I have deliberately staved off commenting on the malicious agenda of those voices of extremism under the command of Tinubu, ethnic-baiting the strongest ethnographic ally the Yorubas have in the south, because the putrid existence of that cult should have lasted only a short while. Our reality, however, is that today's global mercantilists depend on the extremism of their collaborationists to make bank and maintain their hold on economic and political power.
It is a known historical fact that the Yorubas have coexisted peacefully with the Igbos and other ethnic groups in today's Southern Nigeria and the Middlebelt for centuries. The ethnic groups in these regions today (and others whose cultures and languages have been wiped out due to contact with Europeans) interrelated with and interdepended on one another economically and, at intervals, politically.
It is also a fact that there is no recorded armed conflict between the Igbos and Yorubas in our history before the British created this contraption called Nigeria and Yorubas committed the grievous political error of participating in the Uncivil War of the late sixties.
It is equally known that before the British desecrated our land, the Yorubas had one of the most advanced civilizations the world has ever known. Their exceptional state-building ability was only ever threatened by the occasional intrigues of the turncoats among them who, eventually, fractured the civilization from within.
Nonetheless, the crucial point here is that many times over, people like Tinubu used to be banished from traditional Yoruba (and many other African) societies, especially when their ancestry is in such overwhelming doubt and they are as problematic as this dubious man has been since he manipulated his way to capturing critical Yoruba institutions and installed his stooges with, of course, the backing of Western neocolonialists and imperialists.
What has the West got to do with it? You might ask.
Well, the answer, both simple and complicated, is that a diabolic bloc of Western countries share sinister interests in the Nigerian project that relies heavily on permanently preventing Nigerians from dialoguing about their future and, eventually, achieving real autonomy (or vibrant ethnographic alliances) that will ensure their economic prosperity. With modern “Warrant Chiefs” like Tinubu, whose regimes are built entirely on illegitimacy and greed, the interests of these Western countries will remain secure.
People like Tinubu and his revolting cult of ethno-fanatics are no different from the illegitimate Warrant Chiefs (specifically in Igboland) in Colonial Nigeria: their existence is fraudulent, with neither any mandate nor real ties to the communities or ethnic groups they claim to represent—and their illegitimate spell in power is solely to carry out the intentions of their (neo)colonial masters. Go to Alaba, Idumota, Onitsha, Ariaria, etc., etc., and see how ordinary Yoruba and Igbo traders and artisans are getting along spectacularly. Go and confirm how Yoruba mechanics and Igbo aftermarket traders interrelate and interdepend on one another. That is precisely the Africa we want to see. But our neocolonial overlords and their collaborationists don’t want this.
As of the mid- and late-nineteenth century when British rule was already fully operational in Lagos, the Igbos, as a result of their decentralized state structure and through the Aro resistance and, afterward, the Ekumeku Movement, frustrated the machinations of the British to amalgamate the two extreme regions for decades. The Ekumeku resistance—a veritable West African antecedent to the Mau Mau in Kenya, though three times stronger and deadlier—continued for over three decades until Britain managed a scorched-earth victory that placed the economic wealth and infrastructure of the entire Southern Nigeria at the service of Northern Nigeria to the tremendous benefit of the British.
Britain’s publicly documented philosophy on Nigeria since the mid-nineteenth century is to continually use bendable “indigenous elite” stooges, such as Tinubu and his wretched ethno-fanatic cult (add your tongue-tied religious and traditional leaders to the list), to keep their precious (neo)colonial territory eternally “accessible.”
The religiously implemented “civilizing mission” that followed the official adoption of that philosophy, the imperialist economic systems established and entrenched in that process, and the consistent undermining of the country’s total economic and political freedom are Imperial Policies still in effect today, albeit less conspicuously and through a shadowy use of what they call “soft” power. For Britain and other Western Imperialists, colonialism in Africa was never designed with an end in mind.
In any case, the crux of the matter is that those voices of extremity under Tinubu’s command exist for reasons deeper than what is known to the public. Their actions are in tandem with the objectives of Western imperialists and corporatists who, by the way, control today’s visibility platforms, including a significant part of Nigeria’s local media.
Through these visibility platforms, a tiny cult of dozens of malignant retrogrades whose existence should not rank among the top one thousand issues on our list continues to gain such prominence that their extremity is being centered as a cynosure of sorts. On the whole, however, know that they become irrelevant when no one feeds their anaphylactic distraction—because, essentially, that is what treacherous cults of extremism like theirs often aim to achieve—to distract everyone from the principal issues facing West Africans in general: true freedom and economic prosperity.
My only wish is that Southern Nigerians, whether Yoruba, Igbo, Ibibio, Urhobo or any other nationality for that matter, would start seeing these minuscule voices of extremism for the grotesqueness they represent to the future of Africa and the inevitable alliance between the entire south and the middle belt. Their goal is to make sure that on this extraordinary continent of ours, the colonial status quo before independence is the same as after independence—as one blimming Belgian officer dictated from a blackboard before Lumumba was murdered and hacked into pieces.
Our generation must resist this noxious goal of Western imperialists to keep Africans complicit in their own pauperization to the glory of imperialism and neoliberalism. Let the collaborationists die of insignificance.
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Glad voices like yours are out there.