As Sowore Goes To Court Today, Yoruba Race Under Siege…Time To Go Our Separate Ways By Bayo Oluwasanmi
The politics of ethnicity has remarkably slow our national development and has remained the sole engine that drives our modern history.
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Nigeria came into being as a result of the British amalgamation of Northern and Southern colonial territories in 1914. The amalgamation was an act of colonial convenience for obvious reasons. The Brits wanted one country stretching from the desert to the Atlantic Coast.
Northern Nigeria couldn’t pay its way while southern Nigeria generated more than enough revenue for its administrative expenses.
The amalgamation laid the historical bitterness, rivalry, and enmity between the two colonial territories. The two colonies are quite the opposite of one another. The North is largely Muslim. It was the center of the erstwhile Islamic Empire called the Sokoto Caliphate.
The Muslim North looks up to the Middle East and other parts of the Muslim world for affinity, solidarity, and sociopolitical model. The South is largely Christian and highly influenced by the sociopolitical pattern of the West and traditional African societies. This was the beginning of a precarious foundation of our federalism.
The foundations of true federalism are based on the concerns for the unity and integrity of a culturally diverse nation like ours. Our historical experience is a sharp contrast to the important foundations of federalism. Ours is a disruptive and disintegrative sectarian forces coupled with political rancor and instability prevailing since independence.
The lopsided power-sharing arrangement between the federal government and the states fuels precipitation and intensification of ethnic conflicts. The politics of ethnicity has remarkably slow our national development and has remained the sole engine that drives our modern history. The unjust monopoly of power and resources by the central government has galvanized the federating states to advocate for the restructuring of the federal system. The Northerners have never favored restructuring because the status quo guarantees them a perpetual hold on power and monopoly of resources at the center.
Of the 58 years of independence, the northerners have been in political and economic control of the central government for 40 years.
They have always found it compelling to capture the central government. Indeed, they believe in the self-fulfilling prophecy that
they “are born to rule Nigeria” forever. The arrogation and arrogance to be in perpetual control of the central government have further marginalized other federating units in the union.
In all the years they have been in power at the center, the northerners have used diverse strategies and tactics to maintain and
perpetuate the grip on power at the federal level. For 40 years they have been responsible for the economic neglect and infrastructural decay of Nigeria. Full of monumental incompetence, they are the unrepentant pirates and predators of our economy. Because of their long hold on power at the center, they, more than any other ethnic group in Nigeria, hindered the process of national development and integration.
For all these years, the northerners who headed the central government are icons of corruption. National funds allocated for developments never reached the target groups and purpose.
Agreed all the different ethnicities that have served as Nigeria’s Heads of State or Presidents have performed woefully abysmal. However, the northerners who have been in charge for most of the years are the most generously deficient in democratic leadership. They lack sacrifice, courage, initiative, imagination, wisdom, and vision. The northerners have exhibited crass incompetence more profoundly than any of the groups because they have no idea of what participatory
leadership, servant leadership, transformation leadership, super-leadership, and value leadership mean.
They have consistently opposed progressive ideas that would chip away their hold on the center. The northerners have always fought against everything progressive and prosperous for true federalism. They oppose devolution of power (restructure), resource control, derivation principle, revenue sharing formula, state police, and the development and exploitation of mineral resources nationwide. In fact, they want the current 13 percent derivation to be further reduced.
The latest assault from the Fulani hegemonic morons is coming from Emperor Muhammadu Buhari who has completely dismantled the bedrock of our democracy: the rule of law. As if under a spell, Nigerians watch helplessly without putting up any fight, the abrogation of any semblance of rule of law by Buhari. Framed on trumped-up charges, Omoyele Sowore, the pro-democracy activist and former presidential candidate will be arraigned in court today. Sowore is standing trial
on 7-count charge for treason, money laundering, insulting the president, among others. He has been detained for almost 60 days.
Emperor Buhari, a Sunni Muslim, refused to release Sowore on bail as ruled by the court. We consider the systemic persecution and oppression of Sowore as a declaration of war against the Yoruba race.
To Yoruba bastards, prodigals, crumb eaters, backstabbers, traitors, alatenujes, and akindanidanis and others who hold cabinet positions in Buhari administration are the willing allies and ready tools in the hands of Buhari. I have a word for you: Stop selling your birthrights for a bowl of amala. Stop playing second fiddle to Buhari. Stop selling your own people to Buhari and Fulani terrorists. Now is the time for all Yorubas regardless of party persuasion and religious affiliation to come together and fight the Fulani oppressors and get out of this doomed nation… It’s Oduduwa or nothing else!
This is it. The battle lines are drawn. Yorubas, consider this: Why should we continue to elect these political parasites into office
whose agenda is not the Nigerian agenda? Why should we abdicate leadership of this nation to the narrow-minded, selfish, power-hungry feudal imperialists? What are we doing with northerners known for their deformed vision and spineless leadership?
Yoruba Ronu!