MUHAMMADU BUHARI 70TH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Why We Yoruba Must Exit Nigeria.

Nigeria poses a mortal threat to the very existence of the Yoruba nation. It is

imperative to remove this entrenched existential threat promptly in order to

avoid becoming a catastrophic example of a threatened civilization of careless

people who acted too late.

Who and what we are

The infamous amalgamation of Northern and Southern protectorates to create

Nigeria in 1914 entailed an indiscriminate lumping together of hundreds of ethnic

groups with disparate cultures, dissonant values, and clashing worldviews.

Because the British colonizers of Nigeria evolved no common structure or

administration for the amalgamated Nigeria until after the Second World War

(1939-45), we Yoruba were able to go our separate way until 1950.

We Yoruba had for over 1000 years been the only major urban civilization in Black

Africa. We had built an empire comprising most of our nation and many non-

Yoruba nations – the largest empire in the history of West Africa. Our commerce

had reached into almost all parts of tropical Africa, and our language had been

the language of trade in all parts of the West African coast. When Christian

missionaries brought Western Education to tropical Africa in the mid-19 th century,

only we Yoruba readily accepted it, and schools quickly sprouted in our many

cities. By as early as the 1860s, we Yoruba were already producing university

graduates from British universities, and we were already publishing newspapers

in our cities – the first newspapers in Africa. In 1864, one of our Yoruba clergymen

was consecrated ‘Bishop of the Niger’ by the Anglican Church, and he became the

leader of the Anglican Church’s evangelization in the territories of the Niger and

most of West Africa. He trained and employed many Yoruba clergymen in the

work, led the successful venture of making our Yoruba language a written

language and of translating the Bible and other Christian language to Yoruba. He

similarly developed the languages of some non-Yoruba peoples in the territory

that was later to become Nigeria. At the British amalgamation of the many

peoples of the Niger territories to form the one country of Nigeria in 1914, we

were the only educated people in the new country of Nigeria and, for the next

twenty-five years we were able to pursue the development of a modern Yoruba

civilization in our own way. The first schools were not started in most parts of

Nigeria until the 1920s, by which time many Yoruba families were already

producing their third generation of university graduates. No non-Yoruba people in

Nigeria produced their first university graduate until 1933.

The constitutions written by the British for Nigeria between 1946 and 1951 were

the first British effort to give Nigeria the administrative structure of one country.

The 1949 constitution finally structured Nigeria as a federation of three Regions –

Eastern, Northern and Western Regions, with us Yoruba as the large and

dominant nation in the Western Region. We Yoruba quickly took our Western

Region far ahead of the other two Regions - and built the most miles of modern

roads, the most purified water systems, the most advanced assistance to farmers,

the agricultural export crop earning the most foreign exchange for Nigeria, the

only skills development centers for youths, the first Free Primary Education

Program in Africa, the first television station in Africa, the only African-owned

agglomeration of investment capital in Africa, our own Regional University, the

first industrial and residential estates in Nigeria, the best environment for

investments and industries that quickly gave birth to many industries and

businesses, the most advanced civil service which often assisted the Federal civil

service, the richest Regional government that occasionally gave loans (and

sometimes even grants) to the Nigeria Federal Government, the most democratic

politics and elections in Nigeria.

Unfortunately for us Yoruba and for the future of Nigeria, the British saw our

development accomplishments as withholding major parts of the financial

contributions that Nigeria should be making to the reconstruction of the British

economy that the 1939-45 war had ruined. They feared that we Yoruba would

block British access into the Nigerian economy after Nigeria’s independence – in a

situation in which they wanted to have much of Nigeria’s resources to be going

into the reconstruction going on in Britain. The British therefore resolved to do

everything to keep Yoruba leaders out of the management of Nigeria after

independence.

Therefore, the British picked as their ‘friendly people’ the Fulani of the Northern

Region, a small minority people, the least educated Nigerian people, the least

inclined to adopt modern education and modern skills, over 90% of whom were

unchangeably living as cattle herders in the grasslands, and the least ready to

guide Nigeria into modern development. To make the small Fulani political elite

the controllers of the Nigerian Federal government at independence, the British

manipulated everything – the population census and other national statistics, the

size and boundaries of the Regions, the independence constitution, and the pre-

independence election. All these established the Fulani as the dominant group in

the Nigerian Federal Government at independence in October 1960 and

consigned the Yoruba leadership to an Official Opposition.

Nigeria’s downward trajectory

Not surprisingly, the Fulani did not understand the nature of a modern country,

and so they concluded that they were meant to be the new colonial overlords of

Nigeria, and that the way forward for them was to use federal power to subdue

the other peoples of Nigeria and thereby establish themselves in permanent

dominance over Nigeria. Their topmost political leader said to a local newspaper

eleven days after the celebration of independence, “This new nation called

Nigeria shall be an extension of the estate of our great-grandfather - - -. We must

ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We must use - - - the peoples of the South

as conquered territory and never let them rule over us and never let them control

their own future“. Another member of the Fulani elite wrote in 2014, “Allah,

through the British, gave us Fulani in 1960 Nigeria to rule and to do with as we

please. We have been doing that since then and we intend to continue - - -“.

The Fulani’s first “ruthless” step to prevent a change of power came in early 1962,

a few months after independence. It took the form of covertly attacking and

destroying the much respected political leadership of the Yoruba people, and

dragging down the Western Region from its high pedestal. The Fulani plot,

assisted by the British from the shadows, won the support of political leaders of

most of Nigeria who had long been influenced by the British to fear and resent

Yoruba strength. Under this covert attack, the Yoruba leadership cracked and fell

apart, and the federal government rushed in, falsely announced that law and

order had broken down in the Western Region, declared a state of emergency,

suspended the constitution and the elected government of the Western Region,

detained leading Yoruba politicians, imposed a Sole Administrator on the Western

Region, and imprisoned the top Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, on

cooked-up charges of treasonable felony.

This wrecking of the Western Region opened the way to a persistent downward

trajectory for Nigeria. A massive and stubborn Yoruba youth resistance in the

Western Region shook Nigeria to its foundations, and led to the first intervention

of the military in Nigerian politics, and the coming of the first military coup and

first military dictator. Of the 33 years of Nigeria’s history from the 1966 coup,

until 1999, fully 29 years were years of military dictatorships. All the military

rulers, with the exception of the first one, were from Northern Nigeria, men of

Fulani descent or men who strongly subscribed to Fulani ambitions and

philosophy – because the Fulani had used their dominant position over the

government to fill the officer corps of the army with Fulani and other Northern

men.

In the process, a political culture of impunity, crooked manipulation of processes,

confident and blatant corruption, political violence, religious violence, inter-ethnic

animosity and conflicts, and terrible decline of morality, took over the life of

Nigeria. Nigeria’s federal spirit was destroyed, and the federal structure was

relentlessly eroded by the succeeding military dictators – until a military dictator

finally encapsulated the resulting over-centralized governance in a dictated

constitution in 1999. The combination of over-centralized management,

incompetence at the centre and massive corruption gradually destroyed the

Nigerian economy.

Devastation of the Yoruba nation

In these circumstances, the historic cultural ascendancy of the Yoruba nation in

Black Africa and Nigeria, the pre-independence Yoruba trajectory towards socio-

economic development and modernization, were brutalized, and the Yoruba path

upwards has been effectively blocked. Nigeria has deliberately constituted a firm

and devastating impediment, and a determined drag, to the vibrant progress in

modernization that the Yoruba nation had started to accomplish before Nigeria’s

independence – in education, in industrialization, in modern business

development, in modern agricultural development, in science and technology, in

democratic politics and people-oriented governance. A series of rigged and

violent elections (managed by the federal authorities) pushed the Yoruba nation

further and further downwards. In one of these elections – an election called by

the military dictator for the avowed purpose of returning Nigeria to civilian rule -

a Yoruba millionaire and philanthropist, Chief M.K.O. Abiola, swept the polls in all

regions of Nigeria. The election was generally acknowledged as Nigeria’s most

peaceful, freest and fairest election ever. But as the final election results were

being announced, the military dictator appeared on national TV and announced

the annulment of the whole election, without giving any reason for his action. For

continuing to claim that he had won the election, Abiola was arrested and

imprisoned, and he was ultimately poisoned and killed in prison. (A high United

States official had come to interview Abiola; but, as the interview was about to

start, he showed signs of disorientation and then slumped and died in the

presence of the US official. Apparently, the authorities had acted to stop him from

having such a big chance to speak to the world).

Furthermore, under the influence of the Fulani who fear Western education as a

threat to their dominance, the quality of education has steadily declined all over

Nigeria. Because the Yoruba people place a great deal of importance on

education, the destruction of the quality of education has been a major disaster

for Yoruba people. Moreover, the general decline of the Nigerian economy and

the growth of deep uncertainties for business have resulted, in Yorubaland (the

home of most industrial and business development in Nigeria), in the flight of

investment to other countries and the shutting down of industries that had been

established by the Yoruba before Nigeria’s independence. In the circumstance,

unemployment has been wracking the lives of educated Yoruba youths for

decades, forcing tens of thousands of Yoruba youths to flee abroad annually, and

even forcing many to attempt to reach Europe by fleeing across the arid Sahara

Desert and the Mediterranean Sea – a venture that regularly takes the lives of

hundreds of the youths. Yorubaland is thus being robbed of its young educated

professionals – and the effect on the Yoruba nation in Nigeria is terrible. For many

of the educated Yoruba youths who remain at home, the prospects are grim – in

years of unemployment, wrenching poverty, inability to settle down to marry and

begin to raise families of their own, total hopelessness. Many of these youths at

home have been, unhappily, going into crime, drug abuse, criminal cults, internet

crime, prostitution – and thereby seriously poisoning the soul of their Yoruba

nation. Many Yoruba with lesser education are fleeing as refugees to neighboring

countries like Benin Republic and Togo Republic where there are sections of the

Yoruba nation, where low-paying employment is easy to find, where some small

businesses are easier to create and grow, where life is certainly more secure than

in Nigeria. The stark truth today is that the Yoruba nation in Nigeria is losing its

integrity and its dignity, and actually beginning to break up.

Even more devastating to the fortunes of the Yoruba nation in Nigeria has been,

since 2015, the Fulani threat to the physical existence of Yoruba people through

murderous assaults on Yoruba population across the Yoruba homeland. These

unremitting and ferocious attacks by Fulani herdsmen and militias have

decimated Yoruba rural life and essentially destroyed the agricultural economy of

the Yoruba nation.

The authorities of the Western World (especially Britain and the United States)

have kept telling their citizens and the world that the Fulani killings and

destruction in Nigeria are results of ‘climate change’ – that is, recurrent droughts,

the consequent deterioration of grasslands in the West African Sahel, and the

consequent veering of Fulani cattle herders southwards. But this assertion is a

deliberately false representation of the situation, a ploy by the Western World

authorities to cover and justify their continued support of the Fulani in the affairs

of Nigeria, even in spite of Nigeria’s disastrous record under Fulani dominance. It

is true that droughts in the Sahel in the 1980s and 1990s did bring hardship upon

cattle herders and made some cattle herder to veer southwards in the West

Africa sub-region generally, in search of grass for their cattle. But what has

happened in Nigeria, and has not happened in other West African countries, is a

deliberate Fulani political elite agenda to seize upon the distress of the cattle

herders, indoctrinate them with the message that Allah has given all of Nigeria to

the Fulani nation as an exclusive Fulani homeland, equip them with sophisticated

modern weapons, and direct them to head for Nigeria for the conquest and

subjugation of the indigenous peoples of Nigeria. That is why President Buhari, a

foremost Fulani leader, doggedly supported and assisted the agenda of Fulani

conquest of Nigeria throughout his 8-year presidency (2015-23), why he tried

repeatedly to use federal power to seize land for the Fulani all over Nigeria, why

he announced that anybody in Africa could come to Nigeria without travel

documents (a coded invitation to Fulani people all over West and Central Africa),

why he threw all Northern Nigerian border gates open for unrestrained access for

the in-coming Fulani hordes, why he ensured that Nigeria’s security officials

would not arrest the Fulani in the act of killing and destroying. Since the Fulani

were made phenomenally confident in the Buhari years, they are simply

continuing with their killing, raping, destruction and kidnapping all over Nigeria

and Yorubaland, now under President Buhari’s successor, President Tinubu.

Indeed, altogether, under the Tinubu presidency, the violent attacks by the Fulani

marauders and their terrorist allies are manifestly intensifying across Nigeria. The

persistent assertion by the West that all the Fulani killings and destruction in

Nigeria are a result of climate change is a cover-up by the Western powers for

their continued support of the Fulani in the affairs of Nigeria, even in spite of

Nigeria’s disastrous record under the Fulani dominance that was foisted on

Nigeria by the British.

There are no official estimates for the number of Yoruba people (or other

peoples) that have been killed by the Fulani marauders, because the government

is not interested in such matters. However, an unofficial estimate has it that, by

the end of 2023, the Fulani had killed about 29,000 Yoruba people all over

Yorubaland.

Meanwhile, the erosion of time-honored Yoruba values through Yoruba

engagement with Nigeria’s criminally corrupt life has had serious deleterious

effects on social cohesion among Yoruba people. As Nigeria’s public space is

mired in criminality, sleaze and immorality, the exposure of the Yoruba to the

toxicity has bred a small clique of powerful Yoruba high-level scavengers who are

motivated by personal greed to align with the authors of the most sordid culture

of public corruption in the world, the authors of the most frightening system of

impunity and insensitive governance, the enemies and traducers of the ethical

values of the Yoruba nation.

The Yoruba nation is thus at a critical juncture now in Nigeria. The only options

open to the Yoruba today are either to continue to stay in Nigeria and thereby

sink into utter barbarism, and break up and perish; or to act courageously and

liberate itself – now that the Yoruba people are still strong enough to carry out

the liberation. It needs to be repeated that the Yoruba nation in Nigeria is today

disoriented in the manner of a conquered people, and is already showing signs

of breaking up. The Yoruba are faced with the urgent duty to liberate their

nation and separate it from Nigeria.

More on Nigeria’s downfall

Nigeria’s crumbling edifice has been described by external observers as a

“dilapidated, fallen house,” or more recently as a “collapsed” structure. All of

these descriptions are consistent with the stupor into which Nigeria has fallen in

recent decades. Experts acknowledge that the colonial experiments and

fabrications in Africa have had unsavory consequences for Africans, for good

governance, for peace and stability, and for social capital, and have robbed each

country of any internal sense of belonging, as well as of any possibility of

development in a holistic sense. Experts aver that in the Nigerian case, the

negative character of the African postcolonial state is signposted in the prevailing

high level of public corruption, poor leadership, and near anarchy, and that these

have dragged the Nigeria state into outright failure. The relentless decline

towards this point of failure has generated immense human misery among

Nigerians. The sad package of human suffering that is called Nigeria is held

together by a universally discredited, desperate, mafia-like, national coalition of

human predators who are perpetually being manipulated by the few Fulani elite

controlling the power and resources of the Nigerian Federal Government, and

who are determined to hold on to the source of their booties at all costs. The

Nigeria state thus lacks domestic legitimacy. The generality of the population is

disaffected. Accordingly, constituent nations across the expanse of the Nigerian

territory, from the Yoruba Southwest, to the Igbo Southeast, to the Middle Belt,

to the Niger Delta territories, and to most of the North, have voiced in very

uncompromising terms the need to negotiate a peaceful dissolution of the

mechanically cobbled and unwieldy Nigeria state.

A famous Nigerian columnist speaks out in pain

Today’s vital statistics of the prostrate Nigerian country reflect the death throes

of an ill-conceived project that has gone completely awry. Here is how Sonala

Olumhense, a famous veteran Nigerian columnist, has captured the dire

conditions of Nigeria at the close of the year 2023:

“On this final day of 2023, we must tell ourselves the truth - - -.  And where we

are is that the Nigeria state has collapsed. While everything appears to be normal,

there is an absence of substance or true value.  Here are a few indications”.

“One: The naira is now one of the three worst national currencies on earth, with

Bloomberg declaring on Friday (December 29, 2023) that not only is it poised for

its worst record in the last 24 years, but that further depreciation is to be

expected in 2024. The naira plunged 55% this year to 1,043 per dollar as of

Thursday (December 28), making it the world’s worst performer after the

Lebanese pound and the Argentine peso among 151 currencies tracked by

Bloomberg.  And that’s in the official market. On the streets, the Naira trades at

1,208 per dollar”.

“Worse still, soldiers and many federal civil servants did not receive their wages

this month (December 2023), compounding the misery in the country in the

Christmas season.  Add that to the growing inflation, shortage of the naira, and

widespread electricity problems nationwide.  Desperate military veterans are

planning a public protest for January 15 over their unpaid pensions”.

Two: “The value of life continues to plummet in the country, people losing their

lives in their homes, businesses, farms or highways, with the security agencies

rarely investigating or prosecuting anyone.   In Plateau State last Saturday, armed

assailants killed over 160 people in a series of attacks on villages.  Curiously, the

army first reported only 16 killed. As many as 113 persons have been confirmed

killed as Saturday hostilities persisted to early hours of Monday”. Monday Kassah,

the Bokko local government chairman, said.  On Thursday, he updated the death

toll to 200 persons”.

Three: “No infrastructure!  No electricity!  No security!  No place for the trained

and the talented!  No committed leadership!  Investors and tourists alike are

fleeing in the other direction.  Manufacturers are shutting their doors.  Jobs are

disappearing.  Hunger and anger are growing. What this all means is that Nigeria,

as it currently stands, on this last day of 2023, has no further room to rot…”

And another famous columnist

We must add another famous Nigerian columnist to all this – the Nigerian Tribune

columnist Lasisi Olagunju. He gave his New Year column of January 8, 2024, the

shocking title, ‘The scandals in Abuja’. We shall only select nuggets from his

exceptionally incisive column:

“ - - - jobs are - - being purchased in Nigeria of 2024. If anything has changed in

our story over the last six decades, it is that the acorn of misdeeds of the past has

grown to become an oak. - - - That is what corruption has become. The law is

helpless before the powerful because no sane person looks into a deep well and

jumps into it. It is our major gain in sixty years of flag independence. Our country

is fully vaccinated against all virtues.

“ Follow the variegated stories around Emefiele (until recently Governor of the

Nigerian Central Bank). Instead of retail stealing in the central bank, the CBN itself

has been stolen – what we have there is - - a matchbox without matchsticks.

Follow other recent scandals in Abuja. Instead of government ministers being

content with stealing their ministries' money - - - they are stealing the ministries.

Yet, nothing happens to the plunderers - - - .

“You saw a document that surfaced some days ago signed by the Minister of

Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu. In that memo, Edu

directed the Accountant General of the Federation to transfer the sum of

N585,198,500.00 into a private account belonging to one Oniyelu Bridget. There

was a national uproar. - - - Did you not see that the minister did not disown the

document? With her full chest, she owned it and declared what she did as legal.

She also did not forget to blame the leakage and the outrage on her enemies. She

called them desperate persons implicated in an earlier scandal of N44.8bn in the

National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA). She said they wanted to

"stain her integrity because she alerted the government on the ongoing N44.8

Billion fraud in NSIPA..." She was referring to the scandal that has led to the

suspension of the National Coordinator and chief executive of the NSIPA, Mrs

Halima Shehu - - - . There are reports that Halima moved that amount (N44.8

Billion) into some unusual accounts. - - - But her own people plead her innocence;

they are accusing her enemies of being behind her ordeal - -.

“The vaccine that will cure our political elite of greed has not been made. - - -

The Nigerian situation is pretty much like a terminal illness - or worse, like a

carcass being mobbed by a pack of wolves and a wake of vultures. Everyone tears

at it, exacting their share. And the predators are very bold and daring.

“ - - - take a long look at the accused and the accusers in the current scandals in

Abuja. Look at the entire business architecture of government. Corruption is the

only business that yields returns here. In 60 years plus, the Nigerian state has

established itself as a crime scene. We all know that things can't continue like this

without the world coming to an end. - - -“.

The root of Nigeria’s public corruption

The massive stealing of Nigeria’s wealth by Nigeria’s public officials is not merely

some random behavior or occasional crime; it is a product of a combination of

two very important realities. The first of these realities is that none of the nations

in Nigeria sees Nigeria as its own. As many vocal Nigerians are now picking up the

courage to say , an individual Nigerian’s patriotism is for the individual’s particular

nation in Nigeria and not for Nigeria. This reality has always existed, but it has

become more and more obvious since the 1949 constitution pulled Nigeria

together as one country under one constitution and one federal government.

Every top official in the ‘unified’ Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s pointed out this

reality but, unfortunately, Nigerians failed to heed the warnings – and they have

been experiencing more and more horror as a result. The first Prime Minister of

the ‘unified’ Nigeria before and after independence, 1952-66, Sir Abubakar

Tafawa Balewa, said on different occasions, “Since 1914, the British Government

has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian peoples

themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious

beliefs and customs, and do not show themselves any willingness to unite.

Nigerian unity is only a British intention for the country”. On one occasion

during an official visit to the Northern Region, Sir Abubakar said as a Northerner

that the crowds of Southerners streaming to the North were foreigners in the

North and were not welcome there. The topmost leader of the Yoruba nation and

of the Western Region and the greatest philosopher among Nigerian leaders of

his time, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, had written some years earlier, “Nigeria is only

a geographical expression. There are no Nigerians. ‘Nigerian’ is only a term for

those who live within Nigeria’s borders”. General Yakubu Gowon, Military Head of

State in 1966-75, made the following very incisive statement some months after

becoming Head of State, “Suffice it to say, putting all considerations to test –

political, economic, as well as social – the basis for Nigeria’s unity is not there”.

What this reality has generated is that every Nigerian chosen to serve Nigeria

in any high position tends to seek to grab of Nigeria’s wealth for his nation and

his co-nationals (foremost, himself). It never matters to these officials that all

this stealing is robbing the country of its development capability, weakening

the economy, and making the country poor.

The other important reality is a philosophy of life held by the Fulani dominant

nation – a philosophy which posits that the wealth of any unit of humanity (a

village, a town, an emirate, a state, a country) is vested in its rulers by Allah (God),

and that the rulers owe nobody but Allah alone the account of their disposal of

the wealth. No Nigerian public official in any capacity in Nigeria in our time can

opt out of, or push down , the culture that has been bred by this philosophy. Its

fruits are irresistible to all – even to Nigerians who come from radically different

cultures – because it ministers to the greed and other base instincts of man.

In totality therefore, much of governance at all levels of government in Nigeria is

not about managing and advancing the economy and the infrastructural and

social needs of society, but about managing the corruption – comprising the

diversion of funds from public budgets and public projects into hidden corners for

sharing, the complex task of hiding and concealing the stealing and sharing, the

even more complex task of spiriting the money abroad, and the delicate and risky

maneuvers of money laundering. There often are higher-stake corruption

operations that involve high public officials financing, or even creating, terrorist

groups to protect or carry out high-level smuggling (especially of petroleum or its

refined products), or large-scale illegal mining of solid minerals. It is commonly

known in Nigeria that it is to protect the large-scale stealing of refined petroleum

imports that Nigeria’s public officials ensure that none of Nigeria’s three refineries

would function. It is well known too that ships importing refined oil products to

Nigeria frequently vanish from Nigeria’s ports, that much of the crude oil mined in

Nigeria is stolen, and that significant portions of the earnings of the Nigerian

National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, do not reach Nigeria’s treasury. For many

highly placed public officials, managing these corruption activities is the full-time

job.

For any nation in Nigeria that desires to get out of the grip of this powerful

corruption culture of Nigeria, the only way is to deliberately and courageously

separate its people and land from Nigeria and return to its own cultural roots.

Each Nigerian nationality whose people are trapped in this Nigerian mud-pit of

corruption is like a family living in a street where the children are sunk in a culture

of drug abuse. For the parents of any of such families, lecturing or hectoring or

spanking their own children is not likely to keep their children away from the drug

abuse culture. Relocating their family to a safer street is the solution. That is a

major part of what the advocates of Yoruba self-determination are striving to

do – namely, to separate their Yoruba people from Nigeria’s corrupting medley

and return them to their own Omoluabi cultural roots in a separate Yoruba

country of their own.

The informed world has given up on Nigeria

Countless informed people in the wide world, plus large numbers of informed

Nigerians, have given up on Nigeria. For many years now, the wide world has

classified Nigeria as one of the worst countries on earth – in view of Nigeria’s poor

governance, its shockingly collapsing economy, its profound lack of security, the

sullen or even antagonistic mood of its many peoples, and its obvious sinking into

anarchy and towards a bloody explosion. Every year for decades, Nigeria has been

classified, with horrifying consistency, as the most corrupt country on earth. Karl

Maier, an American correspondent of some leading American media, who lived

as correspondent in Nigeria for some years in the early 1990s and has returned to

Nigeria many times, wrote a book from his incisive observations of Nigeria and

gave it the title, This house has fallen: Nigeria in crisis – a factually shattering and

very disturbing report on Nigeria. Two researchers who did a report on Nigeria for

an agency of the US government (Gerald McLoughlin and Clarence Bouchat),

concluded that Nigeria’s unity as a unified country is in jeopardy, and added that

even if Nigeria were to put forth its best efforts, “Nigeria has a long-term struggle

ahead to remain a viable country”. Oxfam International affirms from their

research that Nigeria’s public officials stole from the Nigerian public purse the

equivalent of 20 trillion US dollars between 1960 and 2005. Most observers are

sure that more than this 20 trillion US dollars was stolen during the eight years

2015-2023 – when public officials broke ravenously upon Nigeria’s treasury, an

Accountant General was reported to have stolen 199 billion Naira, a retired

Military Chief of Staff was found with a room full of Naira notes in his home, a

recent Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank later reportedly offered to return to the

Nigerian treasury an amount of 4.4 trillion Naira plus an array of other stolen

assets, a mere assistant in the president’s office later offered to return 500 million

US dollars and 2.75 billion Naira. All over the world, informed observers are

saying that no country can live under this kind of curse and still remain alive and

healthy. A British Prime minister, when he heard of these heavy robberies by

Nigeria’s public officials, responded that if such assets were stolen from Britain’s

treasury, Britain would go bankrupt.

Indeed - Nigeria has gone bankrupt. In spite of Nigeria’s enormous natural wealth,

and in spite of Nigeria being one of the world’s leading oil producers for the past

fifty years or more, Nigeria has had, for many years, to borrow foreign loans to

keep its government running at all – and, apparently, much of even the loans are

systematically stolen by the high government officials. The National Security

Adviser to the new president, President Tinubu who came to office on May 29,

2023, informed a meeting of top security chiefs on November 14, 2023, that

President Tinubu inherited a ‘bankrupt country’ from his predecessor, President

Buhari, and that there is ‘no money for running the country’. Two days later, on

November 16, the new Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the

Economy informed the Nigerian Senate that borrowing more and more loans was

no longer an option open to Nigeria, and that Nigeria was already expending 98%

of its government revenues to service foreign debts. Earlier, on September 01,

2023, a former Governor of the Nigerian Central Bank had said flatly in a national

TV interview that Nigeria’s economy had “collapsed”, and that it was “a dead

horse that is still standing” – and that it had already collapsed before President

Tinubu took over.

Evidence of the economic collapse and bankruptcy is visible all over Nigeria today

in a dark and suffocating dust that is being windswept over everything in Nigeria –

an evil dust bearing such horrible things as grinding poverty, ferocious hunger,

helpless deprivation of access to all things of importance (like food, purified

drinking water, electricity, good and safe roads and other means of

transportation), ever-rising inflation, relentless falling in the value of the Naira,

shortage of cash in the banks, escalation in the number of beggars in the streets,

desperate crimes, blood-curdling insecurity and fear, increasing flight of Nigerian

citizens from Nigeria, increasing reports of suicides. An international agency

classified Nigeria in 2018 as the home of the largest number of people living in

extreme poverty in the world. This year, 2024, Nigeria’s conditions are much

more desperate than in 2018. Another international agency predicts that by the

year 2050, more than 50% of the world’s poorest people will be Nigerians.

Many knowledgeable Nigerians are therefore strongly accepting the need to

dissolve Nigeria. The most respected elder scholar and statesman in Northern

Nigeria, Professor Ango Abdullahi, former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello

University, speaking in a public interview in 2017, and obviously bowing to reality,

said “if Nigerians are tired of staying together, they should be prepared to

accept divisions instead of remaining in agony - - with one another. - - We are

always talking that the Nigerian state is not working and (wondering) how

can we make it to work? And if the best option is to call for separate countries,

why not?” Alhaji Mohammed Mahdi Shehu, Chairman of a Northern Nigerian

intellectual group named Kaduna Dialogue Group, offered a strong proposal in

August 2020 for an orderly and peaceful breaking up of Nigeria into many

small countries. He expressed the view that the 1914 Amalgamation was done

“out of mischief without taking into consideration the peculiarities in Nigeria”.

He added that since independence in 1960, Nigeria has stumbled through one

form of calamity or tragedy or other. He added, “Let us peacefully go on the

(negotiation) table, break the (traditionally friendly) Kola, and distribute the

country for everybody’s peace. If we do not do it now, the future generations

will curse us”. He further added that Nigerians should break up Nigeria in

order “to save properties, lives, relationships and posterity”, and that there

was no sense in continuing to believe that Nigeria would ever get better – and

that, as things stand and are developing in our time, it is obvious that not even

an angel from heaven can ever unite Nigeria.

We Yoruba, based upon our national philosophy of Afenifere – meaning the

desire that all peoples will be blessed with peace and prosperity – absolutely hope

that we Nigerians will peacefully dissolve Nigeria. We have always made it clear to

Nigeria, to Africa, and to the wide world that our struggle for separation from

Nigeria is a peaceful and law-abiding struggle, that we always have serious

considerations for the welfare of all the peoples of Nigeria, and that our purpose

always remains that after we Yoruba exit Nigeria, we shall have friendly neighbors

all around the borders of our Yoruba country.

Our Yoruba people are unused to poverty and anarchy. They are products of a

long history of distinguished political order and proudly prosperous economy.

They are suffering abominably now in the excruciating economic collapse and

security failure in Nigeria, and they need desperately to exit Nigeria. Moreover, it

does not need a soothsayer to tell the world today that an all-consuming

cataclysm is rolling towards Nigeria. Yoruba people must get out before the

cataclysm strikes.

Even the UN and its agencies are giving up on Nigeria

Even the United Nations Organization is giving up on Nigeria. In a recent UN

‘Common Country Analysis’ on Nigeria, the UN portrayed Nigeria in very

staggering, very shocking, terms. The report described Nigeria as a “deeply

divided country on the basis of the plurality of ethnic, religious and regional

identities that have tended to define the country’s political existence”. The report

noted that for decades, various peoples of Nigeria had voiced protests about they

are being marginalized, or being short-changed, dominated, oppressed,

threatened, or even targeted for extermination. The report says that most of

Nigeria’s development and social indices are recording much below acceptable

standards, and that Nigeria faces major challenges caused by poor economic and

social development, and lack of good governance. The report added pointedly,

“Nigeria is one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the world”, and

added that over 80 million or 64% of Nigerian citizens were living below poverty

line. “Poverty and hunger have remained high - - - across the six geo-political

zones, with prevalence ranging from approximately 46.9% in the Southwest to

74.3% in the Northwest and Northeast”. It adds, “The vulnerable macroeconomic

environment in Nigeria is affecting investors’ confidence in the domestic

economy” – meaning that investors are no longer coming to Nigeria and that the

ones who are already in Nigeria are running away. The report estimates

unemployment among Nigerian youths to be 42%, about the highest in the world.

It added, “Nigeria faces humanitarian and emergency crises of considerable

proportions fueled by - - inter-communal conflicts, insurgency, recurring floods,

heavy handed tactics of security forces. - - - The overall consequence is the

situation of systematic and chronic internal displacement that has given rise to

different humanitarian crises that include the most egregious and dehumanizing

human rights abuses”.

But that is not all from UN sources. A UN Rapporteur, Agnes Callarmad, after

visiting Nigeria, reported that she found the 1999 Nigerian Constitution to be “a

pressure cooker” for injustice, oppression and conflict. The UN regional

humanitarian coordinator, Toby Lanzer, rated the humanitarian crisis in the

Nigerian Northeast as being at the same level as those of war-torn regions across

the world. He added, “Having worked in Darfur, Chechnya and South Sudan, this

is as bad as it gets”. And the UN Children’s Emergency Fund has warned that

nearly half a million children were in danger of losing their lives in a short time in

only one region of Nigeria.

Even Africa has lost confidence and hope in Nigeria

In the independence years, the 1960s, and for some decades after, African,

especially Black African, countries generally looked up to Nigeria for leadership

and strength. The Ethiopian Minister of Education said to the leader of a Nigerian

students’ delegation attending a students’ conference in Addis Ababa in February

1960, “My young Nigerian brother, congratulations for the approaching

independence of Nigeria. We Black African countries hope that as you Nigerians

are preparing for your country’s independence, you are also preparing for your

country’s leadership role in our Africa. Soon, most things in Africa will depend on

your Nigeria”. Even as late as 1980, the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, Siaka

Stevens, said to a group of visiting Nigerian Senators in Freetown, “My brothers,

please always keep in mind that you are not building Nigeria for only Nigerians

but for the whole of Africa. As the Western World has America as leader, we

Africans expect to have Nigeria as leader”.

But against the background of Nigeria’s growing failure and poor image in the

world, African hopes in Nigeria have fizzled away. In fact, Nigeria has tended to

become the butt of unsavory jokes among some African leaders. Here is one such

joke. The officials of an African country informed their president that they

intended to plan for him a holiday abroad –specifically in Nigeria. And the

president (whose name we shall respectfully withhold) was reported to have

answered that he did not want a holiday in Nigeria, that his country could not

afford a holiday in Nigeria, where every little thing or service must attract bribes.

But, far more serious than jokes, various African leaders have publicly counseled

that Nigeria be broken up. President Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, for decades one

of the foremost leaders of Africa, publicly and loudly counseled on various

occasions that the peoples of Nigeria should peacefully break up their country

rather than perpetually hurting one another and getting into conflicts. From time

to time, some other African leaders offer the same advice to Nigeria.

What we Yoruba want today

Against this bleak outlook for Nigeria, and in the face of the danger that

continued stay within Nigeria means for the continued existence and integrity of

the Yoruba nation, the imperative for the Yoruba to exit the Nigerian cauldron is

not negotiable.

Most Yoruba people are confident that their nation in their own separate country,

Orileede Yoruba, will unleash the innate Yoruba capabilities to wash Nigeria’s

diseases away, evolve a corruption-free leadership and government, devote the

powers and resources of the country to continual improvements in the Yoruba

people’s quality of life, push back up the quality of education, make education

free in primary and secondary schools, establish scholarships and loans for higher

education, achieve greatness in the sciences, the arts and technology, build an

altogether booming economy, a modern agriculture, a great industrial culture, a

powerful commerce spanning the whole earth, a dynamic program of youth

development, an economy providing more jobs than the available manpower.

This is what we Yoruba were proudly accomplishing in the 1950s under the

leadership of our father Obafemi Awolowo. And it is what Yoruba youths are

demanding now when they sing, “Ile ya, Ileya o, omo Odua Ile ya”. At home in

Yorubaland and in the Yoruba Diaspora all over the world, this song resonates

powerfully with all Yoruba people of all ages. All Yoruba people are thrilled by its

message.

SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE YORUBA NATION, THE HOUR HAS COME FOR US

TO UNITE STRONGLY AND DETREMINEDLY, TO JOIN HANDS AS ONE FAMILY, TO

TRAMPLE DOWN ALL SIGNS OF DISUNITY, TO MARCH FORWARD BRAVELY AND

PROUDLY AND SEIZE OUR HIGHLY ENDOWED YORUBA NATION AWAY FROM

THE POVERTY, SQUALOR, MORAL DEGRADATION, AND BLOOD-DRENCHED

ANARCHY OF NIGERIA. WE CAN DO IT. NOW IS THE TIME TO DO IT. LET’S ARISE

AND DO IT. LET EVERYONE OF US RESOLVE TO ADD SOME VALUABLE

CONTRIBUTION OF HIS OR HER OWN.

AN ANCIENT SONG IN ONE OF OUR MOST ANCIENT PALACES SAYS, “NOT ALL

ARE ADEPTS AT BEEATING THE LARGE HISTORIC DRUMS, BUT ALL CAN TO THE

MUSIC ADD SOME HARMONIOUS SOUND”. SON OR DAUGHTER OF OUR

YORUBA NATION, ADD SOME HARMONIOUS EFFORT OF YOUR OWN TO THIS

HISTORIC LIBERATION STRUGGLE OF OUR EMBATTLED NATION.

NIGERIA NEEDS NOW THE COURAGE TO DISSOLVE PEACEFULLY!

PART ONE

At independence in 1960, Nigeria was truly the economic giant and hope of

Africa. Nigeria was 25% of the population of Black Africa. One of the Regions of

the Nigerian Federation, the Western Region, had the most intensely educated

population in Africa, and Nigeria therefore had the largest and most solid class of

educated professionals in Africa. By the time of independence, Nigeria ranked as

one of the world’s largest exporters of cocoa (from the Western Region), palm

products (from the Eastern Region) and groundnuts (from the Northern Region).

Of minerals, Nigeria was an exporter of tin (mined on the Jos Plateau) and coal

(mined on Udi Hill near Enugu), and every region of Nigeria had rich deposits of

minerals. The Western Region had the second largest deposit of bitumen in the

world, and the Northern Region had deposits of uranium. Nigeria was known to

have rich deposits of petroleum; by the 1970s, Nigeria became one of the leading

producers and exporters of petroleum in the world, earning phenomenal

revenues that made Nigeria one of the world’s richest countries. Altogether,

Nigeria seemed to be heading to success, wealth, prosperity and power.

Unhappily, however, Nigeria lacked the inner unity and strength needed for such

greatness. The hundreds of peoples of Nigeria, pushed together in 1914 by the

British , were radically different in culture, political traditions, religion, attitudes

to religious diversity, and attitudes to modern change. Until after the Second

World War, the British did nothing to give Nigeria a unified existence. When at

last they granted a unifying constitution in 1949-51 and created under it a

Federation of three Regions (Eastern, Northern and Western Regions), they boldly

wrote conflict and instability into the life of the Federation – by disrespecting

obvious ethnic boundaries in the delineation of the Regions’ boundaries, by

making the Northern Region much larger than the Eastern and Western Regions

together, by giving the Northern Region a decisive majority in the Federal

Parliament, and by generally creating the impression that the Northern Region

was destined to lead the Federation. The Regions did well for their peoples (with

the Western Region as the development leader and pace setter), but rancor and

hatred and unhealthy rivalry marked their relationships. Then, to ensure Britain’s

continued control of the Nigerian economy after independence, the British

maneuvered in great detail (falsified the national census, installed stumbling

blocks in the constitution, rigged the pre-independence election, heavily

influenced the post-election inter-party negotiations) to give dominance to the

Fulani leadership of the Northern Region over Nigeria’s Federal Government at

independence.

By doing these things, the British essentially placed a death sentence on Nigeria.

The Fulani were one of Nigeria’s smallest peoples (only about six million in the

Northern Region), were a non-indigenous people, had no homeland in Nigeria or

anywhere, were part of a Fulani people scattered all over West Africa, consisted

mostly of nomadic cattle herders, were the least educated people in Nigeria and

the least desirous of modern education, and were the least capable of leading a

modern country along modern lines. Lacking an understanding of the nature of a

modern country, the Fulani decided immediately at independence that they were

meant to be the new colonial overlords of Nigeria. Nigeria’s sad journey thus

began - through endless falsifications and manipulations of political processes,

falsifications of censuses, destruction of the federation through centralization of

all power and resource control, destruction of Regional and local initiatives in the

economy, attempts to suppress Western education, prohibition of the teaching of

History in Nigerian schools (to rob the indigenous peoples the knowledge of their

history), rancor and acrimony, blatantly rigged and violently protested elections,

inter-people conflicts, pogroms, civil war, religious violence, Fulani use of

military force for an attempt to conquer all of Nigeria’s indigenous peoples,

serious economic decline, Fulani invitation to other West African Fulani to come

and help conquer Nigeria’s indigenous peoples, Fulani attraction of international

terrorist groups to help the Fulani conquest, a destructive push to turn Nigeria to

a Muslim country by violence, vicious insecurity, rivers of blood, economic

collapse, to the now inevitable break-up.

The earliest Fulani adventure to expand their control over all of Nigeria featured a

serious plot, started even before independence and covertly assisted by the

British, to use federal power to crush the Western Region (Nigeria’s leader and

pace-setter in development) – because the Western Region was strong and

wanted true independence for Nigeria. The plot, finally hatched in 1962-5,

destroyed the Western Region’s and Nigeria’s development progress, but then it

dragged down Nigeria’s security, and provoked the first military coup in 1966.

From then on, there followed a long succession of military coups and military

dictatorships until 1999 – with only a brief civilian interlude in 1979-83. The

military dictators relentlessly destroyed the federal principle in favor of

centralization. The military dictators from July 1966 on, being all Northerners,

pushed for further and further centralization and Northern Fulani dominance.

This provoked resistance and bloody conflicts, pogroms, and an attempt by the

Igbo-led Eastern Region to secede from Nigeria in 1967. The attempt started a 30-

month civil war, 1967-70, which took about two million lives among the Igbo

people.

As if to wipe off these self-imposed disasters, mineral oil began in the early 1970s

to boost Nigeria’s economic strength, by making phenomenal amounts of money

available to Nigeria’s development. Nigeria’s prospects were so rosy by the late

1970s that some patriotic Nigerians embarked on putting together a dazzling

program of development for Nigeria. Some of the youthful intellectuals in this

group even believed that they could make Nigeria the ‘Blackman’s World Power

of Modern Times’.

But Nigeria lacked the unity, the cohesiveness and the orderly political and

economic life necessary for such great accomplishments. A manipulated election

in 1979, and another that was blatantly rigged and violently protested in 1983,

shot down those who were proudly talking of making Nigeria the ‘Blackman’s

World Power’. Another military coup came in December 1983, led by another

Northern military officer. From then on, rather than grow in prosperity and

power, Nigeria entered into a process of truculent Fulani grabbing of control, of

unrelenting centralization of political power, resource control and development

management, and the most rabid culture of public corruption in the world. The

Northern Fulani control became so total that one of the military dictators felt free

in 1993 to annul a completed and peaceful presidential election without giving

any reason for his action, and another felt free to arrest and imprison the winner

of the election and then to institute a murderous reign of terror to stop popular

reaction, and yet another unilaterally imposed a constitution on Nigeria by decree

in 1999. The Nigerian culture of impunity and public corruption has grown so

mightily since then that it has earned Nigeria, year after year, the assessment as

the most corrupt country in the world. Since 2018, Nigeria has been classified as

the Number One home of ‘extreme poverty’ in the world.

The succeeding Northern Military dictators from 1985 to 1999, serving the

purposes of centralization and of Fulani control of power and resources, rammed

down their system irremediably. In spite of Nigeria’s hundreds of nationalities,

Nigeria lost federalist direction and became simply a country under complete

control of a central government firmly controlled by the mostly illiterate Fulani

nationality. Nigeria’s central government became an instrument for managing,

not Nigeria’s development, but for managing Nigeria’s titanic and complex culture

of public corruption.

In the end, the Nigerian Fulani political elite, intoxicated by all this great success

of theirs in the politics of Nigeria and by continued covert British support,

embarked upon a pre-modern and primitive ambition to employ violence to

conquer all the other nations of Nigeria and turn their homelands into a large

Fulani homeland. The outside world, lacking an understanding of this bizarre

political turn in Nigeria, wrongly saw it as a development arising simply from

climate change – from the coming of prolonged droughts in the West African

Sahel and Sudan from the 1990s, and the consequent veering of Fulani cattle

herders southwards into the forest territories in search of grass for their cattle,

and therefore intensified conflicts between farmers and cattle herders in Nigeria.

But that is not the true explanation for what has been happening in Nigeria. The

droughts did force cattle herders to veer south in all countries of West Africa, but

what happened in Nigeria did not happen in any other country of West Africa.

What happened in Nigeria is that, to repeat, the small Fulani political elite,

enormously emboldened by their great success in the politics of Nigeria and by

continued British covert support, decided to turn the masses of distressed Fulani

cattle herders into a mass army for conquering the homelands of all the peoples

of Nigeria for a Fulani homeland. As soon as a Fulani leader, Muhammadu Buhari,

was elected President of Nigeria in 2015, the Fulani seriously commenced their

planned conquest of Nigeria. For the next eight years under President Buhari,

Fulani cattle herders and militias, indoctrinated with the message that Allah had

given the whole of Nigeria to the Fulani for a Fulani homeland, and heavily armed

with sophisticated modern weapons (mostly AK 47 rifles), spread out all over the

South and Middle Belt of Nigeria, destroying or burning farms, farmsteads and

villages, uprooting and destroying root crops, burning tree crops, killing farmers

and farmers’ wives and children, wiping out the inhabitants of whole villages,

raping and killing women, killing children on the way to or from school,

kidnapping countless people, extorting enormous amounts of money as ransom

for the kidnapped. President Buhari’s administration never said a word against

these Fulani outrages, and federal agents (police, military and secret service)

mostly ignored the widespread cries of agony and death. It inevitably became

obvious to all harassed Nigerians that the government had ordered its employees

not to interfere with the Fulani killers and destroyers, and that Buhari’s

presidency was covertly assisting the Fulani conquest. There is no official estimate

of Nigerians killed by the Fulani in the Buhari years, because the government had

no interest in such, but according to an unofficial estimate, as many as 29,000

Yoruba people were killed in the Yoruba homeland. Most Yoruba farmers have

abandoned farming altogether, and traditional Yoruba agricultural economy has

been destroyed.

As President Tinubu was being sworn in on May 29, 2023 to succeed President

Buhari, greatly confident armies of Fulani destroyers and killers were waiting for

him. They were sitting on the enormous amounts of Nigeria’s money that had

been stolen in recent years for the Fulani war of conquest, and they owned

enormous arsenals of various weapons, and countless thousands of Fulani killers

and international terrorists. They immediately heightened the tempo and

viciousness of their killing and kidnapping. In January 2024, they publicly declared

war against President Tinubu himself and threatened to invade the president’s

offices and seize the seat of power.

NIGERIA NEEDS NOW THE COURAGE TO

DISSOLVE PEACEFULLY

PART TWO

In summary, as these words are being written in late February 2024, Nigeria’s

economy has collapsed, Nigeria’s security has collapsed, Nigerians are living a life

of wrenching poverty and hunger, a life of frightful insecurity and chaos.

Important roads have dilapidated for years. Electricity supply has been fizzling out

for years. For decades, businesses have been failing or fleeing to other countries.

Nigeria’s unemployment rate has, for decades, been among the highest in the

world. For decades, the quality of education has been falling seriously in all parts

of Nigeria. For decades, thousands of educated Nigerian youths have been fleeing

annually to countries around the world, and those of them who remain in Nigeria

have been facing fearful poverty and deprivation and hopelessness, and the

incidence of suicide has been increasing among them. Though Nigeria is one of

the largest producers of petroleum in the world, Nigeria has depended on

imported gasoline and has left its own refineries in disrepair, and the price of

gasoline has been rising steadily in Nigeria for years. In the past nine months, the

price of gasoline has jumped, at N700 per litter, beyond the reach of most

Nigerian auto owners.

Important holders of knowledge of the economy (such as a former Governor of

the Nigerian Central Bank, C. Soludo, the new Minister of Finance, Wale Edun,

the new National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, and others) are telling the world

that the Nigerian economy had collapsed before President Tinubu took over from

President Buhari – that Tinubu inherited a ‘bankrupt country’. Therefore, the

value of the Nigerian currency, the Naira, standing at 465 to the US Dollar by June

2023, now stands at 2,005 to the US Dollar and is still falling, causing inflation to

skyrocket to 35.41% , and pushing the price of food staples beyond the reach of

most citizens (for instance a bag of rice now at 80,000 Naira, up from 35,000

Naira in June 2023). Terrible hunger grips the lives of most Nigerians. Families are

keeping their children away from schools because they cannot feed the children

before sending them to school, and because they fear that the children might be

kidnapped or killed on the way to or from school. A former Nigerian Senator,

Senator Shehu Sani from the North, recently offered the information that 10,000

schools have closed down in the North because of the insecurity.

An international group (International Civil Society Organization) says that in the

first eight months of the Tinubu presidency, the Fulani have killed 2,423 people

and kidnapped 1,872. On the floor of the Nigerian National Assembly, legislators

are bursting into tears as they recount the economic suffering and the drastic

insecurity of the people of their constituencies, and many legislators are

denouncing Nigeria’s presidential system and calling for its abolition. Many

influential Nigerians are publicly advising ordinary Nigerians to buy guns for self-

defense.

In all regions of Nigeria, huge numbers of hungry people are protesting in the

streets, crying of hunger, condemning President Tinubu and calling for the

dissolution of Nigeria. The students of Nigeria’s universities, Nigeria’s powerful

labor unions, and others, are announcing imminent strikes and mass protests. The

most eminent Fulani leaders and traditional rulers of the North, who never once

raised a voice against Buhari’s sponsorship of Fulani and terrorist atrocities all

over Nigeria for eight years, who never said a word against Buhari’s abominable

reign of corruption, are now issuing public statements redolent with criticisms of

Tinubu, and warnings and threats of imminent disaster and doom for the

president, the government and the country. Many are threatening that a military

take-over of the Nigerian government is imminent. Some Nigerian women are

going stark naked on street protests, and some pundits are warning that,

according to the cultures of many Nigerian peoples, protests by naked adult

women in the streets can invite terrible consequences on Nigeria. Even small

children in their elementary schools are adding their tiny but strident voices to

the swelling storm of protests. Many respected elders in different parts of Nigeria

are publicly and responsibly proposing that Nigeria should be dissolved now in the

interest of all the peoples and citizens of Nigeria.

Spokespersons for the Yoruba people, the Igbo people, and now surprisingly the

Hausa people - the three largest nationalities in Nigeria - want self-determination

for their respective nations and peaceful separation from Nigeria. The Hausa used

to be regarded as subservient to the Fulani, but now the Hausa people have

woken up – and are therefore being killed and brutalized by the Fulani, and are

creditably defending their homeland and people. The Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa

together account for about 160 million in population, out of Nigeria’s total

population of nearly 220 million.

Naturally, most people on the protest trail today see President Tinubu as the

cause of all their economic woes; but they are mostly wrong. The collapse of the

Nigerian economy today is the end outcome of six decades of perpetual and

truculent twisting, distortion, corruption and degradation of Nigeria’s economic

and political life. The pathetic incompetence and brutal corruption of the recent

eight years under President Buhari finally completed the killing of the Nigerian

economy.

President Tinubu believes he can heal the Nigerian economy. But, in spite of his

confidence, his chances of success in that venture are, realistically - and sadly -

close to zero. Healing is for the sick, not for the dead.

And even if President Tinubu, by dint of resoluteness, and with the help of the

capable assistants whom he has called up, succeeds in healing Nigeria’s economy

to an extent, Nigeria’s economy will certainly return to its downward trajectory

after him. The forces pushing Nigeria downwards cannot push in any other

direction than downwards. There is no other country in the world about whom

Nigeria’s kind of story can be told – the story of a country that earned for many

years some of the largest revenues in the world from petroleum (or any other

resource), and that has continued to earn much of such revenues, and has yet

ended up as the number one home of ‘extreme poverty’ in the world. Trying to lift

Nigeria up sustainably is a futile venture.

After publicly admitting that some of Nigeria’s economic problems defy solution,

President Tinubu took courageous action by inviting all the State Governors to

work with him, and he and they together began to consider some economic relief

measures, the establishment of State Police, and even a ‘restructuring’ agenda.

But among most Nigerians, these actions are regarded as too little too late – and

even as measures being hurriedly promoted by the politicians to enable them to

hold on to their positions in Nigerian politics and their stakes in the Nigerian

corruption system. Restructuring, though many prominent citizens have been

saying much about it, cannot stop the Fulani from spreading out to kill, destroy

and kidnap in any part of Nigeria, since they will still be Nigerian citizens. State

Police is a good step, but its establishment requires a prolonged process of

constitutional amendment. Altogether, the stark truth today is that Nigeria has

come to an end. Altogether, the stark truth about Nigeria today is that Nigeria has

come to an end.

The man who bears the ultimate responsibility for the next steps for Nigeria

beyond this point is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He can choose to go

maneuvering and trying, on and on, until Nigeria explodes in rivers of blood. That

is what the most powerful leader of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, did in 1989 -

90 when Yugoslavia as one country had obviously come to an end. Milosevic

chose to continue to keep Yugoslavia together at all costs and by all means, and

he did so until massive rivers of blood flowed and countless thousands of people

perished, until the truth finally asserted itself that Yugoslavia needed to dissolve,

until Yugoslavia dissolved into eight different countries – until Milosevic himself

ended up before an International Criminal Tribunal charged with serious crimes

against humanity, and until he died a lonely and wretched death in the tribunal’s

prison custody. But, in contrast, President Tinubu can do as Mikhail Gorbachev,

President of the Soviet Union 1985-91, did in 1990 when the great Soviet Union

had obviously come to an end. Gorbachev humbly surrendered to the truth that

the end had come for the Soviet Union, and he was therefore able to shepherd his

country into a peaceful dissolution, thereby preempting a massive and

devastating war that would probably have consumed millions of lives.

While considering his options, President Tinubu needs to be aware of the

following important fact – that separation of a people from a country of diverse

peoples, or the dissolution of a country of diverse peoples into new smaller

countries, if accomplished peacefully, is not a tragedy at all. He needs to browse

the histories of some of the countries that separated peacefully, and he will find

stories of subsequent prosperity in all cases – Belgium which separated from

Holland in 1830; Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland which separated at

different times over a long time; the Republic of Ireland which separated from

Britain in 1921; Singapore which separated from Malaysia in 1965; the 14

countries which arose from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991; the Czech

and Slovak Republics which separated in 1993; and East Timor which separated

from Indonesia in 2002.

President Tinubu also needs to note that countries which separate violently tend

to be dogged by violence afterwards – as in the case of Pakistan which separated

in a storm of violence from India in 1947; South Sudan which separated after

years of violence from Sudan in 2011; and some of the eight countries that

resulted from the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia.

What can a peacefully negotiated departure of any nation that seeks to separate

from Nigeria, or a peacefully negotiated dissolution of Nigeria, give to humanity?

Nigeria’s peoples are now trapped in a Nigerian space that is churning in an

abominable curse of utter darkness, unspeakable poverty, hunger, hatred,

hostility, mass murders, fear and death. The hatred and hostility are so deep that,

even now, some people in Northern Nigeria, in the midst of the killings and

kidnapping all over Nigeria, and in the midst of the mass cries of hunger, are

blockading the northern entry to the Jebba Bridge on the River Niger and turning

back food trucks, in order to stop even the small amount of food that is coming to

Southern Nigeria (especially to Southwestern Nigeria), avowedly in order to

“starve out” whole peoples in Southern Nigeria. A peacefully negotiated parting

of ways from this home of horrors can reduce or even eliminate fear, hatred and

hostility, and can ultimately result in mutual respect, peaceful borders, friendly

and mutually helpful neighbors, general progress, prosperity and happiness, for

all.

In the end, the choice belongs to President Tinubu. He stands to earn historic

honor and fame (like Gorbachev) or historic condemnation and infamy (like

Milosevic). His official assistants are doing nothing wrong by advising him to hold

on and keep trying; it is understandable that they see that as their loyal duty to

him. But it is he that must take his decision. He must know that, whatever way he

decides, he cannot now stop the truth from having its way in the Nigerian

situation. Nigeria has reached the point of breaking up. Whether in peace or in

rivers of blood, Nigeria will break up. President Tinubu cannot prevent that; it is

only how Nigeria breaks up that he can influence. We who are President Tinubu’s

brothers and sisters, we who love President Tinubu, must wish him, in this

mightily tough situation, the best of guidance - and the best outcome – in his own

interest, and in the interest of all the peoples and humans now reeling in

abominable deprivation, starvation, hopelessness, hatred, hostility, and insecurity

and chaos, in Nigeria.

The first and most urgent step that most Nigerians would wish from President

Tinubu now is that he should carry out, immediately, his plan to allow and

empower every state to establish its own Forest Guard outfit, federally authorized

and properly trained and armed. This will enable farming to begin to revive

everywhere, and it will begin to alleviate hunger. It will also reduce fear and

hatred.

But this step touches only the surface of the deep and complex problems of

Nigeria. It cannot eliminate the urge in some peoples to attack, kill, kidnap,

brutalize and subjugate other peoples, or to seek to seize other peoples’

homelands, or to take actions aimed at “starving out” other peoples. It cannot

drive away the foreign terrorists that have been attracted to Nigeria in recent

years and that have established firm roots in parts of Northern Nigeria, and it

cannot eliminate the homegrown terrorist groups. It cannot eliminate the fact

that all of these organized terrorist groups have support from some foreign

countries; and it cannot wish away the fact that all of these terrorist groups are

poised to use maximum force to turn all of Nigeria into an Islamic country and to

use Nigeria as the base for conquering West Africa as an Islamic state. It does not

address the very potent fears of the peoples of the Nigerian Middle Belt and

South about the intensifying dangers of religious extremism and jihadism that

have established roots, and are growing, in the Sahel and in the Nigerian North.

These are huge and complex challenges that can only be addressed by allowing

each nation to go on and find its own security and prosperity in a new country of

its own. It is a situation demanding peaceful negotiations. Yoruba people seeking

this kind of negotiation between Nigeria and the Yoruba Nation sent to President

Buhari in 2022 a petition asking for such a negotiation, and they are waiting for

the Nigerian Federal Government to initiate the negotiation process.

But, we repeat, the decision in this final step belongs to President Tinubu, and we

wish him the best of guidance – in his own interest, in the interest of all Nigerian

peoples, in the interest of all men and women and children who now belong to

Nigeria, in the best interest of humanity.

It is time to disengage from Nigeria. The Nigerian experiment has not worked, is

not working, and cannot work. Let us wind it up peacefully. Let our President

shepherd us through the process of winding it up peacefully. We have seen

enough of blood, and enough of human vileness, in Nigeria. Let us not keep

seeing more and more. In particular, let us not wait until we are all engulfed in

the all-consuming Armageddon that now seems to be rolling towards us in the

clouds ahead of us.

I will end here with this little story. In one Yoruba Self-determination youth

meeting recently, a boy stood up and said, “Of course, we can defend our land. Of

course, we shall defend our land and soon chase the Fulani away. But our most

important need is to separate out nation from the destructive country called

Nigeria. If President Tinubu helps to get us peacefully out of Nigeria, we will erect

a statue of him in our city of Lagos or Ibadan as a statement of our gratitude to

him forever. And if our other politicians, our Obas, and any of our other eminent

citizens, will also help in this, we shall show gratitude to them too in countless

ways”. What more can anybody add to that!

In summary, as these words are being written in late February 2024, Nigeria’s

economy has collapsed, Nigeria’s security has collapsed, Nigerians are living a life

of wrenching poverty and hunger, a life of frightful insecurity and chaos.

Important roads have dilapidated for years. Electricity supply has been fizzling out

for years. For decades, businesses have been failing or fleeing to other countries.

Nigeria’s unemployment rate has, for decades, been among the highest in the

world. For decades, the quality of education has been falling seriously in all parts

of Nigeria. For decades, thousands of educated Nigerian youths have been fleeing

annually to countries around the world, and those of them who remain in Nigeria

have been facing fearful poverty and deprivation and hopelessness, and the

incidence of suicide has been increasing among them. Though Nigeria is one of

the largest producers of petroleum in the world, the price of gasoline has been

rising steadily in Nigeria for years; in the past nine months it has jumped, at N700

per litter, beyond the reach of most Nigerians.

Important holders of knowledge of the economy (such as a former Governor of

the Nigerian Central Bank, C. Soludo, the new Minister of Finance, Wale Edun,

the new National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, and others) are telling the world

that the Nigerian economy had collapsed before President Tinubu took over from

President Buhari – that Tinubu inherited a ‘bankrupt country’. Therefore, the

value of the Nigerian currency, the Naira, standing at 465 to the US Dollar by June

2023, now stands at 2,005 to the US Dollar and is still falling, causing inflation to

skyrocket to 35.41% , and pushing the price of food staples beyond the reach of

most citizens (for instance a bag of rice now at 80,000 Naira, up from 35,000

Naira in June 2023). Terrible hunger grips the lives of most Nigerians. Families are

keeping their children away from schools because they cannot feed the children

before sending them to school, and because they fear that the children might be

kidnapped or killed on the way to or from school. A former Nigerian Senator,

Senator Shehu Sani from the North, recently offered the information that 10,000

schools have closed down in the North because of the insecurity.

An international group (International Civil Society Organization) says that in the

first eight months of the Tinubu presidency, the Fulani have killed 2,423 people

and kidnapped 1,872. On the floor of the Nigerian National Assembly, legislators

are bursting into tears as they recount the economic suffering and the drastic

insecurity of the people of their constituencies, and many legislators are

denouncing Nigeria’s presidential system and calling for its abolition. Many

influential Nigerians are publicly advising ordinary Nigerians to buy guns for self-

defense.

In all regions of Nigeria, huge numbers of hungry people are protesting in the

streets, crying of hunger, condemning President Tinubu and calling for the

dissolution of Nigeria. The students of Nigeria’s universities, Nigeria’s powerful

labor unions, and others, are announcing imminent strikes and mass protests. The

most eminent Fulani leaders and traditional rulers of the North, who never once

raised a voice against Buhari’s sponsorship of Fulani and terrorist atrocities all

over Nigeria for eight years, who never said a word against Buhari’s abominable

reign of corruption, are now issuing public statements redolent with criticisms of

Tinubu, and warnings and threats of imminent disaster and doom for the

president, the government and the country. Many are threatening that a military

take-over of the Nigerian government is imminent. Some Nigerian women are

going stark naked on street protests, and some pundits are warning that,

according to the cultures of many Nigerian peoples, protests by naked adult

women in the streets can invite terrible consequences on Nigeria. Even small

children in their elementary schools are adding their tiny but strident voices to

the swelling storm of protests. Many respected elders in different parts of Nigeria

are publicly and responsibly proposing that Nigeria should be dissolved now in the

interest of all the peoples and citizens of Nigeria.

Spokespersons for the Yoruba people, the Igbo people, and now surprisingly the

Hausa people - the three largest nationalities in Nigeria - want self-determination

for their respective nations and peaceful separation from Nigeria. The Hausa used

to be regarded as subservient to the Fulani, but now the Hausa people have

woken up – and are therefore being killed and brutalized by the Fulani, and are

creditably defending their homeland and people. The Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa

together account for about 160 million in population, out of Nigeria’s total

population of nearly 220 million.

Naturally, most people on the protest trail today see President Tinubu as the

cause of all their economic woes; but they are mostly wrong. The collapse of the

Nigerian economy today is the end outcome of six decades of perpetual and

truculent twisting, distortion, corruption and degradation of Nigeria’s economic

and political life. The pathetic incompetence and brutal corruption of the recent

eight years under President Buhari finally completed the killing of the Nigerian

economy.

President Tinubu believes he can heal the Nigerian economy. But, in spite of his

confidence, his chances of success in that venture are, realistically - and sadly-

close to zero. Healing is for the sick, not for the dead.

And even if President Tinubu, by dint of resoluteness, and with the help of the

capable assistants whom he has called up, succeeds in healing Nigeria’s economy

to an extent, Nigeria’s economy will certainly return to its downward trajectory

after him. The forces pushing Nigeria downwards cannot push in any other

direction than downwards. There is no other country in the world about whom

Nigeria’s kind of story can be told – the story of a country that earned for many

years some of the largest revenues in the world from petroleum (or any other

resource), and that yet ended up as the number one home of ‘extreme poverty’ in

the world. Trying to lift up Nigeria sustainably is a futile venture.

After publicly admitting that some of Nigeria’s economic problems defy solution,

President Tinubu took courageous action by inviting all the State Governors to

work with him, and he and they together began to consider some economic relief

measures, the establishment of State Police, and even a ‘restructuring’ agenda.

But among most Nigerians, these actions are regarded as too little too late – and

even as measures being hurriedly promoted by the politicians to enable them to

hold on to their positions in Nigerian politics and their stakes in the Nigerian

corruption system. Restructuring, though many prominent citizens have been

saying much about it, cannot stop the Fulani from spreading out to kill, destroy

and kidnap in any part of Nigeria, since they will still be Nigerian citizens. State

Police is a good step, but its establishment requires a prolonged process of

constitutional amendment. Altogether, the stark truth about Nigeria today is that

Nigeria has come to an end.

The man who bears the ultimate responsibility for the next steps for Nigeria

beyond this point is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He can choose to go

maneuvering, wheeling and dealing, on and on, until Nigeria explodes in rivers of

blood. That is what the most powerful leader of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic,

did in 1989 -90 when Yugoslavia as one country had obviously come to an end.

Milosevic determined to continue to keep Yugoslavia together at all costs and by

all means, and he did so until massive rivers of blood flowed and countless

thousands of people perished, until the truth finally asserted itself that Yugoslavia

needed to dissolve, until Yugoslavia dissolved into eight different countries – until

Milosevic himself ended up before an International Criminal Tribunal charged

with serious crimes against humanity, and until he died a lonely and wretched

death in the tribunal’s prison custody. But, in contrast, President Tinubu can do as

Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union 1985-91, did in 1990 when the

great Soviet Union had obviously come to an end. Gorbachev humbly surrendered

to the truth that the end had come for the Soviet Union, and he was therefore

able to shepherd his country into a peaceful dissolution, thereby preempting a

massive and devastating war that would probably have consumed millions of

lives.

While considering his options, President Tinubu needs to be aware of the

following important fact – that separation of a people from a country of diverse

peoples, or the dissolution of a country of diverse peoples into new smaller

countries, if accomplished peacefully, is not a tragedy at all. He needs to browse

the histories of some of the countries that separated peacefully, and he will find

stories of subsequent prosperity in all cases – Belgium which separated from

Holland in 1830; Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland which separated at

different times over a long time; the Republic of Ireland which separated from

Britain in 1921; Singapore which separated from Malaysia in 1965; the 14

countries which arose from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991; the Czech

and Slovak Republics which separated in 1993; and East Timor which separated

from Indonesia in 2002.

President Tinubu also needs to note that countries which separate violently tend

to be dogged by violence afterwards – as in the case of Pakistan which separated

in a storm of violence from India in 1947; South Sudan which separated after

years of violence from Sudan in 2011; and some of the eight countries that

resulted from the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia.

What can a peacefully negotiated departure of any nation that seeks to separate

from Nigeria, or a peacefully negotiated dissolution of Nigeria, give to humanity?

Nigeria’s peoples are now trapped in a Nigerian space that is churning in an

abominable curse of utter darkness, unspeakable poverty, hunger, hatred,

hostility, mass murders, fear and death. The hatred and hostility are so deep that,

even now, some people in Northern Nigeria, in the midst of the killings and

kidnapping all over Nigeria, and in the midst of the mass cries of hunger, are

blockading the northern entry to the Jebba Bridge on the River Niger and turning

back food trucks, in order to stop even the small amount of food that is coming to

Southern Nigeria (especially to Southwestern Nigeria), avowedly in order to

“starve out” whole peoples in Southern Nigeria. A peacefully negotiated parting

of ways from this home of horrors can reduce or even eliminate fear, hatred and

hostility, and can ultimately result in mutual respect, peaceful borders, friendly

and mutually helpful neighbors, general progress, prosperity and happiness, for

all.

In the end, the choice belongs to President Tinubu. He stands to earn historic

honor and fame (like Gorbachev) or historic condemnation, dishonor and infamy

(like Milosevic). His official assistants are doing nothing wrong by advising him to

hold on and keep trying; it is understandable that they see that as their loyal duty

to him. But it is he that must take his decision. He must know that, whatever way

he decides, he cannot now stop the truth from having its way in the Nigerian

situation. Nigeria has reached the point of breaking up. Whether in peace or in

rivers of blood, Nigeria will break up. President Tinubu cannot prevent that; it is

only how Nigeria breaks up that he can influence. We who are President Tinubu’s

brothers and sisters, we who love President Tinubu, must wish him, in this

mightily tough situation, the best of guidance - and the best outcome – in his own

interest, and in the interest of all the peoples and humans now reeling in

abominable deprivation, starvation, hopelessness, hatred, hostility, and insecurity

and chaos, in Nigeria.

The first and most urgent step that most Nigerians would wish from President

Tinubu now is that he should carry out, immediately, his plan to allow and

empower every state to establish its own Forest Guard outfit, federally authorized

and properly trained and armed. This will enable farming to begin to revive

everywhere, and it will begin to alleviate hunger. It will also reduce fear and

hatred.

But this step touches only the surface of the deep and complex problems of

Nigeria. It cannot eliminate the urge in some peoples to attack, kill, kidnap,

brutalize and subjugate other peoples, or to seek to seize other peoples’

homelands, or to take actions aimed at “starving out” other peoples. It cannot

drive away the foreign terrorists that have been attracted to Nigeria in recent

years and that have established firm roots in parts of Northern Nigeria, and it

cannot eliminate the homegrown terrorist groups. It cannot eliminate the fact

that all of these organized terrorist groups have support from some foreign

countries; and it cannot wish away the fact that all of these terrorist groups are

poised to use maximum force to turn all of Nigeria into an Islamic country and to

use Nigeria as the base for conquering West Africa as an Islamic state. It does not

address the very potent fears of the peoples of the Nigerian Middle Belt and

South about the intensifying dangers of religious extremism and jihadism that

have established roots, and are growing, in the Sahel and in the Nigerian North.

These are huge and complex challenges that can only be addressed by allowing

each nation to go on and find its own security and prosperity in a new country of

its own. It is a situation demanding peaceful negotiations. Yoruba people seeking

this kind of negotiation between Nigeria and the Yoruba Nation sent to President

Buhari in 2022 a petition asking for such a negotiation, and they are waiting for

the Nigerian Federal Government to initiate the negotiation process.

But, we repeat, the decision in this final step belongs to President Tinubu, and we

wish him the best of guidance – in his own interest, in the interest of all Nigerian

peoples, in the interest of all men and women and children who now belong to

Nigeria, in the best interest of humanity.

It is time to disengage from Nigeria. The Nigerian experiment has not worked, is

not working, and cannot work. Let us wind it up peacefully. Let our President

shepherd us through the process of winding it up peacefully. We have seen

enough of blood, and enough of human vileness, in Nigeria. Let us not keep

seeing more and more. In particular, let us not wait until we are all engulfed in

the all-consuming Armageddon that now seems to be rolling towards us in the

clouds ahead of us.

I will end here with this little story. In one Yoruba Self-determination youth

meeting recently, a boy stood up and said, “Of course, we can defend our land. Of

course, we shall defend our land and soon chase the Fulani away. But our most

important need is to separate out nation from the destructive country called

Nigeria. If President Tinubu helps to get us peacefully out of Nigeria, we will erect

a statue of him in our city of Lagos or Ibadan as a statement of our gratitude to

him forever. And if our other politicians, our Obas and our other eminent citizens

will also help in this, we shall show gratitude to them too in countless ways”.

What more can anybody add to that!