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.

By Kayode Emola

For the many Yoruba who can’t discern right from wrong or left from right, it’s time to clearly separate facts from fiction. Before the 1999 introduction of democracy to Nigeria, it was hailed as the panacea for development, the ingredient that would take Nigeria to the next level. 25 years of democracy later, over half the population of Nigeria lives in abject poverty. It is therefore high time we talked about our continuing as Nigerians.

It is plainly evident that Nigeria as a nation is heading nowhere meaningful. Still, my greatest frustration lies with the millions of Yoruba who cannot or will not open their eyes and see that it is over for the country. Many of them believe that one day Nigeria will solve all its problems and become a great nation; yet at the same time, believing that it is better for them personally to travel abroad for pastures green.

This is nothing short of hypocrisy at the highest level in fact, I would go so far as to call it cowardice in the face of the oppression present. For those who believe that Nigeria will one day become great, yet still harbour the idea of travelling abroad; or are currently living outside of Nigeria and not returning to build the country, you of all people are the most miserable.

Today, the people living in Ondo State will go out to validate the failed system the military government handed over in 1999. What they will not see is that the exercise of voting is a mirage that makes no difference either to their personal wellbeing or the good of the nation. And yet still they will believe in the slogans that have been spun by politicians for the sole purpose of deceiving the unsuspecting.

As Yoruba, we ought to look inward, and ask ourselves if we are truly enjoying being part of Nigeria. If not, then we must face the question of why are we silent about the hardship our people face. To paraphrase a popular vlogger, the politicians know that the people must go to bed with hope. It seems that successive governments previously have sowed the seed of hope to keep the people going, even as they knew that Nigeria will not get better.

However, the government under President Tinubu has not only perpetuated the citizens’ poverty but has also stolen their hope. Perhaps Tinubu’s decision to liberalise the country is the push needed to energise the Yoruba people towards the actualisation of Orile-ede Yoruba. If not, if even this can’t jolt them out of their reverie, then I can’t see anything that could shake these poverty-stricken Yoruba people from their die-hard belief that Nigeria will one day be a great nation.

It is now very obvious that when our sovereignty is actualised, we Yoruba will need to guard it jealously from the political hawks who ruined Nigeria. We need to make sure they do not transfer their corrupt way of governing Nigeria into the Yoruba country.

Therefore, it is time to begin planning in earnest what that new country will look like. We need to engage stakeholders throughout various levels of society to discuss how our new nation will function. These includes, though is not limited to, our traditional leaders, civil societies, artisans, various professionals and the general public.

We must now put immense pressure on President Tinubu and the current government to convene a sovereign national conference, so that the question of Nigeria can be answered once and for all. This should not be a conference that gags its participants into agreeing that Nigeria is indivisible, but one that allows each participating ethnic nationality the opportunity to decide their own future.

With that said, we must be aware of the nonchalant attitude displayed by the Nigerian government regarding nations’ quest for sovereignty. The Igbo people have decided to exit Nigeria by declaring their Biafra nation on 2nd December 2024, and will damn the consequences. If this happens, the instability caused will make Nigeria’s remaining as a country entirely untenable, under which circumstances we Yoruba people must be ready and uncompromising for our own exit.

The most sensible path that the Nigerian government could take would be that of peaceful dissolution; but the way things are currently heading, I don’t see that happening. Therefore, if and when the inevitable happens to Nigeria, every Yoruba person, both at home and in the diaspora, must be ready to obey the clarion call.

In so doing, we will show the international community that the Yoruba have affirmatively decided that we no longer wish to be perpetual slaves to those holding us to ransom. This moment is pivotal, the point at which we decide our future once and for all. Let us choose the road to freedom, so that we may truly look forward to building a viable nation that champions the rights and needs of the many, not just the political few.