Eric Leader of the Yoruba self-determination Movement, Ilana Omo Oodua, Prof Banji Akintoye shares his thoughts with DANIEL AYANTOYE on the group’s letter to President Bola Tinubu for the establishment of a negotiation committee for the Yoruba nation, among other issues
In a letter to President Bola Tinubu recently, your group asked for a peaceful breakaway of Yoruba people from Nigeria. What informed this decision?
We have studied the world situation concerning breaking away and so on, and we have found that the ones who approach their struggle peacefully and in a law-abiding manner are more likely to succeed. The others who fought and threatened their government and said nasty things about other people and the government are unlikely to succeed. So, we decided to follow the line that promises success.
Your group gave the President two months to set up a committee to negotiate the exit of the Yoruba people. What are the areas you expect the committee to look at?
When they invite us to negotiate, we will negotiate the things that will make it possible for us to leave (Nigeria) without any encumbrance. For instance, Nigeria has some debt. If we leave Nigeria, then some decision will have to be taken about how much of the debt would be allocated to the Yoruba. It has to be negotiated carefully.
Also, since there are assets, we will negotiate how much of those assets will go with us. There has to be an agreement to create friendly relations in the new Nigerian space. We pledged in our letter that we would make sure that our new country helped other people. We have looked very carefully, and we are ready to do it. Those are the kinds of things that we will have to settle with the negotiation committee.
But what if the negotiation committee refused to allow the Yoruba people to go, what will your group do?
If they say we should not leave, they have a right to say that. But we will tell them that their statement is not final. We will continue to seek other ways to leave.
Your demand came barely a few days after you distanced your group from the invasion of the Oyo State Secretariat by a group of camouflage-wearing persons. Why did this happen almost at the same time?
No, we were already preparing our letter; we’ve been working on those letters for months. Onitiri (Modupe Onitiri-Abiola) has this habit of eavesdropping and finding out that we are about to do something, and then she will do another to intercept our action. But we have decided not to let that bother us anymore. Whatever we plan to do, we go ahead and do it.
Some political analysts have described what they did as a treasonable offence. Do you subscribe to such a position?
They committed treason. She made a statement that she had taken over the government of Yoruba land in Nigeria. She brought somebody sworn in as interim prime minister known as Adele in Yoruba language, and she sent some boys to go and take over the government in Ibadan. All of that together amounts to treason.
Twenty-nine of them were arrested and remanded in the prison custody. Are you not concerned with what they are going through especially because they are supporters of the same cause?
I am concerned about the welfare of every Yoruba person, but they have handled their matter in such a way that we cannot help them. Treason is the highest offence under the law of every country on earth. When you commit treason, you have committed the highest offence imaginable in that country. So, we who are their people cannot help them.
But will you urge the government to probably temper justice with mercy and release them?
It is very risky to do that now. When the government is handling treason charges against some people, and you, their brother, father, and friend, are telling the government to temper justice with mercy, you don’t know what the reaction of the government is. So, it’s better not to mess around.
Will you say Onitiri-Abiola lacks the right to make such a declaration, even when she is one of your members?
Nobody has the right to make that kind of declaration; nobody!
Some have called for her arrest. Are you in support of that?
Let the law take its cause. I do not add to it and I do not subtract from it.
The son of MKO Abiola, Jamiu, in a recent interview, said the family was not in support of a Yoruba nation. Are you not concerned with the development?
I’m not concerned. Everybody has a right to be for or against the Yoruba Nation. That’s the right of everybody. What is important to me is what we are doing, I am also interested in what our chances look like. Our chances as of now look very good.
In the letter, your group said it had earlier sent a letter to former President Muhammadu Buhari while he was in office. Why did you think the letter was ignored by Buhari?
It was not ignored. We know that he received it and he expressed concern immediately he did, but a few weeks after, we heard that the posture in Abuja was that a major election was on the way and that was not the time to enter into a major thing we were asking for.
There are concerns about why the call for a Yoruba nation is coming again, especially since a Yoruba man is now the President. Did this not cross your mind at any point?
A President of Nigeria is a President of Nigeria. That’s all. I won’t say more than that.
But do you see him (President Bola Tinubu) possibly approving the breakaway of Yoruba people from Nigeria since he is currently in power?
He may not assent to it, but we need to make our case so that the international community will know that we want our country.
Some said the renewed agitation is targeted at the President. How true is that?
We didn’t fight Buhari, why would we be fighting our man? We’re not fighting people. We’re not fighting the government. We are just making a statement. Nigeria has become the kind of country we do not want to belong to anymore. That’s all. It has nothing to do with any person.
There appears to be confusion among Yoruba leaders because while you are advocating Yoruba Nation, Afenifere is calling for restructuring. Why is this so?
There is no confusion, Afenifere is calling for restructuring. It’s not entirely unreasonable because they say that when we lived in a region of our own, under Chief (Obafemi) Awolowo, we were prospering more than the rest of Africa. So, we want to go back to that. That’s not an unreasonable thing to say. However, we look a little deeper than that. We believe that if we were to return to the regions of the 1950s and we were managing our affairs, several things would be possible. One, we did not commit any offence in 1962 before the heads of Nigeria ganged up against us and declared a state of emergency in Nigeria in the southwestern part of Nigeria and put our leader in prison.
It was an entirely political thing. The British had helped the Fulani to rig the election of 1959. An election was coming in 1964. Would they be able to hold a man like Awolowo down and not be able to rig the election against him then? The answer is no; there was no way. The western region was too solid and powerful, and Chief Awolowo was leading the region of the west, and he was the best politician in the country. He had conducted elections in 1959 that nobody had ever conducted anywhere in Africa.
So, if he came back as ruler of the western region and as leader of the western region and he was to conduct the same level, the same highly sophisticated, powerful election campaign as he did in 1959, would the northerners be able to resist him? The answer was to disrupt his western region and disrupt his life before the 1964 election. And that’s what they did. What is our guarantee that that cannot be done to us again in the future? We don’t have a guarantee.
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