By Kayode Emola
Last week we witnessed another mass killing of innocent citizens in Ondo State. This daring move by the Fulani terrorists is meant to provoke the civility we’ve once enjoyed in Yorubaland. Yet, the so-called government and representatives of the people have no response to these egregious killings.
Till date, not one person has been arraigned before a competent court of law to answer for these crimes against humanity. It beggars’ belief that the majority of our people waiting to become victims of these crimes carry on with their daily lives as though nothing is at stake.
It must be clear to the Yoruba people by now that we do not have a government, and our land is at siege and being left to the mercies of the gods to protect us. Therefore, we should not sit by and wait for a saviour to save us from this calamity that has befallen us. We must rise to the occasion now to liberate our people once and for all.
Since 2015, over twenty thousand innocent Yoruba farmers and villagers have been killed in several parts of Yorubaland, from Igangan, Saki, Owo etc. Around the border towns of Yewa in Ogun State, hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes, and to seek refuge in neighbouring Republic of Benin.
This does not seem to move our political representatives in the local and federal levels to act in defence of their people. Our political class continues to live in denial of all these activities as though they are not victims of what is happening in Nigeria.
The time is now ripe for every Yoruba to take a stand before it is too late. We all heard the warnings of Obadiah Mailafia in 2021 that the Fulani are planning a jihad against the Christian South of Nigeria. Mailafia narrated how the Fulani intend to enter our towns and villages in the final phase of their campaign to conduct their mass killing after overrunning our forests and bushes.
The signs are all over the place and we must not pretend that these attacks are spontaneous and of no effect when innocent people are being butchered in their sleep for committing no crimes. We must all rise in unison, not just to condemn these killings but to take serious actions to mitigate the continuous attack on our people.
By so doing, we stand the chance of salvaging our Yorubaland from these wanton and senseless killing of our people. For if we fail to liberate our people now from these Fulani jihadist killings, history will judge us far worse than those who led us unknowingly into the Nigerian experiment.
I must not fail to emphasise that the Ondo State killings should be our wake-up call to action and the final straw that broke the Camel’s back. We must go out in this rage to liberate our Yorubaland by pushing back these bloodthirsty Fulani terrorists into whatever hole they emanated from.
This is not the time to pander with the political establishment of Nigeria that sits by and watches while our people’s lives, and livelihood are being destroyed daily. We must not be sentimental to think that because a Yoruba man is the president of Nigeria, then he will be able to muster the federal might to save our people from destruction.
The evidence is before the world that nearly 2 years into President Tinubu’s presidency, the egregious killings of innocent Yoruba people in our land by the Fulani terrorists have increased. Despite huge allocation of resources to the state governors as security allowance.
Therefore, to be forewarned is to be forearmed, we should not believe that we live in a sane environment with people who reason with logic. Now is the time to respond back in kind to those that have sworn to dispossess us of our God given inheritance. If we fail to act now, God will raise the stones in the land to fight for His people.