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: The World Will Never Remain the Same

Published

4 days ago

May 3, 2026

Eric

By Kayode Emola

Over 2 months into the US/Iran war, the effect is beginning to unravel before our very eyes. Anyone observant of the world’s affairs and the effect of globalisation knows that it’s going to take a while before the world’s economy goes back to where it was before the war.

Unfortunately for mankind, whatever goes up in our world economy finds it very difficult to come down, irrespective of where we find ourselves on this planet. It is as though the forces of nature are constantly waging war against our pockets.

Take, for instance, the market of “just in time” we have become accustomed to. This has made the world’s economy into a global village where goods and services are readily available with the click of a button. That economy has been tested very hard by the US/Iran war, and it is about to crack. What happens from here will very much depend on the direction the negotiations between the US and Iran take.

The prices of commodities are beginning to skyrocket even though there hasn’t been an active military campaign since April 7. The damage from the month-long continuous bombardment is leaving countries around the world reeling from the effects of the war.

Many airlines across the globe are now cutting flights drastically, like in the case of Lufthansa, which cut down over 20,000 flights in April. Or Spirit airline that practical shut its door for good yesterday in the US. These are just a few direct consequences of the war between the US and Iran. The indirect consequences down the line may not fully unravel until many months later.

Once travel is disrupted, the movement of goods and people from one location to another becomes problematic. This, in effect, affects the prices of everyday supplies that we need to function. Eventually hurting every one of us in one way or another.

The funniest part of this whole situation is that many people in Africa are unaware of what is going on. Some more than others are feeling the pain because their essential commodities have gone up in price.

The most important thing is for countries in Africa that are blessed with good vegetation, arable land, and natural resources to begin to utilise them for their own benefit. This will mean going the extra mile in ensuring that external factors like the war in Iran don’t affect the prices of everyday goods.

As for us, our Yoruba people, the time is now to consolidate on what has been built by the Awolowo government in the 1950’s. We need to dust all the good works of that government and see how we can build something that would withstand unforeseen circumstances now and into the future. This is the only way we can shield ourselves from any external factors that we cannot influence.

At least, the Dangote refinery in Lagos is a blessing in disguise for the Yoruba people and the entire Nigeria at large. Were it not for that refinery, Nigeria would have been in total shambles right now, not least with an epileptic power supply. This is why the Yoruba nation must prioritise the production of its own goods and services that it consumes rather than the reliance on offshore markets or other countries.

Voice of Emancipation

Voice of Emancipation: Is Africa Left Behind in the Face of Globalisation

Published

2 weeks ago

April 26, 2026

Eric

By Kayode Emola

Recently in the news, we saw how the rise of Xenophobia in South Africa is tearing the African community in South Africa apart. Not what you would expect exactly 32 years after the end of apartheid South Africa.

One would ask, what really happened to South Africa since the return to black rule in 1994? Afterall, with a GDP of nearly $500 billion and just about 60 million population, they are still the largest economy in Africa. Would they have achieved that feat on their own if the white folks hadn’t built that economy.

That really isn’t the issue here. The main issue is that majority of the black South Africans are reeking in abject poverty with no way of escape. So, the easiest thing to do is to blame it on immigrants as though they are the cause of the problem.

The truth is Africans are being left behind in an ever-changing world. As an immigrant myself to the United Kingdom, I have achieved far more than many core British people whose ancestors were originally from Britain. I do not believe that my migration to Britain threatened the existence or survival of the locals. On the contrary, I believe I have added more value to the British society and to its progress and enriched its culture.

Which leaves me to conclude that the problem with the black/brown South Africans is not that migrants are overwhelming their society. Rather, it is a failure of the African leadership to build a good framework for sustainable development.

Many Africans always blame slavery, colonisation and neo-colonialism for the underdevelopment of Africa. As true as these things, they aren’t the major obstacles to our real development. Our real underdevelopment stems from the greed of a few individuals among our black folks who are so determined to steal from our collective commonwealth for their own personal gain.

With an economy the size of South Africa, the average person is supposed to be earning a decent $8,000 to $10,000 annually. Enough to make a good life for themselves, and their immediate family. However, the reality is that GDP doesn’t mean anything to anyone who is just scrapping by.

Estimate from the South Africa statistics department in 2023 shows that nearly 40 percent of their population live below the poverty line earning less than R1,300 ($80) per person per month. With that kind of poverty brings resentment to any successful group or groups of person(s) supposedly perceived to be taking away the wealth of the local population.

This is part of the real reason behind the Xenophobic attitude of our South African brothers whom many African countries defied all odds to stand with in their dark days. Despite, the growing South African economy, it shows that globalisation is not actually improving the lives of the ordinary man on the street. This is the same across several African countries on the continent.

It’s easy to blame the leaders of many of these African countries, but we must equally blame the followers who do not know how to hold their leaders accountable. African leaders get an easy pass despite their mismanagement of the economy in their countries propped up by international organisations and foreign government. Partly because of a docile and an uninformed population.

If our Yoruba nation must succeed, we must make conscious effort to ensure that no one is left behind. There must be specific programs by the government to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry, let alone go to school with an empty stomach.

The level of poverty in the continent is so high that it should revulsed our leaders. However, seeing that our leaders are far removed from the common man, they feel disconnected to their plight. We who are custodians of leadership must ensure that the right policies are in place to genuinely lift millions of our people out of poverty and not just cosmetic dressing.

That is the only time we too as Africans can benefit from globalisation. If not, our people will continue to wallow in poverty, blaming everything on our ancestors and the government without they themselves taking responsibility for their own personal development.

I urge our African people to wake up whilst there is still the opportunity so that we too can benefit from the globalisation the world is experiencing. This will stop the blame game, because the last time I checked, migration is a net contributor to any economy and not the other way round as some myopic people will have us believe.

Voice of Emancipation

Voice of Emancipation: Nigeria’s Political Climate and the Yoruba Struggle

Published

3 weeks ago

April 19, 2026

Eric

By Kayode Emola

There is no doubt that politicians of various political colouration and ethnicity are beginning to prepare for the general election of 2027. Many governors who have served one term are no doubt seeking the opportunity to return for a second mandate, whether their first tenure was a shambles or not.

The President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is also no doubt seeking a second term in office, whether the people want him or not. With various sections of the country already queueing up behind him or against him. The opposition is also trying all they can to oust the President, citing broken promises like the uninterrupted power supply that has failed to materialise.

Whether Nigeria will remain one country in 2027 remains to be seen, with several ethnic nationalities, regions and stakeholders pushing to be the dominant power holder in 2027. The President, who is enjoying the power of incumbency, will do everything within his reach to retain power at all costs.

Likewise, the opposition, which is trying to oust the President from that lofty seat, will use every trick in the book to push him out of office. Whether their trick will be enough to unseat the Jagaban remains to be seen. The opposition has vowed to undertake their own live transmission of election results for the whole world to see. How this will be achieved in the face of multiple challenges in Nigeria beats my imagination.

For someone like me who had previously worked as an INEC presiding officer in the 2011 general election, I know that most results that come from polling stations are not what is eventually released to the public. How the manipulation of those results happens in high places is beyond me and a story for another day.

We all witnessed the many irregularities in the 2023 general election that brought this present administration into power. Gross manipulations of election results across several polling stations were the order of the day. Yet, that did not stop President Tinubu from winning the presidency even though he was an outsider. How anyone thinks they can unseat him as an incumbent remains to be seen.

Only time will tell whether the election will make or break Nigeria this time around, as I do not see President Tinubu bowing out after 4 years without a fight. Equally, I do not see the Fulani North enduring another 4 years of Tinubu’s presidency. The Fulani are so power drunk that they may decide to go to war to break up Nigeria if they do not get hold of the presidency in 2027. Their coalition party is not holding up presently, and doesn’t look like a formidable force that can stop President Tinubu from doing another 4 years.

This then brings us to our Yoruba nation struggle in the run-up to the 2027 general elections. Many Yoruba people who were staunch critics of Buhari and the Fulani militias’ merciless killings of Yoruba people between 2015 and 2023 are now suddenly mute because a Yoruba man is the president of Nigeria today.

Should Tinubu finish his presidency in 2031 if he wins a second term, what will be the fate of the Yoruba people, assuming another Fulani man becomes the president of Nigeria in 2031? Every right-thinking Yoruba person must know that with the current chaos in Nigeria, the country may not even exist beyond 2027. The binding glue holding the country together is now so worn out that every facet of the country is bleeding.

The terrorists troubling the peace and tranquillity of the country are now so emboldened that it will take a miracle to get rid of them. The President is not even shying away from the fact that he is not capable of solving the insecurity challenges bedevilling the country. Rightly so, if his predecessor, who was once an Army General, cannot tackle insecurity, how much more President Tinubu, who has not experienced any military training, talk less of combat.

My fellow Yoruba citizens, we must realise that the time to get out of Nigeria is now, and this is not a time to pander to the political machinations going on. We have no business in Nigeria, as there is neither hope nor future in the country that will uplift the millions of our people now trapped in abject poverty. With the abundant human and mineral resources God has blessed us with, I see no reason why we should continue to humiliate ourselves with Nigerian politics that has nothing to offer us or our future generations.