COUNCIL OF YORUBA ELDERS (CYE)*

 *COUNCIL OF YORUBA ELDERS (CYE)*

*(The New Voice for Yoruba Race)*

*Being the 10th statement from the stable of the Council of Yoruba Elders released today Wednesday 14 August, 2024*

Theme: *Team Tajudeen Abass’ anti-separatist bill: Dead on Arrival*

1.   *Waking the sleeping dog*

We are launching into this discourse with one of the lyrics of that wizardly, prophetic and fighter musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti of eternal remembrance which goes thus; 

 'When trouble sleep

 Yanga go wake am

 Wetin e de find ooo

 Palaver e de find

 Palaver e go get…'

There is an adage in Yoruba language which says; ‘We are striving to rid the evil bean-meal, and someone is busy sprinkling more into the plate’ – ‘A nje ekuru oran kotan, enikan tun ngbon owo re sawo’.

Nigeria is still wriggling from the effect of the just concluded fierce, ragely 10-day national protests whose end is yet to be determined, and some people in the National Assembly are busy stoking fire under the pot of a combustible, flammable substance which may only quicken the looming conflagration of the country hitherto held by a tiny, fragile thread into ashes sooner than expected.

Our attention was drawn to a publication two days ago bearing the news of an anti-separatist bill sponsored by the 'Honourable' Speaker of the House of Representatives Mr. Tajudeen Abass and which has been adopted as it is already billed for its second reading in such a supersonic rocket speed. 

When we read the news on the social media, our first reaction was that it must be one of the junk deposits which is the stock-in-trade of some of our uncouth junk bloggers. But too soon the authenticity of the news was validated by a television broadcast.

And so, the emergency meeting of the EXCO of this organization (CYE) was called for the urgent dissection of the bill. And we concluded that if the National Assembly has no idea of appeasing the ailing and burning hearts of Nigerians, they should be cautioned not to add salt on the people’s sores. They should, therefore, be counselled to withdraw the bill in a jiffy because it will end up being dead on arrival or a step aimed at cascading the country by a mere feeble toss into the abyss.

 

What the Team Tajudeen Abass ought to have first considered is that,  can their new law override the United Nations Charter supporting self-determination as captured under the UN Charter and Resolution Chapter 1, Article 1, Part 2 which emphases as follows?

‘All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’ 

Incidentally Nigeria was a signatory to this charter.

We have no doubt that Team Tajudeen Abass have ruffled the beehive or hornets' nest and they should await severe stinging by the human rights lawyers and fighters across the country. Pray another brouhaha is not being brothed by these our law makers.

2.  *Going down memory lane: a tutorial for the Team Tajudeen Abass*

The just concluded nationwide protests and the emerging realities have clearly shown that the end seems to have come already to the fragile thread holding this country together. There is no issue of further deception or mere pretext about this. Therefore, what reality is blipping on our faces is for all of us to prepare for a sweeping revolution that could swoop on us into total disintegration. 

Really the omen is very much unambiguously clear. 

The issue of the age-long enslavement of the Hausas by the Fulani has gotten to the head now. The Hausas are just too battle-ready to terminate the enslavement and launch into a free life. Ditto the Middle-Belt people who are no more interested in being in further alignment with the Fulani under the deceptive lingo of 'One North'. Also, even in the South of the country, the Yorubas are chanting the slogan, 'Igbo must leave Lagos'. For a long time the Igbo have been singing the song, 'Biafra Republic'. And following suit are the Yorubas singing the lyrics, 'Yoruba nation, no going back'. We will never forget the trauma unleashed on the country from a part of the country known as Boko Haram yearning for an Islamic State.

 

All the above are testimonies that Nigerians have never been one people but strange bedfellows lumped together in forced marriage. 

Here is the question:  Can we save this country from disintegration with the reality splashing us in the face? Our answer is; 'Yes and No'. 

Yes in the sense that if we are ready to face the reality and do the needful to re-align ourselves, we can make it.

No in the sense that if we continue to pretend that things are alright with us and so things can continue going the way they are and we  expect different result, we are afraid we are already doomed.

 

Do we say all these discordant tunes serving as sharp contrast to the lyrics of our national anthem is an overnight event which could be crushed by a mere fiat from our Legislators eating while citizens are protesting - courtesy of the Senate President Godswill Akpabio? Far from it. Thus let us go down memory lane.

3. *The metamorphosis of the rivulets* 

The ocean is massive. But what made the ocean massive are the various tributaries pouring their waters into the ocean. And come to think of it, these rivers themselves are made up of thousands of brooks discharging their waters into the rivers. Now, how did the brooks come about? They are product of the combine of rivulets oozing from their respective sources, as well as the negligible, undefinable, insignificant, unsuspecting domestic waters unnoticeably rilling themselves to the gutters which all transit themselves into the brooks.

 

This analogy is simply the impeccable description of the massive chocking stench, odious, abysmal nauseating absurdity, indomitable bastardy and the jungle of barbarism that Nigeria is today - the odious mighty ocean. 

Does any sane person contest these descriptions? 

Today Nigeria is incontestably in the dungeon of hopelessness across the board, or put the other way round, caged within the grilled bars of no escape route or trapped in-between a dark tunnel sealed up at both sides with no porosity for light rays from the horizon - a literal point of  cul-de-sac.

But are we in this mess by accident? No. There are several rivulets whose unnoticeable gentle streaming have eventually metamorphosed into the stinking mighty ocean.

   

4.  *The evolutions*

Since the 14th century, Africans or Negroes had been the worst victims of slavery in the hands of the American and European slave traders. It was not until 1765 that some British messianic humanists like William Wilberforce, Granville Sharpe and Thomas Clarkson rose stoutly to condemn the barbaric acts and began to propagate  their utter aversion to the human trading and launch their battles against the  brutality known as slavery. And so, in a litigation raised against the trading in humans, The Chief Justice of England, Lord Mansfield ruled in 1772 against further slave trade. Now, with the enforcement of this ruling and abolition of slave trade in Britain, other countries naturally got pressured to follow suit. And so, alternative measures were adopted by several European  countries to explore other trade prospects in Africa.

Thus countries like Belgium, Portugal, Britain, France and Germany laid siege to Africa by competing for space in the continent.

Now, as a way of resolving the hot scramble, the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck convened a meeting involving the scrambling European countries in Berlin, Germany which held  between 1884 and 1885 where African continent was divided  among themselves, perhaps we should employ another language, was sliced like bread and distributed among themselves without a streak of the imputs or consents of the Africans involved. This scramble for and division of Africa marked the egregious climacteric in the life of Africans. 

While slicing and distributing Africa, there wasn’t a minutest consideration for the peoples' geography, history, race, tribe, culture, traditions, ancestry, orientations, politics, societal value, ethnology, language, religion, natural compatibility or what have you. This informed why, for example, the homogenous Hausa people were split into the British and French allotted colonies respectively mindless of whatever the consequences could be.  Thus we have the Hausa people in the British Nigeria and the majority, 56% of them, in the French Niger Republic. 

Ditto the Yoruba people were cut into the two colonies of the British and French. While a part of Yoruba people were cut to the British Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra-Leone, others were allotted to the French Benin Republic and Togo. 

Now, coming to the British Nigeria, the colonial conquests of the various, countless disparate tribes and  nationalities informed the forcible agglutination of the different  peoples into two geographical hemispheres namely, Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria and the eventual merger, or going by the official lingo, amalgamation in 1914 of the two blocs into one country called Nigeria. This obviously made a literal mess of the forcible cohesion of strange bedfellows with the odius effects of incompatibility which will remain redoubtable till eternity. 

Now, for the ease of administration, the country was divided into three regions viz. Northern Region, Western Region and Eastern Region. In considering the divisions of these regions, not a jot of consideration was given to the various factors of sameness of the peoples as enumerated above.

 

Essentially, the bastardly crime of the absurd and repugnant  geographical   delineations was  committed by the colonialists and their attendant effects were literally sown.

This was why the homogenous Yoruba people were divided and pitched with the Igbos of Asaba to form the Western Region while some parts of Yorubaland of the present Kwara and Kogi States were cut off to the Northern Region and regarded the people as Northerners sharing the same geographical entity   with the Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Middle-Belters and several other tribes and nationalities not having the DNA or any nexus of consanguinity with the Yoruba. Just imagine Ofa town sharing border with Osogbo of the present Osun State being regarded a Northern town. What an arrant madness it is! 

Just the same way the massive Igbo people occupying 13 states of Nigeria being absurdly contained within the current states of Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi and Imo States. Is this not repugnant to common sense?

 

Also, imagine the Middle-Belt bloc comprising the cluster of ethnic groups stretching  from Southern Kaduna,  Niger, Plateau, Nassarawa, Abuja, Kogi, Benue, Taraba and Adamawa with the countless clans running to some hundreds who are by the design of the colonialists pitched with the Fulani in the Northern Region who by every factor of creation are at sharp variance to each other. Call it a case of an abysmal antithesis, you are right. Call it a case of day and night , you are correct. Call it a case of cat and mouse, you are on course. Call it a case of pepper and eyes, you are absolutely on line.

 

This was the high level of absurdity created by the British who launched the people into the forced marriage of inconvenience, utter acrimony and incorrigible incompatibility whose effects began to reflect in the governance of the country ab initio, till today and as it will so be till eternity. 

Therefore, not until the eggheads and super patriots in the country sit down at a round-table to untie the knotty knots, do the sifting of the combine of grains  and chaff and effect the re-moulding of the shambles into which the country's system has broken, we will never know peace and development. Doing otherwise is like  merely playing politics with the lives of the people and  pretending as if all is well when in the real sense fire is burning on the roof. Essentially, we are only postponing the evil days. 

Therefore, however brilliant the policies of progression of any government could be, they will never find a headway  in the face of the redoubtable and unappeasable  factors of differential among the strange moulds  coerced into making the milling machine. Someday the engine will knock or explode into smithereens.

5.  *The way Out*

The 10-day national protests have come and gone. Let us examine the effects. What the organizers and the people expect from the protests is an immediate change in the metamorphosis of the bad governance to a good one, yes with immediate effect. But the bitter truth of the matter is found in a maxim which says, nobody can give what he does not have. Sorry to say that it is not only President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that literally has no clue in the slightest streak to the problems of this country, the leadership of this organization has repeatedly made the emphasis in its countless prophetic broadcasts that let all the angels descend from heaven, they cannot fix Nigeria again. So looking for solutions from this government is akin to searching for the horse’s horns which do not exist or waiting beside the brook for the crab to blink its eyes. The wait will be eternal.

What is, therefore, the way out? Either of two things:

a. The peaceful dissolution of the country into compatible sovereign units.

b.  Setting sail on the restructuring of the country without further procrastination. Yeah. 

Should President Tinubu, therefore, set the ball rolling for the restructuring of Nigeria, this single venture might be enough to make him the best President Nigeria ever had. Outside this, futility + futility = futility.

However, out of the two options above, the Council of Yoruba Elders by virtue of its identity as an assembly of elders, the choice of the organization is the restructuring mode. Hence our tenacity and grim determination to pursue the restructuring agenda to a logical conclusion.

6. *The imperative for restructuring*

There is no way the history of the trajectory of Nigeria will be related that the authors will absolve the imperialists of the blame. Yes, they were the foundation of the Nigerians' perpetual crises. But fair enough they own up to it that all they  did was not to care a hoot about anybody’s concern but fanning their   own interest.

According to Richard Bourne, the British rationale was 'balancing the books' or put the other way round  'for colonial convenience'. 

This confession was reinforced by Lord Lugard when he wrote as follows in his book  entitled, 'The British Dual  Mandate in Tropical Africa’ viz. 

‘ No European power was in Africa for purely altruistic motives, and one side of the dual mandate which Britain and other colonial powers had undertaken in Africa was apt to succeed  at the expense of the others. The Europeans desire to exploit African trade and resources was  apt to be a stronger force than the feeling of obligation to help the African people to advance'.

Further to confirm that the British were actually solidly conscious of their misdemeanors of agglutinating the strange bedfellows in a marriage of inconvenience  solely for their personal purpose, a one-time Governor-General of Nigeria Hugh Clifford had this  to say: 

 'Assuming that the impossible were feasible *that this collection of self-contained and mutually independent Native States separated from one another, as many of them are, by great distances, by difference of history and traditions, and by ethnological, racial, tribal, political, social and religious barriers,* were indeed capable of being welded into a single homogeneous nation - a deadly blow would  thereby be struck at the very root of national self-government  in Nigeria, which  secures to each  separate people the right to maintain its identity, its individuality, its own chosen form of government, and the peculiar political and social institutions which have been evolved for its forebear'. 

What we need from the above is the underlined. It is, therefore, no wonder that ab initio and hitherto, the evolution of the country has been immersed in perpetual chaos of chauvinism, distrust, feudalism, envy, self-centeredness, misrule, corruption, mutual suspicions and other accessories of  retrogression until the country is presently ground to a halt that we are witnessing today. 

Please listen to the following confessions and statements of prognostication reflecting the hopelessness of the country’s oneness and omen of disintegration someday. 

a. 'The British expected Nigeria to break up' - Harold Smith, a former Colonial Officer in Nigeria. 

b. 'It is never an easy task to govern a country like Nigeria. It is somewhat artificial creation' - Margaret Thatcher, a former British Prime Minister. 

c. 'Nigeria is not a nation. It is a geographical expression. There are no Nigerians in the same sense as there are ‘ English’ Welsh or ‘French’. The word Nigeria is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not' - Obafemi Awolowo

 

d. 'It is better for us and many admirers abroad that we should disintegrate in peace and not in pieces. Should the politicians fail to heed this warning then I will nurture the prediction that the experience of the Democratic Republic of Congo will be a child’s play if ever it comes to our turn to play such a tragic role' - Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1964.

e. 'The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather  Uthman Dan Fodio. We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities in the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to have control over their future' - Sir Ahmadu Bello. 

f. 'Since 1914 the British government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite. Nigeria’s unity is only a British invention' - Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in 1948. 

g. 'The only way left for rapid progress of both countries in Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria is to return to the good old days when the North and South were separate' - Shehu Shagari a former President of Nigeria.

 

h. 'North can survive if Nigeria divides' – Arewa elders.

i. 'Our great country has by that amalgamation gone into hibernation. I don’t know how long it would be in that libenatory state. But as long as the Yoruba country is connected with the sea we shall not fail. And one day we shall come out of that hibernation to be a free country again' – Alexander Sapara Williams, the first Nigerian practicing lawyer. 

 

j. 'The basis for Nigeria’s unity is not there' - Yakubu Gowon. 

Let us stop the above renditions of the Iyrics of discord and examine if there has ever been any streak of national unity of purpose in this country until we are now all grounded to the point of no advancement.

 

Now with all the above factors running the country comatose, there were wide clamours by the people for the restructuring of the country back to the era of true federalism when the regional system of government held sway being the only era where a little sanity in governance evolved. 

And the instrument for the restructuring is known as national conference whose drive is to plan and strategise on the modality for the peoples' co-existence in the country in the face of the regular conflicts, imbalance in the allocation of resources and impediments to growth by those who desire it.

7.  *The 2014 CONFAB in retrospect*

Thus on 17 March, 2014 the then President of Nigeria Dr. Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated the 492-member Nigeria National Conference under the chairmanship of the then Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi which was conducted for some over 150 days with about N10 billion sunk into the project. The misfortune about the project whose report moulded into some colossal 898 pages was that, first, the president who put the conference in place namely Dr. Goodluck Jonathan failed to implement the report while in office, and the succeeding president Muhammadu Buhari decisively kept a wide berth from the report. And so, back to square one Nigeria is today. 

8.  *The emergence and drive of the New Nigeria Movement*

On 21st November, 2023 the Council of Yoruba Elders made a powerful press statement calling for the excavation of the Goodluck Jonathan’s 2014 CONFAB report in the  bid to reawaken the drive for national discourse on the issue of the country. 

Surprisingly or not surprisingly, the press release generated so much traction across the world that people from the various geo-political zones of the country started calling in for the enlistment of interest for collaboration. Hence the convening of the body christened

*NEW NIGERIA MOVEMENT* 

comprising high-level patriots  and eggheads from across the country.

Thus the organizations that comprised the body are as follows: 

A.  Council of Yoruba Elders - South-West - National Chairman & Convener - Dr. Victor Taiwo.

B. Council of Yoruba Elders - South West  Chairman -

Rev. Dr. Tola Osinubi 

 

C. Ogbako Ndigbo Nile - South-East  Chairman  - Ambassador Akpelu Azunna E. PhD.

D. Niger-Delta People’s Front -  South-South Chairman - Dr. Alexander Ebipua-Koinyan.

E. North-East People’s Assembly - North-East  Chairman - Dr. Suleiman Bagirei.

F. Union of the Natives of the North- West of Nigeria -  North-West Chairman - Mr. George Makeri.

G. Middle-Belt People’s Forum -  North-Central Chairman - Dr. Barrister Nankin Bagudu.

H. Prof. Obasi Igwe - Chairman Policy & Documentation.

I. Major-General Collins Ihekire (Rtd)

Chairman Diplomacy  & Strategy.

Our first duty was to secure the CONFAB’s report, study it rapturously  and bring out the imports therefrom. While we say kudos to the great minds that gave their time for the yeoman’s job done, it was, however, discovered that the efforts lack final and effective solution. There was found a jumbo lacuna without which all the efforts and emplacements will be tantamount to nought. 

Thus the impeccable modality we arrived at, at the New Nigeria Movement is what we refer to as RESTRUCTURING ON THE LINE OF ETHNIC NATIONALITIES AND ETHNIC GROUPINGS.

   

In this experiment, what we are sermonizing and implementing is the modifications of the boundaries of each nationality or grouped nationalities  into a regional geographical expression. The consummation of all the arrangements will now lead to the harmonious delineation of the country into compatible regions under a new constitutional direction for true federalism spelling the regional system of government. 

9. *The Benefit*

The utmost benefit from this seeming bitter pill to swallow is that each region will be orientated to gather its eggheads to look inward and exhume the elements of economic viability in their soil, water, environment and their brains to serve as the region's economic mainstay. By the time these elite double-task their brains, they would discover that God has planted in each land the resources enough to sustain it without having any recourse to the oil from the Niger- Delta - the oil in the Niger-Delta being the bane of Nigeria and a curse for her competitive development.

With this architecture emplaced, these harmoniously constituted regions will newly agree to form a union of regions federating into a national entity whereby each people can say, ‘We are one people with one destiny.’ And they shall jointly agree to service the centre as against the centre repugnantly servicing all the states and local governments from one single economic mainstay of the fast thinning oil value. 

With all these arrangements emplaced, the region that wishes to fly like eagle or move at rocket speed will have nothing clogging it down. The region that wants to engage in majestical exhibition by scuffing at snail-speed is free for its pace without any inhibition or  interference. Period.

10.  *Our projection for six regions* 

a. *Yoruba Region* 

Under this arrangement, the reflection that Yorubaland with homogeneity status extends to 10 States of Nigeria viz. Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Edo and Delta has been fully established, carved into a regional entity and embedded in a map projection. This is Yoruba region.

b.   *Igbo Region* 

Under this arrangement, the reflection that Igboland with homogeneity status extends to 13 states of Nigeria viz. Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo, part of Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Cross-River, Akwa-Ibom, Kogi and Benue has been fully established, carved into a regional entity and embedded in a map projection. This is Igbo Region. 

c.  *Niger-Delta Region*

Under this arrangement, the reflection that the Niger-Delta enclave with heterogeneity status covers Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa-Ibom, Cross-River and Delta States has been fully established, carved into a regional entity and embedded in a map projection. This is Niger-Delta Region. 

Ditto Hausa Region, Middle-Belt Region and Kanuri Region respectively.

11.  *Our modality of  conduct being INDEPENDENT NATIONAL CONFERENCE*

We have adopted to employ the modality of INDEPENDENT NATIONAL CONFERENCE whereby it will be the people that will choose for their future peaceful and progressive co-existence rather than the government adroitly imposing its whims and caprices on the people through its kow-towing delegates of compromise. 

 

12. *Conclusion* 

We, therefore, crave the indulgence of all well-meaning Nigerians to support this historic, epochal, revolutionary and correctional agenda for the good of the present and yet unborn generations. Missing this opportunity, we miss it forever. 

Essentially, the threat being propagated by the  Team Tajudeen Abass has no threshold. How dare you threaten he who is down already to fear fall? As the maxim goes, he who is down fears no fall.

Signed:

*Dr. Victor Taiwo*

Secretary-General

08126923916

 

*Please share widely until its gets to all members of the Executive and National Assembly.*