The Yoruba Self-Determination Movement, led by Prof Banji Akintoye and Chief Sunday Adeyemo, alias Sunday Igboho, has written an open letter to President Bola Tinubu, seeking a peaceful breakaway of Yoruba people from Nigeria.
The open letter, dated April 17, 2024, was signed by both Akintoye, Igboho and one Ola Ademola.
They known as on the President to within the next two months arrange a negotiation team to negotiate the exit of the Yoruba folks from Nigeria.
The letter by the Yoruba Nation arrowheads came a few week after some armed agitators invaded the Oyo State Government Home, making an attempt to hoist their flag on the premises of the state House of Assembly.
The agitators have been subdued and 29 of them have been final week taken before a magistrates’ court in Ibadan, which ordered that they need to be remanded within the prison custody.
Each Akintoye and Igboho dissociated themselves from the violent motion.
Nevertheless, of their open letter made out there to our correspondent in Ibadan on Sunday, the Yoruba Self-Determination Movement, mentioned, “We’ve got the honour to ship to Your Excellency this necessary letter on behalf of the many hundreds of thousands of Yoruba people at house in Yorubaland in Nigeria and within the Yoruba Diaspora in almost all countries across the world.
“We ship this letter as a follow-up to our earlier letter, dated August 06, 2022, which we delivered to your predecessor, President Muhammadu Buhari, in his exalted place then as President of Nigeria.
“Since 2015, the Fulani have been killing broadly among the many different peoples of Nigeria, together with us Yoruba, destroying farms, villages and different belongings, kidnapping males, ladies and kids, extorting giant quantities of cash as ransom from family and friends of the kidnapped, and repeatedly asserting their intention to grab the homelands of all of the indigenous peoples of Nigeria for the aim of turning all right into a Fulani homeland.”
The group mentioned within the Center Belt, horrendous blood-letting was happening with many families pressured into Internally Displaced Individuals Camps whereas lots of their villages have been seized by the Fulani and renamed as Fulani villages.
“In our Yoruba homeland, our persons are resisting considerably higher, however the Fulani attacks and killings and kidnappings are unrelenting and are coming day by day, resulting in horrific instability, and forcing most of our farmers to desert farming altogether, thereby dooming Yoruba people to years and years of famine.”
It additional alleged that an unofficial estimate showed that Fulani had killed as many as 29,000 Yoruba folks since 2015 until date, including that aforementioned causes have been sufficient for them to hunt breakaway from Nigeria.
“All these actions by the Fulani are, to us Yoruba, a ample motive for our in search of to separate our Yoruba Nation from Nigeria. Most of us, Yoruba haven’t any confidence within the ‘restructuring’ that a few of our most revered Yoruba leaders (corresponding to our fathers in our extremely exalted Afenifere) are advocating.
“And our motive is that we all know that restructuring can not preserve the Fulani marauders away from our homeland. Since, after restructuring, the Fulani would nonetheless be Nigerians like us, and would nonetheless have full residents’ rights to return in giant numbers, and with weapons and intent to kill and destroy and seize land, to our homeland.
“The Fulani elite appear to be saying in impact that they intend to make Nigeria ungovernable for President Tinubu, and that they might by no means settle for any official motion of his.
“We’re performing for and on behalf of our 60 million Yoruba folks of the Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, and Oyo State, respectively, plus the Yoruba Local Government Areas of Kogi and Kwara State, and plus the Itshekiri homeland of Delta State, all collectively constituting the Yorubaland in Nigeria, hereby most humbly place our crowning request earlier than Your Excellency as follows:
“That the Nigerian Federal Government shall, throughout the subsequent two months, however not later than June 15, 2024, inform us Yoruba Self-determination Motion that the Nigerian Federal Government has graciously agreed to our proposal for negotiation and that they’ve arrange a negotiation team that may meet and have a dialogue with our Yoruba Nation’s negotiation team.
“That the Nigerian Federal Government shall invite the United Nations, African Union and the Economic Community of West African States, to ship observers to the negotiation meetings.”
It, due to this fact, promised to ahead the listing of its negotiation group to the government as quickly because it received a message in response to its request for the negotiation.
