One wonders whether they slit open their
own stomachs with a long sharp sword and spilled their own bowels all
over the battle field. I say this because no-one seems to be interested
in bringing those that butchered them in the sanctity of their own homes
and their own land to heel. Such a selective application of justice can
hardly be described as being reasonable or fair and surely that is not
the way to foster better relations between the Hausa Fulani and the
Yoruba in Ile Ife or elsewhere. A note that was sent to me captured the
mood rather well when the author said the following:
“There is no Yoruba person who has
incited anything beyond putting our case across. We cannot keep quite
when our people are being harassed and intimated. Barrister Gbenga
Awosode,an Ife indigene has just been summoned to Abuja yesterday. As we
speak no member of the Arewa community has been summoned. Our people
have been killed on our land and on Arewa land over the years with no
arrest made in history. We will not look for anybody’s trouble but if
anyone look for ours he will get it double. Yoruba will not die on our
knees. Any death that will kill us will meet us on our feet. But before
we die……”. The concern is clearly building-up and the anger is mounting.
Yet despite that the impunity continues. I say this because in the last
seven days alone the Hausa Fulani have slaughtered scores of innocent
people in Ile-Ife (Osun state), Buruku (Benue state), Arochukwu (Abia
state), Malagum (Southern Kaduna) and Igbeti (Oyo State). Must we
continue like this?
Our faith, identity and ethnic
nationalities are under attack and are threatened with annihilation and
you want me to accept it in the name of one Nigeria? The fundamental
question that we must all answer either now or later is as follows: if
we cannot live together in peace and unity as one nation must we stay
together by force? Is the unity of Nigeria truly sacrosanct? And if the
older generation believes that this is so must the younger generation
believe so as well? Never in the history of our country, other than
during the civil war, has there been so much ethnic and sectarian
blood-letting as there is today? And it is the usual suspects and those
that the late and great Chief Bola Ige called “the Tutsis of Nigeria”
that always spark it off and attack others either in the name of their
faith or in their quest to take over and forcefully seize the land of
others or in the name of herding cattle and grazing cows.
When one considers this one is
constrained to ask the following question: is it a crime to demand for
the restructuring of our nation or for the peaceful and equitable
dissolution of our very unhappy union? Can we not at least attempt to be
civilised and start learning from others? Must we continue to ignore
the voices of our fathers, elders and reverred heroes like the great Pa
Ayo Adebanjo and the gallant General Alani Akinrinade who saw all this
coming many years ago and who urged us all to sit up and prepare for the
worst? Must everything here be by compulsion and by force? Must some of
us be regarded and classified as field hands and slaves whilst others
are described as being “born to rule?” Is this not insulting to the
majority? Is it not unacceptable? Is it wrong for people to exercise
their God-given right of self-determination? Is that not the basis and
the very essence of freedom and democracy?
The wave of ethnic nationalism rising
throughout the world, including countries like Holland, the United
Kingdom, France, the United States of America, the Russian Federation,
Israel, Germany, Turkey, Austria and, increasingly, Nigeria cannot be
resisted or played down. And in Nigeria the more of our people that our
collective ethnic oppressors kill, the more that wave will rise. The
right to take pride in our ethnicity and invoke the principle of
self-determination cannot be denied. We reject the concept of
globalisation and the enthronement of a new world order. We reject the
concept of an artificial, man-made, multi-cultural, multi-religious,
mongrel mega-nation that is made up of ethnic and religious
incompatibles.
We reject the notion that we must bury
our ethnicity, forget our differences, arrest our development, discard
our values and enthrone the idea of a strange and complicated hybrid
nation where we are expected to live with and accomodate those that hate
our faith, despise our people, scorn our values and that rape, maim and
kill our loved ones and compatriots in the name of religion, conquest,
land, cows and cattle.
The
truth is that no force in hell or on earth can stop the rise and
establishment of the sovereign state of Biafra, Oduduwa or any other
ethnic nation that will one day be carved out of what is presently known
as Nigeria. This is what the German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler
once described as “Mein Kampf”, meaning “my struggle”. This is my hope.
This is my desire. This is my dream. In conclusion I call for restraint
from both sides in the Hausa Fulani and Yoruba conflict in Ile-Ife. I
call for the restoration of peace and I pray that the souls of all those
that were slaughtered rest in perfect peace. God bless and be with the
people of Ile-Ife and the Yoruba nation now and forever.
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