<\/p>\n
By: Femi Fani-Kayode
\nPermit me to begin this contribution with an aside. The barbarians that
\nlaunched a terror attack in Westminster, London yesterday in which four
\npeople were killed and many more injured are the same type of people that
\nattacked and beheaded the sons and daughters of Ile Ife in their own homes
\nand on their own land earlier this month.<\/p>\n
They are also the same type of people that butchered the people of
\nSouthern Kaduna on\u00a0 Christmas eve and Christmas day, that massacred the
\npeople of Agatu last year and that butchered the people of Zaki Biam a few
\ndays ago.<\/p>\n
They are kindred spirits with those that have dedicated their lives to
\nviolence, carnage and cold-blooded murder and terror is their language.<\/p>\n
My heart goes out to the people of London and indeed the whole of the
\nUnited Kingdom. May the souls of those that were killed rest in peace.<\/p>\n
Now to the meat of this essay. Let me make myself clear right from the
\noutset. I do not regard the gallant sons and daughters of Ile Ife that
\nwere arrested, taken to Abuja and shamelessly paraded before the
\ntelevision cameras and the media by the Nigerian police a few days ago as
\nviolent criminals or murderers: I regard them as prisoners of war.<\/p>\n
I do not believe that they have done ANYTHING wrong other than perhaps
\ndefend themselves and their community from a vicious and barbaric attack
\nfrom a bunch of merciless and blood thirsty barbarians and I believe that
\nat the end of the day they will be vindicated and set free.<\/p>\n
I must commend Afenifere for not only stepping into the matter
\nexpeditiously and putting the Nigerian police and the Federal Government
\non notice but also for raising a powerful team of 21 Yoruba lawyers, which
\nincludes Wole Olanipekun SAN and the great Ahmed Raji SAN, to defend them.<\/p>\n
It is no longer news that no Hausa\/Fulani person has been picked up,
\ndetained, paraded before the television cameras or slated for prosecution
\nby the police after the carnage that they unleashed on our people.<\/p>\n
Many sons and daughters of Ife were brutalised and slaughtered in the
\ncrisis and yet the police have not arrested any Hausa\/Fulani man or woman.
\nCan you believe that? That is President Buhari’s Nigeria for you.<\/p>\n
One wonders if the police are trying to suggest that the gallant Ifes that
\nfell and lost their lives during the course of the battle actually killed
\nthemselves?<\/p>\n
Are they trying to suggest that nobody from the Hausa Fulani community
\ncommitted any crime? Are they trying to suggest that the Hausa Fulani did
\nnot provoke the whole incident and draw first blood? This shameless pefidy
\nis wholeheartedly unacceptable.<\/p>\n
The whole crisis started when members of the Hausa Fulani community beat
\nup a young Yoruba woman and stabbed her husband. They went further by
\nkilling another young man and displaying his badly mutilated body all over
\ntown in a wheelbarrow.<\/p>\n
Finally they publicly beheaded yet another young man and jubilantly
\nparaded his head in triumph on a long pole through the streets of the
\nHausa Fulani community in Ife known as Sabo.<\/p>\n
The good people of Ile Ife, rightly, found this affront outrageous and
\nunacceptable and they reacted violently. At the end of the day many people
\non both sides of the divide and FAR MORE than the police and the Nigerian
\nmedia dare or care to admit were killed. Furthermore virtually the whole
\nof Sabo was burnt to the ground.<\/p>\n
These are the facts yet sadly the handling of the whole matter by the
\nFederal Government and the way that they have distorted the facts,
\nbefuddled the issues and established a false and misleading narrative
\nbetrays a high level of deceit, deception and partiality.<\/p>\n
The police should not be selective in this matter and the Federal
\nGovernment needs to be careful with the way it treats Yoruba people.<\/p>\n
If nothing else the events of 1966, 1983 and 1993, all in the south west,
\nwhich brought our country to a standstill, truncuated democracy and
\nresulted in horrendous violence and a change of government proves that.<\/p>\n
The truth is simple and clear: when it comes to a fight the Yoruba never
\nback down and neither do they bow down to an insult or turn their backs on
\na challenge.<\/p>\n
Afenifere has spoken for us all.\u00a0 Gani Adams of the OPC has done the same
\nand so has the reverred Pa Ayo Adebanjo who has been in active politics
\nfor the last 67 years and who has seen it all.<\/p>\n
I have also spoken in a two-part article titled “The Hausa Fulani, The
\nYoruba and The Slaughter In Ile-Ife” and so have many others.
\nAnd what we are all saying is simple and clear: the Yoruba will not accept
\na situation whereby we are made second-class citizens in our own country.<\/p>\n
If you do not accept that we are all equal before the law and before God,
\nthen we will no longer accept the concept or notion of one Nigeria. It is
\nas simple as that.<\/p>\n
When these same Hausa Fulani people slaughtered the indegenees and people
\nof Southern Kaduna, Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Kogi, Kwara, Abia, Enugu,
\nDelta, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Lagos and elsewhere none of them were arrested.<\/p>\n
The police did not parade them before television cameras, they did not
\narrest their Emirs, their traditional title holders or their sons and
\ndaughters and they did not claim that they had committed heinous crimes.<\/p>\n
As a matter of fact in most cases it was their victims and those\u00a0 that
\nthey attacked that were rounded up and arrested simply for defending
\nthemselves.<\/p>\n
This has to stop because that is what the police are doing in Ile Ife.
\nThey are rounding\u00a0 up the victims and claiming that they were the
\naggressors and they are protecting the aggressors.<\/p>\n
This\u00a0 is reckless and dangerous. The Federal Government is playing with
\nfire. And as Yinka Odumakin, the spokesman of Afenifere, wisely counselled
\njust two days ago, the Buhari administration would do well “not to pull
\nthe Yoruba tiger’s tale”.<\/p>\n
Yet sadly, as serious as this whole matter is,
\nsome irresponsible miscreants and shameless elements in our midst, both in
\nthe government, the media and in the political class, have said that the
\nwhole thing was not an ethnic crisis and conflagration but rather a clash
\nbetween a handful of Yoruba and Hausa Fulani miscreants and touts.<\/p>\n
They have run to their friends in certain sections of the media who are
\nmore than ready to feed the Nigerian people with their usual “fake news”
\nand false narrative in a scurrilous and futile attempt to becloud the
\nfundamental issues and cover the whole thing up.<\/p>\n
Yet if this is not an ethnic clash I wonder what is? You have the Yorubas
\non one side and the Hausa Fulani on the other. Both sides lost many people
\nin the fighting. Then at the end of it all you only arrest the Yoruba and
\nsay it was not an ethnic clash.<\/p>\n
You also arrest a Yoruba traditional ruler from Ile-Ife, Oba Ademiluyi,
\nremove his beaded crown, handcuff him, take him to Abuja and parade him on
\nnational television as a murderer. One wonders whether he too can be
\ndescribed as a “tout and a miscreant?”<\/p>\n
This whole affair and the way the authorities are handling it is utterly
\nsordid and one is constrained to ask the following question: who is
\nfooling who?<\/p>\n
This shameless cover up by the Federal Government and the Nigerian police
\nhas to stop.<\/p>\n
This dangerous recourse to political\u00a0 correctness by the friends and
\nfunctionaries of the Buhari administration and this perfidious attempt to
\nbury the whole matter and cover up the atrocities of the usual suspects
\nalso has to stop.<\/p>\n
Let us admit that we have a major problem on our hands and that in order
\nto solve that problem the Government must stop protecting those who are in
\nthe habit of attacking and killing people that welcome them with open arms
\nand allow them to settle in their communities.<\/p>\n
The application of selective justice and the toleration of genocide, mass
\nmurder and ethnic cleansing by the Buhari administration must stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Femi Fani-Kayode Permit me to begin this contribution with an aside. The barbarians that launched a terror attack in Westminster, London yesterday in which four people were killed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-opinions"],"yoast_head":"\n