Following the insistence of the Muslim community, with support from the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, to establish Sharia law in South West states, deeply populated by Yoruba ethnic indigenes, the leader of the Yoruba Nation, a group fighting for the independence of the Yorubas from Nigeria, Prof Adebanji Akintoye, has sent a chilling response to the Sultan.
In a six-page document, dated February 1, 2025, which the Yoruba Nation leader personally signed, the group warned the Sultan and other Advocates of the Sharia law in Yoruba land, and jettison the idea, noting that the Fulani has more important duty of Islamizing their indigenous herders, who are believed to be worshipping other deities in the wild, and not Muslims as popularly believed.
The response is presented in full as follows:
The Sultan of Sokoto and the topmost leader of the Fulani of Nigeria,
We Yoruba people have read your statement that was sent to the public through the Deputy National Adviser of the Nigeria Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, Imam Haroun Eze, following the failed attempt to impose Sharia Courts on the Oyo and Ekiti States of the Yoruba people of the Nigerian Southwest. Since your spokesperson, Imam Haroun Eze made your statement to the public, we hereby make our response also to the public.
Your representative chose to make your statement to the Yoruba people as if you are an overlord of the Yoruba people. You statement said in effect that Yoruba people must accept Sharia as dictated by you. We have great respect for you as a traditional ruler, Your Highness, but in the current circumstance, because of your chosen approach, we are reluctantly compelled to spell out our response in ways that truthfully uphold our Yoruba nation’s integrity, leaving no doubt about what we know and understand as our nation’s relationship with you.
Your representative, Iman Eze, said you are the head of the Islamic religion in Nigeria. Well, while our Yoruba Muslims faithfully surrender their lives to the Almighty God Allah and fully exalt Allah’s great Prophet Mohammed as their Guide, most do not know you as the leader of their Islamic religion in Nigeria. There is no provision in the tenets of Islam that lays the duty on our Yoruba Muslim people to accept you as leader of Islam while we Yoruba are still part of Nigeria. It has now become necessary to get rid of the presumption that you are the leader of Muslims in Yorubaland. In the past ten years, your Fulani people have killed countless thousands of Yoruba Muslims in all parts of Yorubaland, have destroyed the farms, villages and other assets of Yoruba Muslim farmers, have raped and killed countless Yoruba Muslim women, and have kidnapped, and extorted millions of Naira as ransom for, countless kidnapped Yoruba Muslim men, women and children. These horrors by your Fulani people are continuing in Yorubaland as we write this response. At no time in these ten years have you raised your influential voice against these heinous crimes by your Fulani people against Yoruba people – or even, at least, against Yoruba Muslims. We think you should not find it difficult to understand that Yoruba Muslims cannot accept you as leader of their Islamic faith in Nigeria. That is very important. You must have noticed that in the enormous mass of hostile responses among Yoruba people against your representative’s public statement on your behalf, there are as many Muslim as non-Muslim voices – in fact, probably more Muslim than non-Muslim voices.
Our second point is that you Fulani people need to learn to respect other peoples. Your statement through Imam Eze is a very disrespectful statement concerning the Yoruba people. You Fulani think you are the dominant people in every situation in Nigeria. Yes, our Yoruba political leaders and the other political leaders of the rest of Nigeria have made the mistake of giving reality to the British attempts to impose you Fulani on Nigeria. One of your men wrote in a published statement in 2014 that Allah, through the British, gave Nigeria to the Fulani to rule and to do with as the Fulani please. That your Fulani nation came to that kind of mentality is an absolute disaster. Of course, it is the fault of our political leaders from all nations of Nigeria that a small nation like yours should come to that kind of mentality. Your Fulani nation in Nigeria is just about seven or eight million people, in a country of over 200 million people, a country where some nations are as many as 40 million and over in population. Yes, the British gave you Nigeria to rule and to do with as you please, because the British saw you as a non-African people, a people therefore presumed to be superior to indigenous Black African peoples. But it is the fault of our indigenous peoples and politicians that you were allowed to develop the grandiose presumption that Nigeria was yours to rule and do with as you please. The present generation of indigenous Black peoples of Nigeria are now rising to tell you that your presumption has lasted too long and is now coming to an end.
Thirdly, we want you to recognize that what you are trying to do in Yorubaland – trying to impose your fundamentalist and Jihadist brand of Islam on Yoruba people- will never materialize. Your Fulani people have been striving for many decades to import your brand of extremist Islam to the Muslims of the Yoruba Southwest. But it has never worked, and it has no chance whatsoever of being realized. And that’s because we Yoruba are a people who honor family, lineage and kinship relations as very important to a normal, stable and prosperous society. We do not accept the view that family, lineage and kinship relationships should be subdued to religion. We are the most fundamentally tolerant people in matters of religion in the world, and the world now recognizes us for that. Let me quote from two sources to show you that the world recognizes and admires us for our culture of religious tolerance and harmony. One is from a British professor from the School of African and Oriental Studies London , Professor J.D.Y.Peel, who studied African history and culture for most of his life and who died in old age in 2016. In his very last academic article, he wrote “The Yoruba are proud of their religious tolerance and it is a product of their history and culture. The kind of tree which has produced the poisonous fruits that we now see in Islamic fundamentalism and Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria can never grow in Yoruba soil”. Some years ago, an agency of the American government sent two researchers to study the Nigerian situation. They wrote their final report under the title “Nigeria’s unity: In the balance”, and in it they wrote of the Yoruba that the Yoruba are the model of modern co-existence, that they found Yoruba Christians, Muslims and traditional worshippers living harmoniously together not only in the same cities but also in the same households. Some non-Yoruba Nigerians, who are not Fulani, recognize and admire this quality of Yoruba life. An Igbo political leader, Dr. Paul Ezeife, former State Governor of Anambra State, wrote that the Yoruba are the model of religious harmony in Nigeria, and that, from his living among Yoruba people for many years, he had come to admire the Yoruba culture of religious harmony – and that whether it was Islamic festival, Christian festival or traditional festival, the Yoruba celebrate it happily together like a family festival. He added that this Yoruba harmony is endangered in Nigeria because of the fact that there are other peoples in Nigeria deeply sunk into Islamic fundamentalism, but that all persons of good will must help the Yoruba to preserve this beautiful aspect of their nation’s culture.
What all these amount to is that we Yoruba are different from you Fulani. Our young people are fond of proudly saying that we Yoruba don’t mix insanity with our religion. Of course we know that, occasionally, you Fulani find one or two Yoruba persons who receive bribes from you to go and plant Islamic fundamentalist seeds in Yorubaland. But such Yoruba persons, even if they show some success for a while, always fizzle out. We would advise your Fulani people to stop giving their money as bribes to any Yoruba persons for this purpose, because there is nothing that such Yoruba persons can do for your kind of Islam in Yorubaland. They will not succeed; they cannot succeed. Yoruba culture of family, lineage and far-flung kinships, and Yoruba tolerance, accommodation and harmony, are far too strong to be toppled by one or two persons serving for bribes.
Finally, because we Yoruba people are well known for wishing all human groups the best in this world, we will hereby advise you and your Fulani nation. It is obvious to us that the Fulani nation has led itself into a very perilous situation in Nigeria. You are just a few million among over 200 million people of Nigeria, and yet you seriously presume yourself to be the dominant group, the group who must dictate everything, the group whom every president of Nigeria must obey, the group whose ideas of the future of Nigeria must be obeyed by all, and so you have led yourself into very serious danger. We advise you to consider this matter very seriously; it is more serious and more important for you than your attempting to bring fundamentalist Islam to Yorubaland and other parts of Nigeria. The survival of your nation is more important than all your religious and political posturing. Yes, we know that when the colonial powers came to West Africa and found your Fulani people, a non-African people, among us indigenous peoples in most countries of West Africa, they tried to uplift you to the position of leadership in each country, but the struggle against you has been going on. In Guinea Bissau at the time of independence 1i the 1960s, a very capable indigenous politician, Sekou Toure, made sure to put drastic limits upon your place in the politics of his country. In the past ten years, you have engaged upon the ultimate path to your nation’s suicide by trying to conquer all the indigenous peoples of Nigeria, to take their homelands and convert all to a Fulani homeland. We Yoruba offer the advice that your people need to think this over again. In Nigeria you have been using the numerical strength of the Hausa to get a lot of things done in politics. Now the Hausa are saying that they are no longer under you, that they don’t recognize you as their leader anymore, and that all your attempts to persuade Hausa people that the Fulani and the Hausa are the same because of religion, is false. They are saying more and more that they do not recognize you as their kinsmen anymore, and you are on your own in Nigeria.
With the Hausa refusing to continue to let you use them, the danger to your nation in Nigeria has now risen to its maximum strength. That is why we want to advise you seriously to consider what you need to do about this. Your illustrious ancestor, Uthman Dan Fodio, told his Fulani people that he had a vision that showed that in about 200 years, his Fulani people would be violently driven from Hausaland. That’s a horrifying prophesy. But Fulani leaders who lead the Fulani people today, must look at this prophesy carefully. The prophecy does not have to be a literally inevitable prophecy. We Yoruba think that you should be able to see it as a warning instead. And if you see it as a warning, then you need to begin to moderate your posture in the politics and religious life of Nigeria as well as in the politics and life of Hausaland. If you continue to believe that you must control everything, that all Emirs have to be Fulani, that all emirate officials have to be Fulani, that all the local government leaders and officials have to be Fulani, that all the State Governors have to be Fulani, that all the representatives in the National Assembly and the State Houses of Assembly have to be Fulani, you are paving the way to very serious danger for your Fulani nation. Seriously speaking, do your demands for control in everything sound reasonable or sustainable? We Yoruba suggest to you in love that this is what you should be paying your attention to rather than trying to insult other people by trying to force Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia Law on them?
Moreover, the world knows very well that the masses of Fulani cattle herders, amounting to about 90% of your total Fulani population, are not Muslims but worshippers of various spiritual entities in the wild. Why has it never occurred to you to embark seriously on Islamizing this major part of your Fulani national population?
We Yoruba advise you because we love all nations and we want all nations to prosper in the world. Pay attention to the prophecy by Uthman Dan Fodio as a warning, use it as a warning. Doing so would mean that you would give up your ‘born-to-rule’ presumptions, that you would give up your provocative presumptions that you are leader in everything, that you begin to respect other peoples, that you get ready to immerse yourself in society as equal members of society with all other people. That is the meaningful path forward. Our sincere prayer is that the current generation of Fulani leaders would not lead the Fulani people to national suicide. It is time to yield to the demands of change. We Yoruba wish you well.
We Yoruba wish you Fulani well – even though we have taken our decision to separate our Yoruba nation from a Nigeria that has been pulverized in sickening detail by lawlessness, anarchy, economic mismanagement, irresistible power of public corruption, economic collapse, Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, interethnic animosities and violence, and wrenching, almost all-pervading, poverty. We take seriously the statement made by one of our most eminent Yoruba leaders recently that “It is madness to think that Nigeria will work”.
Yours in love and hope,
Adebanji Akintoye
