Power, politics and conflict of ethnic identity in Nigeria

Concluding part of a paper delivered by Professor Banji Akintoye as the guest speaker at a summit on Peace Building and Conflict Prevention in Lagos, hosted by Journalist for Democratic Rights, in Lagos, on July 30, 2019.

Concluding part of a paper delivered by Professor Banji Akintoye as the guest speaker at a summit on Peace Building and Conflict Prevention in Lagos, hosted by Journalist for Democratic Rights, in Lagos, on July 30, 2019.

BUT the threat to peace may be building up too inside the cities of the Yoruba South-West – most notably in the foremost Yoruba cities of Ibadan and Lagos. Large masses of uneducated youths from the North are flooding into Yoruba cities. Most come to operate Okada (commercial motorcycle). Many are frequently observed arriving in trucks in Lagos and Ibadan accompanied by the bikes that have been bought for them in the North.

As a result of all these developments, there is growing fear among the people of Lagos City, Lagos State and all the rest of the Yoruba homeland that some big attack on peace looms over their future. The spirit of self-defence is therefore growing very massively. The widespread belief that the Federal Government would not defend the victims of the attack is seriously energising the growth of the spirit of self-defence.

Meanwhile, the rampages are imperceptibly but surely adding to poverty in all parts of Nigeria. With farming and travelling being widely disrupted and with many farmers abandoning farming, Nigeria faces the danger of food insecurity and an escalation in the number of people living in absolute poverty. Sharp declines in food production in the Middle Belt and in Yorubaland itself could affect Lagos City, Lagos State and the whole of Yoruba land very seriously and could dramatically degrade the peace of Lagos City, Lagos State and all of Yoruba land.

I must now end this speech by directing specific messages to our people of Lagos City and State and, by association, to all our people in Yorubaland – and ultimately to Nigeria. First, a message for the leaders and people of Lagos State: It is an obvious fact that the progress, success and peace of Lagos City and state in the past 20 years have owed much to the state’s orderliness and stability in governance. As a keenly observant elder among my people, I acclaim the fact that Lagos State has enjoyed admirable stability and orderliness in its changes of rulers and in its general tenor of government – in times when most other Nigerian states have stumbled pitifully. This has contributed enormously to Lagos State’s socio-economic progress in general and to the peace that has fairly consistently belonged to Lagos. I urge the leaders and people of Lagos State to sustain and preserve this enviable record.

Second, since our quest in this event is the building of peace in our country, I must, with love and candour, now address our Fulani compatriots and brothers. The only way to arrest the slippage of Nigeria into a sudden escalation of poverty, massive and widespread violence, or even total chaos, is that you, our Fulani brothers, must call off this campaign of killing, kidnapping, maiming and destroying in our country. The outcome of it cannot breed any good for you or for any other Nigerian people. Your conquest of Nigeria or of any significant part of Nigeria is impossible. You do not possess the capability for any meaningful or sustainable conquest; and the ethnic owners of Nigeria’s hundreds of ancestral homelands are too strong to be dislodged or suppressed in their homelands. An old-time kind of tribal conquest is impossible today in Nigeria. No ethnic group commands a monopoly of violence. It is not good for you, our Fulani brothers, to make yourselves chronic enemies of all the non-Fulani peoples of Nigeria.

All that this campaign can achieve is continual escalation of insecurity, poverty and hate in Nigeria and the speeding of Nigeria towards its terminal implosion and dissolution. Even if Nigeria somehow manages to hold together as one country in this storm (which is unlikely), it could descend into a land of hideous barbarism – a land not worthy to be called home by any self-respecting person in the modern world.

Third, a message to the large population of non-Yoruba immigrants, mostly from Southern Nigeria, in Lagos City, Lagos State and the rest of Yoruba land: While most of you have usually settled peacefully, done your businesses or jobs and raised your families, it has not always been easy for some immigrantsto maintain cordial relations with their Yoruba hosts. Occasionally, the rude and acrimonious character of Nigerian politics and inter-group relations creep in. But, happily, matters have never gone beyond crude verbal exchanges and all concerned deserve to be congratulated for that.

Fourth, a special message for the large masses of youths who have been streaming in from the North: No matter what anybody might have indoctrinated you to come and do in Yoruba land, you are mature enough to chart the direction of your own life and to respond constructively to the things that you see around you. You have come to the homeland of the Yoruba people, a homeland where you may practice your religion without hindrance or opposition, a land where, if you handle your relations with people carefully, you can get a lot of assistance from your hosts and you can go on and prosper.

Examples are very many of poor illiterate youths who have come to Lagos or Ibadan or any other Yoruba city and have grown up to be men and women of substance in the world. You can achieve what such people achieved. It is a venture much more rewarding than making yourselves tools waiting to be used to kill, maim and destroy. Decide to prove wrong all those people who fear that you have come to Lagos or any other city of Yorubaland to hurt and kill people and to contribute to a general collapse of society. Do not choose to kill and be killed violently on city streets where you could prosper and shine. Yoruba cities and towns are very ancient organisms; they command too much inner strength to be wrecked by any crowd of desperados.

Finally, a message to the leadership of the Yoruba nation: We Yoruba are the inheritors of one of the foremost harmony-conscious heritages in the world. Let us hold well that which we have. Let us have the courage to resist whatever threatens to destroy our heritage and peace. For more than 1000 years, our homeland has been a land of an expanding urban civilization. Our cities are situated usually not far from each other. Commonly, a backwoods area stands between cities. If one views Yorubaland from far in space, one would see patches of woodland with large cities dotting the edges of each of the woodlands. It is in those woodlands that our people make farms to produce sustenance and wealth. Here and there, inside every woodland there are hamlets, farmsteads and huts, marking the workplaces of countless numbers of our farming folks. To ask us to make room for enclaves for nomadic cattle rearing in our homeland is to ask us to give up our woodlands to nomadic cow rearers and throw large numbers of our people into abject poverty. It is also to ask us to push back on our civilized life in order to make room for a primitive existence.

Insecurity nationwide: Where is President Buhari?

Finally, from what the Fulani herdsmen and militias are doing today, we can see clearly that any Fulani enclaves in our homeland will be centres of violence, of intimidation of neighbouring farming folks and communities and centres from which chaos and instability will radiate out over large areas. Altogether, the demand that we should allow enclaves for Fulani nomadic cattle grazing to be carved out in our homeland is a hideously insensitive demand and we must muster the strength to reject and resist it definitively.

To succeed in rejecting and resisting it, we must re-orientate our approach to our state governors. We have a whole lot to thank our many civic organisations for in this resistance to the invasion of our homeland – our OPC, Agbekoya, Yorubakoya, YOLICOM, several self-determination groups, Afenifere, ARG, Voice of Reason and many more. But, in the final analysis, our state governors are our frontline of defence and we need to try hard to understand the situation in which they stand. Under the current chaotic and impunity-ridden unitary constitution and governance of Nigeria, all power and control in Nigeria reside in the hands of those who control the federal establishment in Abuja. Each governor, to be able to rule in his state at all, must cautiously manage his relations with the Abuja federal community.

So now, each of our state governors finds himself perched between the jaws of a pair of nutcrackers. While the Abuja controllers demand that each governor must grant land in his state for cattle colonies, our people are threatening fire and brimstone if any governor grants even one square inch of Yorubaland. Certainly, our state governors are our own men and none of them would consent to having our Yorubaland overrun by anybody. Already, they are coming together to evolve policies for the defence of our homeland. Therefore, I humbly propose that we leaders and people of the Yoruba nation should come close to our state governors and give them support, for the purpose of giving them confidence and strength to reject the Abuja demands.

I also propose that we should encourage our governors to promote, urgently, the establishment of modern ranches by our own entrepreneurs in our homeland. This should be done with consummate sensitivity to our people’s farming and settlement patterns in our woodlands. Some three or four modern ranches in each of our states will do. In this way, we will open new business and job opportunities for our people, produce beef and dairy products for home consumption and for export and eliminate in our homeland the need for cows reared by nomadic cattle herders.

In summary, I hope and pray that the current crisis will amicably resolve itself. I am confident that, if we Yoruba have to fight to protect our homeland, we will do it absolutely successfully. But I am sure that we command the cultural capabilities to navigate through this crisis mostly peacefully, with little or no further damage to peace in our Lagos and in the rest of our homeland.

Comments

comments