Is Nigeria’s Breakup Now Inevitable?

Undoubtedly, with the state of insecurity and chaos we are in it is either the country is restructured or faces attempts from secessionists. If President Muhammadu Buhari and the other leaders know history they will realize that the country can break up and the only way to prevent this is to restructure it.

This is because all the countries where people of different ethnic and religious groups were brought together in the 20th century as was the case with Nigeria have collapsed. These are India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

As I once wrote in this column the people of the three southern zones especially those in Lagos State can take steps to force President Buhari to begin the process of restructuring the country and get the National and State Assemblies to act. This is by organizing a three – day – a – week industrial action that will paralyze movements on the roads by vehicles and people, the closure of offices in the public and private sectors and preventing traders and market men and women from operating. By the time this is done for three to six months I believe Buhari will cave in.

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But the problem is that Lagos which can make the strike effective will not join because the state government is controlled by the All Progressives Congress (APC) whose national leader former Governor Bola Tinubu is interested in contesting the 2023 presidential election. Consequently, the Governor Babajide Sanwo – Olu and Alhaji Musiliu Akinsanya, the leader of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) who are the followers of Tinubu will make the strike difficult to carry out.

What can make the action effective is if militants like Sunday Adeyemo a.k.a Sunday Igboho, the Odu’a Peoples Congress (OPC) and those of other groups can prevent the movement of vehicles and people in Lagos and Ibadan.

As I had stated in this column up to three or four times in the last four years or so Buhari in 2010 during the campaign for the 2011 presidential poll promised to restructure the country if elected. But he lost. But restructuring was in the manifesto of his All Progressives Congress (APC) through which he won the presidential poll in 2015. Three years ago in 2018 he set up an all – APC committee on restructuring headed by Governor Nasir El – Rufai of Kaduna State. The group’s recommendation was that the country should be restructured.

To me Buhari has not acted on this because as a Fulani and Muslim whose ancestors came from the Republic of Niger he has an agenda to make the Fulani the rulers of Nigeria and Islamize the country. And this has been apparent in the last six years in his actions and statements and those of his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu and the Minister of Justice and Attorney – General Barrister Abubakar Malami.

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Two – and – a – half months ago, the United States warned Nigeria on Sunday, March 21 that soldiers of the Al – Qaeda and Islamic State of Iran and Syria (ISIS) were set to attack the South – West, South – East and South – South and that they were already in forests in Oyo State. Three days later, in the column of March 24 I urged the governors in the six South – West states to take the warning seriously and take adequate steps to meet the challenge.

Last week, retired Brigadier – General Ajibola Togun, the leader of the Amotekun in Oyo State, came out to say his men had found Fulani soldiers in large numbers in forests in parts of the state. But it was unfortunate that Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State did nothing after the disclosure by the U.S. and General Togun, making it possible for the Fulani terrorists to strike in Igangan last Saturday.

All Governor Makinde had done was informing the people of Ogbomoso during a visit to the town last week Thursday that he would inaugurate a task force to implement the ban on open grazing in the state in the next six to eight weeks. When what he should have done three months ago was to have deployed Amotekun security men to the forest areas where the Fulani soldiers were.

I recall that members of the Agbekoya and Odu’a Peoples Congress (OPC) in Oyo State in April and May called on Governor Makinde to give them modern guns to go and take on the Fulani terrorists. I hope with the attack on the people of Igangan that he and his colleagues in the other five states in the South – West and those in the South – East as well as the South – South know we are already in a war situation.

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Given this, I hope that they would speedily take action to recruit more men into their security outfits and equip them with modern guns and other weapons. They also need to get companies and rich people in their states to donate huge sums to meet the security challenges.

Just as the foreign Fulani pose danger to the people of the South so it is with those in the North including the local Fulani and the Muslims. If they don’t force the people of other religions in the South and the North to become Muslims, they would make them to be subjected to Sharia laws. As for the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emirs I see the foreign Fulani as Uthman Dan Fodio did to traditional rulers after conquering the north in the 19th century, deposing and replacing them with their own men.

I am convinced that they would do so even if by now they had promised that they would not remove them. They would say they conquered Nigeria and only their men will be capable of faithfully implementing their political and religious policies the way they should be carried out.

10 topmost Lagos freed slave descendant – families

A prince from a town in a state in the South – West who was born and bred on Lagos Island, but is against the descendants of immigrants claiming to be aboriginal Lagosians sent me a video recording on ten prominent Lagos families who are the descendants of freed slaves. I went online and got information on all of them and found out that the ancestors of three of the families were not from modern – day Nigeria.

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Two of them whose forebear are freed slaves were from Ajase in Dahomey (now Republic of Benin) and Freetown in Sierra Leone, while the ancestor of the third family who was a slave merchant (not a freed slave) was from Bahia in Brazil. As for the remaining seven whose ancestors were from towns in modern Nigeria they came from Badagry, Abeokuta, Oyo and Ilesa in the South – West. I will present the stories of the families one or two a week. I am starting with Olayinka Herbert Heelas Badmus Macaulay.

The son of Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay and his wife Abigail, the daughter of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first Bishop in Nigeria, he was born in a house in Broad Street on Lagos Island on Sunday, November 14, 1864. His father founded and was the pioneer principal of the first secondary institution in the country, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) Grammar School, Bariga Lagos.

The parents of Herbert Macaulay were people captured from Oyo and sold into slavery but were resettled in Sierra Leone when the evil trade in human beings was abolished and they were set free. They eventually returned to Nigeria and decided to resettle in Lagos. But it is not known if they did this because of sickness, or not wanting to trek a long distance to their village of origin in present – day Oyo.

The father of Bishop Crowther was a descendant of King Abiodun of Oyo, the Alaafin of Oyo from 1770 – 1789, while the dad of Thomas Babington Macaulay, the father of Herbert Macaulay, was one of the sons of Ojo Oriare of Oyo.

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Herbert Macaulay, the first leader of the nationalists who began the struggle for Nigeria’s independence in the 1940s had his primary education at St. Paul’s Breadfruit School and CMS School, Faji both on Lagos Island from 1869 – 77. For secondary education he was at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos from 1877 – 80. He travelled to England on Monday, July 1, 1890 and graduated with a degree in civil engineering in 1893 from the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. A surveyor in Lagos, he died on Tuesday, May 7, 1946 at the age of 81.

Source: Daily Sun

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