By Kayode Emola

This week we heard the harrowing news of how scores of Fulani terrorist groups have surrounded our forests up and down Yorubaland from Brigadier-General Kunle Togun (Rtd). Should anyone know better about the dangers we face as Yoruba then I believe General Togun should be a voice to be reckoned with as the former SSS Director and former Chief Commandant of Amotekun in Oyo State.

We heard General Togun narrating his ordeal with the Federal Government in trying to combat this nefarious group in our forests. Yet we Yoruba are sitting on our hands and waiting for the day the Federal Government will come to our rescue. Let’s not forget that the Federal Government under Buhari has allowed these invaders into our space since 2015.

If Tinubu since becoming President in 2023 has not made any efforts to reverse this invasion, then we need to take steps as Yoruba to fight these insecurities as best as we could. It is now time for us as Yoruba to strengthen and empower our local hunters who have been an integral part of our local security from time immemorial. We cannot ignore this warning from General Togun and go to sleep with our eyes closed as if nothing is at stake.

Yoruba is now more than ever in an existential crisis, and it is time for us all to rise to the occasion and save our heritage from going into extinction. We cannot assume that emigrating abroad is the solution to fighting insecurity in Yorubaland. We should empower our people at home with the equipment they need to confront this threat that we all face.

It is not surprising that Tinubu who is the President of Nigeria now, and who is a Yoruba has not been able to confront this challenge. The Nigeria he is handling has way bigger problems from insecurity to the economy that the President would not have time for his Yoruba homeland.

We cannot assume that because Tinubu is the President of Nigeria, he will necessarily be interested in confronting the terrorists in our forests. Tinubu has shown severally that he is more interested in becoming President than doing the work of a President. Little wonder why he spends more time abroad than in the country he is supposed to be overseeing.

His policies even though are laudable do not actually guarantee a prosperous future for the country that he leads. The only good thing about Tinubu’s policies is that it has exposed how fragile Nigeria’s unity is. It has led to the clarion call by the Arewa North to secede from Nigeria despite their insistence that Nigeria is indivisible.

We should therefore not assume that it is a given that since a Yoruba man is the President of Nigeria, then we are safe. These terrorists hibernating in our forests can one day rise to wage war against us. They have tried to lure our people into accepting Sharia which failed but they have not stopped at that but brazenly called for Jihad if we refuse Sharia in Yorubaland.

Therefore, the last option available to us now is to strengthen our hunters to have a chance to defend ourselves. There’s no point thinking that the Governors will be able to help as they themselves as Chief—Security Officers of their States are toothless bulldogs who cannot bite.

If we are to stand any chance of survival, we should try to go to work now to secure our borders from these marauding invaders rather than pander to the mediocre tactics of the Federal Government. We must act now to save Yorubaland so that we do not regret our non-action in a few years time.

By Kayode Emola

As Yoruba, we must understand that the Nigerian political setting is a game, and it is only those who are observant that will overcome it. For far too long, we have lived our lives as though little things do not matter, but those little things add up to bigger problems for us later down the line.

We have seen recently how some Islamic clerics in Yorubaland started to advocate for the Sharia penal code to be implemented in Yorubaland. At first, they claimed it was just an innocent law that would be implemented solely for those consenting Muslims who subscribe to it.

However, we know this is not true, and the real intention of these unscrupulous people is to take Yoruba for a ride. Part of their claim for introducing the Sharia is to allow Muslims in Yorubaland the opportunity to wear hijab. I have not seen where in Yorubaland Muslims are not allowed to wear hijab. Even in some Catholic schools in Yorubaland, Muslim girls are allowed to wear hijab, therefore the claims of these Yoruba traitors are unfounded.

When a protest was staged a few weeks ago to reject Sharia in Oyo state by we Yoruba, these hideous monsters went on to the next phase of their agenda by surreptitiously trying to implement the Sharia in several other Yoruba states. When we rose to the occasion last Tuesday to resist the Sharia court being implemented in Ekiti state, it forced the Sultan to speak out.

Alas, there was evidence that the Fulani north was the brain behind the introduction of Sharia in Yorubaland. They want to do this to show the world that Nigeria is an Islamic country. The most bizarre thing is that all our Yoruba politicians, traditional leaders, and leaders of thought kept mute.

It was only when the youths started shouting from the rooftop that our politicians started to get the message. We saw how Nigeria deceptively stole the sovereign power from our traditional leaders by implementing policies that made them irrelevant. Their unsuspecting attitude affected their way of life and those of ours, and if care is not taken it might affect our children.

Therefore, we must all rise and rid ourselves of this menace called Nigeria before the Fulani north imposes more devastating poverty on us. We have a golden opportunity now to tell the world we do not want to be a part of the Islamisation agenda of the Fulani and their Arab backers. We must resist it with every fiber of our being and do everything we can to build a free society for our children in a free Yorubaland.

Resisting this menace is not just by pushing back with rhetoric, it must be backed by action and the only action that is necessary now is one that calls for the total disintegration of Nigeria. It’s time to push harder for our exit from Nigeria and God willing this time around we shall breakthrough.

We Yoruba cannot continue to feed this monstrous Nigeria that gives us nothing but destruction. We must realise that the only way to protect the lives and properties of our people is by exiting Nigeria. Once we exit, we can make laws that govern everyone equally so that everyone is bound by the same legal system.

As it is in Nigeria, there are multiple laws in place depending on your status in the society. The former Governor of Kano state Ganduje was caught collecting bribes which was recorded for the world to see. The reason why his hands were not chopped off till now still beats my imagination considering that Kano state has Sharia law.

This goes to show that what the Sultan is pushing is not actually the introduction of a legal system called Sharia to govern Muslims but a deception to enslave the Yoruba people. As there are no political officers from the north where Sharia is practiced who have ruined this country being tried by the Sharia court, I do not believe that it is a law that we want to welcome in Yorubaland.

It is therefore imperative for us as Yoruba to band ourselves together and say a big ‘NO’ to Nigeria once and for all. We must be emphatic in our message that we do not want to be a part of this mess of a country anymore. The country has shown over several years that it has nothing good to offer its citizens. We cannot continue to pretend that it will one day be a great nation when all the signs show that it is already a failed state.

By Kayode Emola

America likes to pride itself on being a beacon of democracy, worthy of emulating as a model for governance worldwide. However, President Trump’s election has shown that what America practices is anything but democracy.

If African leaders copied the democracy of America, then I can’t see why a massive revolution should not happen across several countries in Africa. The African people themselves need to rise and fight against this totalitarianism sold to us as democracy. We need to forge a new path for ourselves, going back to the foundations of creation and seeing what worked for our ancestors in the past.

We saw how Trump was dragged through the court for several months in the Biden administration. We also saw many of the rioters of January 6, 2021, who were Trump supporters put in prison by the Biden administration. However, after Trump’s inauguration, in one fell swoop of an executive order, the rioters were freed and presumed innocent.

My question then is what does democracy truly mean? Does it mean that we the electorates are duty-bound to one man’s whims and caprice who sits as the President of the nation? How can the rioters be deemed as criminals because Biden is president and then deemed as innocent because Trump is the president?

This scenario beggar’s belief that the justice system depends on who sits on the throne rather than the rule of law. If America is not governed by the rule of law, which is a by-product of democracy, then one should wonder what America practices that it is calling democracy.

As Africans and especially Yoruba, we need to critically examine our political structure when rebuilding our new nation. This we must do so that we don’t import the European or America democracy that tends to favour only those in power or their supporters.

We need to build a system of government that is fair to all and not just to a certain group of people. If not, we may have failed to leave a legacy for our children who are looking up to us for inspiration.

If Nigeria has taught us anything, it is how not to run a country with the level of corruption this country is experiencing. This may not be far from the America system of democracy we imported which grants immunity to those who actively steal our monies yet we the people feel helpless in prosecuting them.

The worst is that they flaunt this ill-gotten wealth in our faces long after they have left office, and we feel helpless. If we don’t want to be perpetual slaves to these cohorts of treacherous politicians who think only of themselves and their cronies when they’re in power, then we need to always be on our guard.

We need to make sure that our new Yoruba nation rid itself of any remnant of the Nigerian corruption that may inhibit us from building a true democratic society. We must always be vigilant so that those who mean us harm fail in their evil plans.

As the world watches Trump’s administration and his raft of executive orders, we may be able to unlearn many of what we thought was democracy. If we did that, we may have a chance of saving our Yoruba nation from being a victim of democracy like it is practiced in many countries in Africa and around the world.