The Yoruba Nation Youth Leaders in Diaspora have held the Yoruba elites, and its leaders in all spheres responsible for the misfortune that has befallen the entire Yoruba race, saying that the Yoruba leaders have not only collapsed the Yoruba economy and legacy, but they have also allowed the Fulani to enslaved the Yorubas.
This thought was contained in a statement dated April 10, 22024, and signed by one of its scribes, Prophet Ayodele Ologunlola, which was made available to the newsmen.
The statement is titled, “Declaration by Concerned Yoruba Youth Stakeholder: In the Peaceful Exit of Yoruba Nation from the Failed Country of Nigeria”.
The statement reads in parts:
“We, the generation of Concerned Yoruba Youth Stakeholders in the Preservation and Liberation of the Yoruba People and Nation, hereby issue this message to the current generation of Yoruba Elders and Leaders whom God has given the privilege of speaking for the Yoruba people and nation in the affairs of Nigeria. This message is issued from the deepest depths of our Omoluabi upbringing to you, our Yoruba fathers and mothers who, by the grace of God, brought our generation into this world and endowed us with the education and skills that should ensure successful lives for each and all of us in today’s world.
“Our dear parents, according to the best of reliable statistics and estimates, our generation, aged 18 to 50 years, is slightly over 70% of the population of all Yoruba people at home in Nigeria and in the Yoruba Diaspora worldwide. Because of your parental inputs into our lives, we your Yoruba children and grandchildren of this generation, aged 18-50 years, are the most educated Yoruba generation ever and the most educated generation of people in Africa.
“We decided to issue this message to you because we are painfully concerned that you, our illustrious parents, appear to be ignorant of, or uncaring about, or insensitive towards, our conditions and prospects and sufferings, which have been going on now for many decades in the context of the country called Nigeria.
“It speaks much for Yoruba nobility and Yoruba spirit of faithfulness and loyalty, that you, our Yoruba parents and grandparents, have constantly borne the greatest part of the concern for the upholding and elevating Nigeria, even despite Nigeria’s determined downward trajectory in all aspects of human endeavour. It is understandable that while giving Nigeria your best service, you have also pursued your benefits and profits in the corruption-ridden and increasingly chaotic Nigerian situation. What has hurt, and is hurting, us your children and grandchildren very painfully is that you never put any measurable importance upon the good of your Yoruba nation and people, particularly upon our generation of your Yoruba children and grandchildren.
Collapse of Yoruba Economy & Legacy in Nigeria’s Collapse
“In the outcome, you have allowed our Yoruba nation to slide downwards to the status of near-slavery in Nigeria, you have allowed other peoples to degrade or even destroy our Yoruba nation’s heritage, and you have allowed the conditions to arise in which your children and grandchildren have nothing to hold in Nigeria. Entirely without any resistance from you (individually or collectively), the quality of the Yoruba nation’s educational system has been destroyed, the teaching of our history and language was for years prohibited from our schools, the many businesses and industries that had adorned our homeland up to the time of Nigeria’s independence have been made to shut down and perish, every major asset of our nation (such as our cocoa exports institutions, our privately created and privately owned educational and healthcare delivery institutions, even the university that our nation built with great love and designed to be one of the best in the world, our radio and television stations, even our main sports stadium, etc), have been taken away from us and given to Nigeria, and most of these have been deliberately allowed to decline or perish. Our Yoruba people’s spirit of enterprise has been almost totally crushed. Our Yoruba nation’s ambitious agricultural, livestock and tree-crop ventures of the 1950s have perished. Our Okitipupa Palm-oil plantation and factory, once the largest in Africa, our Araromi-Obu Rubber Plantation (the second largest in Africa), our Apoje Citrus Plantation near Ijebu-Igbo, and the Lafia Canning Factory that canned its frits in Ibadan, have all been forced to be abandoned. Even the industries that our nation created as late as the 1970s and 1980s (such as the Oluwa Glass Factory in Okitipupa, the Ceramic Industry in Ifon, the Brick Factory in Ire-Ekiti, Textile Mills in Ado-Ekiti, and others), have closed down. Even our giant investment corporation, Western Region Development Corporation, with holdings in banking, real estate, industries, etc, has been forced to break up and sell some of its assets to non-Yoruba interests. On top of all these, federal roads, neglected and allowed to dilapidate for decades, are strangulating what remains of our Yoruba economy.
“The excessive centralization of political power, resource control, and development management, in Nigeria, foisted on Nigeria by succeeding Northern military dictators during the years from 1984 to 1999, destroyed the Nigerian economy through incompetence in the overburdened central government, destruction of development initiatives and inputs at state and local levels, and a culture of public corruption so powerful and so pervasive as to make Nigeria the world’s most corrupt country for years and years.
“All these economic and social disasters befalling our Yoruba nation have occurred in the years since the 1990s – that is under the watch of those of you our parents who are still leading in speaking for our Yoruba nation in the affairs of Nigeria today. It is difficult for us to understand how this historic collapse of our Yoruba nation could have happened under our parents’ watch. Yes, only a few in your generation went to school, but these few of you are well-educated, sophisticated and dignified, and your generation of educated Yoruba people was much larger and stronger than the same generation of any other Nigerian people. So, why did you record all these failures – why did other people of the same generation as yours succeed in bringing down your Yoruba nation so badly?
“Altogether, today, Nigeria’s economy has collapsed. Important leaders of the economy (such as former Governor of the Nigerian Central Bank, C. Soludo, the new Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun, and others) have publicly stated that the Nigerian economy had collapsed before President Tinubu took over from President Buhari in May 2023, that Tinubu inherited a ‘bankrupt country’, and that ‘there is no money for running the country’, that Nigeria cannot borrow more loans for running the country since 98 per cent of Nigeria’s government revenues are being expended on servicing foreign debts. Therefore, the value of the Nigerian currency, the Naira, has plummeted abysmally, causing inflation to skyrocket to 35.41 per cent, and pushing the price of food staples beyond the reach of most citizens. Terrible hunger grips the lives of most Nigerians and most of our Yoruba people. In all regions of Nigeria, including Yorubaland, enormous crowds of hungry people are protesting in the streets, crying of hunger, and demanding that Nigeria be broken up. Huge numbers of Yoruba people are swelling the crowds of Northern Nigerian beggars in the streets of Yoruba cities and towns.
Fulani Menace.
“Much worse, why do you find it so difficult to understand what the Fulani represent in Nigeria? Because of this lack of understanding, most of you have never offered any word or opinion about the Fulani war against all the rest of Nigeria, including your Yoruba homeland, since the Buhari presidency in 2015-23. It is pitiful that many of you seem to believe that the cause of the Fulani devastations against all non-Fulani peoples of Nigeria is climate change- meaning droughts in the Sahel belt of West Arica, and the consequent loss of grasslands in that belt, making Fulani cattle herders to veer southwards into the Nigerian Middle Belt and South in search of grazing land. Not surprisingly, because that is what you believe, some of you have suggested that the Fulani be given land everywhere to bring the Fulani attacks to an end! But this explanation by you our parents is flatly false. The truth about what is happening concerning the Fulani in Nigeria is that the current generation of non-Fulani (including Yoruba) leaders has let the Fulani achieve so much political success and dominance in Nigeria since the 1960s that the Fulani have now resolved that it is their destiny to conquer all of Nigeria and turn it into a Fulani homeland.
“Therefore, our parents and grandparents, we hereby responsibly affirm that which the entire world fully knows, namely, that the Fulani (who have never owned a homeland) are seeking to grab land all over Nigeria to ultimately turn Nigeria into a Fulani homeland, that the Nigerian Fulani have been inviting all Fulani people from all over West and Central Africa to relocate to Nigeria and to join in conquering and dispossessing the indigenous Nigerian peoples of their homelands, that when the Fulani leader, Mohammadu Buhari, was president of Nigeria in 2015-23, he officially and publicly announced that any person living anywhere in Africa could migrate to Nigeria without any travel documents, and he ordered all Northern Nigerian border gates to be opened to the influx of the Fulani, and these policies triggered a Fulani flood into Nigeria, a flood that is continuing even now. At the border gates, these masses of Fulani are instantly admitted into Nigeria, given Nigerian citizenship identification, and assisted in going deep into Nigeria to contribute to the Fulani seizure of land. There is no official estimate of Nigerians killed by the Fulani in the Buhari years because the government had no interest in such. Still, according to an unofficial estimate, as many as 29,000 Yoruba people were killed in the Yoruba homeland under Buhari. Most Yoruba farmers have abandoned farming altogether, and the traditional Yoruba agricultural economy has been destroyed. The Yoruba people are confronted now by recurring yearly famines for years and years to come.
“Sadly, very sadly, even after President Buhari was succeeded as president of Nigeria on May 29, 2023, by one of our fathers, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the momentum of Fulani killings, destruction, kidnapping, etc, has not decreased, it has escalated fearfully. In fact, under President Tinubu, the Fulani challenge to peace and security in Nigeria has now reached an abominable and intolerable peak. As a mark of the current confidence in the Fulani challenge to security, the topmost Fulani leadership organization, the Fulani Nationalist Movement, issued two Fulani declarations of war against the rest of Nigeria on January 24 and 26, announced that President Tinubu “is not” their president, that if any Fulani be arrested for any act of the Fulani war, the Fulani would “burn down everything in Nigeria”, that the Fulani invasion “will be swift and decisive and nobody will be able to help Nigeria”, that the Fulani leadership calls on all Fulani men to take the war to all parts of Nigeria “until the infidel governments are brought down”; that the Fulani forces will attack Aso Rock and “take over the seat of Government” and from there carry out the conquest of all of Nigeria. Of course, all of this is high treason – but in Nigeria, the government no longer commands the strength or the political will to treat it as a crime.
“Not surprisingly, following upon their declarations of war, the Fulani immediately commenced war on most parts of Nigeria, including Yorubaland. We focus on our own Yorubaland. On January 25, on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway in Yorubaland, Fulani militiamen kidnapped a local chairman of a national political party and later demanded 200 million Naira for his ransom. On January 27 in Kwara State, Fulani kidnappers abducted a student from the campus of Ilorin University. On January 27 in Oyo State, Fulani militiamen abducted the Chairman of a public corporation. On January 29 in Oyo State, a local church pastor was attacked on his farm and killed by Fulani militiamen. On January 29 in Ekiti State, Fulani militiamen attacked the very top of Yoruba society and culture by killing two Yoruba Obas (kings) on a highway. A third Oba escaped. On January 30, in Ekiti State, Fulani kidnappers kidnapped 14 schoolchildren returning home from school in their school bus and later demanded 200 million Naira for their ransom. On February 1, in Kwara State, Fulani militias invaded the palace of another Yoruba Oba, killed the Oba and abducted his wife and child. The message from these Fulani acts is clear – that no Yoruba person of any status should consider himself or herself safe in any part of Yorubaland. And yet you, our very influential parents and grandparents, are not saying anything about these Fulani devastations of your homeland, and are, instead, talking about ‘restructuring’ Nigeria and ‘amending Nigeria’s constitution’ – to preserve Nigeria! Some day in the future, historians will probe seriously into your generation’s allurement with a Nigeria that is destroying your nation and people – and we your offspring fear that the historians’ findings will make us and our children flinch or even weep with shame.
“Meanwhile, members of the Fulani political elite (the Sultan, Emirs, former Nigerian presidents, State Governors, former State Governors, former federal Ministers, Legislators, etc) are publicly and vociferously castigating President Tinubu over every official action of his and threatening him with imminent mass rebellion in the North and imminent military coup by the Nigerian Army. The Fulani elite are saying, in effect, that they and their people intend to make Nigeria ungovernable, and that nothing done by Tinubu will be acceptable to them.
“Our dear parents and grandparents, we are shocked that one of our fathers, President Tinubu, has essentially surrendered to the Fulani threats by giving a directive to all State Governors on March 11 that all State Governors should give land to the Fulani to ensure peace. And so, we hereby dutifully and solemnly serve notice on you our parents that, if any State Governor in any part of our Yoruba homeland should take the step to give any piece of the ancestral Yoruba homeland to any Fulani, we shall responsibly and dutifully regard such action as a declaration of war by that Governor on the Yoruba nation, and all of us Yoruba youths, in our millions at home and in the Diaspora worldwide, shall employ all resources at our disposal to make such a grant of land to the Fulani impossible, and we shall ruthlessly destroy the political life of the said State Governor. While giving this notice to you, we also give it to the powers that uphold order in our world – the United Nations, African Union, ECOWAS, European Union, BRICS Group, and the leading countries of our world – and we expect them to understand and honour such a response by us Yoruba youths.
The Devastation of Yoruba Youths in Nigeria
“Our dear parents, the overwhelming masses of our Yoruba people have been suffering more and more intensely in Nigeria since 1960. But we Yoruba youths of this generation – your children and grandchildren – have been suffering most abominably. For over three decades now, because of the collapse of the Nigerian and Yoruba economy, and because of the collapse of security in Nigeria and Yorubaland, we have been systematically forced to flee away from our homeland – the land of our birth, the homeland for which you our parents gave us education, the homeland and people that, when we were growing up as little children, we fondly hoped to serve and glorify and beautify some day. Because of the horrific conditions of Nigeria, particularly because we cannot get employment for years and years, tens of thousands of us have been fleeing abroad every year for decades. In hot desperation, many of us choose the hazardous option of attempting to reach Europe by crossing the arid Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea – and the news is constantly breaking that many of these are perishing in the desert or the sea. Those of our generation who remain at home, or who are trapped at home, are forced to live in terrifying poverty, with the result that some slip into crimes, begging, prostitution, and other kinds of degradation.
“We are a generation that has been expunged by disaster from the homeland of our birth, the homeland that we love. There are now about nine million of us scattered in nearly all countries of the world. We are a generation living with the deep pain that our politically notable parents show no concern about us. Most of us would like to return home or at least visit home from time to time, but we dare not return home or visit home – because home is far too dangerous and far too morally repulsive. Indeed, in most of our families abroad, we regularly go through the agony of begging our older and adventurous children not to go home to their Yoruba homeland in Nigeria. And yet, the parents who brought us into this world and who made us strong by educating us, never say anything about us, and never care about us, but are always angling to save and preserve Nigeria.
“The Yoruba have become so down-trodden in Nigeria that even our Yoruba Obas, the traditional pillars and apex of Yoruba society and civilization, the men sitting on Yoruba thrones that are nearly 2000 years old, the men who were enthroned for the protection and wellbeing of Yoruba people, never say anything about the horrible conditions of their Yoruba people in Nigeria today, but are forever hustling for favours from Nigeria’s agents of power, and forever struggling to be heard about Nigeria’s “restructuring” and Nigeria’s constitution.
“With tears in our hearts, we most passionately inform you now our parents, that we millions of Yoruba people in the Diaspora, as well as the millions like us who remain at home, totally reject that our Yoruba people should continue to live in the Nigeria whose economy and security have collapsed – the Nigeria of viciously crushing poverty and insecurity, the Nigeria in which our Yoruba nation is perishing.
“And we reject any arrangement whereby our Yoruba nation will continue to be part of a Nigeria in which the Government has manifestly lost the systemic strength and the political will to act firmly and effectively to stop massive criminal conduct and resolute criminal terrorism. We are certain that the resolute and persistent Fulani terror, and its goal of changing the demography of all parts of Nigeria, will soon provoke a generalized war that will cause floods of blood to flow all over Nigeria and consume millions of lives across the face of Nigeria. We believe that our politically influential parents of today, with us their children, command the strength to take our Yoruba people out of the way of this imminent cataclysm. We demand of our parents that they should change over from their focus on preserving Nigeria, and seriously and dedicatedly focus henceforth on preserving our Yoruba nation, on making our Yoruba homeland a happy land that is able and ready to receive our millions of exiles from abroad and to open great doors of opportunity to all our Yoruba people in economic enterprise, quest for knowledge, adventures in the sciences and the technologies, and in the arts and the humanities.
“We completely and fearlessly reject any further Yoruba participation in any program of ‘restructuring’ of the Nigerian political and economic chaos, or Nigerian constitutional amendment since such participation presumes that our Yoruba nation will continue to be part of the Nigeria of economic and security failure, and since we are sure that restructuring can never stop the Fulani agenda of ethnic cleansing and land seizures because restructuring cannot keep the Fulani out of any part of Nigeria, and restructuring can never eliminate the horrible and destructive corruption and insensitive governance that have become deeply ingrained in the group psychology of Nigerian leadership and the chaotic political and economic systems of Nigeria.
“We hereby note before all mankind that, worldwide, peacefully negotiated settlements have proven to be constructive and progress-yielding paths out of multi-cultural states that are distressed by the tensions of irreconcilable orientations and values such as now characterize the failed Nigeria enterprise.
“And, accordingly, we advocate, and we urge our parents to join us in advocating, that the authorities and influential leaders of Nigeria should consent to a program of peaceful discussions and negotiations by representatives of the various peoples of Nigeria, towards a peaceful and mutually respectful negotiation of the exit of any people from Nigeria, or the dissolution of the now destructive Nigerian experiment.”
Signed
This 10th day of April 2024.
04/10/01
Prophet Ayodele Ologunlolua
Yoruba Nation Youth Leader in Diaspora
