The motion was thrown out by Justice Obiora Egwuatu following the dramatic withdrawal by counsel to the security agency, Mr Idowu Awo.

At the resumption of the case, the DSS lawyer stunned the court just as the motion was about to be heard, announcing his decision not to go ahead with the matter.

He, rather informed the court that he had filed a notice of appeal against the bail granted to four out of the 12 detainees.

Awo stressed that he would prefer to pursue the appeal at the Court of Appeal.

Justice Egwuatu, thereafter struck out the motion following the no objection by the detainees’ lawyer, Mr Sunday Adebayo.

An Oyo State High Court, earlier in August, granted an ex-parte motion prohibiting the DSS and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, from arresting Sunday Igboho.

The  court went further to restrain the DSS and Malami from freezing Igboho’s financial assets, as well as restrict any form of intimidation and harassment by the duo.

The DSS paraded Sunday Ighoho’s aides on July 1 after a raid on his home in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

They were accused of stockpiling arms to cause chaos in the country.

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Also, the court restrained the DSS and Malami from intimidating, harassing, and blocking the bank accounts of Mr. Igboho..

Justice Akintola, who presided over the matter gave the order following an ex-parte motion moved by Igboho’s lawyer   Yomi Aliu (SAN) at the court.

Addressing newsmen shortly after the court proceedings, Mr Aliu explained that “the court has ordered that he (Sunday Igboho) must  not be arrested, detained, killed in the next 14 days”.

The lawyer added that his accounts should not be blocked either .

The court order comes the same day when the DSS finally produced all 12 detained aides of Sunday Igboho before the Federal High Court in Abuja.

The detained aides have been accused of stockpiling arms to cause chaos in the country while Sunday Igboho is now being tried by the Benin court on fresh charges bordering on illegal migration, dubious connivance with immigration officers, and an attempt to cause civil unrest.

It would be recalled that the court on July 28 granted him access to medical care and ordered that he be transferred to another detention facility.

Igboho and his wife, Ropo were arrested in Cotonou on July 19, while they tried to catch a flight to Germany.

The court, later ordered his wife’s release and returned him to police custody.

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A Senior Advocate of Nigeria and human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana on Thursday kicked against the breakup of Nigeria along ethnic lines.

It would be recalled that groups including the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) led by Nnamdi Kanu and the Yoruba Nation agitators have campaigned for both Biafra and Oduduwa Republics.

Falana, while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today, monitored by Mega Icon Magazine, noted that he has a fundamental disagreement with secessionist groups in the country.

His words, “personally, I am strenuously opposed to the campaign for the balkanisation of Nigeria because I believe the masses of our people are oppressed by the ruling class and imperialism.

“To that extent, I have a fundamental ideological disagreement with those who are calling for the breakup of the country along ethnic lines.”

He explained that amid the agitations in some quarters that the nation should split, the Nigerian government owes it a duty to convince the agitators by reposing confidence on the corporate existence of Nigeria.

Meanwhile, he stated that it is not a criminal offence for some persons to make separatists demands, the senior lawyer, however said the current administration should respect human rights in line with Article 20 of the African Charter on Human Rights.

“If a group of people decides to fight for the breakup of the country, the duty of the government is to try as much as possible to convince them to repose confidence in the corporate existence of Nigeria”, Falana submitted.

The two major separatists – Igboho and Kanu – have been arrested and are facing trial both in the Benin Republic and Nigeria respectively.

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The Golden Stool, also called the Sika Dwa Kofi, was the Ashanti Kingdom’s symbol of power since the 17th century. Made of gold, the stool is said to be 18 inches high, 24 inches in length, and 12 inches wide. It never touched the ground and no Asantehene, King of the Kingdom, ever ascended the throne without it. Narratives of oral tradition had it that, Okomfo Anokye, a High Priest who was also one of the two founders of Ashanti land, conjured the stool from heaven. Decorated with golden bells, the myth had it that as the stool descended from the sky, it came to the feet of Osei Tutu I, the first Asantehene. Ashanti believe that inside that stool was the soul of its nation. It was this stool that Hogston impudently wanted; it was this injustice of Britain that was resented by Asantewaa, Regent of the Kumasi Ejisu–Juaben district. She was livid at this British audacity.

Enraged at the pusillanimity of Ashanti men, Asantewaa stormed an all-men meeting where disagreement on whether or not to confront Hogston and his colonial taskmasters was ongoing. There, she made that famous speech that conferred manhood on a woman and effeminacy on men, to wit, “How can a proud and brave people like the Asante sit back and look while Whitemen took away their king and chiefs, and humiliated them with a demand for the Golden Stool? The Golden Stool only means money to the Whitemen; they have searched and dug everywhere for it. I shall not pay one predwan to the governor. If you, the chiefs of Asante, are going to behave like cowards and not fight, you should exchange your loincloths for my undergarments!”

As a mark of her seriousness to go to war against Hogston’s Britain, Asantewaa seized a gun and shot into the sky in front of the men. There and then, she was chosen by Ashanti kings to become Generalissimo in a war dubbed the Yaa Asantewaa War, the Ashanti-British War of the Golden Stool, with her leading an army of 5000 warriors. Asantewaa and her army pummeled the British in the Fort of Kumasi. After months of the fight, Hogston sent a 1,400 forces to quell the rebellion, leading to the capture of Yaa Asantewaa. Fifteen of her close war advisers were equally captured and sent on exile to Seychelles. Asantewaa died in exile on October 17, 1921, but, 36 years after, her dream of an Asante that was free of British temerity became a reality on March 6, 1957, with the independence of the Asante people, making Ghana the first African nation in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve this feat.

Coming back home to Nigeria, no one needs Nostradamus to predict that, by 2023 when President Muhammadu Buhari would be finishing his presidency, he would be an antihero in the mold of Hogston. An antihero of traumatized, ethnically demonized, internally colonized Nigerians, that is. Sunday Adeyemo, a.k.a. Igboho, may then assume the trope of a rescuer of his people, just like Asantewaa. In Buhari’s unexampled ethnic favouritism, unbridled disdain for any ethnicity other than Fulani and his self-appointed role as Usman Dan Fodiyo-reincarnate, Buhari is gradually pulling off the chains from the hands and feet of Nigeria’s chained ethnic nationality prisoners, something in the mold of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the Allegory, a group of people hitherto chained to the wall of a cave all their lives and a blank wall of shadows as all they saw, suddenly left the prison and their eyes were open. With Buhari’s obsession for haranguing southern “villains” like Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu, unbeknown to him, he is gradually liberating the Yoruba and Igbo people from their imprisoning belief in a collective good from a united Nigeria.

The ding-dong over Igboho has been on in the last few weeks. Arrested in the Benin Republic about a week ago, Buhari has since then been bearing the Dracula teeth of the Almighty Nigerian government, with the aim of sinking them into the naked flesh of the separatist advocate. All things being equal, however, the Nigerian president may soon realize that, as the Yoruba say, you cannot violate the son of the initiate and the uninitiated in similar proportion, without having your hands burnt. Having succeeded in his crude and brash interdiction of Kanu, Buhari took another step forward to similarly Umaru Dikko-lize Igboho. With the situation of things, however, he is likely to discover that this is a barren exercise.

Unfortunately for the Buhari government, it hangs on its own lapel the tar-brushed image of one that thinks only from the lens of ethnicity. The government has thus sent everyone to their tents. Indices that were hitherto opaque have become dominant. Every government move is painted in ethnic ink, no thanks to Buhari’s obsession with his Fulani stock. It is so bad that Nigeria under Buhari has become the most divisive ever in history.

We have shouted ourselves hoarse over Buhari’s inexplicable nepotism and favouritism. He then transformed magisterially from cronyism in appointments to abetting crimes of his ethnic stock. Fulani can do no wrong and the criminal cattle rarer elements among them receive such governmental protection that is not known in the history of inter-ethnic relationships in Nigeria. While herders kill notoriously in the south and the Middle Belt, Buhari looks the other way to lick his plate of fura and nunu.

Bandits who terrorize, kidnap, kill, and who recently downed military aircraft, in his and his Fulani ilk in the government’s estimation, are engaged in normal businesses. In his very before, Sheik Gumi, who obviously has the government’s support, traverses forests to hold tete-a-tete with dare-devil, self-confessed killers and national saboteurs, and Lai Mohammed and others in his government laud him as the cousin of Angel Gabriel. Killer Boko Haram, who massacre hundreds, are said to have undergone rehabilitation and are sent back to the midst of same people they kill like jackals. They are asked to sin no more. Just because they are northerners.

If the south and Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State were merely raising unnecessary hell over nothing, Emir of Muri, Abbas Tafida, gave the world a different orange to suck last week. Tafida issued a 30-day ultimatum to herdsmen in the state to vacate the forest, stating that they had turned Taraba forests into terror binges. “Our Fulani herdsmen in the forests, you came into this state and we accepted you, why then will you be coming to towns and villages to kidnap residents, even up to the extent of raping our women? We are tired of having sleepless nights and the hunger alone in the land is enormous and we will not allow it to continue. Because of this unending menace, every Fulani herdsman in this state has been given 30 days ultimatum to vacate the forests,” said Tafida. Remove “Taraba” and “Tafida,” you would think the king of Igangan in Oyo State was talking.

What Tafida did is clearly indistinguishable from what Igboho did in Igangan. In that frustrating outburst, the Emir did not just issue a quit notice against these criminal elements who he clearly identified as the same people Buhari has wrapped his hands round in the last six years; he literally signed their death warrants. Irritated by same audacity to plunder and kill of the Fulani, former Chief of Army, General Theophilus Danjuma, on March 24, 2018, at the convocation ceremony of the Taraba State University, Jalingo, had alleged “an act of ethnic cleansing” by the Nigerian Army under Buhari against his Taraba and Nigerian people. Without any equivocation, he alleged that the army was colluding with killer herdsmen, sending unsuspecting persons to the hereafter in the process.

“This ethnic cleansing must stop in Taraba, and it must stop in Nigeria. These killers have been protected by the military; they cover them and you must be watchful to guard and protect yourselves because you have no other place to go. You must rise to protect yourselves from these people; if you depend on the armed forces to protect you, you will all die. I ask all of you to be on the alert and defend your country, defend your state,” Danjuma had said.

Igboho’s sin is that he said same thing about his Yorubaland. Tafida did too last week to articulate the frustrations of his subjects who have become victims of routine kidnapping, rape and murder orchestrated by these nomadic criminals from Fouta Djallon. To confirm the howling of Danjuma, Tafida and Igboho, a few days ago, under the guise of searching for contraband rice, “men of the Nigerian Customs Service” stormed Ibarapa land in what the natives claim was a reprisal attack by Fulani herdsmen they staved off a couple of months ago. Three men, including an Amotekun official, were killed and many sustained injuries. The so-called 8 trailer loads of rice that the “Customs” claimed brought them on their chase to Ibarapa, were not found, save for guns bearing serial numbers of the Nigerian Army and blood and sorrows the intruders, said to be Customs men, left in their trails.

Not only did Igboho do just what Danjuma and Tafida did, he went a step further to say that the future of his Yoruba people could not be guaranteed under a bigoted presidency of Fulani domination that Buhari runs. In reiterating conversations that are daily exchanged on southern Nigerian streets, Igboho told the world that Buhari seems to have declared war against anyone who dares to cry while the Fulani pummel them.

To underscore his brash irreverence for law and lawful agitations, Buhari ordered the DSS to invade Igboho’s house some weeks ago. Two persons were killed and guns claimed to have been retrieved from his house were hoisted as an emblem of the invaders’ victory. And a cache of amulets that were later shown to have been in the news about a year before. In a Nigeria where, a few years ago, robbery evidence that bore the name of then-Senate President, Bukola Saraki, was advertised by the police, which was later discovered to have been planted to criminalize this “enemy” of Buhari’s, what stopped the DSS, which entered Igboho’s house without a warrant, from cloning the Saraki hoax by planting those guns on him?

Now, Buhari has brought every Yoruba to the painful realization that Igboho, no matter his limitations, symbolizes them. He is the Nana Asantewaa of Ashanti kingdom who has offered himself to defend his people against the Hogston at the Aso Rock Villa. Some people are even already pointing at the similarity of Buhari’s harangue of Igboho with same harangue against Chief Obafemi Awolowo by Buhari’s forebears. Tafawa Balewa, in cahoots with Ahmadu Bello, had accused Awolowo of treasonable felony and sent him to jail. True or not, that is the narrative you invoke when you have a leader who is bigoted inside an ethnic cocoon as Nigeria does at the moment.

By Igboho’s suit of last Friday, filed at the Oyo State High Court in Ibadan, where he asked the court to declare that his campaign for self-determination on behalf of his Yoruba people was legal and a fundamental right, Buhari has vicariously made every Yoruba man a plaintiff in that suit, while he and his Fulani people are defendants. Citing Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Right (Ratification and Enforcement) Act., Laws of Federation, 2010, and Articles 3, 4, 7, & 18 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous People made at its 107th Plenary Meeting of Thursday 13th September 2007, let us see how a Buhari, who sees nothing wrong in Fulani herders and bandits’ terrorism of the Northwest, would see criminal culpability in Igboho’s agitation to let his people go. Even Pharaoh, as demonic as he was, merely pleaded with Moses not to allow his people to leave the land of their tribulations. He didn’t jail Moses. To the best of my knowledge, Igboho’s self-determination agitation has not led to the shedding of a single pint of blood. The court will interpret the law and rule on what is illegal in Igboho asking for freedom for his people.

Back to the legal fireworks going on in Benin Republic. Not only did Buhari’s ethnic leaning provoke similar coming together to defend Igboho by his Yoruba kin in the small African country, his peremptory closure of the Nigerian/Benin border, without prior notice to the authorities of Benin, should have a lot to do with where the pendulum swings. While Buhari’s home state’s Nigeria/Niger Republic border was literally a beehive for trans-border activities, Benin that shares some consanguinity with the Yoruba, was under lock and key.

President of Benin Republic, Patrice Talon, had met Buhari on January 19, 2021, to plead with him to relax the closure as it was affecting commerce in his country but Buhari magisterially waved the pleading off. Talon even pleaded that Buhari should install Nigerian customs officers at the Benin port, so as to ensure strict compliance. In anger, Buhari kept on harping on smuggling across the Benin border, as if there were no information filtering out that smuggling never stopped in the Nigerien end of the border.

At the end of the meeting, Talon and his Benin delegation retired to the Benin embassy in Abuja to dialogue with Nigerian authorities, for several hours. They held series of meetings with Nigerian economic actors, which included Aliko Dangote, one of the prime movers of the closure. Though Buhari opened the borders in August 2019, it is said that this has not translated into actual resumption of goods traffic between Nigeria and Benin. Now that Tukur Buratai is seeking to carry Igboho’s head on a platter to Buhari in the Villa, he may be reminded that a pounded yam of 20 years could still be steaming hot.

Right now, Yoruba are no longer looking at Igboho as a person. They see him as symbolizing the Asantehene Golden Stool which Buhari wants to impudently snatch from them. They are rallying round and will continue to rally round him. This advocacy for self-determination may become a fire-spitting dinosaur or a consuming hydra, the many-headed monster of the Greek mythology. This will be due mainly to Buhari’s preference for intransigence, rather than the amity of mutual talks, as well as his disdain for other Nigerian tribes other than Fulani. His government may just be bringing out the beast in a people who share the Ashanti people’s disdain for emperors.

Dr. Adedayo, writes from Ibadan

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The Department of State Services (DSS) on Thursday confirmed that its operatives which included a team of joint security operatives raided the Soka Ibadan residence of Yoruba Nation agitator , Sunday Adeyemo better known as Sunday Igboho arresting 13 of his armed men.

Dr. Peter Afunanya, DSS Spokesman, disclosed this in a briefing with journalists late Thursday’s evening, in Abuja, the nation’s capital. Afunanya explained that the raid was based on intelligence that Igboho was stockpiling arms to cause chaos within the region.

He narrated further that when the security operatives approached the house, they were attacked by nine of Igboho’s boys who engaged them in a gun duel but were subsequently overpowered.

According to him, two of Igboho’s men were killed while an operative sustained injuries, however,  Igboho escaped during the gun battle and is currently on the run.

Afunanya who said the long arm of the law will still reach Igboho, urged the agitator to turn himself in or be tracked down.

The 13 suspected armed agitators that were arrested consist of 12 males and 1 female. A large cache of arms and ammunition was also recovered by the operatives.

Dss’s full statement

In the early hours (about 0134 hours) of today, 1st July, 2021, a joint team of security operatives raided the residence of Sunday Adeniyi Adeyemo a.k.a. SUNDAY IGBOHO at Soka, Ibadan, Oyo State. This was based on intelligence that he had stockpiled arms in the place. On approach to the residence, the team came under heavy gun attack by nine (9) men, suspected to be IGBOHO’s guards. Six (6) of them were armed with AK-47 gun and Three (3) others, with Pump-Action riffles.

2. In the course of the exchange, two (2) of IGBOHO’s armed men were gunned down while the rest were subdued and arrested. Only one operative who was shot by the assailants on his right hand sustained injury. He has however received medical attention and is very stable.

3. Afterwards, the team procedurally searched the house and subsequently recovered the following among others:

i. Seven (7) AK-47 assault rifles;

ii. Three (3) Pump Action guns;

iii. Thirty (30) fully charged AK-47 magazines;

iv. Five Thousand (5,000) rounds of 7.62mm ammunition;

v. Five (5) Cutlasses, One (1) Jack knife, One (1) Pen Knife

vi. Two (2) Pistol holsters;

vii. One (1) binoculars

viii. A wallet containing Five (5) US Dollars in one (1) Dollar denomination; local and international driver’s licences in his name, ATM Cards, a German residence permit No. YO2N6K1NY bearing his name;

ix. Two (2) whistles;

x. Fifty (5) Cartridges;

xi. Eighteen (18) Walkie-Talkies;

xii. Three Voodoo charm jackets/traditional body armour;

xiii. Two (2) Laptops (One (1) Toshiba and One (1) Compaq); and

xiv. His International Passport and those of many others (as displayed here). Further exploitation and forensic analysis are ongoing.

4. Aside the items recovered from the building, about thirteen (13) suspects including twelve (12) males and one (1) female were arrested and brought to Abuja. While one suspect is being profiled, the other twelve (12) paraded here are:

i. Abdulateef OFEYAGBE
ii. Amoda BABATUNDE aka Lady K (female)
iii. Tajudeen ERINOYEN
iv. Diakola ADEMOLA
v. Abideen SHITTU
vi. Jamiu NOAH
vii. Ayobami DONALD
viii. Adelabe USMAN
ix. Oluwafelumi KUNLE
x. Raji KAZEEM
xi. Taiwo OPEYEMI and
xii. Bamidele SUNDAY.

5. Highlights of this brief are to:

i. Inform Nigerians and the world that Sunday IGBOHO and his group, in the guise of campaign for self-determination, have become well-armed and determined to undermine public order. This, the arrests and seizures are, no doubt, a confirmation of a grand plan by IGBOHO and his cohorts to wage a violent insurrection against the Nigerian State.

ii. Alert foreign missions and licencing authorities within and outside Nigeria about this development and the possibility that IGBOHO could declare some of his personal permit and identity cards missing in order to seek their replacement.

iii. Apprise stakeholders that the Five (5) AK-47 assault rifles recovered from the building are suspected to be those collected by IGBOHO’s men from Nigerian Customs and Immigration personnel at Idi Iroko, Ogun State.

6. The gun duel which lasted for an hour offered IGBOHO the chance to escape. Sunday ADEYEMO a.k.a Sunday IGBOHO is now on the run. IGBOHO may run as far as he can. He may hide as long as he wants. He might have attacked security operatives as his strength carried him. But this will be the end of his shenanigans. Soon, he will not have a hiding place. His strength will sure fail him. And the law will catch up with him. The law may be slow. But it will be steady.

7. Consequently, ADEYEMO/IGBOHO is advised to turn himself in to the nearest security agency. Those cheering and eulogising him may appeal to or advise him to do the needful. He should surrender himself to the appropriate authorities. He or anyone can never be above the law. Meanwhile, those arrested will be charged accordingly.

Peter Afunanya, Ph.D
Public Relations Officer
Department of State Services
National Headquarters
Abuja.

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Igboho, while responding to some allegations of proposed invasion of the Alake of Egba’s palace, His Royal Majesty, Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo in Abeokuta, noted that he should never be misquoted as he would always respect elders and custodians of culture in the South west region, stressing that  traditional rulers must be held in high esteem.

Contained in a statement issued by his Media Adviser, Dapo Salami and made available to newsmen in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, Igboho said, “I  cannot disrespect the Alake of EgbaLand.

“I Sunday Igboho will never disrespect anybody, elders, Obas and traditional rulers. It is not true that I made such statement. Alake is my father and he’s someone  I hold in high esteem. I can never attack my father . Alake is  one of the most important factors in Yoruba race. I believe that Baba will give us the necessary support to achieve our desire agenda.

“Alake is a father that deserves respect from all Yorubas.Those people who read a lot of stories about me may not know that I am for the Yoruba people. We are all fighting for Yoruba nation; we are all fighting for justice, and justice is for all”, the statement reads

He, however urged the public to disregard those peddling the rumors  that he planned to disrespect traditional rulers in the South west.

The post ‘Alake is my father, I can’t attack his palace’ – Sunday Igboho debunks allegation first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

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Also, the Palace of the Ooni of Ife denied issuing an official statement on the viral video in which Sunday Igboho was seen lambasting the Arole Oodua Olofin Adimula, Ooni Adeyeye over what he alleged as acts of betrayer against his struggle to liberate Yoruba race from the terrorist herdsmen.

Answering questions from newsmen at his office in Ile-Ife , the Ooni’s aide noted that it is not in the style of the Ooni to make official response on any matter that threatens the unity and peace of the country, especially as it affects the descendants of Oduduwa worldwide.
“Sunday Igboho still remains a son to the Ooni. Baba has already forgiven him because he had tendered an apology via a video clip he produced via social media yesterday evening”.

According to Olafare, the royal father could not bicker with any of his sons even in the face of quantum of provocations.

He noted that though, tendering of the unreserved apology to the Ooni by Igboho was the handiwork of Olugbon of Ile-Igbon and Vice Chairman, Oyo State Council of Obas and Chiefs, Oba Olusola Alao who had called the activist to advise and warn him of the consequences that might follow his misconducts towards the Spiritual Head of Oduduwa Race whose sons and daughters are the Yorubas he claimed to be fighting for.

“Before tendering the apology, it was the Baba Olugbon of Ile-igbon that first called and informed Arole Oodua on phone that he had scolded Sunday on phone on his misdeeds and that, and that he would soon tender a public apology to him on the matter via a video release. Sunday Igboho thereafter released the video in which he tendered his apology.

“Even though the way and manner Sunday had behaved was sacrilegious to the Oduduwa throne but he has already apologized and I can confirm that Arole Oodua has forgiven him, because, there is no perfection in humanity. Sunday is a human being like any other normal human being who could misbehave as well. No one is perfect!.

“As the father of all, the Arole Oduduwa Olofin Adimula, Ooni Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja II remains his father who had even identified with him in the past two weeks he had begun with the struggle and he is still solidly behind him for the liberation of the Yorubas from criminal herdsmen who have adamantly terrorized our land. Just that he must watch his back so that people with ulterior motives will not high jack his movement”, he advised.

When asked if the Ooni has ever made an official statement on the issue, Olafare swiftly replied that it not in the habit of the palace to make official statements on any matter that threatens the unity and peace of the country, especially as it affects the descendants of Oduduwa.

“No no no, palace has never officially responded and will never respond over the video. As a matter fact, it is not even our style to do so, and we have a ‘Talkless & Listen more” history on issues like this because we focus more on what unites us together than what divides us as a people of one source”.

“Like I said, he has apologized through Kabiyesi Olugbon who called Baba on his behalf and Arole Oodua has forgiven him. Let’s just let the matter rest”. Olafare said.

The traditional ruler however appealed to all and sundry to let the sleeping dog lies on the matter since Sunday Igboho had been forgiven and life must go on.

The post Ooni has forgiven Sunday Igboho, aide says first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

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In recent time, their Ondo and Oyo states have become hotbeds of the scalding hot security crises in Northeastern and Northwestern Nigeria. Flakes of the unending years of savage Boko Haram war in the Northeast are whooshing gently but destructively and settling on Western Nigeria.

Fleeing displaced Northerners who escape to the bosom of Oduduwa are stretching South-West space beyond tolerable level. Infrastructure is becoming unbearably elasticized.

Firepower of artilleries is stampeding insurgents from the theater of war and with mounting fire of Northwest banditry, forests of Yorubaland are now comparatively safe havens for fleeing warlords.

At the same time, proceeds of kidnapping in Yorubaland are said to be surviving funds renegades of Northeast insurgents and ragtag armies of the bandits of Northwest remit home for the sustenance of their evil war.

Unable to withstand the economic weather at home, their neglect by government and the Islamic tzedakah system that constituted their survival for centuries, northern beggars and vagrants are also migrating westwards in thousands.

The above alien challenges have successfully defaced the aesthetics and perforated the peace of Yorubaland.

The army of beggars in Southwest today will sober even Senegalese-born author and first published Black African Francophone novelist, Aminata Sow Fall of the Beggars’ Strike fame.

In Ibadan, for instance, beggars paste themselves like foamy lather round the Mokola overhead bridge, in almost a hundred, while their kindred are scattered round the city in embarrassing proportions.

They even have the temerity to sun-dry their tattered clothes on the Ibadan bridge’s metal railings which they have converted into their balustrade.

The second evil is the small weevils in the form of ubiquitous young northern bicycle riders, known as Okada, which infest the land like irritant locusts. They are deadly riders who have no respect for traffic rules or law and order. They are responsible for a horde of fatalities on the highway.

One man who should know, Chairman of the Oyo State Security Network Agency, codenamed Amotekun, Col Kunle Togun, (rtd) last week introduced a new dimension to the infestation. Many of the Okada riders, he said, are foreigners and spies for kidnappers and bandits who enter Yorubaland through Nigeria’s porous borders.

According to him, ferried into Oyo and other Yoruba States during the COVID-19 lockdown via articulated lorries, most of these Okada riders cannot speak any of the Nigerian languages or English but French and have no known residency permit.

Coming on the heels of this invasion is another internal invasion, said Togun. It comes in the form of Yoruba traditional rulers allocating lands to Fulani herdsmen and who, “take money, cows and cars from these people and allow them to settle and wreak havoc in their domains.

In January, 2018, I had written about the deadliness of Fulani herders. Fulani herdsmen have been declared one of the deadliest terrorist groups in the world by the Global Terrorism Index (GTI).

In a survey, GTI said the herdsmen, mainly of the Fula ethnic group, killed 80 people in total in 2013 but by 2014, had murdered at least 1,229 people.

The group, according to the report, operates between Nigeria and parts of the Central African Republic (CAR) and had killed 847 people in 2015 across five states in Nigeria through several coordinated attacks during which they inflict varying degrees of attacks on local civilian populations.

According to GTI, the attacks were unleashed on private citizens and the Fulani terrorists’ primary and audacious contest is for the farmlands of their victims. These are the people the Nigerian government covers in baby shawl.

President Muhammadu Buhari and a few of his uncritical minded aides have annoyingly sought to legitimise Fulani invasion of Yorubaland and their audacious evils. In September 2018, on the sidelines of the China-Africa Cooperation Summit in Beijing, while addressing Nigerians, Buhari personally lapsed into a variant of his usual incoherent epistle, this time adumbrating why herdsmen terrorism persists in Nigeria.

“To my disappointment…the press in Nigeria do not make enough efforts to study the historical antecedents of issues that are creating national problems for us,” the president had waffled, citing what he called “cultural and historical implications” as responsible for the mindless murders and impunity of his brother-Fulani herdsmen.

The last straw that broke the camel’s back was the president’s deployment of callous euphemisms in the service of his waffle.

He labeled the Fulani carnage “misunderstanding, especially between herders and farmers” finally heaping the blame of the persistent murders on climate change and the drying up of Lake Chad.

This, he claimed, necessitated the frenetic search for pastures by displaced cattle nomads. About the same time, his Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, another Fulani descent, toed same vacuous route of the drying-up of Lake Chad, as well as scarcity of pasture as cause of the Fulani mayhem.

At another forum, we were told that renegades of Muammar Gaddafi’s armed men found their ways out of Tripoli to Nigeria with weapons and mutated into the killer herdsmen.

At yet another forum, Buhari laid the blame squarely on the doorsteps of ISIS and later, on spiritic opposition members who, in the quest to tar-brush his government, have been funding the mayhem. Buhari’s incoherence has ceased to baffle intelligent listeners.

When it was reported that this self-same Fulani herdsmen had killed Mrs. Funke Olakunrin, daughter of Afenifere leader, Pa Reuben Fasoranti, along the Ondo-Ore road bordered by thick forests, Buhari again deployed his legendary incoherence. Fulani herdsmen were not responsible for her murder. Armed robbers, he said, killed her.

Unarguably, no one in the Buhari government has been as recklessly audacious in hurting victims of herdsmen’s terrorism as Garba Shehu, the president’s media aide. Shehu has constituted himself into the most notorious presidential megaphone renowned for his divisive comments on Nigeria’s interminable insecurity issue.

A few hours after Governor Akeredolu articulated the views of the people he governs, announcing that the Ondo forest, which Fulani herders use as umbrella to commit heinous acts of murder and mindless terrorism, would no longer be accessible for their impunity, Garba shot a verbal poisonous arrow at the people of Ondo State, nay Yorubaland.

Clothing his garrulousness in the cloak of law, his statement also rankled with an argumentative pitfall called appeal to the person.

Shehu began his fallacy with Akeredolu being “a seasoned lawyer, Senior Advocate of Nigeria and indeed, a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA)” and that he had “fought crime in his state with passion and commitment,” but, “in our view,” he said, “would be the least expected to unilaterally oust thousands of herders who have lived all their lives in the state on account of the infiltration of the forests by criminals.”

Garba’s doggerel also appealed to “rights groups” and “makers of our constitution” who he said would be worried by Akeredolu’s action which he claimed “could set off a chain of events which he foresaw and tried to guard against.” He was apparently borrowing a leaf from his master’s incoherence.

To begin with, that statement was one of the swiftest to come from a presidency that seems in perpetual somnolence. It underscores Fulani issue being at the core of Buhari’s emotions. It came less than 24 hours after Akeredolu’s. As usual, it was a bid to again beatify Fulani herders who are known to be responsible for the spate of kidnappings and murders in the Southwest.

But Akeredolu would not allow such hogwash dressed in a presidential bandana. “Shehu’s statement is a brazen display of emotional attachments and it’s very inimical to the corporate existence of Nigeria. We need clearly defined actions on the part of the federal government to decimate the erroneous impression that the inspiration of these criminal elements masquerading as herdsmen is that of power,” he said.

He successfully echoed bothers on the streets that the Buhari government provides a nestling comfort and hibernation for Fulani killers and values the lives of his fellow Fulani cows more than Nigerians’.

Compared to the unusual valour, courage and strength demonstrated by Akeredolu, on the superficial, Makinde sounded like one kowtowing before the Fulani vermin sucking the blood of Yorubaland.

However, if you were abreast of some of the issues oscillating in Oyo State, you cannot but act with Makinde’s kind of caution.

One is that, but for his latter-day claim to fighting for the people, the name Sunday Igboho was associated with violence, land-grabbing, tyranny and political gangsterism. Hundreds of families who have, over the years, fallen victim of Igboho’s land-related violence would be very circumspect on the real motive of his new-found activism.

I suspect that this de-javu undergirded the governor’s fear on Igboho. Should government accommodate the Igboho irritancy and promote outlaws in urgent thirst of rebranding into undeserved heroism?

Which is more desirable in the bid to rout the Fulani criminal elements: embrace the crudity of rogue elements and their lawlessness, resort to their outlandish interventions and by that, justifying the pains and despair they inflicted on the people?

In theory, any government which openly goes into an unholy dalliance with the lord of thugs cannot earn the respect of the people of Oyo State.

However, the above operates in the realm of theory. No governor is Chief Security Officer of his state, except in nomenclature.

Seizing on the vacuum in security over the years and the known powerlessness of governors to rescue them from their tormentors, Igboho has become a hero among the traumatized people of Oyo State and as such, response to his call to arms is awesome. His heroism seems to have obliterated the long years of his infamy from the minds of the people.

Today, Igboho is the David to the rescue of the people from the Fulani Goliath, their own Ogbomoso’s Ogbori Elemoso of the 15th century, and Makinde seems inconsequential in the equation.

So, is Sunday Igboho a reincarnation of Ogunlola? The story of Elemoso cannot be divorced from the Ogbomosho history, its civilization and conquest.

It is the story of Olabanjo Ogunlola Ogundiran, an Ibariba. In 1650, history reported that Ogunlola and his wife named Esuu migrated to current site of Ogbomoso in continuation of his hunting expeditions.

They settled beside the Ajagbon tree. With other hunters, Aale, a Nupe descendant; Onisile and Orisatola, they formed the Alongo, a system of administration aimed at securing their settlement against wild animals and enemy invasion.

Imprisoned in Oyo-Ile for his oft delve into criminal activities, Ogunlola heard of the notoriety of a wicked and deadly character called Elemoso who was terrorizing Oyo-Ile people. He was believed to be a spirit.

Ogunlola then went to the Alaafin to ask for his permission to confront this terror. At the palace, as Ogunlola told the king of his quest, palace courtiers shouted, “Elemoso, eni t’a o ri! Iwo ke! – Elemoso, an invincible man! You?”

Grudgingly, Alaafin gave him the go-ahead and Ogunlola stormed Elemoso’s camp and shot him with an arrow, beheaded him and proceeded to the palace with the decapitated Elemoso.

On the surface and judging by his actions since he became governor, Makinde doesn’t seem to harbor any motive to be a Fulani fawner. More than many of his ilk in the PDP, he has fought the Buhari government’s policies most vigorously and has made the federal government look very stupid thereby, subtly underscoring the tissues of issues in true practice of federalism. His stubborn defiance of federal government’s herd mentality of COVID-19 lockdown and school resumption dates are core examples.

That notwithstanding, Makinde and the rest governors of the Southwest would need to flirt after what I call the Akeredolu spirit if they are to be respected by their people. Not doing this will make them to be worthless in the people’s estimation like Muhammadu Buhari and his government.

This must however be executed with strict adherence to law and superior logic that the Yoruba are known by, the type that Akeredolu is deploying on Fulanis in Ondo State.

For some weeks now, that irrepressible Ibadan-based broadcaster, Edmund Obilo, has been bringing out the lamentable plights of the people of Igangan in the hands of Fulani herders and drawing out Makinde to confront them headlong.

We all know that this won’t happen. With Buhari lionizing the herders in their infamy, no policeman will follow any governor on this suicidal mission.

Yes, I believe that Igboho is very central to this war now. However, he must go through some purgatory, be cleansed of the land-grabbing blood in his hands and return to the fold as leader of the traditional military response to the Fulani menace.

There must be genuine repentance and forgiveness for his horde of infractions from thousands of people he inflicted pains upon.

The next step would be for Makinde to collaborate with him after his penance to jointly rout the foreign invaders. None of the duo can do it alone.

The two, with the support of Amotekun and the science of African metaphysics, should militantly move into the troubled areas of the state where Fulani herdsmen’s vitriol is most burningly dominant and, like Babagana Zulum, working with natives, smoke the blood-sucking deviants back to their land of infamy.

They should both forget their individual political leanings for now, for the sake of the people. This is because, as Bob Marley sang, all the Fulani criminals and their patrons in government desire at this moment for their evil to thrive is for the governor and Igboho “to keep fussing and fighting.”

If government militarily descends on Igboho now, he may sprout uncontrollably and become another Muhammed Yusuff, progenitor of Boko Haram insurgency, whose rout by ex-Gov Ali Modu Sheriff and federal government precipitated the colossal havoc today on Nigeria. Igboho will even have the sympathy of the people. I will support him.

Again and very urgently too, Makinde should stampede out those foreigners and their local Fulani accomplices on Okada terrorizing the people. He should also rid Mokola Bridge, as well as the streets of Oyo State, of the eyesore of Northern Nigerian beggars who are defacing its environmental aesthetics and highly burnished peace.

If Kaduna’s Nasir el-Rufai and Kano’s Ganduje could deport the eyesore of Almajiri from their states, South West has no business cuddling the menace that the North brought upon itself.

Being firm against the impunity and terrorism of Fulani herders is where the Southwest must begin to externalize what it means by restructuring, a la security. It should then proceed to escalate it further.

The ultimate should be a campaign across the region, which must begin now, that only a bastard child of Yorubaland will vote in an unrestructured Nigeria in 2023.

By then, Buhari, his Fulani stock and the bastards among Yoruba children who have already begun to campaign for positions in an unrestructured 2023 Nigeria, will begin to take Yorubaland seriously. We must stop them in this act of grabbing spoons to swallow their electoral vomit.

As I was putting my submissions to bed, I learnt that the federal government had ordered Igboho’s arrest. Great. It seems thesis and antithesis are about to clash so that we can see a synthesis.

Perhaps this will speed up the denouement of this Fulani grisly drama. If a Buhari who has never put any Fulani murderer on trial in his over five years reign suddenly recognizes the colour of law and order, then let’s see whether Yoruba will allow this presidential tribal impunity to stand.

Dr. Festus Adedayo, journalist, author, lawyer and political communication Scholar,  writes from Ibadan

The post Sunday Igboho And The Spirit of Ogbori Elemoso | By Festus Adedayo first appeared on MegaIcon Magazine.

The post Sunday Igboho And The Spirit of Ogbori Elemoso | By Festus Adedayo appeared first on MegaIcon Magazine.