and for all and move to a more prosperous venture. We can do far better for ourselves as an independent Yoruba nation than continue to wallow in poverty.

Many of our Yoruba people have now resorted in selling their valuable assets such as lands and other tangible items just to escape the nightmare that the Nigerian economy has become. This really doesn’t bother me as much; but what really gets to me is that majority of those who think they have escaped the poverty of Nigeria by relocating abroad quickly realises that the grass is not as green as they had hoped.

The ultimate beneficiary of these are the ethnic nations who are hell bent on taking over our ancestral land either by buying it for cheap or taking it by force. If we don’t do anything now to stem the tide of these calamity that has befallen us, research shows that by the year 2050, Yoruba people will become minority in our own land.

If we think this cannot happen, we should take a cue from the Nok people who once lived in the Middlebelt of Nigeria. I am sure many of us have not heard about them and may never hear about them. I pray and hope that history will not point to a Yoruba race that once occupied our land but are nowhere to be found.

We need to know that there is only one solution and that is a complete U-turn from the status quo. Get out of Nigeria as quickly as possible to build an independent Yoruba country where we can begin to enact policies that will preserve our culture and tradition. Implement policies that will enhance the personal economy of our people so that they do not see running away from their ancestral land as the only solution to their personal life ambition. If not, I hope and pray that the worst doesn’t happen to us as a race.