Voice of Emancipation

The War by Fulani Leaders Against Sunday Igboho Needs to Stop Now

Published

1 year ago

January 10, 2025

Eric

By Prof. Banji Akintoye

On (Yesterday) January 5, 2025, I witnessed a video showing an important Fulani leader, Prof. Garus Gololo, screaming a fierce message against Chief Sunday Igboho, a prominent leader of the Yoruba Self-Determination Struggle. Prof. Gololo was, like many other Fulani notables before him, striving might and mane to paint Sunday Igboho as a criminal whom the federal government should arrest and detain. Prof. Gololo’s attacks on Sunday Igboho were so harsh and so lacking in truth that I have decided to make the truth available to him. I need to say that in putting this true information forward, I am not acting in any spirit of anger or malice. I just believe that every prominent citizen of Nigeria needs to have the truth as the basis of his public pronouncements, in the interest of us all.
Prof. Gololo thinks that seeking self determination for one’s nation is a crime. This highly educated compatriot of ours is grossly wrong in that view. Demanding self determination for one’s nation is entirely in accordance with the provisions of international law and of Nigerian law. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People affirms that indigenous peoples have the right to self determination, and that members of an indigenous people have the right to seek to retrieve their nation’s self determination from the country that their nation currently belongs to, provided that they do it without violence or disruptiveness. The African Charter of Human and People’s Rights fully affirms exactly the same. Now, since Nigeria is a member of the United Nations and the Africa Union and a signatory to these two international laws, both laws are parts of the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Former Nigerian President Buhari, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in 2016 and 2017, acknowledged that if any nation in Nigeria seeks self determination peacefully, through a peaceful organization, then the Nigeria state would have no other option than to negotiate with such a nation. President Buhari even added that it is immoral to deny self determination to any nation that peacefully seeks it.

Therefore, since the Yoruba Self Determination Struggle is well known to be an avowedly and consistently peaceful and law-abiding movement, Sunday Igboho as a leader of it is breaking no law of Nigeria. No activist in the struggle for Yoruba self-determination and separation from Nigeria is breaking any law. As Prof. Gololo may not know, the Yoruba Self-determination Struggle published a Manual in 2020 to guide the activities of the struggle and to inform its Yoruba people and the rest of the world, about its chosen path to the self-determination of the Yoruba nation. Copies of this manual, titled YORUBA NATION CHOOSES THE NOBLE PATH TO ITS NOBLE GOAL, was sent to the President of Nigeria and to the Secretary General of the United Nations. In response to Prof. Gololo’s massively fiery attack against Sunday Igboho on social media, the highest organ of the Yoruba Self-determination Struggle has directed that the Manual be further widely disseminated – and that a copy must be made to reach Prof. Gololo.

The following is the background story to Sunday Igboho’s intervention in Igangan in 2021, the intervention that makes Prof. Gololo and other Fulani notables violently set against Sunday Igboho. The northwestern province of the Yoruba homeland, the area of Yewa, Ibarapa and Oke-Ogun, has always been a peaceful rural area and the home of very productive Yoruba farmers. About 2010, a certain citizen of the province named Fatai Aborode returned home from abroad after many years of study in Germany, after obtaining a Doctorate degree in Engineering, and after an impressive professional career. On arrival back home, Dr. Aborode started a large modern farm which, at the peak of its success by 2020, employed as many as 320 workers of various specializations and grades.

From 2015, large numbers of the Fulani began to descend on the area, immediately killing, maiming, raping, kidnapping, extorting ransom, destroying farms, farmsteads and villages, horribly wrecking all peace and security. They even had a coordinator, their appointed chieftain with the title of Seriki. Their reign of terror was so fierce that even the Obas of the area lived in fear of the Fulani Seriki. One of the Fulani groups once kidnapped a daughter of one of the Obas and held her for many days in the bush until a large ransom was raised and paid by the Oba.

On December 12, 2020, a group of heavily armed Fulani men ambushed Dr. Aborode’s car on the public road near his farm, killed him, and fiendishly mutilated his body. In the public outcry that followed, another citizen of the area, a young man named Sunday Adeyemo (better known as Sunday Igboho) who lived in the city of Ibadan, decided to do something about the situation. On January 8, 2021, taking some youths with him, and responsibly asking for police protection for himself and his group, Sunday Igboho headed for the town of Igangan, the reported headquarters of the Fulani Seriki. In tense village after tense village on his way, large crowds of youths arose and joined his group – and so too did many policemen. By the time he reached Igangan, his following had swollen to over 3000 youths. He found the Seriki surrounded by a guard of many Fulani militiamen armed with AK47 rifles. As Sunday Igboho stood before the Seriki, one of the Seriki’s militiamen shot at him, but he waved the shot aside and calmly continued to address the Seriki. He informed the Seriki that the people of the area wanted all the Fulani to leave their area, in the interest of peace. There was no violence in his words or actions, and the police were there observing the situation. The Seriki did not argue. Before Sunday Igboho left, he advised the Seriki and his crowd of killers and kidnappers to leave the area within seven days. When he came back seven days later with his large following, the Seriki and his Fulani marauders had fled from the province. Sunday Igboho became an instant national hero among his Yoruba people.
But instantly too, to Fulani people of all ranks, including even the Fulani in the highest peaks of the Nigerian Federal Government, Igangan became an unbearable Fulani failure – and Sunday Igboho became the Fulanis’ number one enemy, an enemy that must be eliminated. The reason for their virulence against Sunday Igboho is that since the late 1990s, Fulani leaders from Nigeria had been busy mobilizing Fulani leaders from all over West Africa and together they had held many meetings and had ultimately decided that their Fulani nation that had never owned a homeland must now own a homeland, must choose Nigeria as the homeland that Allah had given to the Fulani, and must use force to seize the homelands of the indigenous peoples of Nigeria and convert all into the Fulani homeland. This Fulani agenda quickly resulted in hundreds of Fulani hideouts all over the Yoruba forests. Of these Fulani secrete seizures of Yoruba land, their settlement in the Oke-Ogun area was the most successful, with Igangan as its centre. Sunday Igboho’s expulsion of the Fulani from Igangan and district was therefore a big blow to the Fulani agenda. For months, high-ranking Fulani citizens went to visit Igangan and neighboring towns, as if they were mourning the Fulani failure there. Since Sunday Igboho had committed no crime, they could not get him arrested by the Fulani-led Federal Government of Nigeria, but they brooded over other options.

Meanwhile, Sunday Igboho’s fame and support among his Yoruba people bloomed. In May 2021, the Yoruba Self-determination Struggle embarked on mass rallies across Yorubaland to promote their struggle, with Sunday Igboho as leader of the rallies. These rallies turned out to be the biggest mass rallies ever in Nigeria’s history. The rallies started in Ibadan where a crowd 1.3 million people participated, and went on to Abeokuta, Oshogbo, Akure and Ado-Ekiti, with the huge crowds increasing at every stage. Ado-Ekiti had the largest crowd – numbering about 3.1 million people. Each of these rallies was wonderfully orderly and peaceful; nobody was cautioned or arrested by the police, nobody was wounded, and no property was damaged.

Then, on July 01, 2021, at one o’clock in the dead of the night, some operatives of the Nigerian Department of State Security (DSS), leading an army of over 200 Fulani militiamen and terrorists, showed up outside Sunday Igboho’s Ibadan home. They had come not to arrest him but to kill him. They blocked the main highway and other roads passing through the neighborhood. Deeply surrounding the house, they embarked from the front on shooting and destroying everything of value – cars, motorcycles and bicycles (including neighbors’ cars), everything. Awakened by the noise, Sunday Igboho rushed to a window, yanked it open and shouted “Who are you people? What do you want?”. They recognized his voice and some of them caught sight of his face by the brief illumination at the window. And they fired countless bullets at that window.

They then forced their way into the house, more than a hundred guns blazing. In many neighboring houses, people fainted in shock. Starting with the room where Sunday Igbohho had appeared at the window, they pulled down the house room by room, leaving nothing to chance. They killed two of the people asleep in the house and rounded up the rest. They even shot and killed the family cat – believing that it was Sunday Igboho transformed into a cat. Miraculously, though they searched and shredded the whole house from floor to roof, they never saw Sunday Igboho anywhere in it. When they left, they took the two blood-soaked corpses with them, as well as the persons whom they had arrested in the house.

The DSS operatives returned to Abuja by road. In the outskirts of Ibadan, they paid off the militiamen whom they had hired for the invasion of Sunday Igboho’s home, and these departed to their hideouts in some forest near Ibadan.. In Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State, the DSS operatives dropped off the two corpses at a public mortuary.

Back in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, the DSS hurried to display to the public a collection of weapons which they claimed that they had seized from Sunday Igboho’s home. Their intention was to use this to paint the picture that Sunday Igboho was an insurrectionist who had been hoarding weapons. But their luck quickly ran out when many citizens in different parts of Nigeria identified the displayed weapons collection as the same collection which the DSS had displayed before in connection with a previous criminal case. The office of the Attorney General of Nigeria then issued a statement denying government’s involvement in the attack on Sunday Igboho’s home. But when the DSS arraigned in court the men and women whom they had arrested in Sunday Igboho’s home, lawyers from the Attorney General’s office came to present the DSS case. The government then announced that Sunday Igboho was wanted by the law.

In Ibadan, Sunday Igboho’s people and lawyers filed his case in the Nigerian High Court against the government and its agents – that they had acted illegally by coming to his house in the night, that they had abused his human and civil rights, that they had killed some people asleep in his home, that they had destroyed his home and a lot of other property, etc. Having no answer to these charges, the DSS and the government lawyers pleaded that the justification for their actions against Sunday Igboho was that he had been engaging in secessionist activity by advocating the self-determination and separation of his Yoruba nation from Nigeria. But in its judgment, the court ruled that self-determination was the inalienable right of every nation, that advocating self-determination was not an offence under the laws of Nigeria, that the government’s agents had acted illegally by going to a citizen’s home in the night, by bombarding the house, by killing people there, and by destroying the house. The court then awarded 20 billion Naira as damages for Sunday Igboho against the government and its agents. The court ordered, finally, that the government’s order declaring Sunday Igboho wanted should be withdrawn by the government.

Days passed, until the deadline set by law for filing an appeal against the High Court’s judgment passed. If Nigeria had been a land of law, that should have been the end of this case in court. But under this Fulani-led government, Nigeria was very far from being a land of law. Weeks after the deadline had passed; the government’s agents and their lawyers appeared before the court, seeking to file an appeal. The judge responded that they had lost the deadline for the filing of an appeal. But this was Nigeria. A week or so later, the court judge was hurriedly transferred or just shoved aside, and a new judge, a Fulani judge, was brought from somewhere in Northern Nigeria to hear the appeal. And he did what he had been brought in to do – he struck down every single point in the earlier judgment of the court. However, Sunday Igboho’s lawyers immediately embarked on the steps needed for an appeal to the Nigerian Supreme Court. The case is a civil case filed by Sunday Igboho against the government of Nigeria. There is no criminal charge against Sunday Igboho anywhere.
But the Fulani-led Federal Government would not relent – because Igboho was, and still is, regarded by the Fulani as the greatest enemy of the Fulani. On July 20, 2021, while Sunday Igboho and his wife were waiting for a flight to Europe at the Cotonou Airport in Benin Republic, he was arrested. The news flashed through Cotonou immediately and Sunday Igboho’s kinsmen went into action immediately, certain that this was Nigeria’s corruption and illegality in action. They found that the plan was to whisk Sunday Igboho to Nigeria that night, but their lawyers made that impossible. And so, there followed roughly 30 months of Sunday Igboho’s detention in Cotonou, partly in prison custody and partly under house arrest – without any criminal charge, without any court case, all for what the authorities described as “investigation”.

On the whole, the Benin Republic authorities are straight-forward people, very much unlike Nigerian officials. It was obvious that they were acting under some corrupt foreign pressure. Even so, the leaders of the Yoruba Self-determination Struggle, because they operate under a strict rule that they must never let any of their people suffer unjust treatment, sued the government of Benin Republic at the ECOWAS Court. And the ECOWAS court ruled that Benin Republic must pay Sunday Igboho 20 million CFA (about 55 million Naira) for unjust detention.

Yes, our Yoruba Self-determination Struggle is a peaceful, law-abiding, civilized and competent movement. We know our rights. We are charitable towards others. But we don’t tolerate unjust persecution of our people. We want our Fulani compatriots to give up their campaigns of falsehood against one of our foremost leaders, Sunday Igboho. By the grace of God, we Yoruba shall soon peacefully depart from Nigeria and begin, under our own patriotic and dedicated leaders, to live the life of progress and high-quality prosperity that we Yoruba love very much. We say proudly to the world that our new country shall be a friendly and helpful neighbor to all its neighbors, a country decently upholding the dignity of the Black Race, a country that all other countries in the world shall respect and confidently do business with.

Prof. Banji Akintoye is the Leader, Yoruba Self-determination Movement

Voice of Emancipation

Voice of Emancipation: Lessons from the Iran/USA War

Published

2 days ago

April 11, 2026

Eric

By Kayode Emola

The USA/Iran war is not going as planned, and the world is currently witnessing a stalemate. A stalemate that is bad not just for those who are directly involved but for the entire global economy. Every nation is holding its breath to see what happens with the peace talks being brokered by Pakistan.

While the US and Israel have succeeded in setting Iran back so many years in their weapons and nuclear program development. The Strait of Hormuz has handed Iran a serious lifeline. A lifeline that far surpasses any damage that the joint US-Israeli bombings may have inflicted.

Iran knows that it cannot withstand the US in an open combat. However, it knows that attacking US interests in the Gulf States will give it enormous leverage. Leverage that it can use to bargain at the negotiating table. Coupled with that, the geography of the Strait of Hormuz handed Iran an added layer of advantage, thereby multiplying its immense opportunity to reclaim its destiny.

Before February 28, 2026, when the first bombs started landing in Iran, the US held all the cards at the negotiating table. Once the table has been destroyed and no off ramp available, an exit becomes near impossible, hence the impasse that we all are witnessing.

As things stand, we don’t even know who oversees decision-making in Iran or who the decision makers are. Iran has learnt from Hezbollah’s mistake of announcing a new leader shortly after Hassan Nasrallah was killed by the Israeli forces in September 2024.

Once they announced Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader, Iran made sure he was not put before the public glare to keep him away from harm’s way. Fuelling speculations that he was badly injured during the attack on his father’s compound.

Whether Mojtaba Khamenei is dead or alive or in a coma, as some have suggested, the decentralised system of command built by the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has helped Iran withstand the firepower of the US and Israel. Iranians can come out of this war with their head held high that they have fought a good fight. Despite all the beatings they’ve received, they refuse to capitulate in the face of adversity.

If Iran, which is under severe sanctions and a broken economy, can withstand the firepower of the United States of America, then I believe the Nigerian government needs to bury its head in shame in their fight against insurgency. As it stands, we don’t even know which agency is responsible for the fight against the terrorists troubling the country.

The Nigerian Police Force (NPF) is not properly trained to combat terrorists and kidnappers in the forests. The Nigerian army is also not trained to fight insurgents that have no base from which they operate. Hence, the difficulties in putting this ugly charade to an end. Also, the corruption surrounding mismanaged funds meant to tackle insecurity shows that the country is not geared towards keeping its citizens safe.

Therefore, the over 200 million Nigerians who live in fear daily must realise that there is no one out there looking out for their safety. The Nigerian politicians are more interested in looting the treasury than in saving the lives and livelihood of the citizens. So, if we, the indigenous nationalities that make up Nigeria, continue to think we can remain as a single country with all this mayhem going on, then we must be mistaken.

Our Yoruba people must realise that we are only lucky that no Southwest state was mentioned in the travel advisory given out this week by the US. That is not to say Yorubaland is safer than anywhere in Nigeria. As any attack anywhere in Nigeria affects every Nigerian equally. We must see an attack in Jos, Maiduguri, Ebonyi, Kwara, Kogi, Ogun, Ondo etc as an attack on the Yoruba man.

We must use the ongoing mayhem as our collective starting point to start building a lasting security architecture for the Yoruba defence. One that can withstand both internal and external pressures. We must insist on building systems that will outlast an individual and even an entire generation if the Yoruba must continue to exist beyond the Nigeria that we know today.

Voice of Emancipation

Voice of Emancipation: Jos Killings: Another Harsh Reality of Nigeria’s Insecurity

Published

1 week ago

April 4, 2026

Eric

By Kayode Emola

Just when we thought the Nigerian military was beginning to gain the upper hand in the country’s security situation, this Palm Sunday saw the terrorists strike a community in Jos with a heavy blow. The magnitude of the attack this time left scores of innocent people dead.

Many people have tagged this as political rather than religious. Whether that is the case, the fact remains that innocent people were killed for no fault of their own in a country they called home, a country they hoped would protect them from incidents such as this.

Sadly, their stories have ended painfully. Their memories and the pain of their passing will remain in the hearts of their loved ones, carrying this grief for the rest of their earthly lives. What more must Nigerians give to their government to be protected from non-state security actors? Are these terrorists too difficult to locate? Or is the Nigerian government unable to muster the courage to go after these lunatics?

At least this time, the President of Nigeria visited the families of the victims to condole with them. However, condolences alone should not be all the Nigerian government has to offer bereaved families.

The government owes a duty to go after the perpetrators of this heinous crime and bring them to justice. Anything short of this would appear to be tantamount to the government running scared from addressing the security situation in the country.

Whether those killed were Christians or not, I believe that the mere fact that the terrorists carried out their act on Palm Sunday carries great significance. Whilst US President Donald Trump has urged the Nigerian government to address the ongoing Christian genocide, the terrorists are using the significance of attacking on Palm Sunday to demonstrate that they do not care what the US President says or does. Nigeria is their hunting ground, and they will kill the innocent citizens for sport, just because they can.

To the eminent US Congressmen such as Riley Moore, Ted Cruz, and others who are champions of Christians around the world and Nigeria in particular, I believe this will serve as a reminder that more needs to be done. Merely shaking the hands of the Nigerian political officials and having their photos taken will not solve the insecurity situation in Nigeria.

Nigeria is not just bad; it is a society that is rotten to its very core. The Bible says in Psalm 11 verse 3, “If the foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” So if anyone anywhere thinks that Nigeria can be fixed or repaired, then they are the most miserable of men.

The only solution is a total overhaul of the country, yet the dynamics of ethnicity and religion within the country will not allow this. Over 300 tribes were forcibly fused together by a foreign colonial master – Britain – to serve only the benefit and pleasure of the British government, which controlled the lives and destiny of the colonies.

Now, the good and innocent people of Nigeria will continue to pay with their lives the price for the self-serving and fallacious actions of the historic British government, because no one in the world is ready to listen to our plight. Conservative estimates are that over 600 people have been killed in Nigeria this year alone by terrorists – Fulani, Boko Haram, and others – a number that one might normally expect to see reported from a war zone, rather than a country allegedly at peace.

Yet, our stories do not make the international headlines because, on the world stage, Nigerian lives don’t matter. Contrarily, if Nigeria were to be situated in Europe, I am sure that the country’s turmoil would be reported on expansively and would horrify all who heard of it, whether local or foreign.

This is why the Yoruba and other ethnic nationalities are calling for a peaceful separation. We believe at least six new independent nations should be formed from what is currently one dysfunctional one. Surely, if Nigeria were to be dissolved today, just like the Yugoslavia of 1991-1992, into six new independent nations, insecurity would be a thing of the past.

The break-up of Nigeria into the Yoruba nation in the Southwest, Biafra nation in the east, Ijaw Nation in the south, Savanna nation in the Middlebelt, Hausa nation in the northwest, and the Kanuri nation in the Northeast will make the lives of the indigenous people safer. It will also be a cost-effective way of tackling the long-lasting security challenges that Nigeria has been facing.

However, the US government’s approach to assisting the Nigerian government in tackling insecurity, that is, one of providing military hardware and expertise, is unhelpful. To continue in this approach is to do the Nigerian people a disserve that will only perpetuate events such as that of 29th March 2026.

I know that salvation will come one way or another. I just hope that the US government –which claims to be the champion of democracy and freedom around the world – will be at the forefront of helping these millions of Nigerians currently trapped in a prison created by the British government. If not, then the resulting solution will be that every nationality will be faced with the option of a violent disengagement from this contraption called Nigeria.

Voice of Emancipation

Voice of Emancipation: President Tinubu’s State Visit to the United Kingdom

Published

3 weeks ago

March 22, 2026

Eric

By Kayode Emola

Last week, the Nigerian President Bola Tinubu and his entourage visited the United Kingdom for a 2-day state visit. Whilst many of his critics say the visit should have been postponed or cancelled due to the multiple bomb blasts in Maiduguri. Others are of the opinion that such events are difficult to put on hold due to months of preparation.

Whatever argument is put forward, the important thing is that the event has come and gone. What we need to analyse is who truly benefits from this state visit? Is it President Tinubu and the Nigerian people or the UK government and its citizens?

To start with, the UK has a long history of putting its national interest first before any personal interest. Whereas Nigerians have a history of putting personal interest first before their national interest. That said, we need not look further at who is going to benefit more from the state visit of President Tinubu.

History teaches us that when it comes to diplomacy and agreement, the UK government cannot be trusted wholeheartedly. Not least because in the late nineteenth century, the British government signed several treaties of trade and friendship with many Yoruba monarchs, only to usurp their powers, transferring such powers to their own self-appointed administrators.

Today, those monarchs who are supposed to be the custodians of the governmental leadership in Yorubaland are mere spectators in royal regalia. Simply because they trusted the smiles of the British officials without truly knowing the snares that were set before them.

The UK government is not foolish to put up a lavish party for the Nigerian President just for showmanship. The British government knows when to use their high stakes diplomatic state visit as a tool for its national interest. This visit, I believe, plays into that scenario very perfectly.

Several commentators have spoken about the money the British government paid the Royal Niger Company to buy Nigeria in 1899. Many have linked President Tinubu’s visit to the UK to the royalties due Britain from the construction of Nigeria Ports Authority, which has been stopped for several years now. All these are just theories and without empirical evidence cannot be corroborated.

Whilst we may not know the full details of what transpired behind closed doors between the British government and the Nigerian President. One cannot help but wonder why a state visit with a country that the USA has designated as a country of particular concern.

I am not against a state visit for the Nigerian president to the UK. However, if the UK government were to be sincere about its interest in Nigeria, it should have helped the Nigerian government in tackling insecurity in the country. In the last decade alone, a report from ‘Protecting the Civic Space’ indicates that no fewer than 91,740 people have lost their lives between 2011 and 2024 in Nigeria. This figure should make any right-thinking nation pause and ask itself what the root causes of the problems are.

However, Britain is not ready to face the hard truth that it is partly responsible for the problems bedevilling Nigeria today. The ghost of the forced 1914 amalgamation of Southern and Northern Nigeria continues to haunt Nigeria even in this twenty-first century. Despite many British politicians, including former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, saying the amalgamation should never have happened.

There is still opportunity for the British government to make amends by addressing the amalgamation issue; if not, many more people are going to die needlessly in Nigeria. The Fulani North, whom the British government handed over the power of Nigeria to when they left in 1960 after Nigeria attained independence, have promised a mass jihad by the end of this month.

If the Fulani threat is anything to go by and their level of preparation ascertained by several security groups, then I don’t think we should wait until thousands of people are slaughtered before we see the dangers in Nigeria. The country sits on the cusp of history, and it shouldn’t be written with the blood of the innocent people who did not choose to die in this manner.

I will implore the Yoruba people not to read any genuine meaning into the state visit of President Tinubu to the UK. The UK has never been a friend to the Yoruba people, they’ve only been a friend to their own national interest.

What we must do is ask the United Kingdom what measures it is putting in place to help with the de-amalgamation of the country. As this is the only genuine gesture that can save countless lives that may be lost due to insecurity rampaging the country. Anything short of this is the United Kingdom turning a blind eye to the real tasks that are at hand to save lives and properties of the helpless Nigerians who are in the crossfire of several militias terrorising the country.