KIRIJI SPEECH
KIRIJI SPEECH - Prof. Akintoye
THE 1886 YORUBA PEACE TREATY AND IMPERATIVE LESSONS OF YORUBA NATIONAL
UNITY SPEECH AT THE 2019 CELEBRATION OF THE 1886 YORUBA PEACE TREATY
BY PROFESSOR (SENATOR) BANJI AKINTOYE
House of Chiefs, Ibadan, 23 September 2019
I salute you, Your Royal Majesty, the Olubadan of Ibadan, our royal
Father of this great occasion in the life of our Yoruba nation;
I salute our beloved Governor and Host, Governor Seyi Makinde;
I salute the leaders, officers and members of the many organizations
that have put today's occasion together;
I salute all the eminent Yoruba men and women who have honoured the
invitation to this august occasion;
I salute all our guests and friends and well-wishers here gathered.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
In the thousands of years of the pre-20th century history of the
Yoruba nation, the Yoruba Peace Treaty of September 23 1886 is a
unique document of incalculable importance. In modern Yoruba history,
it is a foremost document that was deliberately designed to foster
unity and peace among all parts of Yorubaland and among the entire
Yoruba nation, Black Africa's largest nation, and Black Africa's
foremost leader in civilization.
Representatives of virtually all kingdoms and ethnic sub-groups of the
Yoruba nation appended their signatures to this treaty – from the
Alaafin of Oyo to the Ooni and chiefs of Ife, the chiefs of
Yorubaland's most powerful city of Ibadan, the kings and chiefs
representing the large alliance known as the Ekitiparapo comprising
the Ekiti, Ijesa, Igbomina and Akoko subgroups, the Awujale and
war-chiefs of Ijebu.
Its terms and statements had something to say about virtually all
parts of Yorubaland. Its immediate purpose was to bring to an end the
Kiriji War, the war which had started between Ibadan and the
Ekitiparapo in 1878, and which had expanded over the years to involve
in various ways almost all other kingdoms and states of Yorubaland –
the Ooni's kingdom of Ife, the Modakeke kingdom near Ile-Ife, the
Alaafin's kingdom of Oyo, the Awujale's kingdom of Ijebu, the Egba and
Owu kingdoms of Abeokuta, the Remo kingdoms, the kingdom of Owo, the
kingdom of Ondo, the kingdom of Ilorin, the kingdoms and communities
of the Okun Yoruba in the Yoruba northeast, the kingdom of Lagos, the
kingdoms of the Ilaje and the Ikale, even the far western Yoruba
kingdoms of Ajase, Ketu and Sabe (now in Benin Republic).
The 1886 Treaty was a treaty affirming peace, brotherliness,
friendship and commerce among all Yoruba people after nearly
one-hundred years of internecine wars that had pitched Yoruba kingdoms
against Yoruba kingdoms, cities against cities, and alliances against
alliances, all over Yorubaland.
It is therefore a very positive development that we, today's
generation of Yoruba people, have set aside the day of this Peace
Treaty as a day to celebrate every year. In many locations in
Yorubaland, this celebration is going on today. In future years, we
must see to it that more and more locations in the Yoruba homeland,
and even in the Yoruba Diaspora abroad, put up these September 23
celebrations of Yoruba unity.
As we gather here to celebrate, however, my humble thought is that we
Yoruba should spend this day to rub minds together about some deeper
ramifications of our nation's unity. Sure, we are a very strongly
united nation. In fact, I have said in some of my past lectures and
speeches that hardly any nation in the world can claim to be more
united than our Yoruba nation. We Yoruba are all very proud of our
culture and our great accomplishments in civilization. We believe
that, among nations in the world, our nation is, and deserves to be,
highly exalted because of the common worldview and the principles and
ideals which we evolved in our history. Our religion is so superior in
its overall message and its structure that it has become in the modern
world the only Black African religion that ranks as a universal
religion, one of the world's leading religions, one of the most
widespread across the world, and one of the fastest expanding
religions throughout the world.
Our nation is also owner of principles and ideals which command great
respect in the world – principles and ideals such as our Omoluabi
tenets, our deep respect for human life, our respect for individual
peculiarities and choices, our generally democratic tendencies, our
culture of religious accommodation and harmony, our deep sense of
hospitality to strangers and foreigners, our unique expectation of
dutiful, respectful and decent leadership and governance, our love of
the beautiful and even elegant life, our unique dedication to societal
progress and orderliness, and our general orientation towards mutual
help and collaboration in the quest for the better life.
This worldview and these principles and ideals have kept our whole
nation strongly bonded throughout our history. Even though we have
lived in many separate kingdoms for most of our history, our common
worldview and our cherished principles and ideals have made us a
highly noticeable nation among the nations of Africa and the world.
They have also distinguished us from other peoples near and far. Even
when we fought wars in our nation for nearly a hundred years in the
nineteenth century,the norms that we regard as uniquely Yoruba norms
nevertheless strongly persisted.
The central focus of my speech today, however, is our significant
failures to mobilize and employour national unity on occasions when we
desperately need to mobilize it most powerfully. In particular, at
critical moments in our modern history since the last decade of the
19th century, since the advent of British colonial rule, we have
failed again and again to employ the strength inherent in our national
unity to position our splendid nation for its victory and for its
appropriate destiny in the world.
As we were ending the Kiriji War in 1886, we were already getting
immersed into a new era in which our nation's inherent strength was
experiencing very powerful reinforcements from new cultural inputs
that were coming from another part of the world. Christian missions of
various European nations had begun to come to our country and to the
rest of Black Africa by the 1840s, bringing the Christian message and
Western education. Because we Yoruba lived in heavily populated,
secure, well ordered and well governed cities and towns, the Christian
message and the Western education spread much faster in our country
than in any other country in Africa. By the 1860s, we were already
producing many university graduates in various disciplines.
By the 1880s, we were already a nation with a strong and rapidly
growing literate elite. We were also a nation with a considerable
share in the growing worldwide commerce. We had many big Yoruba
merchants in the new trade in the interior of our country and in our
port towns. In fact, some of our coastal merchants had shipping lines
of their own. In 1864, one of our clergymen was consecrated the Bishop
of the Niger, becoming the leading Christian worker in most of West
Africa. In 1859, the first newspaper in Africa began to publish in our
city of Abeokuta and, in the years that followed, some other
newspapers emerged in some of our other cities. Our Yoruba language
was developed as a written language in these years, and a new culture
of literature in the Yoruba language quickly evolved. From the late
1880s, the Yoruba modern elite created a powerful movement of Yoruba
Cultural Nationalism, partly to strengthen Yoruba national unity, and
partly to counter the cultural arrogance of Europeans in Africa – to
demonstrate that Yoruba culture was not inferior, and was superior in
many respects, to European cultures. No other Black African people
developed a movement like this.
In short, a new and distinct nation-state or modern country of the
Yoruba people was emerging undoubtedly out of West Africa. The roots
of such a country were manifestly very strong. Its Yoruba people were
powerfully unified by a common worldview, common cultural and ethical
attributes, common national pride, common written language, a rapidly
modernizing economy, and a strong and growing modern elite and middle
class of professionals, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. We were the
largest single Black African indigenous nation, were highly advanced
in civilization, and were a powerful nation. In the wide world outside
of Europe, we Yoruba nation had much more readiness than almost all
other nations to be a separate modern country on our own. The Japanese
unified their country in these times and created the modern
nation-state of Japan, but by the 1870s, the Japanese were not nearly
as ready as we Yoruba were for that kind of historic accomplishment.
We need therefore to ask ourselves some very serious questions today.
It is, I believe, very instructive that most of these questions are
questions that generations of my Yoruba undergraduate students have
asked me during my long career as a university teacher. Why did we
fail to grab our nation as a separate entity when European imperialism
was beginning to sweep over West Africa? Why did we fail to do so –
even if we wouldagree ultimately to become a country under British
rule? The small nation of the Basuto in Southern Africa managed to
stay intact and separate in those circumstances, even though it
ultimately accepted British imperial rule. Why couldn't we Yoruba
exploit our unity and strength to do at least that? Why did we –
large, strong, educated and rich nation – allow our nation under
British colonialism to be dragooned into an amalgamation with hundreds
of other nations into a large and incoherent country that was
manifestly likely to be unmanageable? Even though the British, out of
fear of us, did all sorts of things to depress and distort our image
in Nigeria in colonial times, why have we, since independence, allowed
ourselves to be dragged further and further down by Nigeria? Why do we
let ourselves be imposed upon, and be relentlessly pushed towards a
noxious destiny, by some small and less accomplished nationality in
the context of independent Nigeria?
At this point in time when our nation and most other Nigerian
nationalities have been reduced to the status of near slavery in
Nigeria, what ought to be the Yoruba nation's manly response? A
shrouded federal establishment controls almost all powers and
resources in Nigeria, almost totally monopolizing all command
positions in the hands of one small nationality, continually seeking
with impunity to seize more and more powers and resources, reducing
the homelands of most Nigerian nationalities to disrespected, subdued
and distressed peripheries in Nigeria, reducing the elected state
governments of most Nigerian peoples into impotent and timid leaders
of their peoples, treating the citizens of the subdued nationalities
who get to serve in the federal establishment as persons who hold
their positions there by sufferance and tolerance only, and, in all
these ways, generating deeper and deeper levels of poverty,
insecurity, instability and hopelessness inNigeria.
Above all these, in recent years, members the small nationality that
controls the powers and resources of the Federal Government has
launched an invasion on the rest of Nigeria, threatening to kill, maim
and destroy, and actually killing, maiming and destroying, and
bringing large numbers of their non-Nigerian ethnic kinsmen to help
them, in an ethnic cleansing campaign that is aimed at permanently
seizing the land and other resources of all other peoples of Nigeria.
In these conditions and circumstances, the masses of the people,
youths, women and children of the large and resourceful Yoruba nation
want to know what the leadership of their nation will do, and the
peoples of the other nationalities of Nigeria, and decent people all
over the world, want to know too.
In one of my recent speeches, I pointed to a particular occasion in
which the Yoruba nation commanded enormous resources of power but
failed to gather the resources together to defend its country. I refer
to the British invasion of Ijebu in 1892. When the British invaders
came, the Ijebu bravely raised a large and well-armed force to face
them. And the Ijebu forces seemed about to win, until the invaders
rushed up some categories of weapons which the Ijebu did not yet have.
But at that time when the Ijebu were losing that engagement, the
Yoruba nation commanded more than enough military capability to
prevent any part of their homeland from being conquered.
Had some of the large power of the Yoruba nation been gathered to
support the Ijebu, the Ijebu could not possibly have lost. All the
well-armed and war-seasoned armies owned by various Yorùbá authorities
as a result of the 19thcentury Yoruba wars were overwhelming. If they
had worked together, they were more than enough to warn off, or
defeat, the British invaders. Ìbàdàn had an army numbering 80,000 at
Ìgbájọand Ìkìrun, another numbering about 40,000 near Abẹ̀òkúta,
another numbering about 30,000 at Orù in Rẹ́mọ, and yet another
numbering about 30,000 near Ifẹ̀ and Modákẹ́kẹ́. The Èkìtiparapọ̀had
an army numbering 50,000 near Imẹ̀sí-Ilé, and another numbering 25,000
near Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Ìlọrinhad an army of about 15,000 near Ọ̀fà.
Beyond the immediate war fronts, Ife had an army of about 30,000 in
the Ifẹ̀tẹ̀dó and Òkè-Igbóarea; and Oǹdó had an army of about 35,000
near Òkè-Igbó. The kingdoms of Ìjẹ̀bú-Òde, Abẹ́òkúta, Ọ̀wọ̀ and Kétu
(Ketu now in Benin Republic) had forces that were reputed to be among
the best armed in the country. The Ìjẹ̀bú-Òde kingdom had a main army
numbering about 60,000, another numbering about 40,000 near Orù, and
another numbering about 25,000 near Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Abẹ́òkúta's army
numbered about 50,000; Ọ̀wọ̀'s about 40,000; and Kétu's army about
40,000. Thus, together, the Yorùbá Nation commanded over 500,000
fairly well-armed and highly seasoned troops commanded by very
seasoned generals. This was a much bigger and better force than was
owned by any other African nation at the time, and a much bigger and
better force than the European invaders ever encountered anywhere in
Africa. But these Yoruba forces were never pulled together. And as a
result, relatively small armies commanded by mostly inexperienced
European officers conquered parts of Yorùbáland.
Moreover, Yoruba capabilities at the time did not end with military
power. The influence of the Yoruba elite was considerable. Used to
Influence the governments of European countries, it might have saved
Yorubaland from becoming part of the empire of any European nation in
Africa. The influence of the Yoruba clergy in Church circles in Europe
was also considerable. And so was the influence of Yoruba merchant
companies and Yoruba-owned newspapers. In short, the YorùbáNation had
a great deal of power at its command but failed to harness it together
to defend itself.
Therefore, the greatest and final question before the Yoruba people
today is as follows: In the face of coordinated assaults on Yoruba
farmlands, cities and towns and highways by the Fulani, will the
Yoruba fail again to harness the enormous and variegated resources of
power at their disposal for the defence and liberation of their
homeland and their people?
My in-depth knowledge and perception of Yoruba readiness today is
clear and unambiguous. TheYoruba will fully and absolutely use their
great power. They will fight and win. And they will set their homeland
and their people completely freeonce and for all.
I must now send a number of messages. The first is a message from the
entire Yoruba nation at home and abroad to those who are designing
evil against our land and people. We hear your horrid threats. We hear
you threatening that you will come to kill, to maim and to destroy in
our land. We see you already coming into our ancestral homeland and
brutalizing some of our people and on our farms, villages, and
highways. We are fully aware that your ultimate intention is to launch
a wholesale and coordinated assault to envelope our whole nation in
massive destruction. And we want you to know that we are more than
ready to crush you and completely throw you out of our land.
The second is a message from this Yoruba Day celebration to every
Yoruba man, woman and child. Do not run before the marauders. Never
abandon any part of your farm or farmland or highway or city or town
to any of them. Learn to join hands and to pull your resources of
power together to throw the invaders out of our land, our farms, our
villages, our towns and our cities. Use whatever you can lay your
hands upon to defend yourselves, your loved ones and your communities.
Keep standing and fighting bravely until help comes. In this desperate
emergency, let us all defend our nation rather thn our parties and
organizations. Let the spirit of the proudvictory of 1840 guide and
inspire you.
Never forget that we Yoruba are a great and powerful nation, one of
the largest, greatest and most powerful indigenous nations of Black
Africa. Do not forget that our nation's power is spreadout widely into
all corners of the world. We do not desire to hurt or subdue any other
nation or to take their land. But we will never let any other nation
take any inch of our land. We stand on the solid footing that our
cause is just. We stand tall and strong. The sword of the just, the
eternal Sword of Victory, goes ahead of us. Oduduwa himself beckons us
to a great victory.
The third message is to all the civic organizations that have been
standing bravely forward to defend our land. It is a message to the
indomitable Odua Peoples Congress, OPC, to the young and brave
warrior, Gani Adama, who holds the ancient Sword as our nation's Aare
Ona Kakanfo,to the ever-victorious Agbekoya, Yorubakoya, Yoruba
Liberation Command, Okun Youth Association, Odua United Yoruba
Kingdom, to the tens of our other self-determination groups, and to
the countless warriors who, as individuals or local groups, defend our
Yorubaland day and night. We know your worth. We are confident that
with you standing out there, our Yoruba nation can laugh in the face
of any invader.
And the final message is a message from this gathering on behalf of
all our Yoruba people at home and abroad to all our State Governors.
We all, irrespective of our political party affiliations, appreciate
and thank you, our State Governors, for all that you are doing to
defend our homeland. We are happy that you have joined hands together
and are working together on this historic task. We are all standing
solidly behind you to see all threats to the peace and security of our
homeland cleared away.
I must conclude now with a quotation from my speech to Egbe Omo Yoruba
of United States and Canada in their 25th Anniversary in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, USA, on 19th July this year. "My summary of all the
pictures of the Nigerian and Yoruba scene today is that we, the
present generation of Yoruba leaders, have great duties that urgently
demand our responses. A great American leader once said, "To some
generations much is given; of other generations much is expected". It
is my profound belief that we of today's generation of Yoruba people
are called upon to give much to our Yoruba nation, to the Black Race,
and to the world. It is my profound belief that we do have much to
give. And it is my profound belief that we will bravely give it".
I thank you all.
THE 1886 YORUBA PEACE TREATY AND IMPERATIVE LESSONS OF YORUBA NATIONAL
UNITY SPEECH AT THE 2019 CELEBRATION OF THE 1886 YORUBA PEACE TREATY
BY PROFESSOR (SENATOR) BANJI AKINTOYE
House of Chiefs, Ibadan, 23 September 2019
I salute you, Your Royal Majesty, the Olubadan of Ibadan, our royal
Father of this great occasion in the life of our Yoruba nation;
I salute our beloved Governor and Host, Governor Seyi Makinde;
I salute the leaders, officers and members of the many organizations
that have put today's occasion together;
I salute all the eminent Yoruba men and women who have honoured the
invitation to this august occasion;
I salute all our guests and friends and well-wishers here gathered.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
In the thousands of years of the pre-20th century history of the
Yoruba nation, the Yoruba Peace Treaty of September 23 1886 is a
unique document of incalculable importance. In modern Yoruba history,
it is a foremost document that was deliberately designed to foster
unity and peace among all parts of Yorubaland and among the entire
Yoruba nation, Black Africa's largest nation, and Black Africa's
foremost leader in civilization.
Representatives of virtually all kingdoms and ethnic sub-groups of the
Yoruba nation appended their signatures to this treaty – from the
Alaafin of Oyo to the Ooni and chiefs of Ife, the chiefs of
Yorubaland's most powerful city of Ibadan, the kings and chiefs
representing the large alliance known as the Ekitiparapo comprising
the Ekiti, Ijesa, Igbomina and Akoko subgroups, the Awujale and
war-chiefs of Ijebu.
Its terms and statements had something to say about virtually all
parts of Yorubaland. Its immediate purpose was to bring to an end the
Kiriji War, the war which had started between Ibadan and the
Ekitiparapo in 1878, and which had expanded over the years to involve
in various ways almost all other kingdoms and states of Yorubaland –
the Ooni's kingdom of Ife, the Modakeke kingdom near Ile-Ife, the
Alaafin's kingdom of Oyo, the Awujale's kingdom of Ijebu, the Egba and
Owu kingdoms of Abeokuta, the Remo kingdoms, the kingdom of Owo, the
kingdom of Ondo, the kingdom of Ilorin, the kingdoms and communities
of the Okun Yoruba in the Yoruba northeast, the kingdom of Lagos, the
kingdoms of the Ilaje and the Ikale, even the far western Yoruba
kingdoms of Ajase, Ketu and Sabe (now in Benin Republic).
The 1886 Treaty was a treaty affirming peace, brotherliness,
friendship and commerce among all Yoruba people after nearly
one-hundred years of internecine wars that had pitched Yoruba kingdoms
against Yoruba kingdoms, cities against cities, and alliances against
alliances, all over Yorubaland.
It is therefore a very positive development that we, today's
generation of Yoruba people, have set aside the day of this Peace
Treaty as a day to celebrate every year. In many locations in
Yorubaland, this celebration is going on today. In future years, we
must see to it that more and more locations in the Yoruba homeland,
and even in the Yoruba Diaspora abroad, put up these September 23
celebrations of Yoruba unity.
As we gather here to celebrate, however, my humble thought is that we
Yoruba should spend this day to rub minds together about some deeper
ramifications of our nation's unity. Sure, we are a very strongly
united nation. In fact, I have said in some of my past lectures and
speeches that hardly any nation in the world can claim to be more
united than our Yoruba nation. We Yoruba are all very proud of our
culture and our great accomplishments in civilization. We believe
that, among nations in the world, our nation is, and deserves to be,
highly exalted because of the common worldview and the principles and
ideals which we evolved in our history. Our religion is so superior in
its overall message and its structure that it has become in the modern
world the only Black African religion that ranks as a universal
religion, one of the world's leading religions, one of the most
widespread across the world, and one of the fastest expanding
religions throughout the world.
Our nation is also owner of principles and ideals which command great
respect in the world – principles and ideals such as our Omoluabi
tenets, our deep respect for human life, our respect for individual
peculiarities and choices, our generally democratic tendencies, our
culture of religious accommodation and harmony, our deep sense of
hospitality to strangers and foreigners, our unique expectation of
dutiful, respectful and decent leadership and governance, our love of
the beautiful and even elegant life, our unique dedication to societal
progress and orderliness, and our general orientation towards mutual
help and collaboration in the quest for the better life.
This worldview and these principles and ideals have kept our whole
nation strongly bonded throughout our history. Even though we have
lived in many separate kingdoms for most of our history, our common
worldview and our cherished principles and ideals have made us a
highly noticeable nation among the nations of Africa and the world.
They have also distinguished us from other peoples near and far. Even
when we fought wars in our nation for nearly a hundred years in the
nineteenth century,the norms that we regard as uniquely Yoruba norms
nevertheless strongly persisted.
The central focus of my speech today, however, is our significant
failures to mobilize and employour national unity on occasions when we
desperately need to mobilize it most powerfully. In particular, at
critical moments in our modern history since the last decade of the
19th century, since the advent of British colonial rule, we have
failed again and again to employ the strength inherent in our national
unity to position our splendid nation for its victory and for its
appropriate destiny in the world.
As we were ending the Kiriji War in 1886, we were already getting
immersed into a new era in which our nation's inherent strength was
experiencing very powerful reinforcements from new cultural inputs
that were coming from another part of the world. Christian missions of
various European nations had begun to come to our country and to the
rest of Black Africa by the 1840s, bringing the Christian message and
Western education. Because we Yoruba lived in heavily populated,
secure, well ordered and well governed cities and towns, the Christian
message and the Western education spread much faster in our country
than in any other country in Africa. By the 1860s, we were already
producing many university graduates in various disciplines.
By the 1880s, we were already a nation with a strong and rapidly
growing literate elite. We were also a nation with a considerable
share in the growing worldwide commerce. We had many big Yoruba
merchants in the new trade in the interior of our country and in our
port towns. In fact, some of our coastal merchants had shipping lines
of their own. In 1864, one of our clergymen was consecrated the Bishop
of the Niger, becoming the leading Christian worker in most of West
Africa. In 1859, the first newspaper in Africa began to publish in our
city of Abeokuta and, in the years that followed, some other
newspapers emerged in some of our other cities. Our Yoruba language
was developed as a written language in these years, and a new culture
of literature in the Yoruba language quickly evolved. From the late
1880s, the Yoruba modern elite created a powerful movement of Yoruba
Cultural Nationalism, partly to strengthen Yoruba national unity, and
partly to counter the cultural arrogance of Europeans in Africa – to
demonstrate that Yoruba culture was not inferior, and was superior in
many respects, to European cultures. No other Black African people
developed a movement like this.
In short, a new and distinct nation-state or modern country of the
Yoruba people was emerging undoubtedly out of West Africa. The roots
of such a country were manifestly very strong. Its Yoruba people were
powerfully unified by a common worldview, common cultural and ethical
attributes, common national pride, common written language, a rapidly
modernizing economy, and a strong and growing modern elite and middle
class of professionals, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. We were the
largest single Black African indigenous nation, were highly advanced
in civilization, and were a powerful nation. In the wide world outside
of Europe, we Yoruba nation had much more readiness than almost all
other nations to be a separate modern country on our own. The Japanese
unified their country in these times and created the modern
nation-state of Japan, but by the 1870s, the Japanese were not nearly
as ready as we Yoruba were for that kind of historic accomplishment.
We need therefore to ask ourselves some very serious questions today.
It is, I believe, very instructive that most of these questions are
questions that generations of my Yoruba undergraduate students have
asked me during my long career as a university teacher. Why did we
fail to grab our nation as a separate entity when European imperialism
was beginning to sweep over West Africa? Why did we fail to do so –
even if we wouldagree ultimately to become a country under British
rule? The small nation of the Basuto in Southern Africa managed to
stay intact and separate in those circumstances, even though it
ultimately accepted British imperial rule. Why couldn't we Yoruba
exploit our unity and strength to do at least that? Why did we –
large, strong, educated and rich nation – allow our nation under
British colonialism to be dragooned into an amalgamation with hundreds
of other nations into a large and incoherent country that was
manifestly likely to be unmanageable? Even though the British, out of
fear of us, did all sorts of things to depress and distort our image
in Nigeria in colonial times, why have we, since independence, allowed
ourselves to be dragged further and further down by Nigeria? Why do we
let ourselves be imposed upon, and be relentlessly pushed towards a
noxious destiny, by some small and less accomplished nationality in
the context of independent Nigeria?
At this point in time when our nation and most other Nigerian
nationalities have been reduced to the status of near slavery in
Nigeria, what ought to be the Yoruba nation's manly response? A
shrouded federal establishment controls almost all powers and
resources in Nigeria, almost totally monopolizing all command
positions in the hands of one small nationality, continually seeking
with impunity to seize more and more powers and resources, reducing
the homelands of most Nigerian nationalities to disrespected, subdued
and distressed peripheries in Nigeria, reducing the elected state
governments of most Nigerian peoples into impotent and timid leaders
of their peoples, treating the citizens of the subdued nationalities
who get to serve in the federal establishment as persons who hold
their positions there by sufferance and tolerance only, and, in all
these ways, generating deeper and deeper levels of poverty,
insecurity, instability and hopelessness inNigeria.
Above all these, in recent years, members the small nationality that
controls the powers and resources of the Federal Government has
launched an invasion on the rest of Nigeria, threatening to kill, maim
and destroy, and actually killing, maiming and destroying, and
bringing large numbers of their non-Nigerian ethnic kinsmen to help
them, in an ethnic cleansing campaign that is aimed at permanently
seizing the land and other resources of all other peoples of Nigeria.
In these conditions and circumstances, the masses of the people,
youths, women and children of the large and resourceful Yoruba nation
want to know what the leadership of their nation will do, and the
peoples of the other nationalities of Nigeria, and decent people all
over the world, want to know too.
In one of my recent speeches, I pointed to a particular occasion in
which the Yoruba nation commanded enormous resources of power but
failed to gather the resources together to defend its country. I refer
to the British invasion of Ijebu in 1892. When the British invaders
came, the Ijebu bravely raised a large and well-armed force to face
them. And the Ijebu forces seemed about to win, until the invaders
rushed up some categories of weapons which the Ijebu did not yet have.
But at that time when the Ijebu were losing that engagement, the
Yoruba nation commanded more than enough military capability to
prevent any part of their homeland from being conquered.
Had some of the large power of the Yoruba nation been gathered to
support the Ijebu, the Ijebu could not possibly have lost. All the
well-armed and war-seasoned armies owned by various Yorùbá authorities
as a result of the 19thcentury Yoruba wars were overwhelming. If they
had worked together, they were more than enough to warn off, or
defeat, the British invaders. Ìbàdàn had an army numbering 80,000 at
Ìgbájọand Ìkìrun, another numbering about 40,000 near Abẹ̀òkúta,
another numbering about 30,000 at Orù in Rẹ́mọ, and yet another
numbering about 30,000 near Ifẹ̀ and Modákẹ́kẹ́. The Èkìtiparapọ̀had
an army numbering 50,000 near Imẹ̀sí-Ilé, and another numbering 25,000
near Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Ìlọrinhad an army of about 15,000 near Ọ̀fà.
Beyond the immediate war fronts, Ife had an army of about 30,000 in
the Ifẹ̀tẹ̀dó and Òkè-Igbóarea; and Oǹdó had an army of about 35,000
near Òkè-Igbó. The kingdoms of Ìjẹ̀bú-Òde, Abẹ́òkúta, Ọ̀wọ̀ and Kétu
(Ketu now in Benin Republic) had forces that were reputed to be among
the best armed in the country. The Ìjẹ̀bú-Òde kingdom had a main army
numbering about 60,000, another numbering about 40,000 near Orù, and
another numbering about 25,000 near Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Abẹ́òkúta's army
numbered about 50,000; Ọ̀wọ̀'s about 40,000; and Kétu's army about
40,000. Thus, together, the Yorùbá Nation commanded over 500,000
fairly well-armed and highly seasoned troops commanded by very
seasoned generals. This was a much bigger and better force than was
owned by any other African nation at the time, and a much bigger and
better force than the European invaders ever encountered anywhere in
Africa. But these Yoruba forces were never pulled together. And as a
result, relatively small armies commanded by mostly inexperienced
European officers conquered parts of Yorùbáland.
Moreover, Yoruba capabilities at the time did not end with military
power. The influence of the Yoruba elite was considerable. Used to
Influence the governments of European countries, it might have saved
Yorubaland from becoming part of the empire of any European nation in
Africa. The influence of the Yoruba clergy in Church circles in Europe
was also considerable. And so was the influence of Yoruba merchant
companies and Yoruba-owned newspapers. In short, the YorùbáNation had
a great deal of power at its command but failed to harness it together
to defend itself.
Therefore, the greatest and final question before the Yoruba people
today is as follows: In the face of coordinated assaults on Yoruba
farmlands, cities and towns and highways by the Fulani, will the
Yoruba fail again to harness the enormous and variegated resources of
power at their disposal for the defence and liberation of their
homeland and their people?
My in-depth knowledge and perception of Yoruba readiness today is
clear and unambiguous. TheYoruba will fully and absolutely use their
great power. They will fight and win. And they will set their homeland
and their people completely freeonce and for all.
I must now send a number of messages. The first is a message from the
entire Yoruba nation at home and abroad to those who are designing
evil against our land and people. We hear your horrid threats. We hear
you threatening that you will come to kill, to maim and to destroy in
our land. We see you already coming into our ancestral homeland and
brutalizing some of our people and on our farms, villages, and
highways. We are fully aware that your ultimate intention is to launch
a wholesale and coordinated assault to envelope our whole nation in
massive destruction. And we want you to know that we are more than
ready to crush you and completely throw you out of our land.
The second is a message from this Yoruba Day celebration to every
Yoruba man, woman and child. Do not run before the marauders. Never
abandon any part of your farm or farmland or highway or city or town
to any of them. Learn to join hands and to pull your resources of
power together to throw the invaders out of our land, our farms, our
villages, our towns and our cities. Use whatever you can lay your
hands upon to defend yourselves, your loved ones and your communities.
Keep standing and fighting bravely until help comes. In this desperate
emergency, let us all defend our nation rather thn our parties and
organizations. Let the spirit of the proudvictory of 1840 guide and
inspire you.
Never forget that we Yoruba are a great and powerful nation, one of
the largest, greatest and most powerful indigenous nations of Black
Africa. Do not forget that our nation's power is spreadout widely into
all corners of the world. We do not desire to hurt or subdue any other
nation or to take their land. But we will never let any other nation
take any inch of our land. We stand on the solid footing that our
cause is just. We stand tall and strong. The sword of the just, the
eternal Sword of Victory, goes ahead of us. Oduduwa himself beckons us
to a great victory.
The third message is to all the civic organizations that have been
standing bravely forward to defend our land. It is a message to the
indomitable Odua Peoples Congress, OPC, to the young and brave
warrior, Gani Adama, who holds the ancient Sword as our nation's Aare
Ona Kakanfo,to the ever-victorious Agbekoya, Yorubakoya, Yoruba
Liberation Command, Okun Youth Association, Odua United Yoruba
Kingdom, to the tens of our other self-determination groups, and to
the countless warriors who, as individuals or local groups, defend our
Yorubaland day and night. We know your worth. We are confident that
with you standing out there, our Yoruba nation can laugh in the face
of any invader.
And the final message is a message from this gathering on behalf of
all our Yoruba people at home and abroad to all our State Governors.
We all, irrespective of our political party affiliations, appreciate
and thank you, our State Governors, for all that you are doing to
defend our homeland. We are happy that you have joined hands together
and are working together on this historic task. We are all standing
solidly behind you to see all threats to the peace and security of our
homeland cleared away.
I must conclude now with a quotation from my speech to Egbe Omo Yoruba
of United States and Canada in their 25th Anniversary in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, USA, on 19th July this year. "My summary of all the
pictures of the Nigerian and Yoruba scene today is that we, the
present generation of Yoruba leaders, have great duties that urgently
demand our responses. A great American leader once said, "To some
generations much is given; of other generations much is expected". It
is my profound belief that we of today's generation of Yoruba people
are called upon to give much to our Yoruba nation, to the Black Race,
and to the world. It is my profound belief that we do have much to
give. And it is my profound belief that we will bravely give it".
I thank you all.
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