Permit me to begin this contribution with two incontrovertible assertions. Firstly had we successfully answered what has come to be collectively known as the ”Nationality Question” in the ’50′s and ’60′s there would have been no civil war in 1967. Secondly had we not chosen to forget our differences but instead had we tried to understand them the last fifty three years of our existence as an independent nation would have witnessed far more unity,stability and progress than it has done. The agitation and quest to answer the ”Nationality Question” in Nigeria will not stop until the question has been successfully answered no matter how long our leaders, politicians, professionals and intellectuals ignore it and attempt to brush it under the carpet. The quest to properly identify, situate and define the rights, duties and obligations of each and every one of our numerous nationalities in a wider Nigeria will never end until it is achieved. As a matter of fact given the sheer desperation of each of the major ethnic groups to win control at the centre in 2015, the activities of Boko Haram, the agitation of the Niger Deltans, the resurrection of MASSOB, the unmistakable resurgence of a rather extreme form of Igbo nationalism, the activities of various ethnic nationalist groups and the growing religious and sectarian divide in our country it has only just started in earnest and it is a cause that I have chosen to dedicate my life to. As long as I live I will resist the idea of any part of Yorubaland being turned into a ”no-man’s land” where the Yoruba people are meant to live as second class citizens and never-do-wells and where they are treated like filth. If that makes me a tribalist or a bigot, then so be it.

If loving my nationality,which comprises of 50 million Yoruba people, and adoring my nation of 160 million Nigerians at the same time is a crime then I am guilty of that crime. I do not have to love one at the expense of the other. We are not America which is a nation that is made-up of immigrants and ex-slaves and a country which literally wiped out the indigenous population that they met there when they arrived who were known as the Red Indians. We are not Americans who somehow found their way into the world barely three hundred years ago but we are Nigerians. And each and every one of the great and numerous nationalities that make up our beautiful nation has a noble heritage that goes back for thousands of years. We may not be as developed or as wealthy as they are but we know who we are and we know where we are coming from. That is why I am proud of this country and all the various nationalities that make it up regardless of our difficulties and challenges. Yet we are not so different to some others. In the United Kingdom there are basically four nationalities. The English, the Welsh, the Irish and the Scottish. Each of these four nationalities is actually a tribe yet you very rarely find a British person who will tell you that he is not proud of his Scottish, Welsh, Irish or English heritage AND at the same time proud of his nation. He is first an Irishman, a Welshman, an Englishman or a Scot before being British even though he cherishes being both. He does not have to sacrifice his Irish, Welsh, English or Scottish heritage and roots for Britain and neither does he have to sacrifice Britain for his heritage and roots. He balances it well, he has the best of both worlds and this is indeed a wonderful thing. He derives his strength from both. He enjoys being Irish, Scottish, English or Welsh and cherishes it deeply just as much as he enjoys and cherishes being British. And today, centuries after Great Britain was established as one nation under one Crown and one Royal Sovereign the British citizen still cherishes his primary nationality and tribal heritage so much that power has been gradually devolved from the centre at Westminster in London to the various tribes and ethnic nationalities in the regions over the years.

Such is the agitation for the restoration of ethnic identity and devolution of power in the United Kingdom today that Scotland is preparing for a referendum to determine whether her people should remain in Great Britain or not. This is a beautiful thing. It is known as self-determination and no human being ought to be denied that right. Taking pride in your primary roots and your ancient heritage is not a crime.That is how it is meant to be. It is only in Nigeria that we call this perfectly natural and wholesome phenomenon ”tribalism”. We give it an ugly name and we ascribe to it an even uglier connotation. Everywhere else in the world the reality of ethnic nationalities is acknowledged, respected, valued, cherished and well-managed. As a matter of fact such diversity is a source of strength and pride for many. For example in the nation of Belgium one will find that there is an ancient dichotomy and deep rivalries between the Flemish people of the north and the Walloons of the south. They speak different languages and have a completely different history and cultural heritage yet these two great and ancient nationalities or tribes are proudly Belgian and they rally under one flag. This is how it ought to be everywhere. I have no hate or ill-feeling towards any other ethnic group in this country or anywhere else. God knows that that is the truth. If I did I would say so and damn the consequences. Racism and tribalism is below me and such primordial traits offend my sensibilities. To harbour such views is well below my intellectual and spiritual dignity. Those that know me well can attest to this. I am just too big, too large-hearted and too well educated for that sort of thing and most important of all my christian faith and heritage does not allow me to look down on anyone or any other race. We are all children of the Living God. I have as many non-Yoruba friends just as I have Yoruba ones. I look down on no other human being, no other race and no other nationality and I do not claim that the Yoruba are better than anyone else.

[b]What I insist on though is that I should be allowed to acknowledge my history and to preserve my ancient heritage, culture, values and ethos. I also insist that my people should be allowed to develop at their own pace. I am not ashamed of who I am and where I come from and had it not been for others holding us back I know where the south west and the Yoruba would have been by now in terms of development. And neither would I go to England or America or Enugu or Kano and claim that I own the place or that my people built it from scratch and that they generate all the money that is there. I would never say or do such a thing and neither should I be expected to sit back quietly when someone says it about my land, my people and my territory. In this debate I have threatened no-one, I have incited no-one, I have accused no-one and I have not sought to silence anyone with threats or blackmail. I have not expressed hatred towards anyone. Yet my family has been subjected to insults, threats, humiliation, hate-speech, misrepresentation, falsehood, intimidation, calls for arrest and lies by some people who really ought to know better. My late father of blessed memory has been insulted during the course of this debate as has my late mother, my wife, my children and my people from the south west. We have been called all sorts of names and subjected to the most filthy and disgraceful abuse and malicious lies[/b]. And now some ask ask me if I will ever stop this fight for the rights of my people. The answer is that I will not stop because a price has already been paid. I will never renounce my views. As a matter of fact now more than ever before I see how important it is for us to ensure a certain degree of separate development in this country and to hold on to our heritage because we are just so different. Those that have chosen the path of aggression and open hostility and that seek to suppress our voices, intimidate us into silence and drown us with their propaganda are vulgar, crude and rude. That is their way. They are also experts at telling lies. Yet they cannot silence a whole nationality or just wish us away. We are here to stay. I am not looking for trouble and I abhor strife and violence. To me this is simply an intellectual exercise and we can agree to disagree and still remain compatriots and friends. However I will not give up my identity because that is all I have. I will not betray the dreams of my forefathers and their aspirations for our people. For four generations now the Fani-Kayode have contributed positively to the affairs of this country. Unlike some of those that are bleating and insulting us we have paid our dues. Like millions of others we have a stake here and we are from Yorubaland. I have a little Fulani blood in me too and I am very proud of that but I am first and foremost a Yoruba and I will live and die for the Yoruba and indeed for my nation Nigeria if needs be.
[b]
I have written about virtually every major ethnic group and nationality in this country over the last twenty three years and sometimes in very harsh terms, including my own, Yet it is only when I disagree with some of our Igbo brothers and sisters and dispute their claims on Lagos that all hell breaks loose. Well one thing is clear. Whether they like it or not as long as God gives me life I will voice out my opinion and articulate what millions of the Yoruba are secretly thinking on this matter but are too shy, gentle and polite to say. They may not want to talk but I will talk for them and I will voice their legitimate concerns about the future of every Yoruba child in an increasingly hostile, ugly and unsustainable Nigeria. All the smear campaigns in the world cannot change that and neither can it stop it. If God does not smear me or mine, no man can smear us.This battle is more important to me than politics or anything else. It is a battle for the very survival of my people and my nation and with my intellect, my pen, my tongue, my knowledge and my wits I intend to fight it till the day that I die. It is my right to voice out my views and create awareness about the imminent danger that my people are facing of being overwhelmed by others that were never really part of them.[/b] They say our territory is ”no-man’s land” yet they will never offer us theirs in return or even allow us to build there. Who is the fool here? And when we complain they have the nerve to insult us. Enough is enough. It stops today. I am not a racist or a bigot but I believe that I have a right to defend that which is mine and to preserve my identity. Though I love being both, let it be clearly understood that I am a Yorubaman before being a Nigerian and I make no apology for that.

We ignore our differences at our own peril and this is not only naive but it is also exceptionally dangerous. They made the same mistake in Yugoslavia through the ’70′s and 80′s until the explosion came out of the blue in the ’90′s and all hell broke loose. No-one saw the war coming in that country except the more discerning and brilliant minds who had been shouting for decades before it came that their very own ”nationality question” had to be answered and that Colonel Broznin Tito’s dream of an eternal and everlasting old Yugoslavia was unsustainable. No-one listened to those discerning voices and consequently millions were killed in the most horrendous and vicious civil war that Europe has ever seen. From being one country where the people and numerous nationalities were compelled to ”forget their differences” by law, Yugoslavia was eventually broken up into five sovereign independent states as a consequence of fratricidal butchery and unrestrained and all-out war. I pray that we never break up and that we never witness or fight such a war in Nigeria. The answer is to understand and settle our differences and not to conveniently forget them.

“can go back to fight a war to keep this country together even at 71…, some people are saying that “should anything happen to President Jonathan, forget about Nigeria” and so on. I know those who are saying this. Yes, they are supporters of the President. But I know the President is a sensible person so don’t waste your time saying that the world would come to an end if something happens to your son. Of course he is your son but he is our President. I have always respected these people but these things that they say amaze me. These are the same people that went to school, people who went to universities, people that are educated and people who have held positions of responsibility. There is a doctrine known as the ”Doctrine of Nigeria’s Settled Issues” and nobody should attempt to tamper with them. Number one, I don’t want any one of us to tamper with anything to do with Nigerian unity. Number two, the republican constitution is also a settled issue, more or less. Number three, the states are the federating units of this country and number four we are a capitalist country. Anybody that wants to talk about this country must make sure that he doesn’t do anything that will disrupt these basic settled issues in our political life. Anyone that is talking about dismembering this country you should not listen to him. If we see such things as ”christian south” and ”muslim north” we should disregard it. Even if such people say it the media should ignore it because you know it is not the truth, so you should not even write it”-

GENERAL IBRAHIM BABANGIDA, The Daily Trust Annual Dialogue, Abuja, 26th January 2012.

I have nothing but the deepest respect and affection for General Ibrahim Babangida and those that know me can attest to this. He is not only a great and profoundly good man that has sacrificed so much for our nation but he is also one of the very few truly detribalised leaders who genuinely and honestly love Nigeria and who passionately believe that the interest of every Nigerian is better served if our country remains as one.

I do not for one minute doubt General Babangida’s sincerity of purpose or his deep sense of patriotism. Anyone that can take a bullet to keep Nigeria one must always be given his due respect and honour. Yet despite my personal feelings and affection for the General I am afraid that, from an intellectual and political perspective, I have to respectfully and humbly disagree with him on this issue. I do not believe that there is any such thing as a ”Doctrine of Settled Issues” in our body polity and neither, in my view, is Nigeria as we know it today a sacrosanct, unbreakable or unchangeable union.

It is trite that the only thing that is certain in the life of men and nations is change. Whether we like it or not change is like an irresistable tide and, when its time comes, it is like a moving train and a raging wind which crushes or blows away anyone or anything that stands in it’s way.

You either bend with it or you break. I am a student of history and it may interest those that subscribe to this rather arcane and anachronistic theory known as the ”Doctrine Of Settled Issues” that Nigeria remains the only mega-nation and forced union of incompatibles that the British colonial masters cobbled together at the beginning of the 20th century that still remains together today. There were actually three in all and the other two, namely the Sudan and India, have broken into two and three pieces respectively over the years. Why should Nigeria be any different?

More importantly why should we be told that Nigeria MUST be different? Would this have been so if there was oil in the north? Again when one considers the delightful and miraculous ”crumbling” of the almighty Soviet Union (another forced artificial union) or the breaking up of the old Yugoslavia and the emancipation and creation of numerous new countries in the Balkans and eastern Europe which came as a consequence of that magnificent change. I ask again, why should Nigeria be any different?

The words of the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher are instructive here. In the September 2, 1991 edition of Newsweek she said, ”the lesson of this century is that countries put together artificially will fall apart. National identities will not be suppressed”. Twenty years after these famous words were spoken we are beginning to witness their relevance and veracity in Nigeria. The right to self-determination and to forcefully resist what many feel is an internal colonial system is a legitimate and inalienable right of all free men and women. You cannot hold me down and keep me in your house on your own terms and deny me the right to be free or to say or do as I please.

If you do not treat me fairly and if you continue to make me feel worthless and full of fear of your terror and ability to inflict violence on me and mine, then eventually, whether you like it or not, I will leave. No one signed their life or their future away to bondage and none of us subscribed to the view that decisions about our country and our furure can and have been made by our past leaders and heroes and that they can no longer be changed or altered. I say that they can if the circumstances determine that this must be so. And if you do not give us our rights eventually we will exercise them by force and regardless of how you feel.

As much as I am amongst those that have criticised the Goodluck Jonathan administration forcefully, objectively and vigorously over some of their policies in the last few months let me make two things clear. Firstly my criticisms are borne out of my concern for our country and nothing else. I have nothing against Mr. President personally other than the fact that by not getting it right he is playing into the hands of the ”born to rule” northern cabal who believe that he does not have a right to be President simply because he is an Ijaw man. This cabal believes that no southerner should have the right to rule in peace without being told what to do or being teleguided or controlled by them.

They have sworn to make the country ungovernable for Jonathan and we are now seeing the results of that threat. For the record let me just warn these ethnic supremacists that they must not misconstrue the position that some of us have taken when it comes to this government and it’s policies as an endorsement of their deeply conspiratorial and despicable ethnic agenda. I should also add that Jonathan must not die under any mysterious circumstances. If this were to happen there would be no Nigeria left afterwards. This is because we that are from the south, together with our compatriots from the Middle Belt will rise up, join hands together and resist the Phillistines, the Amalekites and the usurpers in our midst to the last man.

By the time it is all over they will know that it is only when you kill a madman that you will know that he has friends and family. The new Nigeria has no place and no room for those that believe in the ”born to rule” philosophy or those that subscribe to any form of Boko Harm or Taliban-style islamic fundamentalism. We will not tolerate it, we will not bow to it and we will resist it with every fibre of our being.

I have said it before and I will say it again- if Nigeria is not a place that every ethnic nationality is regarded as being equal and is treated as such then let there be no more Nigeria. There is nothing that is sacrosanct about a forced union of incompatibles. If you are in a bad marriage you get out of it before you kill each other. The Lugardian ”poor husband of the north” cannot force the ”rich wife of the south” to remain in this unholy and iniquitous union for much longer unless the terms are right and unless there is equity and justice for all.

The mistake we made in 1967 by not standing on Aburi will not be repeated. The days of the master/servant relationship that we have witnessed between the north and the south for 51 years of our national existence are long over and they shall never return again. This country is moving forward and she is not going back and if Presdent Goodluck Jonathan can just get his act together and vigorously resist the hegemonist giants in the land he would have my full support and that of millions of others. This is the time for a new vision for our country. It is the time for new leaders who are ready to stand up and speak the truth about our precarious state of affairs and about the direction in which our nation must go. It is the time to talk about the convening of a Sovereign National Conference and to answer the Nationality Question. It is the time for courage. Let us not take our unity for granted or treat it as ”a given”. Nigeria must change, she must be restructured, she must be reformed and she must make every single ”Nigerian” believe that he or she can get to the top regardless of their nationality or faith. Other than that, whether we like it or not, Nigeria will eventually break.

Chief Femi Fani-Kayode is a two time former minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

agbameta:



1. I am not ashamed of who I am and where I come from and had it not been for others holding us back I know where the south west and the Yoruba would have been by now in terms of development.


2. I will never renounce my views. As a matter of fact now more than ever before I see how important it is for us to ensure a certain degree of separate development in this country and to hold on to our heritage because we are just so different. Those that have chosen the path of aggression and open hostility and that seek to suppress our voices, intimidate us into silence and drown us with their propaganda are vulgar, crude and rude. That is their way. They are also experts at telling lies.



God bless FFK.

Though I love being both, let it be clearly understood that I am a Yorubaman before being a Nigerian and I make no apology for that.

Taking pride in your primary roots and your ancient heritage is not a crime.That is how it is meant to be. It is only in Nigeria that we call this perfectly natural and wholesome phenomenon ”tribalism”.

Asoozy: Stop saying God bless Fani alone. Start printing his articles and start distributing to the grassroot Yorubas. Translate it if need be and perhaps read it out to the illiterates. Yoruba land owners need to be re-educated.

Stop selling or renting to certain people from the other side of the Naija!

Ijafara lewu!

Yoruba heritage is at stake! Your most priced land is at stake! APC is at stake! If Lagos falls to PDP, APC would be finished!

Tinubu is ill and Fashola is too docile and politically correct to protect the Yoruba interest and our seat of power.

Yoruba stop ronuing and start acting!

Omo Yoruba ise Ya!!!

jas_o: Fani Kayode has sincerely demonstrated that he's a true son of Yoruba race. I think others should emulate his value and imbibe in their culture.
I dump my hat for you Fani, You have spoken well and God will not wipe off your brilliancy.
Those who do not share his perception about situation of things in Nigeria should go and hug transformer.
He said the truth and lies can't rain for life. One day truth shall be known but people who adamant and turn blind and deaf to the truth will definitely find themselves to be blamed when it happened.
I believe as a Nigerian that each tribe known his geographical boundary but if some people now pretend not to know this fact that is their baby. The greed that continue ruling their lives would eventually finished them at the right time.

olabukola: He wrote well but he sounded remorse, I think he learned a few things from all that happened so far.

As for the poster clamouring for no rent for people across the Niger, don't you think that will create a lot vacant property in SW. It makes no economic sense to me. How then do you recoup the funds invested in the property? We should be careful what we advocate for.

Going grass root with the write up is good at least it will awaken our zeal to separate but as far as we remain in the same country our hands are tied and what we can do or not do is very limited.

Did I hear you say Tinubu is sick? what is wrong with him if I may ask.

EMMA BC: What is FFK turning to; a lunatic or a wacko?

bennyraz: Ibo's need to respect their host states because when you see a yoruba man in your state, he would adhere and respect the laws of your land and your people. Who knows maybe that's why hausas in the north keep on killing ibos in the North and the remaining ibos in the north have refused to find their way home (south-east) because they believe were they are is better than going back home! In kano, what effrontery does an ibo man have to say that Kano is a no man's land or even in kaduna an half hausa state or even in sokoto or Niger state? is it because Yoruba's have been so welcoming and accommodating that is why you all feel free to insult the land! if the traditional rulers in the south-west invoke oro on you, do you know that it will be labelled as genocide against the yorubas!the truth is, we are very accomodating and lets us continue to live in peace with one another and other tribes should not fail to respect their host states

gtrust:

Did you say 'HOST'

They buy their houses from you and pay you CASH!
They do their business and pay their taxes to government.
They develop your area by building beautiful houses with approval.
They feed themselves.
They pay for their health care.
Most importantly, they are NIGERIANS IN NIGERIA.

Host:
-provides asylum
-pays unemployment allowance
-provides housing befitting for the family
-pay for healthcare
-free education for the children.
-many more responsibilities if you're interested...

so

KnowAll: [size=16pt]FFK has become a voice of awakening, championing the cause of the Yoruba's in this modern era. We should embrace his clarion call, his effrontery, eagerness, and audacity to thread where many of our brothers shy away from.

Dan Anyiam: cities.

I want to invite Fani Kayode to come and trade in Onitsha or Nnewi