₦airaland Forum

Yobabad:
Good write up @Deji, the truth is that most of us Yoruba Muslims knew about the Christians genocide going on in the country But could not say anything due to the Muslim Muslim ticket

It has long been occurring. Even b4 Tinubu came to office

The Wrath of America

By: Deji Yesufu

The day is the 2nd of May, 2011. American Navy Seals flew into Pakistan on the order of the United States of America’s president, Barack Obama. Their target? Osama Bin Laden. For ten years, Bin Laden had been America’s most wanted criminal for being the mastermind of the September 11th, 2001, bombing of the World Trade Center in the United States, the bombing of the Pentagon, and the simultaneous killing of no less than three thousand American lives on that infamous day, now known worldwide as September 11. The person who authorized the invasion of Pakistan that day was Barack Obama, a Democrat leader, and one who was not too open to using the full force of American might. In this case, he had no choice but to employ it.

For months, American secret services had been tracking Bin Laden, and their investigations had led them to a building a few hundred meters from a prominent military establishment in Pakistan. Obama, then Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and a host of other American leading government officials and military men, sat in Washington, as they watched in real time the invasion of a sovereign state – Pakistan. The Navy Seals entered Bin Laden’s building unnoticed in the dead of the night and quietly killed all his guards. Then a few of them headed to the section of the house where Bin Laden was supposed to be living. They find him. Immediately, they radioed Washington. “Kill or capture alive?” The reply was decisive: kill him. All this was done in a matter of seconds. The soldier opened fire on Bin Laden, shooting him directly in the forehead. His body was gathered up, and he was buried in the Mediterranean Sea, where no one could turn his burial site into some holy place. That is an example of America exacting its full wrath on a nation.

A few days ago, the United States of America, through POTUS, Donald Trump, announced that Nigeria has been redesignated a country of particular concern, especially with regard to religious freedom. The Trump administration, since coming to office, has been uncomfortable with reports of widespread systematic killing of Nigerian Christians by Islamic insurgents in the country. The Nigerian government has denied this report. They have continually stated that Islamic insurgency in the land has affected both Muslim and Christian communities, and that Christians are not particular targets for these insurgents. Unfortunately, a different report has been emerging from within the country. There are tens of confirmed reports that these Islamic insurgents target Christian communities in Northern Nigeria for extermination. There are videos of mass burials; large-scale destruction of houses and churches; and these insurgents making incursions into communities that are secluded and undefended.

The killings have continued unabated, particularly under the administration of Muhammadu Buhari. And it appears that either the law enforcement is aware of these killings and is looking away, or they are actively supporting the activities of these insurgents. It is these reports that Donald Trump and his men received, and have now announced that the United States will be forced to move into Nigeria and engage these insurgents head-on. As I write this, Leah Sharibu is still within the den of Boko Haram. In spite of the cries for help by the family of this dear girl, the Nigerian government has been totally unable to rescue her from the den of those animals. It is these situations that make the announcement by Trump music to the ears of many Christians in Nigeria.

As we examine the subject of the wrath of the United States of America, we also want to examine the situation on the ground in Nigeria. Why does it appear that the Nigerian military is unable to defeat Islamic insurgency in northern Nigeria? Why do the same Nigerian military personnel go to Darfur, or Senegal, or even Liberia, and restore peace to those places, but are totally ill-equipped to shut down an insurgency by a few rag-tag individuals in the north of the country? The answer lies in the worldview of the average Nigerian northerner. An average Northerner is first of all Muslim before he is Nigerian. Islam for Northerners is not what many in southern Nigeria practice. Islam, for a Northerner, is fundamentally a political system. It is the reason the Sharia Law is central to the way Northern states operate. The people in Northern Nigeria consider this country an afterthought. The only reason they are still in Nigeria is that they receive monthly derivations from the Federal Government. The day this stops, northern states will “araba” from Nigeria. Within this worldview is also the relation of the average Muslim to a Christian in the north. Christians are “Kufaar” – infidels, and they are as good as nothing. The average northerner is still a human being and will usually not kill an infidel if unprovoked.

But when occasions warrant it, they have no qualms doing it. Many times, these killings are the product of inflammatory preaching from some Islamic scholar. At other times, it might be a mob action that was occasioned by somebody claiming that a Christian had blasphemed the Prophet. At such times, northerners do not wait to hear the other side of the story. They simply step out and kill the person alleged. In recent times, however, these killings have increased more and more because certain Islamic insurgents have been coming into the country, taking advantage of our porous borders, and waging wars on Christian communities. It is these killings that have caught the attention of the international community and have also occasioned the wrath of the United States of America.

The question that has arisen since Donald Trump made his announcement yesterday has been: Does the United States of America have the right to invade a sovereign nation to kill terrorists? The answer is simple: no. But the reality is that the USA has done this over and over again in the past, and no country can stop it from doing it. This is how Osama Bin Laden was killed, and despite Pakistan’s protestation to the international world, nothing happened. The situation is a matter of interest: America is concerned about protecting Christian communities in northern Nigeria. If the Nigerian government will not do it, Donald Trump is saying they will do it on our behalf. One will think that a country like Nigeria will rejoice at such an announcement. One would think that after 26 years of failing to put down Islamic insurgency in the country, Nigeria would be rejoicing that it has found the help it needs. Rather, the Nigerian government is protesting that its sovereignty must not be invaded. Islamic clerics like Gumi are saying that America must not be allowed within the Nigerian borders. Etc. They are saying all these things because on paper, many in government talk about fighting insurgency in Northern Nigeria, but in reality, they allow this thing to fester.

Recently, the United States of America renamed its military the “Department of War” from the initial “The Department of Defense”. Trump’s presidency explained that “defense” connotes waiting for the enemy’s aggression, but war means “peace through strength”. Too many times, all the United States needs to do to bring order to societies around the world is to simply issue a threat, and peace is restored in those places. It is not likely that the United States will invade Nigeria and kill terrorists. But Trump means what he said: if the Nigerian government is unable to quell Islamic insurgency within the borders of the country, they will come and help us. And they will do it with or without our permission. America’s interest is not in Nigeria’s oil, lithium, or any natural resource we have. Trump’s presidency wishes that all men have the liberty to practice their religion unhindered. This is also what the constitution of our country guarantees for every citizen of this country. This is the reality on paper, and we should be thankful that we have people who will not only say things on paper will also follow those things with action.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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TextandPublishing's Documentary on Obafemi Awolowo and the Action Group

TextandPublishing.com has embarked on an ambitious project: to tell the story of Obafemi Awolowo in a five-part series.

The first part covers his early life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlwiMVfryag?si=Wuz0YYMETw2HXg0Z

The second part looks at his time in government, with his team in the Action Group:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cN6Hf2A1eg?si=oBZt1vJD_Pem0hfI

The third part will cover the Western Region crisis of the 1960s. The fourth part will look at the civil war. While the fifth and concluding part will look at his twilight years. The 3rd to the 5th part are yet to be published.

Every Nigerian must watch these series, especially modern Awoists.

meobizy:
Did not read. He is gone and that is the final conclusion.

Like everyone of us one day... that's why you should read.

"If you are bullish, wicked, and domineering by nature, your chess will reveal it. If you are kind, loving, understanding, and concessional, your chess will reveal it."

Saturnalia:
Whether Nigeria works or not is not the issue, Nnamdi Kanu and his people (that believed the hogwash) should produce “Jubril El-Sufani” if he ever wants to be released.

You cannot just be running your mouth like a faulty tap without consequences.

Don't run your mouth... another point

Daniel Naroditsky: How the Internet Killed a Chess Grandmaster

By: Deji Yesufu

Two days ago, it was reported that Daniel Naroditsky had died. Naroditsky was an American Chess Grandmaster. Chess and those who play the game are in a different world. There is a deep rivalry among players, and a constant appeal to climb the Elo rating. The Elo rating is a rating system that was developed to determine your level of playing performance. Your Elo increases as you win more and more games, and it drops as you lose more and more games. If an individual is rated 2600 and is beaten by someone who is 2100, he could lose as many as 50 Elo ratings. The fight to increase and maintain one’s Elo rating is actually a fight for life among chess players worldwide. There is a lot of suspicion that Daniel Naroditsky killed himself because he came under the burden of these Elo ratings, and because of the pressure that many people put on “performance” in one’s chess games. In recent times, Naroditsky came under attack from Vladimir Kramnik (former world champion from Russia), who claimed that Daniel had been cheating during online games (which were not true). From interviews that Daniel granted online, it was clear that those comments hurt him badly. It is possible that comments like those of Kramnik and other people online could have affected Daniel and possibly led him to take his life.

I no longer judge people who come under suicidal thoughts ever since I survived my own. In this life, we all depend on community. Some people find strength from family members – wife and children; others get theirs from church people; and others get theirs from internet support. But community is the essence of living. Having people constantly encouraging you and constructively criticizing your work because they want you to be better is a blessed thing. It becomes a curse when the same people you depend on for support turn out to be the people trying to pull you down. Such persons smile in your faces, but they do something else behind your back. My support system has been church people. One day, in March 2022, a leading church in this country, people whom I considered friends in ministry, stood on their pulpits and tore my ministry down. They practically used the announcement time during a Sunday morning worship to destroy everything I had been building. It was worse when I discovered that these “pastors” practically lied to make their point. That occasion was the second time I considered suicide in my life. The first time also had to do with church people. When I saw the pattern, I quickly changed my association with “believers” like those. And, yes, I am very suspicious of persons like them to date. My life is important to me.

In fact, I entered into the wild world of chess because I was mentally trying to separate myself from these “church” people. I consider myself a super active person. And when my day is done, and I no longer have an article to write, a piece to edit, or some work to do, I look up recent happenings in the world of chess. That is where I found Daniel Naroditsky. Danya, as his friend called him, was different from the whole lot. He was genuinely kind, sensitive, gracious, and pedagogical. Daniel’s greatest strength was his ability to teach chess to viewers. He had a way of making people comfortable under the sound of his voice. Like every other thing in life, chess brings out the real you. If you are bullish, wicked, and domineering by nature, your chess will reveal it. If you are kind, loving, understanding, and concessional, your chess will reveal it. Daniel was the latter. One commentator online said that he was convinced that Vladimir Kramnik went after Danya because he knew his sensitivity. It is not likely that it is Kramnik’s comments that led Daniel to take his life. It is, however, clear that Daniel had reached his tipping point, and one comment online might have just led him to end it all.

Let me end by making this point: the internet is full of spirits. Most people are not what they are online in real life. The internet, even when people appear with their real names, still offers anonymity that gives people the liberty to say things that they would naturally not say in real life. The spirit that possesses a lot of people online is a demonic spirit. And I include myself in this. We all tend to be something else online, other than what we would be in real life. In the process, we say things to people that can damage them. One missionary was in a faraway country in Africa when I left a comment on his timeline. He reported that comment to a mutual friend, and while I thought it was an innocuous comment, it became clear to me that it was damaging to him, impeding a great work he was doing for God in a faraway village in a distant nation. Since then, I have tried to curb my comments online. If I know someone, and I strongly disagree with a point of view they express online, I wait till I see them in person, and then I share it with them. Some other time, I use the inbox. But I am more and more careful with my comments now.

TextandPublishing.com is in the middle of a series on Obafemi Awolowo, a foremost Nigerian nationalist and politician. Awolowo was a public commentator in his early years in the 1930s. He wrote an article once where he criticized the building of a public library in Ibadan. The white men decided to close down that library because of what he wrote in that article. When Awolowo began to suffer political persecution at the hands of those in power in the early 1960s, he turned his attention to the public. Rather than making his case at the court, he made his case to the public. Awolowo’s comments influenced the young men who overthrew the First Republic in Nigeria. When Obafemi Awolowo realized that his words could make or mar Nigeria, he became more circumspect with the things he said in public. Words carry power.
I did not know Daniel Naroditsky, but I watched him enough online to know him to some extent. He was the best of the lot, and it is sad that it appears that it is the best of us that leave this world first. Danya was only 29 years old. I pray that God will comfort his family and strengthen his mother at this time. He was never married. Daniel would be greatly missed in the world of chess.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

Yobabad:
Personally I don't think Nigeria will work, we are just desceiving our self's with one Nigeria

oh, sad, ... really

"It was in a quest to get answers that Omoyele Sowore led a group of protesters in Abuja to demand the release of Nnamdi Kanu from detention. Kanu is the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and has been in detention since 2019."

"In other words, what will save this country is a scientific exploration of the humanities, especially with regard to how different people groups should live together."

Nnamdi Kanu – Nigeria’s Quagmire

By: Deji Yesufu

Yesterday, 20th October, 2025, was exactly five years since Nigeria sinned against its young people, with the dastardly act of mowing down peaceful protesters at Lekki Toll-Gate in Lagos. All kinds of cover-ups have followed that unfortunate event, but the blood of those young people continues to hunt those in power. Until the question is answered: who authorized the dispatching of soldiers to Lekki, who then oversaw the killing of tens of peaceful protesters, it is safe to say that their killers will not have peace, both in this life and in the life to come. Already, a number of the men who were in power then are already dead – all men will receive the reward for their ways in the life to come. Let us be clear about this matter: nobody kills a nation’s young people, especially when they were protesting peacefully, and goes scot-free. And when such a thing happens, those in authority owe the people of this country answers.

It was in a quest to get answers that Omoyele Sowore led a group of protesters in Abuja to demand the release of Nnamdi Kanu from detention. Kanu is the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and has been in detention since 2019. He has been in and out of court, and on a few occasions, he has been granted bail by the judges, but the Nigerian government has decided not to release him. Nnamdi Kanu poses too great a security risk to Nigeria, and those in power believe it is better that he is clamped in jail than allowed freedom, given his potential to destabilize parts of the country. Every country reaches a position in its national life where it must weigh its options. Do we obey the courts and release an individual to the public, and then risk his raising an uprising against the government? Or, do we clamp him in detention, and retain the peace – regardless of whether the peace is one of the graveyards? This is the reason why Wole Soyinka was placed in detention throughout the period of the Nigerian civil war, and this is the reason why El-Zakzaky is still in detention to date. The question remains, however, what does Nigeria do with the Nnamdi Kanu quagmire?

EndSARS, IPOB, Boko Haram, Bandits, Fulani Herdsmen, Niger Delta Youth, etc., are all products of a failing state. A few months ago, Reno Omokri said that the sciences are better than the arts. He argued that people who major in science as a discipline make more money than those in the arts. Now, such puerile thinking is the reason why Nigeria is where it is today. When a people reduce life to only pecuniary gain, you will end up with a failing state. I should remind my readers that Reno Omokri has today been nominated as an ambassador for Nigeria by the Tinubu government – that is if that nomination is not scuttled by his recent gaffe, where he invited an American politician for fact-finding on the question of killing of Christians in northern Nigeria, and this man ended up making the point that there is indeed genocide against Christians in northern Nigeria. I have totally digressed.

My point in bringing Reno Omokri to this essay is to make the argument that society is divided along two major disciplines: the sciences and the humanities. The humanities are what some people call the arts. The long-debated question of all time has never been how much money people can make in life. There are many people who are content with just enough through life; it is not everyone who has it as a goal to be rich. But most of us want to live in peace, some prosperity, and to enjoy health. We look up to countries in the West, and we hope to imitate their systems of government. Most people in the USA and Europe, including Russia, are living in peace and prosperity because they have learnt the art of the humanities. They recognize problems that are peculiar to their countries, and they offer practical solutions to solve them. Nigeria has forever been beleaguered by the North/South dichotomy. Northern Nigeria, even in the time of the British, was fundamentally Muslim, and they were not open to much Western civilization. The opposite was the case with the South. Today, we have Boko Haram breathing down the nation’s neck. A working society should look into this question. Our fathers suggested a federal system of government. Are we practicing true federalism, or are we just doing what we like? In a truly federal state, each state in the country will have a level of autonomy, while at the same time contributing to the center for the development of the whole country. If all the federalism we practice as a country is to only divide and share gains from oil sales, we have not started to practice true federalism.

The question of Nnamdi Kanu’s continual detention brings us face to face with two realities. First, every person in our nation today is striving to survive, and we all make up theories that will aid this survival process. Nnamdi Kanu’s theory of dividing Nigeria and extricating Eastern Nigeria is a doctrine he has sold to the people of Eastern Nigeria, and he is earning good money in the process. This doctrine thrives in that region of the country because the people there have reasons to feel marginalized. Despite efforts by the federal government to invest in the East, its state governors have not helped matters. The evil of corruption has eaten deep into that region and thus renders many of its people poor. The side effects of all these are that the people turn around to blame the Nigerian government for lack of development. In the same vein, many terrorist cells are growing among the youth of that region. Recently, Simon Ekpa, the young man leading terrorist activities in that region but who lives in Finland, was arrested and jailed for this by the Finnish authorities. Kanu continues to claim that these terrorist activities are going on outside his purview – a story that only the gods should believe. What is the way forward?

The founders of Nigeria believe that this country will thrive more as a united entity than a splintered one. By the sheer providence of God, the British saw wisdom in bringing the northern and southern parts of this country together as one whole. Our fathers suggested federalism as a means of welding the desperate parts of this country together. The way forward for this country will lie with how we practice federalism in this country. Federalism suggests two things: first, equal representation of each part of this country within any political establishment in the nation. Secondly, it also suggests the rapid development of individual units of the country at their own rate. It means that the Nigerian government would need to encourage states to become increasingly self-sustaining. It might require that these states have their own security. Because of the increase in the population of Nigeria, there is a need for the creation of more states; but this time with a de-emphasis on collecting resources from the center, and more and more states utilizing agriculture to develop their states and regions. It will mean that states in Nigeria that are oil-producing will get a larger share of the resources that come from their land, and those states that do not produce oil will have to find other resources to depend on. For example, Lithium is quite abundant in Northern Nigeria, and the people there might want to invest more in exploring those resources. If this country can find a leadership that will radically change the process of revenue division in this country, the over-dependence on the center will reduce, and the clamor for secession will be a thing of the past. Because each people group will now look to their state governors. The Federal government will get its resources from the states to fund defense and federal infrastructure developments.

In other words, what will save this country is a scientific exploration of the humanities, especially with regard to how different people groups should live together. Obafemi Awolowo made it clear in his book “Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution” that only a federal system of government can serve Nigeria. He also made it clear that the vision for a united Nigeria must not stop on our shores alone. We must begin to look at bringing the different parts of Africa, at least black Africa, together through a federal system of government. If Africa manages to unite under a working government and then takes advantage of the vast expanse of land it sits on, there will be no continent in this world that can stand up to us.

When protests line the streets of a country, and people begin to agitate either peacefully or violently, thinking government must bring out the carrot and the stick. The stick is law enforcement – clamping down on unruly behaviors, arrests, jailing, etc. All these are what functioning governments do to keep the peace of the land. There is also the carrot. We must suggest ways forward. We must find a middle ground with these agitators. We must appreciate the fact that Nnamdi Kanu today has a cult following in Eastern Nigeria, and we must do everything to appease them. Governance is not child’s play. Those who seek elective offices should understand that they are there to solve problems, not to line their pockets with stolen funds or feed their ego. It is when the latter abounds more in government that the agitators possess moral high ground to make noise on the streets. A word, they say, is enough for the wise.

Deji Yesufu is a pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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"Awolowo" on YouTube by TextandPublishing

"Nigeria's problems are surmountable." That's the summary of my thoughts as I read the life and times of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo in his books.

Tonight, at 8 pm, TextandPublishing.com YouTube channel will be premiering our long-awaited announcement on Obafemi Awolowo. We would like you to join us to watch the six minute video. You can also watch it afterwards in case you see this later.

Please subscribe to our channel on YouTube as we aim to grow a channel that narrates stories on Nigerian historical figures with the sole aim of bringing solutions to the myriad of this country's problems. See you at 8 pm.

Kindly also share the link. Thank you.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHKoeTnPhQM?si=uR3QrVNstiH4dsKL

October 7 – Two Years Following a Genocide

By: Deji Yesufu

Three days ago, the United States of America, led by President Donald Trump, invited Israel and Hamas to sign a cease-fire agreement that will bring back forty-six Israeli hostages (of that number, twenty are presumed to still be alive). The agreement will enable a foreign agency to lead the government in the Gaza Strip and will aid in the reconstruction of the entire war-torn area. Trump has gotten the help of the Saudis, the Qataris, the Egyptians, and other leading Arab nations to speak with the leadership of Hamas to agree to the terms of the agreement. Israel will not be governing Gaza, and Israel will be returning hundreds of Hamas prisoners of war in the deal. Hamas has agreed to 95% of the terms of the deal. There is one little line, however, that they insist on: Hamas wants to continue to be part of the rebuilding process of Gaza. When Israel learnt, two days ago, that Hamas was still giving conditions, they moved into Gaza and began to pummel the terrorist group. Trump had to call Benjamin Netanyahu and ask him to hold fire. Hamas has only a day or two left to agree fully to the conditions of this ceasefire; if they do not, Israel will be moving into the Gaza Strip with a “final solution”. The cry of “genocide” that the world has come to characterize the activities of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in Gaza will not deter them. Every trace of terrorism will be rooted out of Gaza – the only problem is that the twenty or more Israeli hostages left may have to be sacrificed in the process. How did our world get to this point?

Jews and Christians have not always been good neighbors historically. Many Christians regard the Jews as the killers of Jesus, and thus must be held suspect. This is what gave rise to the word “antisemitic”, and it led to an increasing desire among European and American Jews in the 19th century to return to the holy Land and reclaim the land of their fathers. This movement was generally called Zionist, and they began to return to the Holy Land little by little. But it was a typical case of moving from frying pan to fire. What the Jews called “The Holy Land”, the European colonizers called “Palestine”. Palestine will therefore encapsulate the Holy Land, which will include Jerusalem and Nazareth, where Jesus grew up. While the Jews were exiled from the holy land, a number of Arab communities had sprung up there. It is these Arabian people who are regarded as Palestinians today.

At the turn of the 20th century, antisemitic fervor was so rife in Europe that the Jews began to move everywhere they could find safety. America shut its borders against them at some point, and so they had no choice but to head to the holy land. By the early 1940s, it was clear that there was going to be a religious clash between the Jews and their Arab neighbors in the holy land. The Second World War ended in 1945, and the United Nations was put together at about that time. The first duty of the United Nations was to settle the Jews in their homeland in a peaceful manner. In September 1947, the UN suggested a two-state solution, where the Palestinians would occupy Gaza and parts of East Jerusalem; they would also live in the West Bank, and they would also have some parts of Nazareth too. The UN divided the territory in a most even manner. The Arabs rejected this plan. Instead, in May 1948, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon went to war with Israel, and by a stroke of what could only have been called divine intervention, Israel defeated all six nations at the same time. The aftermath of the war left Egypt in control of Gaza, while Jordan had control of the West Bank. The Palestinian communities were then moved into Gaza and the West Bank. Since that time, Israel has held control over the whole region that used to be called Palestine, and the Palestinians who live in Gaza and the West Bank have continued to constitute themselves as terrorists against the nation of Israel.

October 7th, 2023, is now regarded as the new 9/11. On September 11th, 2001, a number of men hijacked four American local airplanes. Two of them were flown into the World Trade Center in New York, killing all passengers on board and another three thousand persons on the ground. A third plane was flown into the Pentagon – America’s seat of military defense. A fourth plane was heading for the White House, but passengers on board that plane overcame the hijackers and crashed the plane in an open field, killing everyone on board. Al-Qaeda, a Middle Eastern terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the dastardly act. The head of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, became a wanted man. He was killed by American special forces in Pakistan in 2011. 9/11 introduced the Western world to militant Islam. What very few people did not know is that militant Islam is what Israel has been battling from its inception.

When the Palestinians rejected the two-state solution that was proposed by the United Nations in 1947, they did so simply on the fact of the rabid antisemitism that the Quran teaches. Just as every action of militant Islam is founded on bigotry against every other religion besides their own. It has taken close to 1,000 years for Christians to learn tolerance – the ability to co-exist with differing religious beliefs. Many Muslims are yet to learn this. Therefore, when October 7th happened, the whole world was again awoken to the extremism of militant Islam. An extremism that many people all around the world experience on a daily basis, but may not have the media power to cover. For example, Nigeria has been under extreme militant Islamic domination since 2009. Some have suggested that both Christians and Muslims are victims of Boko Haram. This is not an entirely correct narrative. While indeed both Christians and Muslims are victims of Boko Haram, the fundamental ideals of Boko Haram are to wipe out Christianity from Nigeria and end Western civilization in the country. Christians are their primary target, while Muslims may be collateral damage.

The real battle with militant Islam is the concept of a clash of civilizations. Many extreme Muslim adherents are still living in the seventh century, where debates are ended with the use of the sword. The blessing of modern times is that there can be a proliferation of ideas, such that independent ideas can coexist for the overall betterment of society. It is true that there are many ideas today that are anti-religious. It is, however, the duty of theologians and religious people to persuade society against such ideas. Now, if society rejects theological theories for modern theories, we must have the good sense to allow people to do whatever they wish to do. Life has a way of teaching men the right path, after they may have followed some destructive paths. Governments must also endeavor to lead society in such a way that beneficial ideas can coexist. Where such ideas are inimical to society, the government can lead an effort to ban them through legislation. The real challenge with Islam is that many people who profess the religion have simply refused to grow up. While many progressive ideas are very bad, we cannot reject other beneficial ones. For example, Israel today has become the sole military might in the Middle East because it is the most progressive of all the countries there. While other countries in the Middle East were struggling to come out of their seventh-century worldview, Israel has built a military capacity that can take on the whole of the Middle East at the same time. Iran can testify to this fact.

Today, exactly two years ago, 1,200 Israeli civilians were killed on the border they share with Gaza. They were killed not because they were combatants at war; rather, they were killed solely because of their race and religion – Israelites and Judaism. That is genocide and if anyone wishes to know who committed genocide in the Middle East in recent times, it was Hamas on October 7th, 2023. What Israel is doing in Gaza is a just war that is necessary to flush out terrorist activities on its borders. It is sad that there has been a colossal loss of lives in the process. This loss was clearly envisaged by Hamas, and they were confident that Israel’s rage against the Gaza people would lead to many losses of lives and world outcry against Israel. Israel is today almost blacklisted in the comity of nations, but those who know the lessons of history know that what is happening in the Middle East is a necessary conflict of good against evil – and good is triumphing. Israel’s war against militant Islam will spill over to other countries, like Nigeria, and with time, Islam will need to outgrow its 7th-century worldview.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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Dr. Paul Adoyi is the Chief Executive Officer of FarmerGiant Nigeria – which he started in the year 2013 in Lagos. He has since transported the company to the city of Ibadan to take advantage of the agrarian space we have here. Perhaps what was most encouraging for me about the program was that the company decided to unveil its new face on the day of the 65th anniversary of Nigeria’s independence from British rule. Paul Adoyi is a strong believer in Nigeria. He is convinced that Nigeria of today can work, and that the various encouragement that the Tinubu government is giving the private sector will ultimately benefit Nigerians themselves. Dr. Paul told the guests that since it became increasingly difficult to access forex for business, FarmerGiant has diversified its production – so that 87% of the raw materials they need for producing their equipment are sourced locally. The result is that the company hardly import anything today, while job opportunities are opening up for Nigerian skilled workers.

The day was filled with fun: eating, merriment and even games.

Dr. Paul took guests all around the company facility and showed us the things that they produce. So, FarmerGiant, has two main arms: they are into agricultural consultancy. Where they help people set up farms, they help to equip these farms, and ensure that these farms are running and profitable. To prove that they are adept in farm management, they have quite a number of plant and animal farms all around Ibadan. On the flip side, they have also diversified into agricultural equipment production. So, they make incubators to hatch chicks and various poultry equipment; they manufacture various equipment for producing Garri in large scale; they have different milling machines, and all kinds of agricultural farm devices. Dr. Paul informed the guests that he had been working closely with graduates of the Agricultural Engineering department of the University of Ibadan to produce these devices. FarmerGiant is the first agricultural company in Nigeria to go digital. They promote their equipment online, and they can be reached easily on farmergiant.ng.

Dr. Paul Adoyi’s vision is that Nigeria can take advantage of agriculture to be successful. He believes that the large agrarian land in Nigeria can very easily be cultivated by Nigerians themselves to make good money. This way, the country becomes increasingly less dependent on import goods, and Nigerian can patronize locally made good and services. This will make jobs available for the teaming unemployed youths in our country, and at the same time give strength to the economy. When Dr. Adoyi chose to celebrate his company’s new face with the birth of Nigeria at independence, he was making a strong statement that he believes in Nigeria and that agriculture is one of those sectors that can make this country great.

Website: www.farmergiant.ng
Tel: +2348132530775


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47DlEmR_zZY?si=ZWiYGOsQfIGsk2pr

LagosOrigin:
Enough of this Olubadan noise please , he's inconsequential in the scheme of things. He's a local oba appointed by Seyi makinde

Did you read the article? Because if you did, you probably will realize that there is no mention of Seyi Makinde in the whole piece.

Obafemi Awolowo and the Olubadan of Ibadan

By: Deji Yesufu

My background in Pentecostal Christianity gave me a faulty conception of the culture of the Nigerian people. I used to hold the opinion that many things in our culture were fetish and that no genuine Christian should be associated with them. Even adopting titles like “Chief” appeared like an anathema to me. I am not sure where I might have picked those ideas from, but the almost unanimous belief of many of us in the Pentecostal religion was that those who take up traditional title roles in many communities in Nigeria have sold their souls to the devil. They are men and women who engage in sacrifices to demons, and they cannot be regarded as Christians in the true sense of the word. Obafemi Awolowo changed all of that.

When you read books, you encounter spirits. Books written by dead people carry a certain authority because readers come to the work of these people with a benefit of hindsight, something that even the writer never had. So, a few years ago, the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation published all the written works of the sage again – including a book written on HID Awolowo by Wale Adebanwi. Then I had the good fortune of finding the resources to purchase these books. I then found the time to read all the books, numbering about thirteen, and Obafemi Awolowo became unraveled before my very eyes. The stories we heard about Awolowo were that he was something of a mystic. Awolowo’s writing revealed that the man was just like every one of us. There is no doubt he was very cerebral and possessed something that is near the prophetic, but reading him, you get the inclination that anybody can become an Awolowo. Awolowo properly documented his thinking in such a way that later generations could pick up where he left off and build on his work. I believe that Obafemi Awolowo understood that many people in his own generation would not see the vision he had for Nigeria. Awolowo wrote of an “educated reformer”; he said that such people are the people who will come and change Nigeria. But this is what the sage said about Nigeria as a nation – it is his most quoted statement, yet many people who quote him do not necessarily succeed at bringing out the point he was trying to make. In his first book, written in 1946, “Path to Nigerian Freedom”, Awolowo wrote:

“If rapid political progress is to be made in Nigeria, it is high time that we were realistic in tackling its constitutional problems. Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English’, ‘Welsh’, or ‘French’. The word ‘Nigerian’ is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not. There are various national or ethnic groups in the country. Ten such groups were recorded during the 1931 census as follows: Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba, Fulani, Kanuri, Ibibio, Tiv, Edo, Nupe, and Ijaw. According to the Nigerian Handbook, eleventh edition, ‘there are also a great number of other small tribes too numerous to enumerate separately…”

When people quote the sage here, they give the impression that Awolowo was saying Nigeria was not a nation but only a mere geographical expression. While he did write that statement, that is not what he meant. Awolowo was writing a book with the British, the white man, as his first audience. He was arguing in that book on a number of reasons why Nigeria should be given independence as soon as possible. He was helping his white readers understand that the country they refer to as Nigeria is not a nation “yet” in the strict sense of the word – at that time, it was still largely a mere geographical expression. His main point was this: Nigeria is a conglomerate of nations. Because one of the main defining elements of nationhood is that the people speak the same language and have the same historical origin. This is why he mentioned the English, Welsh, or French. One could also add: German, Swiss, or Polish. Language is the most important defining characteristic of a nation. Therefore, when you come to this “geographical expression”, you encounter many languages, with people from many historical origins. Therefore, that kind of place is not a nation per se – but a conglomerate of nations. Awolowo made this point to argue for the concept of federalism – a political theory that allowed for hundreds of nations to associate together in a harmonious manner. Nigeria will later adopt federalism as a political structure, even though we are yet to perfect the spirit and character of federalism as a country.

Now, when you understand the point that Nigeria is a conglomerate of nations, then you can appreciate why there is such a thing as a nation of the Yoruba in Nigeria. And even within the Yoruba nation, you have other nations that are defined by their peculiar dialect: the Oyo-Yoruba, Egba, Ibadan, Ekiti, Ondo, etc. In the 1930s, Nigeria’s population was approximately 40 million people. In the 1960s, our population was nearing 60 million. Today, Nigeria has approximately 220 million living within this geographical expression. Our population may have grown about four times what it was in the 1960s. My point here is this: the population of the Yoruba nation today may even be more than the population of the whole of Nigeria in the 1960s. Therefore, it is important that as time goes on, and as the country increases in population size, certain nations within the country must be recognized. The Ibadan people are a historically significant group, and having an Olubadan today rule over them is akin to having a distinct nation within the overall federal nationhood of Nigeria. This is the reason why celebrating the coronation of an Olubadan, as was done today, 26th September 2025, is something that is worth the time.

Now that Chief Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, one-time governor of Oyo State, has been successfully coronated as the new Olubadan of Ibadan, it is time people like him and others in this “nation” begin to consider lifting Ibadan to nationhood status in the real sense of the word. Obafemi Awolowo also argued that with time, Nigeria should create more states. Many have championed the idea of an Ibadan State. Unfortunately, when they do this, they forget a very important prerequisite for actualizing this vision. When Awolowo wrote about creating more states in Nigeria, he never envisioned the time when states would go cap-in-hand to Abuja to collect monthly revenue. Rather, he wrote about “viability” – that a state is ready to be created when such a state is viable – that it can stand alone. A viable state will use the resources within her to build her nation up, while at the same time contributing to the center. Ibadan can become a viable state if she rediscovers agriculture. In the 1950s, Obafemi Awolowo and the Action Group built the foundation of the Western region on two agricultural products: cocoa and palm kernel. Ibadan can do the same thing today.

As we celebrate a new Olubadan, and as the discussion around the creation of states increases, the people of Ibadan should look closely at the point of making Ibadan a nation-state. Agriculture can be so modernized in this place that we can become a net exporter of goods, so much so that one day, Oyo State would even forget to collect its state monthly allocation because it is making a lot more than it is collecting from the center. This is what it means to become a nation in the true sense of the word.

As I went around the city today, I saw people who were really happy to have Ladoja on the traditional seat of their forefathers. I hope that Ladoja will bring his wealth of experience as a former Governor to bear on making Ibadan such a prosperous hub that the Nigerian nation will have no qualms granting Ibadan a state status in the days to come. If this happens, Obafemi Awolowo could smile from the great beyond as he sees one of his greatest visions for Nigeria come to pass. A vision where all ethnic groups, all nation states within this country, become self-sufficient, viable, prosperous, and beneficial to their people. If such a thing were to happen in Nigeria, it should only be fitting that it begins in Ibadan, the Pacesetter, the same town the sage operated in years ago – showing Nigerians that Africans can do great things if they set their minds to it.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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Brig. Alabi-Isama, Maitasine, and Boko Haram

By: Deji Yesufu

A few days ago, the internet reminded us of the life and bravery of Lt. Col. Abu Ali. He was killed on the 4th of November, 2016 by Boko Haram. For a number of months before his death, Col. Ali had become a thorn in the flesh of the terrorist group. He almost singlehandedly recovered communities after communities from Boko Haram, after the insurgents had taken over those places in Borno State. With the help of his armored tank, Col. Ali would enter into the den of those animals, mow them down, and other soldiers will come from behind to mop up what he had done. It is said that the attack that took his life was specifically designed to kill him. Boko Haram had had enough of him and they ensured that he was eliminated. It is important that Nigeria keeps remembering the men that have paid the ultimate price to keep this country going, and it is the reason why those of us who mold public opinion with our writing, have a duty to share ideas in a responsible manner. We must do everything to build this country up and not to tear it down. It is in the bid to do this that my attention was drawn to a comment by Brig. Godwin Alabi-Isama (ret’d).

Brig. Alabi-Isama was speaking with Edmund Obilo on his internet broadcast, State Affairs. Among other things, he mentioned that he was part of the Nigerian army effort to quell the Maitasine riots of the 1970s. When he was asked how he did it, Alabi-Isama explained that he would be sharing those experiences in his next book. He then made the point that informed this essay: he said he is eighty-five years old. That during his youth, he did his bit to bring peace to the social fabric called Nigeria. He fought a civil war; he helped to quell riots in the north; and for all these, he was dismissed unceremoniously from the Nigerian Army. He then explains that it is the duty of young men to ensure that peace reign in the country they live in. He would not be coming out of retirement to fight Boko Haram at his age.

For those who may not know, the Maitasine riots were a series of events in the 1970s and 1980s in Nigeria that revolved around the preaching of an Islamic cleric called Muhammad Marwa. Marwa taught an unorthodox form of Islamic doctrine, where he raged against the Nigerian state and roused public sentiments against the government – especially the police. Marwa instigated young men through his preaching, who then began to fight the police and the soldiers. In the process, thousands of people were killed. Marwa himself was killed in 1980, but an element within that sect tried to resuscitate itself in the early 1980s but was forcefully put down by the Nigerian military. The Maitasine riots are the precursor to Boko Haram. Boko Haram was founded on the teaching of another Islamic cleric called Muhammad Yusuf. Yusuf also taught violence against the Nigerian state and, in the same fashion with Marwa, began to kill policemen and burn government institutions. The Nigerian police eliminated Yusuf in 2009, but his doctrine had spread far and wide. Other things that helped to spread his teaching were the coming of international terrorists’ groups like ISIS, who have since teamed up with Boko Haram to make the Nigerian state ungovernable. The simple question remains: Why has Nigeria not succeeded in bringing an end to insurgency on its territory? I will use the rest of this essay to suggest a few reasons.

First. The first would be a lack of professionalism within Nigerian law enforcements. Alabi-Isama mentioned that he and his team were able to round up quite a number of Maitasine faithful without killing any of them. The cold-hearted manner with which Muhammad Yusuf was murdered in 2009 still remains a stain on the conscience of this country. While, understandably, his followers had killed many law enforcement agents, at the same time, the Nigerian police should have been professional enough to bring that young man to justice. Unfortunately, he was summarily executed by some trigger-happy policeman, at the point where he had already been apprehended and was in police custody. How this country has managed to populate the rank and file of its police with men who can not think is something that is beyond me. In fact, one word that characterizes so much in Nigeria is this same lack of professionalism in many of our public institutions. Everybody is seeking money; no one is concerned about doing a job well. It is sad.

Second. We can not avoid the question of militant Islam. Many Muslims take umbrage with me for including the word “Islam” with terrorist groups like Boko Haram and Maitasine. They say that those groups are fringe Muslim groups and should not be considered to be the same as mainstream Islam. This is true because there are fringe groups in Christianity, too, and many of us Christians would not wish to be associated with some of these people’s ideas. What I, however, continue to insist on is the fact that many people in northern Nigeria are yet to come to grasp with the sociological implication of identifying with a country called Nigeria. Probably because of ravaging poverty and very little education, many northerners see themselves first as Muslims before they see themselves as Nigerians. Their allegiance is first to the religion before they make a commitment to the state. In fact, the lack of education in Northern Nigeria leaves them vulnerable to radical preachers who bring ideas that are against the Nigerian state. And before one knows it, these people would have raised an army of unemployed young men and plunged communities into disarray. The whole idea of saying that Western civilization is haram is an idea that is still endemic in many parts of northern Nigeria. Boko Haram are only willing to back their ideas up with violence. Therefore, there will be no end to these kinds of violent groups in the North until northerners themselves make the commitment to the Nigerian state in the same manner that they are committed to their religion.

Third. I am not convinced that Muslims in the south of Nigeria are making as much effort at educating their northern counterparts as they should. The impression I get of many Muslim groups in the south of Nigeria is one of tacit support of the activities of their brethren in the North. If Muslims in the south have made the same effort at condemning the activities of Boko Haram, in the same forceful manner with which they campaign for the hijab to be introduced to secondary schools in Osun State and other south-west states, we might have seen the end of Boko Haram by now in our body polity. Sincerely, the matter still boils down to the question that even our northern brothers have failed to answer. Have Muslims in Nigeria made a commitment to this nation in the same level that they make to their religion? The impression that I get is that many educated Muslims in the south still see Nigeria as a “Christian” entity, and they will welcome any effort to change it. The constitution of this country regards this nation as a secular space. Nigeria is neither Christian nor Muslim, although it gives freedom to all religious and non-religious groups to associate in peace. This freedom should, however, not be at the expense of the well-being of our country.

In conclusion, it is important that we ask ourselves as a people: how much blood of innocent Nigerians will warrant a re-think on how we all have been doing things in this country? Who among us, particularly the elites, will allow our sons and daughters to join the Nigerian army or police? Is it not true that most of the people who join many of these government institutions are persons who do not know anyone and then join the military mainly so that they can survive? We owe it to the memory of the dead and to ensure that our young men and women are not brought to their early grave because of needless crisis in society. If it is true that Alabi-Isama helped quell the Maitasine riots in the 1970s without shooting a bullet, perhaps the Nigerian army will need to call that man out of retirement; apologize to him for his unceremonious discharge from the army; pay him his dues; and then ask him how he did it. Following this, they can then train men in intelligence who will help to bring this needless bloodshed to an end in Northern Nigeria.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached naijareformed@gmail.com

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Mosab Hassan Yousef – Son of Hamas

By: Deji Yesufu

On August 1, 2025, Mosab Hassan Yousef informed the public through several of his social media accounts that he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Going by his records, his utterances, and what he stands for, it will almost seem impossible that the Nobel Prize committee will recognize an individual like him for such an exalted award. However, perhaps there is something that they are seeing about Mosab that the world has overlooked. If it is possible to understand the rationale behind this nomination (he has not won the prize yet), perhaps our world might be able to take the required step to see sustained peace come to the Middle East. Who is Mosab Hassan Yousef? Who is this Green Prince?

Mosab, as most people call him, was born on the 5th of May, 1978, in what is today known as Palestine. His father is Sheikh Hassan Yousef. Sheikh Yousef is one of the few individuals who founded the religious/political group that is known today as Hamas. Mosab grew up to regard Israel as the foremost enemy of the Palestinian people. His own family lived in the West Bank, not Gaza. Mosab explains that in his youth, two diametrically opposing worldviews were playing out before him. The first was the typical indoctrination that he was taught both at home and at school, which was that Israel had taken the land that belonged to his forefathers, and that it was his duty to destroy all Jews. Even as young as ten years old, Mosab joined up with other young Palestinian boys to stone Israeli soldiers who may be patrolling their neighborhood. He paid very little attention to his studies; his goal in life was to kill an Israeli soldier, and he worked very hard towards this goal. On the flip side, other things were happening within his life that would eventually come to have meaning when he was an adult.

Mosab tells the story of his first whipping. He did not explain what led to it, but he remembers that he was a little older than ten years old. He also says that his dear mother was also made to endure watching the scenario. An uncle had concluded that he had done something wrong and that he was going to be punished. He was tied up and beaten with a whip until he fell unconscious, blood pouring out all over his back. He has never been able to reconcile what he could have done as a ten-year-old that would warrant such brutality. In the same community that pays such a high premium to discipline and the eradication of lawlessness and sin, he was raped by a male relative. He did not mention who this person was, but Mosab explained that the psychological injury of being raped by a man was even worse than the one that led to his being caned as a child. All these, combined with watching how women were treated in his community, particularly the issue of honor killing, where a father would gladly kill a daughter all because she had chosen to take a position in the family that is against the father’s wish. This is besides the fact that women are treated like garbage, and the hypocrisy that follows the covering up of sin just because of the wealth of the individual is quite rampant, where he grew up. Mosab did not pay much attention to these problems in his community in the West Bank. His rage against Israel blinded him to these realities until…

At age eighteen, Mossab decided to take the law into his hands. He was finally going to kill an Israelite. He jumped over the barricade that separated his community from the Israelites and had his weapon hidden. He was just about preparing to take the shot when an eagle-eyed Israeli soldier spotted him and demanded his surrender. Young Mossab was arrested and slammed in an Israeli prison – along with thousands of other Palestinian youths. It was in prison that things began to be clearer for him. Mosab observed that even the Palestinians who were in prison with him did not trust him. There was a strong culture of mistrust among all of them, despite the fact that they all came from the same community. Besides this, there was the brutal practice of torturing fellow Palestinians by Palestinians themselves. Mosab explains that he can still hear the cry of horror coming from the lips of some of those young men as they are being tortured by their own countrymen. Usually, something would have happened in the West Bank, and the conclusion would be that a Palestinian had betrayed their cause and revealed secrets to the Israelites. They will then find an innocent person, torture him, and sometimes even kill him in the process. Mosab explained that the only way he was not tortured was because everyone knew he was the son of one of the founders of Hamas.

Mosab was in the middle of this dilemma when he approached Israeli operatives and told them that he wished to “rat” on his own country people. The Israelites did not believe him, but since they were short on sources, they were willing to give him a try. They, however, ensured that he had lots of cover and that his identity would not be revealed to his Palestinian people. The code name that was given to him for those operations was “The Green Prince”. Mosab took the time to weigh the two cultures he had lived in all his life and reached the conclusion that a culture of death reigned among the Palestinians, while a culture of life was prevalent among the Israelites. Mosab chose life over death. He was released from prison and was sent to the University to read History by the Israelites. While he was doing this, he used his network of connections within Hamas to learn about potential terrorist attacks on Israel. Then he would inform his Israeli friends about these, and they would go to those places and stop the suicide bombs before they went off. This way, both the lives of the Palestinians and the Israelites were saved. Mosab did this for close to a decade, before the Israelites decided to retire him. They whisked him out of Palestine and sent him to live in the United States of America. It was while in the USA that he wrote his bestseller “Son of Hamas”. The book shot him to the limelight, but at the same time brought his life into peril. Mosab has since left the USA and returned to Israel. He says his life in the USA is not safe, with many thousands of leftists and liberals who are championing the cause of Palestine in American universities, and many of them are threatening his life. Mosab was largely in abeyance until October 7th, 2023, when it happened. It was that incident that launched him out again. He had long argued with his Israeli friends that suicide attacks on Israel would not end. This is why it was never his wish to leave his earlier job of unveiling terrorist activities against Israel. But the Israeli authorities understood that his life was in danger if he continued to live in the West Bank.

Mosab’s theory about happenings in the Middle East was fundamentally altered when he met a Christian missionary in Israel and became a Christian. He was able to examine the fundamental root of his people’s hatred of the Jews, and he was able to trace it to the Quran. He saw that the writers of the Quran had made it clear that all Jews are the enemies of Muslims, and that there will be no end to our world except that the Jews are destroyed. Now, that section of the Muslim writ remained largely unnecessary for centuries until 1948, when the United Nations decided to allow the Jews to return to Palestine to live. The area that is today regarded as Israel, and also called Palestine for some people, was the geographical location of the people of Israel as recorded in the Bible. In AD 70, however, Jerusalem was destroyed and a large population of Jews was killed. Those who survived moved into other parts of the Middle East, but the religion and culture of the Jews were largely preserved because it is a religion that is founded on the Old Testament. So, for close to two thousand years, the geographical location called Palestine was largely uninhabited.

That area was called Palestine by the Romans. Mosab’s argument is that there is no such thing as “Palestine”. Instead, his own people are Arabs, who live in the Middle East. Many of them have come to become Muslims, but long before the coming of Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century, the people living in that region of the world were polytheists, like most other places in the world. Mosab argues that the people we call Palestinians today are persons who migrated from neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon and came to live in the land of Israel. These people are Arabs, and the only link they have to that land is that they have also lived there, especially when the Jews were not around. Mosab then argues that what will make for peace is for the Arabs, or Palestinians if you like, to regard the Jews as friends, not enemies. He says that there are thousands of Arabs who live in Israel today and have come to adopt Israel as their nation of birth, while retaining their religion as Muslims. Mosab argues that Israel has brought light, life, education, and civilization to the Middle East. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. And that this has made the country strong and prosperous. Rather than its Muslim neighbors fighting Israel, they will do well to work with Israel. Mosab believes that many Arabs living around Israel will not live in peace with Israel as long as they retain that ideological position that the Jews are their enemy. So, when Israel wages war against Hamas in Gaza, Mosab sees this as a necessary counter-offensive on an ideology that is evil at its root.

It is this thinking that the Nobel Prize committee has recognized and has thus accepted the nomination for Mosab to get the Nobel Prize for peace this year, 2025. They are giving him this award for the efforts he made to ensure that suicide attacks failed on the soil of Israel for close to a decade. It was something that went unnoticed for a long time, but after October 7th, 2023, many people in Israel have come to realize how much Mosab has done to save Israeli lives. Mosab’s greatest pain in life was being disowned by his own father. After his book, Son of Hamas, was published in 2010, his father spoke to him on the phone and told him that he would always love him, but Mosab knew what that meant. The following day, Sheikh Yousef disowned Mosab publicly. It was something he needed to do to preserve his family’s honor back in the West Bank. Mosab, however, grieves over the fact that his father chose an ideological position over his own son. It is this grief, and the fact that Israel represents light and life to the Middle East that drives him to do all that he does. If he wins the Nobel Prize for peace in 2025, Mosab’s lifelong work would have become globally recognized and could help bring permanent peace to the Middle East.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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Charlie Kirk: Understanding White Evangelicalism

By: Deji Yesufu

Throughout my brief years in pastoral work, my greatest on-the-job learning experience was teaching my children the catechism. For them, it is pure head knowledge. They rattle off the answers to all 145 questions, and it is just a beauty to hear them mouth those healthy orthodoxies. It does not make them Christians, but it plants a seed of God’s word in their hearts that will one day grow into grace and knowledge of our Savior, Jesus Christ. My children’s catechism, question 93, asks: “What is the sixth commandment?” The response they give to it is: “The sixth commandment is, thou shalt not kill”. The 94th question continue: “What does the sixth commandment teach us?” “To avoid angry passions,” is the appropriate reply by the children. That aspect of the catechism is called “The Ten Commandments,” and it has helped me to know the commandments off-hand, at least to some extent.

To kill a man is a grave thing indeed. Nobody can create a human being. The formation of the fetus in the womb of a woman is beyond sex between a man and a woman. It is the working of God’s grace that biology explains in a limited manner by showing that a sperm travels into the woman’s womb and fuses with an egg. In reality, it is beyond that. In Genesis 2, scripture tells us two things happened when man was formed: the man was made from the dust, but the man was not complete until God breathed the breath of life into him. Therefore, while Biology has succeeded in telling us how the flesh is formed, scripture tells us that God breathes into every fetus and that clump of cells becomes a human being the very moment the biological process of fertilization is complete. When a man is murdered (or even when a baby is aborted), a tragic end is brought not just to a physical form, but also to the breadth of life, which God alone put there, is suddenly snuffed out. So, a murderer is playing God. A murderer determines who lives and who dies. Besides this, the ground opens its mouth and receives the blood of the murdered. This is why it is biblical justice for the blood of the murderer to be shed for the one whom they killed. Crime increases in societies that treat murderers with kid gloves.

My concern in this essay is not so much about the killing of Charlie Kirk or what appropriate justice must be meted out to his killer. My concern here is to offer a response to a few people who may or may not have rightly criticized Charlie Kirk’s kind of ministry. I am not concerned with responding to the radical left, many of whom are rejoicing over the death of this man. I am rather concerned with a few people who think that white evangelicals of every form do not deserve our pity. I have heard the phrases “white supremacy” and “racism” used with reckless abandon since Kirk died. David Hundeyin, a brilliant independent Nigerian journalist, whose work in unearthing Nigeria’s president’s academic history has made him an international name in journalism, criticized those of us defending the death of Charlie Kirk. He said that we are ill-informed and we are the new Uncle Toms (not exactly his words, but clearly what he insinuated). There have been many criticisms of some of us who copy American-style evangelicalism and who say we simply parrot these people’s way of life without judging matters independently. We are told that we are practicing the white man’s religion, and we should begin to think for ourselves. I hope that my explanation of white evangelicals will help my readers understand the issues, and also help them realize that Charlie Kirk was a martyr in every sense of the word, and his death, like that of his Savior, will redeem America from its sorry state.

First, there is the white evangelicals’ sin.

While a lot of them may not admit it, many white evangelicals are aware of their sin – the historic sin of slavery their fathers perpetuated on the black population of Africa. Slavery is a very recent history in America, and it will take a complete idiot to deny it. Slavery was so bad that it occasioned a civil war in America, and as the war was coming to an end, it led to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the man who led the northern parts of America against the South. It is true that the South of America was mostly Christian. In fact, many of them were professing Calvinists – the Christian tradition I espouse today. Evangelical pastors stood on their pulpits and used the Bible to explain away man’s inhumanity to man by making his fellow man crawl under his table. I am very sure that this sin grieved the God of heaven, and it led to the judgment of the civil war that left thousands of Christian men dead on the battlefields all around the United States of America. Many white evangelicals have defended this question of slavery by claiming that it was their fathers who committed the sin, not them. As I will show in the next point, this sin flows in the veins of the children also. Those who say white evangelicals should not be pitied because of the sin of slavery may be stretching the matter too far, though. Because none of us would wish to be judged by the sins of our own forefathers.

Second, there is the white evangelicals’ Achilles’ heel.

The white evangelicals’ Achilles’ heel is their love of money. It is called capitalism. It was love of money that made the slave trade continue for that long. Even after slavery had been abolished, the love of money, enshrined in unbridled capitalism, leads many white evangelicals to follow the trail that leads to money. Modern economic and political ideals have reached the position that neither full-blown capitalism nor unhealthy socialism is healthy for a country. Wise governments seek a healthy balance between the two political theories. It is important to allow for free market and healthy competition that will lead to productivity in society, with employers paying for the best minds to work for them, while at the same time accruing healthy financial gains for greater investments. The government should allow smart and able-bodied men to engage in free enterprise. On the flip side, though, the government must do everything to protect the weak. Marx and Engels have taught the world that the workers are the goose that lays the golden egg. While the entrepreneur must earn a profit, the worker must also be given a living wage. Government must also provide social security for the weak; pensions for retirees; care for the old; health for the sick; schools for children; support for the disabled and infirm, etc. Obafemi Awolowo taught that if African nations were to speed up the process of meeting the First World countries, they should make health care and education free at all levels in their countries. This is healthy socialism that must be balanced with healthy capitalism. The Archille’s heel of white evangelicals is that they pay very little emphasis on socialist theories – demonizing these as Communism – and they extol all the virtues of capitalism without paying attention to possible dangers around it. This is why many white evangelicals in America turn Christian ministry into a means of making money. It is a sin they must understand is ingrained within them, and God alone can bring them to repentance in this matter. It is what has given us the Word of Faith theology. And even Reformed Christianity in America is not immune from the stranglehold of money.

Third, there is the gospel message that the white evangelical knows very well.

The advantage of living in America is that you have access to wealth like no other country in the world. Americans are super wealthy. The implication is that all their institutions are well funded – including their churches. Pastors are paid so well that they can afford to sit down and study. The result of extended study of books and history is that white evangelicals in America are the leading source of sound biblical knowledge in the world today. Their piety may not be as profound as their knowledge, but they have contributed to biblical knowledge in our world today like no other country has. In the past, it used to be England and the Netherlands. But America has today overtaken the two countries combined. There are hundreds of theological institutions all around America today that are ready to provide free tuition to students all around the world. American churches are the biggest sponsors of missions all around the world. Along with this money also comes a wealth of knowledge like no other. Many of us who are learning theology have benefited from American-run institutions and sponsorship, and for this, we are grateful. It is one reason many of us shy away from criticizing American religious institutions, because if truth must be told, it is the person who pays the piper that dictates the tune. This might be the reason why many black men defend white evangelicals.

Fourth, there must be a proper distilling of this gospel message for an African context.

If Africans learn well from the Americans, and we have eyes to see what the Holy Spirit is writing within scripture, we should be able to use the vast knowledge the Americans have given to us, and bring them to solve African problems. What I disagree with many Nigerians who are evangelicals like me is that I refuse to bring America to Nigeria. At seminary, I was taught contextualization. I was told that the gospel message is the same everywhere, but the context in which it would be disseminated would differ from country to country. How you will preach the same gospel that the Americans are preaching, while preserving the Nigerian context, is something only the Spirit of Jesus can teach. What many Nigerians do is just to imitate the Americans or their British teachers. But this might not be practical in an African context. So, the minister thinks through problems, prays about them, and then God gives him wisdom to solve those problems. For example, I understand that the people of Ilesha, my hometown in Osun State, rejected Christianity because the missionaries who came to preach to them insisted that polygamous men could not be accepted in the church. My forefathers simply turned to Islam because it permitted polygamy. On the other hand, the right answer to that matter was that a polygamous man can be accepted in church, but he would be required not to add to his wives, and he would not be able to hold any office in church. There are hundreds of other examples. The main thrust here is simple: gospel knowledge is not British or American knowledge. It is biblical knowledge that gives the man of God the initiative to solve day-to-day problems. The black African must be able to rise above the narrow mindset of his white evangelical counterpart.

Fifth, there is a Savior who saves all men in spite of their sin.

The biggest lesson of the gospel is that all men are sinners. What those who criticize Charlie Kirk and other white evangelicals fail to see is that they also are sinners. The history of slavery in Africa is worse than anything ever recorded in American slave history books. In fact, the white men succeeded at enslaving other black men because the blacks were already enslaving themselves, and the whites only offered better financial rewards. The kind of sin in the hearts and minds of black men is not any worse than the sin in the hearts of white men. We are all sinners, and the gospel teaches that Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins. It is a glorious day when the Holy Spirit helps you and me to look beyond the sin of others and to recognize sin within our own hearts. When men realize that they have sinned, the debates end, and there is humble contrition. There is usually forgiveness that follows, and a healthy erasing of wrongs done in the past. The social justice people lost me when they claimed that the white evangelical must bear the sins that his fathers committed. If the black African does not bear the sin of his own fathers, why should we demand the same standard from other people? Christ is able to save men to the uttermost, and the Christian message is neither a British nor an American message. It is wisdom from above; it is God’s means of saving men from sin and then reconciling all men together beyond skin coloration.

Conclusion

As I sat down to write this essay, it was reported in the news that the killer of Charlie Kirk has been found. The murderer is 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. He is a radical left young man whose father handed him over to law enforcement. I hope the state of Utah brings the fullest wrath of the law against him. The biblical counsel is that when a man kills another man, justice demands that he also must be killed. It is all these silly leftists who have encouraged the abolishing of the death sentence. When people understand that when they commit a crime, they can go off the hook, they continue in it. This idea is not a white evangelical one; this is what scripture teaches. And this is where I part ways with white evangelicals: it is possible for many leading white evangelicals to teach doctrines that will preserve their sins in society. It is, however, our duty to point out their errors to them. Now, the fact that they do these things does not mean that biblical wisdom is wrong. The truth of the Bible far exceeds all the wisdom that white evangelicals can know or teach. When you know God and can be taught by the Holy Spirit, you have something that many white evangelicals cannot have.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANTY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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Charlie Kirk and September 11

By: Deji Yesufu

It has been a very hectic one-week period for our world. Tuesday, September 8th, 2025, two gunmen enter a public bus on the outskirts of Jerusalem and kill six Israelis in obvious retaliation for Israel’s military actions in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East. The leadership of Hamas claimed responsibility for this attack. The following day, September 9th, Israeli fighter jets invaded the sovereign nation of Qatar and killed five leaders of Hamas who were discussing the terms of releasing hostages from Gaza to bring an end to the war. Israel explains that the attack was retaliation for the killings the previous day on their land. We were still reeling from all these news, only to wake up to hear that an American conservative speaker, Charlie Kirk, had been gunned down by an unknown shooter midafternoon of the 10th of September. Kirk was holding his usual speaking engagement with students at a university in Utah. The media describes Kirk as “right-wing” and might be suggesting that his political views may have been what had instigated his assassination. There is still a manhunt for his killer as I write this. Today, following all these events, is the 24th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

All of these came on the backdrop of a provocative article I had written, which I titled “Israel is Fighting a Just War”. I have gotten two very interesting responses to that article. The first person is a Christian who claimed to have been a member of the Christ Embassy Church, but who no longer associates with the church. He explained that my article was ill-informed and stated that I reached conclusions that were regrettable. The second person is a Muslim. He took umbrage with me on the fact that I dared to identify with a genocidal regime (Israel). He said that America is the leading exporter of terrorists to the world, and whatever America gets, America deserves. I tried to explain to the two men that the real issue here is militant Islam. I tried to show them that at the root of Islam is a deep-rooted antisemitism and that even if the Jews were to do nothing in reaction to all the terrorist attacks on their country, they would still be unsafe. The two men tried to convince me that modern Jews are not the biblical Jews. They said that the Jews are just as anti-Christian as any other religious group that opposes Christians. Therefore, it is a waste of valuable time trying to stand in defense of the Jews and whatever they may be doing. I want to use the death of Charlie Kirk to explain what is at the heart of a true progressive, modern, and civilized society, and why certain ideologies are antithetical to what has made our world what it is today. What I share with the Jews may not be a common faith, but a commitment to these ideals of a civilized society.

Charlie Kirk was killed because he not only hold certain political and religious views, but he also proclaimed those views without fear. Whether our world appreciates it or not, we must understand that the United States of America is the biggest influence on world culture and politics today. What America believes will inform what the rest of the world holds dear. In the last thirty years, a certain anti-religious idea began to pervade the American landscape, and this idea thrived on America’s greatest strength – freedom. America holds the position that every man has a right to freedom of ideas, religion, and conscience. This philosophy of freedom is what has given rise to the flourishing of a marketplace of ideas, where the best ideas reign. American ideas are also closely connected to the political atmosphere of that country. It means that the political party in power and the person at the seat of government will decide what the majority of the American people will believe. America will allow you to share your thoughts, and it will give liberty to people to hold those ideas. In the past twenty years, however, something began to happen. A leftist anti-Christian idea began to reign in the United States. It was promoted by Barack Obama, and it took a permanent seat in the days of Joe Biden. The problem was not with the holding of these ideas – remember that America permits all kinds of ideas to reign. The problem was that these leftists began to prohibit everyone who opposed their ideas from speaking. It is what brought about the cancel culture that began to reign on Twitter before Elon Musk bought that social media space. The left lost the battle with Donald Trump coming to power, but their penchant to silence opposing views is what made one of them attempt a near-assassination of President Trump. And it is this very mentality that has led to the killing of Charlie Kirk yesterday.

What do all these have to do with September 11? On September 11, 2001, exactly twenty-four years ago, the world came face to face with militant Islam. It will interest many to know that militant Islam and militant leftists are bedfellows. They have a common enemy, and that enemy is freedom. They have a rabid fear of people expressing opinions other than theirs, and they will do everything to silence all opposing views. Their silencing of the opposition could range from personal attacks, criticism, death threats, and, in some cases, assassinations. They believe that if people are given the freedom to choose what views they might wish to espouse, these people will take the wrong path. They forget that God, our creator, has given every man a will and we all have the liberty to use that will whichever way we please. Even many Christian traditions have not been able to appreciate the liberty that the Christian message has given to men. Jesus Christ calls all men to listen to the truth and to make informed decisions regarding what they wish to do with the information they have. The blessing of adult life is that you and I will make decisions today, and we must live with the consequences of those decisions tomorrow. It is bondage to insist that grown men must do what you command them to do. This might have been permitted under the feudal system of the past, but in the days of civilization and modernity, all men must decide what they wish to use their lives for. The best we can do is to go to the marketplace of ideas and sell our ideas to all men, and we must rest content with allowing the best ideas to win. This is what has made America a great country, and this is the future of the modern world.

Charlie Kirk was just thirty-one years old. His wife is also very young, and the oldest of his two children would be about three years old. He was one of the biggest supporters of President Trump, and one news commentary claimed that he practically won the state of Arizona for Donald Trump. He was supposed to have been given an office in the cabinet of Trump, but they concluded that his work with the “Turning Point USA” was more important than any work he could do at the White House. Kirk will go into American Universities and debate leftist ideologies. In the process, he had helped to change many students’ mindset and helped them to appreciate a more conservative worldview and even consider the Christian message. Kirk was in the middle of answering a question on transgenderism – pointing at the fact that his Christian worldview abhors such thinking, when he was suddenly shot in the neck. He died a little less than two hours after that time.

When I write that “Israel is Fighting a Just War”, I am positing the idea that modern civilization thrives in an atmosphere of freedom. As we raise our children, one of the best gifts we can give them is the freedom to be themselves and to think for themselves. We must help our children to appreciate the fact that what they hold as beliefs will inform what they do in life, and what they do in life comes with consequences. Similarly, every person in our world must have the liberty to listen to ideas – to accept or reject them. When the state begins to force on people what religion or political ideology they must espouse, you have bondage. And where there is bondage, there can’t be a marketplace for ideas, and the best ideas will not flourish. This will bring regression to society instead of civilization and progress.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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MrPresident1:
VBCampaign, the emboldened below, is it a mistake? If it is not a mistake but it is deliberate on your part, then know this now, the Israelis are not the Israelites of the Bible.

The real Israelites will be regathered by Jesus Christ himself when he returns. Any purported return before Jesus Christ is a deep fake. Anything that is fake does not solve any problem, it only aggravates existing challenges or disfunction

The Israeli are not the Israelites of the Bible

It is near impossible to engage your points. But they noted nonetheless

MaxineDHouse

What you have written is Pacifism. You cannot be a pacifist in a world of sin.

Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 13:3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 13:4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain[b][/b]: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

God has given every civil government powers to bear the sword. The aim is to punish evil, and protect good. So that evil doesn't overrun society.

Many preached Pacifism in the middle ages when Islam encroached on Europe. They quickly jettisoned that idea when they realised the Mohammedians were taking over their land.

MaxInDHouse:
The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love VIOLENCE, he HATES with a passion. ‭Psalms 11:5 NIV‬

So let all believers in Christ stay away from violence!

While at the same time we must recognise the concept of a just war...

Israel is Fighting a Just War

By: Deji Yesufu

A little over a week ago, I was in Oyo Town to minister for a brother who is trying to plant a reformed mission in that part of the country. Two other ministers accompanied us to the conference. One morning, over breakfast, our discussion turned to happenings in the Middle East. One of the ministers then asked why Israel is trying to take over Gaza. As far as he was concerned, Israel may be fighting a just war, but they should not overstep their boundaries and take over a land that belongs to another people. I replied by saying that Israel is not trying to take over Gaza. I then went on to explain what I believe the issues were in the Middle East and why the military actions the nation of Israel is carrying out against Palestinians must be brought to a logical conclusion. I will use the remainder of this essay to shed further light on the response I gave to the minister.

The idea of penning this article has been in my mind for months now, but the possible reaction to it has held me back. While I vouch for myself to be a fearless writer, I also know my limits. One of such limits is Islam. In the 1960s, even the inimitable Obafemi Awolowo advised the Nigerian government and public commentators to stay clear of happenings in the Middle East. There is no way you will comment on the crisis there without offending Muslims in this country. Now, while this country could remain mum with regard to happenings between the Palestinians and Israelites in the 1960s, the fact that militant Islam has become a national malaise for us in this country today means that we can no longer remain quiet on the subject anymore. As Boko Haram rages in the North East of Nigeria, and bandits hold sway in the North West, Israel is also fighting militant Islam on their borders and within their country. As I pen this piece this evening, two Palestinian terrorists entered an Israeli public bus and opened fire on innocent commuters. Fifteen people were critically injured, and six of those are now dead. The terrorists were killed, and Hamas has claimed responsibility for the attack. Why then do I say that Israel is fighting a just war? It is nearly impossible to start the story of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from the beginning, but I will start from somewhere.

Historically, the land that the nation of Israel presently occupies belongs to the Jews. It was on that land that Jesus Christ walked. It was there he was crucified, and it was there he rose from the dead. In AD 70, the Romans ransacked the land of Israel in retaliation for a number of uprisings among the Jews that had led to the killing of Roman soldiers. The result was the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the killing of thousands of Jews, while a whole lot of them were dispersed into the diaspora. When you look at the map of Israel, you will see that it is a country that is located in a little corner of the Middle East, sandwiched between countries like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. So, when the Jews were dispersed two thousand years ago, they went into all these countries. Some even went as far as Western Europe, and others went to Russia. The Jews, however, retain their heritage, particularly their belief in the One God who created the heavens and the earth, and their commitment to the Old Testament – Genesis to Malachi.

In the 19th century, the land that is presently occupied by the nation of Israel was a vastly unoccupied piece of space. There were a few Jews who lived there, but the land had come to be mostly occupied by Arabs – most of them from the neighboring countries of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon. These people were Muslim, and they coexisted peacefully with the Jews. About that time, a Zionist movement began in Europe that began to encourage Jews to return to their fatherland and help build it up. It was going to be a daunting task, because, besides overcoming the challenge of developing an arid land, there were the Jews’ Muslim neighbors who had a particular hatred for them. What is little known about Islam is that the Muslim scripture is fundamentally antisemitic. There are portions of the Quran that teach that Muslims and Christians are the worst of all creatures, and that Jews should be destroyed at all costs (Quran 98:6). Like many scriptures in our holy books, these portions of the Quran are open to wide interpretations. There are, therefore, many militant Muslim groups that take these scriptures in their literal form and are committed to the destruction of all Jews.

It was within these climates that the holocaust of the Second World War occurred, which led to the United Nations compensating the Jews with their forefathers’ land of Israel in 1948. For close to a century now, Israel has waged different wars to preserve their right to live in that territorial space. Many of their Muslim neighbors have come to accept the fact that Israel has a right to live in that space, except for a few radical militant Muslim countries and persons. Shi’ite Islam is not as accommodating to Jews as Sunni Islam. The Shi’ite-led government of Iran had committed itself to sponsoring a terrorist group against Israel. There is the Hamas government in Gaza that is fighting Israel to the East of the country; there is the Hezbollah group in Lebanon that is waging war on Israel from the North of the country. Everything was supposed to come to a head in October 2023. Four terrorist groups were supposed to launch an attack on Israel’s sovereignty at the same time. But the Hamas people, operating in Gaza, were too excited about the plan; they launched their attack a day before, culminating in the October 7th, 2023, attack on Israel that resulted in the death of no less than 1,200 Israelis. Since that day, Israel has launched coordinated attacks on all its neighbors. In an unprecedented manner, Israel had decimated the ranks and file of the nation of Iran, leaving the country today vulnerable to a possible regime change. Israel has destroyed Hezbollah, killing all its top operatives in one single operation. They have also destroyed the Houthis in Yemen. And presently, they are in Gaza trying to recover a few hostages they are convinced are still alive; hostages taken after the October 7th attack on their territory.

Why is this war then a just war? It is because the war Israel is waging is an ideological war. Many Israelis compare the war against Hamas as something akin to what happened in the Second World War. The Second World War was not just a war that was fought over land and territorial supremacy; it was an ideological war. Adolf Hitler had posited a doctrine that said that the German people were the most exalted species of persons in the world. They taught that the Jews were scum. They believed that black men were animals. Etc. They then tried to overrun most of Europe and Russia, and then use the resources they got from those places to colonize the whole world. Japan and Italy joined Hitler in this hateful ideology, and the world was plunged into a just war that claimed the lives of no less than 75 million people. In the same manner, the war Hamas and other militant Muslim groups are waging against Israel is an ideological war. It is not just a war over land. The basic idea that many militant Muslims hold is that the Jews are an evil lot, and the Muslim world cannot permit their existence in the Middle East. The only way to end the crisis in the Middle East is to reorient the fundamental ideas that rule the minds of the people of that region of the world. Militant Islam must be understood for what it is, and it must be rejected in the modern world in all its facets. Atheistic, liberal, and agnostic thinkers, who reject Christianity, cannot continue to provide cover for militant Islam to carry out their barbaric actions. Similarly, moderate Muslims must separate themselves from the ideas and actions of militant Islam.

Now, practically speaking, it would be nearly impossible to rid the Middle East of all militant Muslims who hate Jews. Already, Israel has identified many wealthy Qataris and other Muslim persons around the world who fund terrorist operations against the Jews. What Israel plans to do with the Gaza Strip is to simply remove every militant Islamic group from that space and repopulate the place with Palestinians who do not hate Jews. These Palestinians, and there are thousands of them both in Palestine now and in the diaspora, wish to have their country back from Hamas, who are the present government in that place. There are many Palestinians who live peacefully within Israel, and who have come to regard the Jews as friends. In fact, while the war against Hamas rages on, Israel continues to provide the people of Gaza with food, water, and shelter. While at the same time warning the people against going to areas where they could be caught in the war between Israeli forces and Hamas.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict must be discussed in Nigeria and understood because Nigeria is also in the grip of militant Islam. Despite their vaunted claim to rid the country of Boko Haram and other terrorist groups like them, northern Nigeria continues to suffer from the influence of these militant Muslim groups because many Muslims in the North offer Boko Haram and other terrorist groups like them tacit support. For many Muslims in the North, religion comes first before loyalty to the country. When a militant Islamic group emerges and begins to teach people to take up arms against the constituted government, the ordinary people offer sympathy to this group with the hope that they could overrun the government and institute full Islamic jurisprudence over where they live. It is the same thing that has happened in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East where the Palestinians live. Someone has called this a clash of civilizations. Islam is trying to come of age in a world where certain core tenets of their religion cannot stand the test of time. The earlier this happens, the earlier the nations of the world know peace.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

Rexymania:
I think he copied and pasted it.

Anyway, it's good he created some awareness

How... please. One wonders at the kind of individuals on this forum these days

When a Driver Kills His Employer: Socio-Economic Implications of Unemployment in Nigeria

By: Deji Yesufu

I was visiting a friend in Lagos recently. The plan was for me to meet up with him at home. The estate where he lives has security guards who would usually conduct light searches on persons entering the Estate. But that day, things were different. The security men at the gate demanded that I get my host to call them and ascertain that I am indeed a visitor. After I had gained entry, my friend sent me a text: there was a murder in the estate a few weeks back. A driver had killed his boss and stolen his car. I did a quick search online for this story, and it revealed that the name of the victim was Kola Adun, a middle-aged man who lived alone in his house in the estate, while his wife and children lived abroad. The driver and murderer, Ayomide Oluwadamilare, had been alone with his boss one faithful day in June 2025, when he had suddenly descended on his boss and stabbed him to death in his room. He then acquired the keys to the man’s Toyota Camry vehicle and drove it out. He shut the dead man inside the house, shut the gate, and fled. Weeks later, he approached a car dealer in Ikorodu, who immediately suspected that the vehicle was stolen. It was the car dealer who alerted the police, who then arrested the thief and murderer. Ayomide confessed to the crime of killing his boss and led the police to the house. By this time, neighbors had been complaining of a foul smell enveloping the area. The police broke into the house to meet the decaying corpse of Wale Adun.

Society reacts to crime in different ways. The estate, where Adun lived, has now beefed-up security. Other people, particularly those employing house-helps and drivers, will begin to make efforts to ensure that the histories of their employees are well known. My friend said that the same driver who killed Adun, had left the same job some months back. He then returned to work and carried out the dastardly act. My friend suggested that perhaps it is better never to take back an employee who had once deserted you. The solutions to such actions will continue until we remember that our society is not the first society that occupied planet Earth. Nigerian cities are not the first cities to exist in our world. Crimes are not peculiar to Nigeria. The wickedness of men’s hearts is not unique to Nigerians alone. Disloyalty, hate, and murder is not a unique Nigerian preserve. These issues have long existed, and many theories have been propounded to deal with them. I hope to share just one of them in this article. Some of my readers are getting tired of my often-quoting Obafemi Awolowo. Well, until my reading list moves to another person’s work and life, you will have to bear with me for now.

When Awolowo was sent to prison in 1963, he was determined to make the best use of his ten-year prison term. He decided to write three books: “Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution”, “The People’s Republic of Nigeria”, and “The Strategy and Tactics of the People’s Republic of Nigeria”. In the last book just mentioned, Obafemi Awolowo suggested a few things that our nation can do to achieve its aims and goals of making this country a prosperous and progressive nation. He listed 15 strategies for achieving this. The first on that list was “Full and Gainful Employment” for every Nigerian. The sage argued in that book that it is the duty of Nigerian governments at all levels to ensure that every Nigerian who is fit and able to work has a job to do. He also argued that the government must ensure that there is a minimum wage that all employers of labor adhere to in the country. He said that the only way there can be peace and harmony in a kennel is if six bones are available for the six dogs in that kennel. If four bones are provided for six dogs, there will not be peace and quiet in that space. The socialists add to Awolowo’s point by saying that when the poor have nothing else to eat, they will eat the rich. A society is breeding crime when they do not allow its fit and able young men to be gainfully employed.

A few years ago, I wrote an article where I decried the modern slave camps that bestride the Oluyole industrial estate in Ibadan. I brought it to the attention of the state government that many of the Lebanese owners of these companies are not paying attention to modern employment laws. Nigerians are employed in these companies as contract workers, without any health securities or benefits, and they are made to work from 8 am to 4pm, standing on their feet, with only as much as a break of half an hour. Those whose health fail, are summarily sacked and quickly replaced from the pool of an army of unemployed youths that bestride the Nigerian landscape. I was reliably informed that my article got to the table of the Oyo State Governor. Still, nothing has been done to improve the situation of workers in that section of Ibadan. Contract workers are still being used in Nigeria, and we expect for us to have peace in our societies? You employ a driver and pay him N50,000 a month. You employ a cook and house-help, and pay them N55,000 a month. And you expect these people to be pleased with you? They watch you spend that same amount of money on one meal with your friends, while these people struggle to keep their own families fed and sheltered for a month. These people are human beings too, and some of them do not have the fortitude to bear with such injustice. A society becomes functional when every working individual earns a living wage – it does not matter what they do. If you employ somebody to abandon all he is doing and commit his time and energy to you for a month, you must be able to pay him or her something that will make it possible for him not to go begging before the next month begins. If this is not the case, crimes like the one that took the life of Wale Adun will not diminish in society. I have not said that Adun mistreated his driver. I am only reminding the rich that when the poor have nothing else to eat, they will usually descend on the rich. It is what brought about the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, and if we are not careful in this country, we will see a similar societal upheaval. What is the way forward?

First. Nigerians must cease talking and begin doing. There are no ends to sociological theories for peaceful existence in this country. There is such a course in Nigerian universities called “Peace and Conflict Resolution”. We continue to talk in this country, and we do not do. People love the sound of their own voices; some of us opinion writers revel in the idea of being referred to as “eggheads”, “professors”, etc. We love the sound of our own voice, but we are not intent on carrying out actions to solve societal problems. The Nigerian society will continue to produce unemployed youths. One day, this country will reach a tipping point, and those young people will put actions to words. They will solve their own problems themselves, however violent means they employ in the process. Before that happens, it behoove this country to begin to implement the hundreds of ideas either stockpiled in our universities to solve these country’s problems.

Second. The government must commit to doing certain minimums within society that will allow for its smooth running and progress. Obafemi Awolowo identified two of these: they are education and health. When government invests in securing the health of its people, it gives the workforce vitality and the ability to produce, thereby ensuring the overall prosperity of the country. When government invests in education, it builds the minds of the people up, such that these same people can proffer ideas for the overall good of society. What we usually see coming from the stable of many governments in Nigeria is a commitment to building infrastructure or paying salaries – things that will usually put the government in a positive light. They do not realize that it is possible to pay salaries, build infrastructures, and also invest in long-term benefits to society like health and education. It is said that an investment in educating a child will usually yield no less than twentyfold down the years.

Third. Nigeria must return to agriculture. It is a truism that a people that refuse to work their land so that it might give them food, will flee that land to other countries that work their own land. It is called japa. State governments in this country, along with their various local government counterparts, must begin to invest in agriculture in scientific and sustainable ways. They could go as far as even [quote]paying the youths to farm the lands that are given to them. Something has to be done. In the same book quoted above, Awolowo said that it is better to employ people to carry out white elephant jobs like the building of pyramids than not to have them do anything at all. It is idle hands that become the devil’s tool. In the case of agriculture, when the young people are employed in this manner and also paid for it, the government is getting them to use their time and energy productively, and at the same time, they can earn money from the products that the land yields to them. The mass migration of young people from rural areas to the cities, who then end up becoming miscreants to city dwellers, can be curtailed by the government, through the local government, by gainfully employing these young people on the farm lands.

I believe that the Nigerian societal challenges are yet to reach their peak. We are still discussing these issues in little-known blog articles like mine because incidents like those of Wale Adun are still quite rare in our society. I hope that they do not become more commonplace before we give the attention that these matters require.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at newdejix@gmail.com

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milkywaves:
Yes! indeed he sets a sterling example worthy of emulation.

Yeah... I enjoyed his court sessions a great deal. He will be greatly missed.

Caught in Providence

by: Deji Yesufu

(This article was first published in November, 2025. Judge Frank Caprio died Yesterday)

While the cost of a lot things is on the increase in Nigeria, for some reasons I find the cost of internet data reducing. So much so that I can now freely watch videos on YouTube – something I never could attempt in the past. My venture into YouTube might also have come as a result of a piece of counsel I received from my immediate younger brother, Wale. He said that YouTube is a world of its own and you can learn practically anything on that forum. So in my free hours, and when I do not have any new videos from channels that I have subscribed to, I just browse YouTube and watch videos that appeal to me: thankfully the owners of that medium have enough morality to censure illicit contents.

It was while watching YouTube one day that I encountered “Caught in Providence“. Caught in Providence are short video clips of the court session of a judge – Justice Frank Caprio, who is the chief Judge of the Municipal Court of Providence . The court is situated in Providence, Rhode Island, and I think the idea is that since most of the people that come before the judge are sometimes guilty of an offence, the label “caught” is therefore inserted in the title of the show. While “Providence” is the name of the city where the whole drama occurs. I was drawn to the videos by a couple of things but the very fist thing that caught my attention was the word: providence.

Providence is a theological word and it is one of the most comforting and gracious words in theology that describes the nature of God. On watching the show, however, I discovered that there is no mention of God in it.

Providence, in theology, is a description of God’s gracious provision to his people. When Jesus told his disciples, in Matthew 6, not to take a thought as to what to eat or drink, our Lord was describing the gracious providence of God. Providence also extends to God’s gracious hands extended to all humanity, including men and women, who despise God. The mere fact that a human being is made in the image of God warrants God’s gracious provision of food, drink, health, rain, and so on, on them. God’s providence is also extended to all of creation. God provides for the plants, the trees, the animals and everything that is on earth and in our universe. It is God’s providence that works the issues of our lives out such that a human being who once despised God, comes to understand his grace and bows his head to him in repentance and faith, and becomes a born again Christian.

Providence is such a gracious word and I think residents of that city in Rhode Island are very blessed indeed. I am convinced that if the history of the name of that town is traced, it would be traced back to the Puritans that came from England and the staunch Christian values they brought with them. It is only such a worldview that can birth such a name.

Justice Caprio is a lot of fun to watch. His court proceedings are done with so much graciousness – it reminds me of the grace of God. As the ultimate judge in his court, Caprio often writes off the bills of many offenders – many of whom might be too poor to pay their debt. At other times, he would often reduce the charges slammed on individuals. In a recent video, he told a gentleman that rather than paying off his debt so quickly, if he had come to court to argue his case on a certain charge the city had placed on him, the court could have either written off the whole thing or reduced it. Caprio is of Italian descent and he always wants everyone to know that. His father had come to America from Italy during the 1920/30s and the man provided for his family from the meager amount he earned from distributing milk to the community. He however believed in education and ensured that his children were educated. One of them would one of day become a judge in that town. On a particular episode, Justice Caprio was brought close to tears when one woman, who had come before the court, told the Justice that her mother told her that if she was ever before Caprio, she should tell him that his Dad used to supply them milk.

As touching as Caught in Providence is, I find myself sometimes uncomfortable watching it. Wikipedia lists Justice Caprio as a committed Democrat and the leftist worldview of his political leaning is strewn all over the show. Yesterday, a woman and her wife (misnomer?) appeared before the judge to pay a certain fine she had acquired. Caprio had no reaction when this lady suddenly announced that her wife was in court and would like to speak to the judge. Their lesbianism was considered normal. Besides, the very thing that catches viewers’ attention, the goodness of the judge, is the thing that acts as an impediment at seeing the all round goodness of the Judge of the whole earth.

There is something particularly wrong about a society that espouses morality but leaves out the name and person of the God who is the source and foundation of all morality. Without the Bible, without the ten commandment, it is not possible for humanity to know good from bad. The errors of our age is in people deciding to choose the standard of good, while at the same time despising or disregarding the Person who brought about morality. The atheist argue that morality does not require a worldview that includes God in it. They say the standard of good and bad is imbedded in nature and in all of us.

The theist, on the other hand, ask the question: who put these standards there? The natural answer is God; an answer that the atheist or agnostic must reject or all their worldview comes falling apart. Justice Caprio and all those behind the production of Caught in Providence have succeeded in rewarding good and punishing evil, without regard to the Ultimate Person who will judge all humanity one day. It is actually not the fault of Caprio – he is simply reflecting the worldview that pervades most of the West today. I hope that Caprio and all of his viewers will realize some day that the drama in his court is also a drama that will one day play before the Judge of all the Earth. The only difference is that in the life after now, there will be no grace: all that will be left will be judgement. God must punish every rebellion against him.

With this in mind, I must return to the scenes in Justice Caprio’s courts. I enjoy watching Caprio show mercy to the poor. I love to watch him hug children. I see him use the money sent in by anonymous donors to pay off the debt of people who normally will be unable to pay. As I watch these scenes, I see the Christian gospel play out. God, as Judge of all the Earth, will punish every sin and every sinner. But one day, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, came to the earth and died for the sins of all men. So that when the sinner enters the courts of God’s justice and that sinner names the name of Christ, God looks on him, like Caprio often looks at folks before him in court, and say: because my son has paid the debt of your sin, I hereby discharge and acquit you of every sin. You are redeemed; you are justified; you are free; and your sins can no longer damn you.

This is the Christian message and, friends, it plays out practically daily in Justice Caprio’s courtroom in Providence.

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Feudalism is a real problem in Nigeria body polity

Feudalism

by: Deji Yesufu

On August 9, 1967, Brigadier Victor Banjo led Biafran soldiers into the Midwestern region of Nigeria. The Nigerian Civil War had commenced earlier in June 1967, but there was a gentleman’s agreement that the Midwest was to remain neutral in the conflict. For this reason, Nigerian soldiers had to access Eastern Nigeria through the then Benue province, and emerge into Nsukka to quell what she called Col. Emeka Ojukwu’s rebellion. Biafra, however, broke this gentleman’s agreement and decided to take Lagos by going through the Midwest. Banjo was the man Ojukwu sent to lead that expedition. The opening of the Midwest during the war ushered in a new phase of the war – a topic I cannot delve into at this time. Five days after what has now been historically termed the “Midwest Invasion”, Banjo gave a radio broadcast to Nigeria, which the BBC picked up and subsequently transmitted to the world. Among many things, he said:

“…There is now an army at the disposal of the feudal North, an army that has lost all traditions, discipline, and standards of a responsible army. There is now a government of a federation that is sustained by violence and is therefore tied to the ambition of the Northern Feudalists. There has been a considerable amount of bloodshed, chaos, and tribal bitterness among such people…”

Victor Banjo proceeded to explain that the army that he was leading was not a “Biafran Army” but a “Liberation Army”. The aim was to liberate Western Nigeria from the feudalist northerners, who at the time were operating in Lagos. He then appealed to the people of Western Nigeria to permit him to do his job and not hinder his mission. It is not likely that Emeka Ojukwu agreed with Banjo to make that broadcast. Ojukwu would have preferred that Banjo invade Western Nigeria and use the element of surprise to chase out the Feudalists in government there. Banjo did not think this was practical, and he was certain that it would only jeopardize the ragtag army he was leading at that time. If the West could join him in his pursuit, chasing out the feudalist would be a little challenge. The two men were in the middle of this disagreement when the Nigerian Army recovered from the surprise downfall of the Midwest and launched an attack on Banjo that led to the flushing out of the rebels from that region of the country. Banjo and three others were summarily executed by the Ojukwu government for this. In this article, I want to examine the meaning of the word “feudalism” and explain why it has been at the root of our problems as a country since the British put the northern and southern protectorates together in the Amalgamation of 1914.

Feudalism is a system that operates in a society where human beings are mostly stratified. In a typical feudal community, you will have the nobles born, the middle class, and then the working class. Europe, for many years, operated a feudal system of society. Even till date, feudalism is still operational in England. Anywhere a person’s intrinsic worth is measured by his place of birth, parentage, or class, that system is feudalist. Since the late 18th century, particularly after the French Revolution, feudalism began to suffer greatly in our world. People came to understand that it was not enough that an individual should be of noble birth. They realized that a person’s intrinsic worth should be traced more to what value he can add to society, rather than what family he originated from, or the people he knows in society. Therefore, when systems of government was being developed throughout the 19th century, feudalism took a back burner. People came to understand that many people who are of noble birth usually do not add much to society. They are born rich, so they do not possess the kind of hunger to strive for excellence and development, such as will add to society and will make them successful individuals of their own worth. On the other hand, people who are born either in the working class or the middle class possess a hunger to make it in life. And their striving for success is what ultimately adds to society and makes society better. I now return to Nigeria.

Three individuals were the leading political personalities in Nigeria as the country headed to independence in 1960. The three of them were the Premiers of the three regions. Sir Ahmadu Bello of Northern Nigeria; Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of Eastern Nigeria; and Chief Obafemi Awolowo of Western Nigeria. Ahmadu Bello was a descendant of Uthman Dan Fodio, the man who brought Islam to northern Nigeria. Bello was a first-class aristocrat, and with the limited education he had, he had risen to be the leader of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC). Bello did not just benefit from the feudalist system he grew up in; he was a man of considerable intelligence, and he exhumed royalty wherever he was. The kind of government he led in Northern Nigeria was not the type that permitted opposition. Bello’s words on any matter were final. Bello and others did not hide their feudalism, and they also did not hide their hatred of the liberal democracy that was being practiced in Western Nigeria. On the other hand, there was Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who, though of noble birth, with the loss of his father at the age of eleven years old, had to struggle through life and, with the grace of God, along with hard work, rose to become Premier of Western Nigeria. Awolowo’s politics was one that believed in the triumph of the best ideas. He did not believe that he should be made leader of a people merely because of the nature of his birth, but purely on the strength of his ideas. This is why he encouraged a great deal of debate among his political associates, and they only arrived at a consensus when they were all sure that the best idea, not the person who proffered the idea, had been reached. This was the secret behind the success of his eight-year stint in government from 1952 to 1959. And it was the clash between Awolowo’s liberal democracy and Ahmadu Bello’s feudalism that led to the Nigerian civil war. Again, a discussion that must be had another day. Now, is feudalism still an issue in Nigeria? I think it is, and this is the reason for this essay.

I suspect that the reason Nigeria jettisoned the parliamentary system of government for a presidential one, where a President is almost always immune to criticism from the opposition, unlike in the parliament, where the Prime Minister must defend his policies before an opposition leader, is that Nigeria’s democracy could not handle constructive criticism. Nigerians are essentially feudalist in worldview. While the whole idea behind noble birth has largely been jettisoned in our communities, there is still the existence of feudalist groups, what has now been generally accepted as “cabals”, form themselves into oligarchs that determine the direction that a certain system will go. So, you go to a university and you find out that it is not the best ideas that run a department, but rather a certain individual and his cronies. The same goes for the church, mosque, and practically every system that is run within the country. It is the reason why “who do you know?” is a very important question in an average Nigerian system. I am aware that many people’s existence is owing mostly to the deference they must give to another person. It is the reason why grown men will kneel or bow to other men. It is a terrible thing.

I have the privilege of working within two systems today. I am the missionary pastor of a local church we are trying to plant in Ibadan, and I am laboring to discourage feudalism within the church I lead. Some of the greatest blessings that I have received as a pastor have been God giving me the opportunity to listen to people that others might term inconsequential in the congregation, and hearing God bring worthy ideas through them. I also have the opportunity of working closely with Prof. Ibiwari Erekosim as the secretary of the board of the Reformed Theological Seminary Foundation in Portharcourt. I have watched how this man leads the board of trustees as Chairman, and I can see how he discourages feudalism within the board. Every board member, regardless of age, status, or qualification, is equal. What triumphs in our board meetings are the best ideas. When the best ideas triumph in a system, the inherent worth of people will be revealed to all, and those ideas can be implemented to build society up to the benefit of all. When, however, feudalism is the order of the day, we only see one man or the system of oligarchy he has built around himself.

Feudalism can be a thing of the past in our body politic. But one way to deal with it is to recognize it not just in the systems we operate in, but also within ourselves. When we make the effort to rid ourselves of these worldviews, we will begin to operate in a world where worthy ideas triumph.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY and VICTOR BANJO. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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jesusjnr2020:
I agree with you.

The gospel of prosperity is antichrist hence no surprises with the consequent heresies and blunders being made by her preachers including Biodun Fatoyinbo.

It is bound to continue unless they divorce from that antichrist gospel, so merely apologising for their errors as he and some others have done isn't enough.

God bless.

Thank you