By Suyi Ayodele
The tiger approaches the dog for a game. It offers its tail to the dog to touch and play with. The innocent dog, thinking that it has a new buddy, wags its own tail in amusement. Every elder around watches the dangerous offer with bated breath. They asked rhetorically: what manner of play can the dog possibly engage in with the tiger (eré kí ni ajá únbá ekùn se)? Every seeming conviviality between the two four-legged creatures always ends up bloody for the dog. That has been the case from time immemorial. In the wild, while other carnivorous animals leave the leftovers of the prey for lesser ones to feed on, the tiger is not blessed with such generosity. Like the python, the tiger leaves no leftovers. That is why it is saluted as Ekùn a je eran, je egungun (the tiger which eats both flesh and bones). So, you may wish to wonder what benefits the dog will derive from any relationship with the tiger? The tiger is pathologically belligerent; you don’t blame it for that. It is its nature . It needs no friends and makes none.
Wisdom is never in short supply in Yorubaland. No! It has never been! Elders too abound to teach moral lessons from their past experiences. The problem with the South- nature West at the moment is the greed of its political class. Those with crass ambition are the ones calling the shots in the region at the moment. They are the gang of the end-justifies-the means, who can do anything to achieve their set goals- goals which ultimately are self-serving. Nothing is too big for these dregs of humanity to sacrifice as long as they get whatever they desire. The entire Yoruba race can go into slavery for all they care. What matters to them is their ambition. Why people are not seeing this or pretend not to see it, baffles me.
The next round of general election will be held in 2027, which is some three years and a few months away. However, the battle for the soul of Nigeria has begun in earnest. There is no pretence about the fact that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is desperate for 2027. Only the Almighty God stands between him and his second term; nothing else, at least within the power of mortals. Tinubu will do anything to get his second term. He will sell where he needs to sell, buy what he needs to buy. Nothing will be too precious for him to trade off. He will be mean where meanness is required and meek where meekness is desired. The battle for 2027 is not for the weak. It is like a forest where only the strong-hearted (odaju) can foray. To achieve the aim, a lot of things will be sacrificed. People will equally be sacrificed. Old ties will be broken, and new ones knotted. Ex-foes will become friends, and old friends will be dispensed with. That is the way of ambition. The end will always justify the means. There will be nothing permanent; there will be nothing indispensable; Yoruba race inclusive. A man like Tinubu does not dwell on past achievements. He is like the sound of the proverbial dane gun. Ò kù ni ìbon úndún (there is something else is the sound the gun gives). Winning the 2023 presidential election is just a launching pad to him. When a child sets his mind at ascending his father’s throne, every item on his way becomes a transactional instrument to achieve his aim. In one of the essays submitted to the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), one of the candidates has this to say of ambition: “Humans are greedy creatures. Nothing will be enough for them….” The beat has started. Like the fox that he is in the Nigerian political space, Tinubu has started to test the waters. He is doing this indirectly and directly. He was in Ibadan last Saturday, April 20, 2024. No, Tinubu was not in Ibadan in flesh and blood. His men were there to set the stage. He was adequately represented by his blood too, the first product of his loins; Mrs. Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, the Iyaloja General of Nigeria.
Ibadan is crucial to the Yoruba race. Whatever is sealed and delivered in the city of Iba Oluyole is sure to be delivered in every nook and cranny of Yorubaland. That was why a group of people, operating under the auspices of Commodities Farmers’ Organisation in the South-West, gathered to sign an ‘agreement’ with the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), on peaceful co-existence between Yoruba farmers and the itinerant Fulani herdsmen, otherwise known as herdsmen. The leader of the Commodities Farmers Organisation, one Olusegun Dasaolu, speaking at the event, which was held at the International Conference Centre, University of Ibadan, said: “We have signed the peace pact to put a stop to farmers/herders’ clashes. The first step we are going to take is to identify who are genuine herders in the South-West. We have also agreed together to collect or collate data in that regard.” He added that the ‘agreement’ would ensure “that the South-West farmers return to the farm, and also to promote food security in the country….” By that statement, Dasaolu and his promoters recognised that South-West farmers were off their farms because of the issue of incessant clashes with herdsmen. So, in Dasaolu’s reckoning, for the Yoruba farmers to return to their farms in their ancestral land, there must be an agreement with the herdsmen. He talked about “collecting or collating” data of the herders to identify “genuine herders”. Yet, this sudden commodities farmer never realised that the first step that the late Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), the former governor of Ondo State took was to ask herders in the state’s forests to come out and be registered. It was when that call was not heeded that Akeredolu mobilised his fellow South-West governors, with the exception of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State -who for obvious reason was not committed to the idea- to form the Amotekun Corps, which has been doing a yeoman’s job in the entire Yorubaland. The question is, how come that suddenly, the Miyetti Allah group that would not obey a state governor was now dancing Fuji ropopo in Ibadan because of a Dasaolu? I will not be tempted here to ask: “who bankrolled” the Ibadan peace ’agreement’?
He who forgets history is bound to repeat it. When history repeats itself, it does so in a more devastating form and format. History is about to repeat itself in the entire Yorubaland. Unless something is done before it is hatched, the entire Kaaro Oojire (Yoruba Race) will lose its existence to the Fulani expansionist movement. That is what the Dasaolu ‘agreement’ with his new friends in MACBAN led by the group’s National President, Othman Ngelzarma, is all about. The impending calamities embedded in the ‘agreement’ will happen to the Yoruba race all because President Tinubu wants a second term, and nothing more! Anyone can dispute this assertion. Time will tell. Pity! What Uthman Dan Fodio and his expansionist army could not achieve on the back of horses with deadly arrows and swords is what Tinubu and Dasaolu are giving to the descendants of Fodio before our very eyes!
The agreement last Saturday between the Commodities Farmers’ Organisation and Miyetti Allah is a dangerous agreement. It is an agreement that will bring no peace because the other party does not understand the language of peace. Whoever midwifed the misadventure; whoever piloted the bad episode, must either be ignorant (which I doubt), or mischievous (which is most likely), but certainly greedy and unfeeling. The bad ‘agreement’ is like a loaded gun. Elders of my place say kò sí omo rere nínú ìbon (a loaded gun gives birth to no good offspring). Check history very well. The Fulani stock has no history of fidelity to agreements. The entire Hausa land which allowed them any leverage in the past, are living in servitude today. Yoruba lost Ilorin to the descendants of Dan Fodio because Afonja signed an agreement with Alimi. When the time came for his ‘friend’ to eliminate him, Afonja’s body was pierced with so many poisonous arrows such that he died standing as the arrows maintained equilibrium for him! When he was found to be dead, his corpse was burnt by the Fulani soldiers who acted under the supervision of Alimi! Dasaolu should take some time off his ‘farm’ and read a bit of our history. He will learn that it is foolish for a man to use his two hands to locate the head of a cobra in the burrow.
The Yoruba, at the moment, have a bigger challenge at hand. The penultimate Saturday’s unsuccessful invasion of the Oyo State Secretariat by miscreants who plied the name of Yoruba Nation agitators is enough wahala. The task before the six states of the South-West, and their brothers in Kwara and Kogi States is to identify every operational cell of these dregs of humanity and flush them out. They cannot afford to add a covert RUGA engagement to that. There is no need to look for a pseudonym to describe the ‘agreement’ with Miyetti Allah; it is pure RUGA. If Mrs. Folasade Tinubu-Ojo, who supervised the ‘agreement’ for her father pretended not to know, the rest of us should let her realise that we know what it is. It is slavery dressed in the garb of peace. What kind of peace does a man need such that he offers his father’s shrine to a stranger to defecate? What is the content of the ‘agreement’? Is it in line with the counsel given by Femi Adesina during the administration of Muhammadu Buhari that for us to live, we should give up our ancestral land to herdsmen? By this new ‘agreement’, does it mean that herders will have free access to our farmlands? Are we ready to give up anything so that our son can have a second term? Is that the new ill-wind blowing our way?
Let us get it right. Yoruba are not that naive. Our forebears handed us an egalitarian society. They were not cowards. They sacrificed a lot to ensure that the boast of dipping the Quran into the Atlantic did not materialise in their time. What Buhari tried unsuccessfully to achieve in eight years is what some greedy elements are offering their Fulani lords on a platter of gold. They have forgotten the caution of our elders to wit: ohun tí ehín tè tí ò ké, owó èékáná ò ka (whatever the teeth press and does not moan is not an assignment for the fingernails). Those who signed the Ibadan ‘agreement’ with Miyetti Allah are no farmers. I doubt if they can even stalk cassava stems correctly. What is propelling them is greed. They are all Mr. Giwas (traders). They represent nobody; at least not the farmers in my home state of Ekiti. What is the size of Dasaolu’s plantation, if any? What is the population of his Commodities Farmers’ Organisation? Who does he speak for and on whom is the ‘agreement’ binding?
President Tinubu has a maximum of eight years to rule, if he wins his second term in 2027. He cannot afford to sell an entire race into slavery in the name of an asinine ‘agreement’ with a truculent group like the Miyetti Allah. What this agreement portends is peace of the graveyard. It should, and must be resisted by all men of good conscience. Those who want herdsmen to have free access to their homestead can do so without dragging the entire clan into such an imprudent venture. The labour of our heroes’ past should not be in vain. Imagine that the late Akeredolu has not even completed his registration among the Saints in heaven and this is already happening to the good fight he dedicated the latter part of his life to fighting! It is indeed true that a home is settled only when the illegitimate child has not come of age.
We shall go beyond asking the Alálè Yoruba to visit those behind this plot to enslave the Yoruba race in the 21st century with their fiercest ire. We must equally resist them, vehemently, I dare say! This is not a call to arms; it is one of our minimum obligations under a democratic setting. May the spirits of those who have gone before us fight those who want to hand over our children as slaves to those who never conquered our forebears. Standing on the authority of Alaafin Aole, we declare to those behind trading our land off on the field of politics that: when they walk on Yoruba land, may they hear the sounds of the footsteps of the invisible; when they eat, may they never be filled; when they drink water, may they remain thirsty! May Oduduwa Atewonro, and Agboniregun join forces to turn their days to night! Ase waa!