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.

By Kayode Emola

Last week Friday, we saw how the Trump team humiliated the Ukrainian president in the oval office before an international audience. After that bitter encounter, the Ukrainian president had no option than to leave the white house and immediately headed to the UK.

The Trump team were very adamant that the Ukrainian president must sign minerals deal before any form of negotiation. Trying to drive a hard bargain, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that there must be security guarantees before any of deal can be considered.

Alas, the US president was not keen to negotiate, his was an order that must be followed to the letter. Sign the deal and the rest can come later, he even openly said that the Ukrainian president does not have any cards in which to play and cannot dictate the terms.

Trump went on to say that should the Ukrainian president not sign that deal; he was playing with World War III. Was Trump serious about pushing the world into another war or is he just using it as a threat to force the Ukrainians to the table. Only time will tell, but as far as Donald Trump is concern, the US has invested heavily in the Russia/Ukraine war, and it is payback time now.

To be frank, people should ask the Ukrainian leadership how they intend to win the war despite not been able to get any of the land Russia took from it since the beginning of the conflict despite receiving over $300bn in aid from the US, Europe and other allies. Where has those monies gone into? Is the Russia/Ukraine war a make belief or an avenue for some people to cash out.

Some prominent US commentators like Scott Ritter has stated that the US doesn’t need minerals deal with Ukraine. That doing minerals deal with Ukraine is a favour to the Ukrainian government just for them to save face. In his recent broadcast, Scott stated that the US has already done a deal with the Russian government worth $7tn and that this is the direction the US is heading towards.

We know that Trump has stated on numerous occasions that he is no longer interested in funding NATO. Trump believes that NATO has outlived its usefulness, and the world should move to more economic alliance rather than a military alliance. No wonder Trump is slamming tariff on any country that the US has a trade deficit with.

Some few days ago, Trump suggested that nuclear powers should start thinking of denuclearisation of their arsenals. If this is followed through, then Trump would have made history as the president who changed the world’s direction towards peace.

Not many people knew that the current trajectory of the world was not sustainable. America alone owes over $35tn and rising with no intention or means of paying back, yet it continues to accumulate debt on a large scale. If that trend was not halted or reversed, it risked sending the world financial markets into a complete meltdown somewhere down the line.

Should that happen, only countries with strong economic base will be the ones with any means of withstanding a shock from such a global meltdown. Hopefully, if Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) can reverse the downward trend of America, then the world may have a chance to withstand any future financial crisis.

We Yoruba need to understand that in international diplomacy, no country will stand up for us if we continue to let our heritage go into ruin by the Nigerian government. We have lost our economic base built in the 1950s by Chief Awolowo and his team and now we are about to lose our existence and land.

We need to understand that the Ukrainians relied on the US government to help them fight and win their war with the Russians without adequately preparing for the war themselves. Despite several warnings over several years before the Russian invasion in February 2022, the Ukrainians did not take the threat of an invasion serious until a full-scale war started.

We Yoruba must not through ignorance let our guard down like the Ukrainians and end up where we do not expect. The Ukrainians downplayed the threat of losing their lands to the Russians and ended up in a war they weren’t prepared for. Despite all they have lost in the war, they are now going to cede their mineral resources to the US in the name of finding lasting peace.

If NATO were to be disbanded or Russian being allowed to join the alliance and with no real enemy in Europe to war against, then the Ukrainians fight against the Russians would have been for nothing.

I hope and pray that our Yoruba people would not wait for us to get to the stage where we are at the brink of losing everything before they react. Most Yoruba are not good at anticipating what is to happen in the present time let alone predict what is to happen in the future.

We need to double our effort in future proofing our Yoruba economy and put on our thinking cap to know that the world is changing rapidly so that whatever happens, we are not left behind. We must be prepared to face the daunting challenges that stares us in the face and be ready to confront it with the courage that it deserves and pray that God in His infinite mercies will grant us the grace to succeed.

By Kayode Emola

Last week, we witnessed another kidnapping of one of our Yoruba son enroute Lagos to Abuja. This was not just another kidnapping as it was the youth leader of the revered Afenifere Yoruba Cultural group. Just to put it in context, Afenifere is the foremost Yoruba group that speaks on behalf of the Yoruba people since the days of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

However, since the Alliance of Democracy led by Tinubu destroyed the Afenifere group, it has since lost it potency on the Yoruba matter. Today, it is a pity that the Afenifere cannot take a stand whether to unite and fight for an independent Yoruba nation, a restructured Nigeria, or a regional government.

Until such time that the Afenifere makes up their mind as to their direction of travel, we on the Yoruba self-determination struggle will continue to unequivocally ask for our independent Yoruba nation. We believe it is our moral duty to demand from the Nigerian government our inalienable rights to self-determination as enshrined in Article 1 of the United Nations Charter.

This is the only sure guarantee to lasting peace in our Yoruba land and our future prosperity. We cannot afford to continue in this state of anarchy in Nigeria and pretend as though the country is working for the benefit of all.

Video of the released Afenifere Youth leader was widely circulated in social media. However, the release was not without the parting of huge sums of money to the kidnappers. The monies paid to the kidnappers will then go on to purchase more sophisticated weapons to continue in their dastardly act of kidnapping where they await their next victim.

I do not know how much was eventually paid as ransom to the kidnappers before he was released but their initial demand was ₦100M equil $67,000 to be produced within 3 days. If we on the Yoruba struggle had called on the Yoruba people to raise $100,000 to support our local vigilante, it may take us forever to come up with one-tenth of such resources.

Whilst I am happy that my brother Ojajuni has been freed from the kidnappers den, I believe strongly that this is the time for us to act decisively. We each need to reflect of the current situation of insecurity in our environment and ask ourselves what can we do to stop kidnapping in Yorubaland.

We need to be better prepared to tackle this issue of insecurity in Yorubaland and ensure that this ugly incidence do not repeat itself. Every community in Yorubaland need to come together to form a community defence team to tackle this menace. They need to link their defence team with their neighbours to ensure that when one community is attacked, the next community is ready to rise up to the occasion in solidarity.

It is only when we come together in unity that we can achieve a meaningful result in terms of tackling the menace of insecurity. No one community can achieve success on their own without the support and solidary of the next.

We must all come to a place where an attack on one is seen as an attack to all and everyone must rise to the occasion. If we continue to think that the attack on our fellow Yoruba citizens does not concern us, then the day it will be our turn, there may be no one left to help us.

Above all, we must begin to earnestly work together for the greater good of our Yorubaland and the liberation of our people. Without the total liberation of Yorubaland from Nigeria, these sort of events will not be totally eradicated from our land. I am taking this opportunity to call on everyone who cares that this is the time for us to double our efforts in our self-determination struggle, God willing, we will come out victorious in the not too distant future.