27th August, 2013
Chief Femi Fani Kayode, a former minister and presidential adviser, speaks to AYORINDE OLUOKUN on the Yoruba-Igbo affair
Why do you think the mutual distrust between the Igbo and Yoruba has persisted in spite of years of intermarriages, friendship and all other types of relationship between the two ethnic groups?
I don’t think there is really any mutual suspicion or distrust. What I think is that the Yoruba have been so accommodating to a point that they forget that, at a point you have to draw a line and say enough is enough. I don’t know how it got to a point that an Igbo person will think he owns Lagos and that 55 per cent of financial resources are generated by them. I don’t know how they can say that and then they expect the Yoruba to say nothing in return. And those ones that responded have been called all sorts of names and subjected to all kinds of humiliation. And that is what worries me the most, because when you do that and you push people into a corner that we cannot even speak for ourselves or for the rights of our people, you are courting disaster. And we do not want to go down the road of Kigali.
We have to build a plural society where everybody’s right is respected. I will not go to the East or the North or any part of the country and try to impose my will or claim territories of other people. I wouldn’t do it and if I did it, I would not complain when the other people raise an objection.
Let me tell you the more fundamental aspect of all these analysis and this is something I want to say with all seriousness. The greatest act of wickedness that the military inflicted on Nigerians is to ban the teaching of history in our schools in the 80s. The consequence of that is that they are easily influenced by historical revisionism and lies. People tell them anything they want to tell them and these young ones believe what they are told and the consequences are that we may now repeat the mistake of the past. And I am talking of all them and not just one section. If they have been taught history the schools, they would understand where we are coming from and why we have to be very careful about what I will call the nationality question which till today has not been answered in Nigeria and which needs to be answered whether anybody likes it or not. Who are we? Where did we come from? How did Nigeria come together? Do we really want to stay together? If we do can we not agree on what terms of staying together? Can we not fight on the devolution of power from the centre to the regions, to the states? Do we want to continue on this unitary system of government? These are the fundamental issues of the day.
But most Nigerians will prefer that they are buried under the carpet and act as if all is well. But that is a very dangerous thing. But it is very, very important that we do not make the mistake of yesterday and if we want to avoid the mistake of yesterday, we must ensure that we learn from those mistakes and avoid them.
In the South-west of Nigeria, the reason there is too much resentment–even though they won’t say it–is that most Yoruba people are too polite to voice this opinion, but the time for being overly polite has long gone- because today, we have graduate unemployment in this country and 70 per cent of our people are living below the poverty line and the country is back in debt and everything is going backward for us in this country. And let me tell you the problem that we have here- from the 50s, if you look at the way in which the Western region of Nigeria was developed- and when I say the West, it is not just Yorubaland, but the Midwest. Delta and Edo States were part of the old Western region at a time. The rapid rate of development was really remarkable. That was when we had the first television in Africa, we had places like Cocoa House, Western House was built, Obafemi Awolowo University was built- these were the fruits of Awolowo and Akintola government in the Western region. The Western region built an industrial estate in Ikeja which was part of the region then, it wasn’t part of Lagos. And all those wonderful things were funded and developed from the resources we derived from cocoa production. So we got our money from cocoa export and we funded all our infrastructure development, all government programmes from that money. To add to that, you also have the natural resourcefulness and the ability to work hard. That was among the Yoruba businessman, the Yoruba professional class and it was so outstanding compared to anywhere else in Africa.
Our people have graduated as far back as the early 1800 whereas other people didn’t even know what a school looked like. Our people have attended Oxford and Cambridge as far back as the mid 1800. We are very advanced people and that reflected in the way in which our region developed so fast in such a way that no region came close to us. And if we had been allowed to develop that way, today we would have been the Dubai or the Singapore of the African continent. That’s how good we were. But unfortunately for us, when the military came in, everything changed. They centralized authority, the rest of the region through the federal government arrested our development, tied us down to progressing at their own space and that is why we are where we are today.
The only benefit that we got in the South west from developing at the slow pace of the rest of Nigeria was the fact that we got some crumbs from the oil money to build the bridges in Lagos, build the airport, build the third mainland bridge and all these things in the 70s and these are all things that we enjoy. But at the same time, we could have done those things ourselves if we have been allowed to develop at our own space. But we were held back by the rest of the country and unfortunately, that is where we are today and it is something of a tremendous concern.
And we say okay, fine, we have to develop at somebody else pace and it is a slow space, but don’t now come to our territory and say you own it, you built it and you control all the money there. It’s not acceptable because it is not true. And sooner we all appreciate the fact that if we concentrated more on developing our own areas and our country as a whole, rather than going into another person’s territory and saying we own it and make it what it is, the better it will be for all of us.
But many people believe that the root of the distrust between the Yoruba and the Igbo are in the pre- and post-independence events like the way the late Dr. Nnamdi AZikwe, according to the Igbo, was not allowed to assume the leadership of Western Region parliament, an act which was assumed to be the introduction of tribalism into Nigeria politics…
Now, if you start the narrative from the 1959 regional election result you are starting from the wrong point, you will miss the narrative and that’s the problem with our Igbo brothers and sisters, they always start there- ‘oh, it is the Yorubas that started it by betraying Zik in 1959.’ But if you want to go further back and I challenge anybody to bring evidence that I am wrong, the first statement that was made that created the division between the Igbos and the Yorubas came from an Igbo man and it was a very, very decisive statement and that was where it all started.
That was in 1945 when Charles Dadi Onyeama who was a member of the legislative council representing Enugu in Lagos. He was a very great man who went on to become a representative of Nigeria at the Hague. A great jurist, he made a statement that Igbos’ domination of Nigeria and of Africa is only a matter of time and he made it at the Ibo State Union Address. At that point in time when he said it, nobody in the West was even looking at tribe. Herbert Macaulay, a Yoruba man established the National council of Nigeria and the Cameroonns, NCNC and handed the party over to Zik, an Igbo man. Macaulay didn’t care. NCNC was controlling the whole of the South-West, nobody cared.
But Igbo nationalism began to manifest and Zik himself said the god of the Igbos would ensure that they rule Nigeria and Africa. That was in 1947. And it was after those two major comments that Yoruba leaders now got together and said we cannot go on like this. If we are not careful, this people will turn us into slaves. Action Group was now created as a consequence of all those things that were said. And then came the regional election which in fact, Zik would have won, but for the fact that AG joined forces with Ibadan Peoples Party to give Awolowo majority of two or something like that.
It was that close and Zik would have been the first Premier of the Western region, but because of the statement that was made and things like that. Now, for anybody to say that the Yorubas have not been accommodating when an Igbo man nearly became the first Premier of the West doesn’t make sense at all.
After that, came the attempt by the Igbos to grab power in January 15, 1966 coup which was an Igbo coup with about three Yoruba Army officers. It failed and the rest is history. But throughout that time till today, the Yorubas have never killed the Igbos in our region and by God’s grace, we will never do so. We’ve never attacked anybody from any ethnic group and we believe in peace. But we must stand on our rights and that is how civilized people behave, we are very civilized.
What is the way forward now, how do you think this mutual distrust can become a thing of history?
I don’t even believe that there was distrust. If it is true that there is distrust, the Igbo would not have been so welcomed in Lagos and in the other parts of Yorubaland. The problem is on the other side. The Yoruba are not welcomed in the South-East the way in which Igbo are welcomed in the West. The kind of things Igbos are allowed to do in the South-West, no Yoruba man is allowed to do it in the East. I love the Igbo, that’s the funny thing, I have many Igbo friends. My father was at a time the leader of the NCNC as the leader of the opposition in the Western House of Assembly. My grandfather taught Zik at Methodist Boys High School. When Zik came back after his degree in America, it was my grandfather that chaired the occasion when they did reception for him and we have so many strong links with the Igbo and so many other Yoruba did, too.
Today in Lagos, you have an Igbo commissioner, Igbo councilors, Igbo spokesmen. The Yoruba have been so accommodating and that’s a good thing. We are open, but some of them believe that as a consequence of that, we have forfeited our right to our heritage, to our history, and that we have forgotten that we are coming from somewhere and that this is our territory. Why should we be jealous of the Igbos? No, we welcome them and allow them to flourish in our territory and we also want them to also welcome us.
But the argument is that it is not that the Yoruba are not welcomed in the East, but that the Yoruba prefer to operate in their own enclaves?
Maybe we should do more to make them go there. If we say you don’t open your area for somebody and you said it is because those people don’t want to come, maybe they don’t like it for a reason, maybe they don’t feel welcome. But whatever the reason is, that is the reality. I am not sure how many of our people want to go there. But the question is if we go, would we be accepted? Many have gone and tried to establish businesses and buy land but they came back to say these guys are not opening the place for us. But it is not an issue for us, it’s okay. I believe in an integrated society, but I also believe that we must not lose our identity. There are many nationalities in this country. Chief Obafemi Awolowo wrote in his book, Path to Nigerian Freedom, in 1947 that Nigeria is not a country but a geographical expression and within that geographical expression, there are many nationalities: each has its own history, its own heritage, its own ways and its own world view. And that we must recognise those differences and appreciate them. It doesn’t mean anybody is better than the other. What it means is that we must accommodate those differences and treat each other with utmost sensitivity and understanding, so that we can join hands to move Nigeria forward together. And that is what I believed in.
You talk about the nationality question…
If we don’t answer the nationality question, we run the risk of running into a terrible storm and it might lead to a lot of problem in our country.
You know why? If we don’t say these things and speak up, we will not be able to resolve our differences. We are making what I call the ‘Zik mistake’. I am not attacking Zik, but I will explain what I mean. When Zik and Sardauna met, Zik told Saudana, ‘We should forget or differences.’ Sadauna said ‘No, we should understand our differences’ and he was absolutely right. Unfortunately though, majority of Nigerians took Zik’s position, which is that we should forget our differences and move forward as if we had none. And that led to terrible conflicts in which many many people were killed in the first republic and then, the civil war in which so many people also died.
That was the price we have to pay for not understanding our differences. If we had followed Sardauna’s advice and not Zik’s advice at that time and had tried to understand our differences and had tried to understand one another, those terrible things would never had happened. And I am afraid that the same thing is happening today. We are pretending as if we have no differences and we are courting danger and disaster.
Since you wrote the series of widely circulated articles about the relationship between the Yoruba and the Igbo, there have been a lot of responses, with many condemning you. Do you regret writing those articles?
The answer to your question is emphatic no. Why should I entertain any fear or regret about what I wrote? I don’t regret a word of what I wrote. And I don’t entertain any fear about anything. If people don’t want to hear the truth, that is their problem and not mine.
Some people believe that you went overboard in those articles, that some of the things that you wrote, you should not have written them…
Nobody should tell me what to write or what not to write and neither did I go overboard. It’s an intellectual exercise and those essays were based on my knowledge of history and I will be more interested in somebody pointing out where I get the history wrong, rather than trying to telling me what I should say or what I should not say. In a debate like this, I expect informed opinion, I expect somebody to write and challenge my assertions based on their own knowledge, not just abuse and issue threats and lecture one about what to say and what not to say. People should stop being lazy intellectually, they should try to rise up to the occasion and learn from these things, go and do their own research, find out what their history is and come and tell us about their views or opinion about that history.
So, what is your reaction to those who said you sound more or less like an ethnic champion in those articles?
I think you cannot refer to me as an ethnic champion because I have been a nationalist for many years, I have put my life in politics for the past 20 years, I fought for this country, I stood up against military government, I stood up for the northern children, the girl child, I stood up for the Igbo and the non-Yoruba that were killed in the North. I stood up for people whose rights have been violated by government and I have paid my dues. I was a federal minister in this country, not a Yoruba minister. I was a spokesperson for the presidency, not a spokesperson for the south-west. So, I am not an ethnic politician and I believe in Nigeria. If I were, I would tell you and I will have no regret about it. However, I don’t believe it is proper for people to lay claim to other people’s land and other people’s territories. My essays were a reaction to something and that is what so many other people seem to have forgotten.
When you create the impression that the Igbo not only own Lagos, but also that the Igbo contribute 65 per cent of business and also contribute 65 per cent of revenue in Lagos, I have to reject that because those assertions are not true and I have to react to them. Now, I reacted not with insults, not by calling my brother and friend, Orji Uzor Kalu a tribalist or anything like that. What I did was to simply say I disagreed and I told them why I disagreed and based on their reaction to my first disagreement, we now went into the full scale debate. I haven’t insulted any individual, what I have done is to analyse our history and draw conclusions from that history and that’s the way it is supposed to be in a civilized society, not getting up and insulting people both night and day and trying to intimidate me into silence. And if I am silenced and intimidated by all these insults that is going on, all these subtle threats going, it will them mean no Yoruba man will be able to speak again on this issue because it will then mean that we have been intimidated, but I cannot be intimidated. No Fani Kayode can be intimidated and no Yoruba man can be intimidated.
I am a Yoruba man before being a Nigerian and I owe no one an apology for that. But at the same time, I love Nigeria, I believe in Nigeria and I love all nationalities in Nigeria, but that is not to say I will forget my heritage, I will forget my history, I will forget where I am coming from. I will never do that. I will not sacrifice my Yoruba side on the altar of a greater Nigeria and I will defend the interest of my own ethnic group, my own part of Nigeria any day, anytime, because I don’t see how any Yoruba man can go to any other part of the country and claim their land and say that they are the ones generating all their money because the local people are stupid and they have no business acumen and they don’t even know their rights. I am not going to accept that.
But the argument, even by those who agree with you, is that you could have made your point without making some references you made in the newspaper articles?
I don’t need the approval or support of anybody. This is not a football match, it is an opinion. Did they understand the meaning of the word opinion? And people are entitled to their opinions and in civilized, pluralized societies, people ventilate their opinions and I am putting it to you that nobody has put a better argument on this matter than me when it comes to the issues concerned. I am looking forward to a person that is in support or against me that can put a better argument on these specific issues. And each of those essays are pretty good. I have been writing for 20 years, they were pretty good, they made the point. The problem here is that many of our people don’t like to say what is on their mind. But I am not like that, I always speak my mind and that’s why with me, sweet or bitter, you will get the truth. I am not like most of our people who will pretend saying something here, saying something in another place. You know very well the articles I wrote painted the mind of every single person in this country about how some of our people behave, particularly the Yorubas, but how many of you will say the same? But I don’t play like that, I speak truly and it is important to speak the truth in order to avoid conflict in the future.
It is when you refuse to speak the truth that you are courting disaster and possible violence in the future.
The old Yugoslavia was similar to Nigeria in terms of its ethnic diversity and religious plurality and the kind of attitude we are manifesting here was manifested by the leadership of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, Yugoslavia was held together against the will of most of its people, by a very strong central authority where the President seem to control everything but give little money and resources to the various states and regions just like we have in Nigeria today. But unfortunately, when Tito died, the various ethnic nationalities and also the various religions comprising of orthodox Christians, Catholics, protestants, the Muslims and so on, and all the different nationalities- the Croats, Serbs, Kosovars, Bosnians, very diverse, just like Nigeria, the place started to warm up and eventually disintegrated. And that was because they refuse to sit up and iron out their differences in a humane and civilized way and fashion out a constitution which could guarantee the rights of the various ethnic nationalities and religious inclinations, all of a sudden all hell broke loose and it resulted into one of the most terrible wars in Europe and millions of people were killed, concentration camps were set up and the rest is history. We don’t want to get to that point in Nigeria. If we don’t talk about our differences, and we continue to pretend that we don’t have them, if we don’t answer the nationality question, eventually Nigeria may end up like Yugoslavia it may not be now, it may not be 10, 20 years from now. People will say I don’t wish Nigeria well, but I pray to God that I am wrong on this. Everybody knows that ethnicity and religion play important role in this country and unfortunate as that is, we have to get it right.
But how can this happen when there so much fierce opposition to Sovereign National Conference, an avenue which many have argued will be the appropriate platform for addressing such issues?
Those that are opposed to national conference are those right at the top of the political class. They are very irresponsible group of people. They are not bothered about the consequences of their intransigence because they are comfortable about the situation as it is because if you are top in this country, it is either or you have been a minister, you are a senator, you have worked in the Villa or you’ve been a President or even a governor, you just accept the situation that that things are better for those of us at the top. So, why do you want to change the situation? Why do you want to devolve power? They all want to protect their vested interest and the power configuration that existed in the country. I don’t think there is any country in the world that has come to the sovereign national conference because people decide to do it. Nobody gives up power easily. What usually happens is that some terrible things act as a catalyst and some people will say we better to sit down and do this. But we haven’t got there yet in Nigeria, that’s what scares me. We are sitting and acting as if we don’t have a problem. Those at the top don’t want the status quo to change. At the end of the day, the only way you can guarantee that Nigeria will remain in the distant future is if we devolve power from the centre as it is being done in the United Kingdom where power is being devolved from Westminster to Northern Ireland, to Wales to Scotland and so on. We need to understand that it is important that we devolve power to various regions and nationalities and let us have a real federation in every sense of the word and not a unitary state with a federal façade which is what we have today. If you weaken the centre and you devolve power, you will find that the fight for who becomes the President in this country will not be as cut throat as it is and everybody will feel let me control my own part of the country at my own pace which is what most of us want
FROM [email protected] TO You
Do you feel that this whole thing should stop and that we should put it behind us?’’
ANS- ‘’No. It will never stop. It has only just started and it is a cause that I have dedicated my life to. As long as I live I will resist the idea of yorubaland being turned into a no-man’s land where the yoruba people are meant to live as second class citizens or to be treated like filth. If that makes me a tribalist so be it. If that makes me a bigot so be it. I have no hate or ill-feeling towards any other ethnic group in this country or anywhere else. God knows that that is the truth. If I did I would say so and damn the consequences. Racism and tribalism is below me and such primordial traits offend my sensibilities. To harbour such views is well below my intellectual and spiritual dignity. Those that know me well can attest to this. I have as many non-yoruba friends as I have yoruba ones. I look down on no-one and no other nationality and I do not claim that the yoruba are better than anyone else. What I insist on though is that I should be allowed to preserve my ancient heritage, culture, values and ethos and that my people should be allowed to develop at their own pace. I am not ashamed of who I am and where I come from and had it not been for others holding us back I know where the south west would have been by now in terms of development. And neither would I go to England or America or Enugu or Kano and claim that I own the place or that my people built it from scratch and generate all the money there. I would never say or do such a thing and neither should I be expected to sit back quietly like a fool when someone says it about my land, my people and my territory. In this debate I have threatened no-one, I have incited no-one, I have accused no-one and I have not sought to silence anyone with threats. I have not expressed hatred towards anyone. Yet my family has been subjected to insults, threats, humiliation, hate-speech, misrepresentation, falsehood, intimidation, calls for arrest and lies by people who ordinarily would never come into contact with us. My father has been insulted as has my mother, my wife, my children and my people from the south west. We have been called all sorts of names and subjected to the most filthy lies and libel. And now you ask me if I will ever stop. I will not and I will never renounce my views. As a matter of fact now more than ever before I see how important it is for us to have a certain degree of separate development in this country. Those that seek to suppress our voices, intimidate us into silence and drown us with their propaganda are vulgar, rude and crude. That is their way. They are experts at telling lies too. Yet they have met a match in me and mine. If it is division and enmity they want they will receive it in full measure. If it is peace, they will receive it. I am not looking for trouble and I abhor violence. To me this is simply an intellectual exercise and we can agree to disagree and still remain friends. However I will not give up my identity because that is all I have. I will not betray the dreams of my forefathers and their aspirations for our people. For four generations now the Fani-Kayode have contributed positively to the affairs of this country. Unlike some of those that are bleating and insulting us we have paid our dues. We have a stake here and we are from yorubaland. I have a little fulani blood in me too and I am very proud of that but I am first and foremost a yoruba and I will live and die for the yoruba if necessary. I have written about every ethnic group in this country in very harsh terms in the past including my own, yet it is only when I criticise the igbo and stand up to their bogus claims that all hell breaks loose. Well two things are clear. Whether they like it or not as long as God gives me life I will voice it out and articulate what millions of the yoruba are thinking on this matter but are too gentle and polite to say. They may not want to talk but I will talk for them and I will voice their legitimate concerns about the future of every yoruba child in an increasingly hostile and unsustainable Nigeria. Secondly from this day on, as God is my witness, the igbo and everyone else will know that the yoruba are not cowards. That is their popular refrain-that we the yoruba are cowards. They say it morning, day and night forgetting that during the civil war we showed them our mettle and worth on the battle field and drove them back to Enugu. Even if they believe that every yorubaman is a coward they will know that me, Femi Fani-Kayode, a proud son of the yoruba and a prouder son of Nigeria, is not a coward. I will defend my nation, my nationality, my kinsmen and my family any day any time. I am not ashamed of that and neither am I ashamed to say so. I will protect them from enemies within and enemies without. This battle is more important than politics or anything else to me. It is a battle for the very survival of my people and with my intellect, my pen, my tongue, my knowledge and my wits I intend to fight it till the day that I die. If anyone is unhappy with that they can go and jump in the lagoon. I am a Nigerian and I have rights. It is my right to voice out my views and create awareness about the imminent danger that my people are facing of being overwhelmed by others that do not come from the west. They say our territory is ‘’no-man’s land’’ yet they will never offer us theirs or even allow us to build there. Who is the fool here? And when we complain they have the nerve to insult us. Enough is enough. It stops today. I am not a racist or a bigot but I believe that I have a right to defend that which is mine and to preserve my identity. I am a yorubaman before being a Nigerian and I make no apology for that’
Answering the nationality question…
Had we successfully answered what has come to be collectively known as the ‘’Nationality Question’’ in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s there would have been no civil war in 1967. Had we chosen not to ignore our differences but instead tried to understand them the last fifty three years of our existence as an independent nation would have witnessed far more unity,stability and progress than it has done. The agitation and quest to answer the ‘’Nationality Question’’ in Nigeria will never stop until that question has been successfully answered no matter how long our leaders, politicians and intellectuals ignore it. The quest to properly situate and define the rights, duties and obligations of each and every one of our nationalities in a wider Nigeria will never end until it is achieved. As a matter of fact given the sheer desperation of each of the major ethnic groups to win control at the centre in 2015, the activities of Boko Haram, the agitation of the Niger Deltans, the ressurection of MASSOB, the unmistakeable resurrgence of igbo nationalism, the activities of various ethnic nationalist groups and the growing sectarian divide in our country it has only just started in earnest and it is a cause that I have chosen to dedicate my life to. As long as I live I will resist the idea of any part of yorubaland being turned into a ‘’no-man’s land’’ where the yoruba people are meant to live as second class citizens and never-do-wells and where they are treated like filth. If that makes me a tribalist or a bigot, then so be it.
If loving my nationality,which comprises of 50 million yoruba people, and loving my nation of 160 million Nigerians at the same time is a crime then I am guilty of that crime. I do not have to love one at the expense of the other. We are not America which is a nation that is made-up of immigrants and ex-slaves and a country which literally wiped out the indigenous population that they met there when they arrived who were known as the Red Indians. We are not Americans who found their way into the world barely three hundred years ago but we are Nigerians. And each and every one of the great and numerous nationalities that make up our beautiful nation has a noble heritage that goes back for thousands of years. We may not be as developed or as wealthy as the Americans but we know who we are and we know where we are coming from. In the United Kingdom there are basically four nationalities. The English, the Welsh, the Irish and the Scottish. You also have the Cornish but they are very few in number. Each of these four nationalities is actually a tribe yet you very rarely find a British person who will tell you that he is not proud of his Scottish, Welsh, Irish or English heritage AND at the same time proud of his nation. He is first an Irishman, a Welshman, an Englishman or a Scot before being British even though he cherishes being both. He does not have to sacrifice his Irish, Welsh, English or Scottish heritage or roots for Britain and neither does he have to sacrifice Britain for his heritage or roots. He has the best of both worlds and it is a wonderful thing. He derives his strength from both. He enjoys being Irish, Scottish, English or Welsh and cherishes it deeply just as much as he enjoys and cherishes being British. And today, centuries after Britain was established as one nation under one Crown and one Royal Sovereign the British person still cherishes his primary nationality and original tribe so much that power has gradually been devolved from the centre at Westminster to the various regions and to these various tribes and nationalities over the years.
Such is the agitation for ethnic identity and devolution of power in the UK today that Scotland is preparing for a referendum to determine whether her people should remain in Great Britain or not. This is a beautiful thing. It is known as self-determination and no human being ought to be denies that right. Taking pride in your roots and your heritage is not a crime.That is how it is meant to be. It is only in Nigeria that we call this perfectly natural and wholesome phenomenon ‘’tribalism’’. We give it an ugly name with an ugly connotation. Everywhere else in the old world it is respected, valued, cherished and well-managed. As a matter of fact such diversity is a source of strength and pride for all. If you go to Belgium you will find that there is the ancient dichotomy between the Flemish people and the Waloons. They speak different languages and have a completely different history and heritage yet both of these nationalities or tribes are proudly Belgian and they rally under one flag. This is how it ought to be. I have no hate or ill-feeling towards any other ethnic group in this country or anywhere else. God knows that that is the truth. If I did I would say so and damn the consequences. Racism and tribalism is below me and such primordial traits offend my sensibilities. To harbour such views is well below my intellectual and spiritual dignity. Those that know me well can attest to this. I am just too big, too large-hearted and too well educated for that sort of thing and most important of all my christian faith and heritage does not allow me to look down on anyone or any other race. We are all children of the Living God. I have as many non-yoruba friends as I have yoruba ones. I look down on no other human being, no other race and no other nationality and I do not claim that the yoruba are better than anyone else.
What I insist on though is that I should be allowed to acknowledge my history and to preserve my ancient heritage, culture, values and ethos. I also insist that my people should be allowed to develop at their own pace. I am not ashamed of who I am and where I come from and had it not been for others holding us back I know where the south west and the yoruba would have been by now in terms of development. And neither would I go to England or America or Enugu or Kano and claim that I own the place or that my people built it from scratch and that they generate all the money that is there. I would never say or do such a thing and neither should I be expected to sit back quietly like a fool when someone says it about my land, my people and my territory. In this debate I have threatened no-one, I have incited no-one, I have accused no-one and I have not sought to silence anyone with threats or blackmail. I have not expressed hatred towards anyone. Yet my family has been subjected to insults, threats, humiliation, hate-speech, misrepresentation, falsehood, intimidation, calls for arrest and lies by some people who really ought to know better. My late father of blessed memory has been insulted during the course of this debate as has my late mother, my wife, my children and my people from the south west. We have been called all sorts of names and subjected to the most filthy abuse and malicious lies. And now some ask ask me if I will ever stop this fight for the rights of my people. The answer is that I will not stop because a terrible price has already been paid. I will never renounce my views. As a matter of fact now more than ever before I see how important it is for us to have a certain degree of separate development in this country and to hold on to our heritage because we are just so different. Those that have chosen the path of aggression and open hostility and that seek to suppress our voices, intimidate us into silence and drown us with their propaganda are vulgar, crude and rude. That is their way. They are also experts at telling lies. Yet they cannot silence a whole nationality or just wish us away. We are here to stay and they have met their match in me and mine. If it is division and enmity they want they will receive it in full measure. If it is peace, they will receive it in abundance. I am not looking for trouble and I abhor strife and violence. To me this is simply an intellectual and spiritual exercise and we can agree to disagree and still remain friends. However I will not give up my identity because that is all I have. I will not betray the dreams of my forefathers and their aspirations for our people. For four generations now the Fani-Kayode have contributed positively to the affairs of this country. Unlike some of those that are bleating and insulting us we have paid our dues. We have a stake here and we are from yorubaland. I have a little fulani blood in me too and I am very proud of that but I am first and foremost a yoruba and I will live and die for the yoruba and indeed for my nation Nigeria if needs be.
I have written about virtually every major ethnic group and nationality in this country in the past twenty three years and sometimes in very harsh terms, including my own, Yet it is only when I criticise the igbo and stand up to their bogus claims on Lagos that all hell breaks loose. Well two things are clear. Whether they like it or not as long as God gives me life I will voice it out and articulate what millions of the yoruba are secretly thinking on this matter but are too shy, gentle and polite to say. They may not want to talk but I will talk for them and I will voice their legitimate concerns about the future of every yoruba child in an increasingly hostile, ugly and unsustainable Nigeria. Secondly from this day on, as God is my witness, the igbo and everyone else will know that the yoruba are not cowards. That is their popular refrain- that we the yoruba are cowards. They say it morning, day and night forgetting that during the civil war we showed them our mettle and worth on the battle field and joined hands with others to drive them back to Enugu. Even if they believe that every yorubaman is a coward they will know that me, Femi Fani-Kayode, a proud son of the yoruba and a prouder son of Nigeria, is not a coward. I will defend my nation, my nationality, my kinsmen and my family any day and at any time. I am not ashamed of that and neither am I ashamed to say so. I will protect them from enemies within and enemies without. All the smear campaigns in the world cannot change all that. If God does not smear me or mine no man can smear us.This battle is more important than politics or anything else to me. It is a battle for the very survival of my people and my nation and with my intellect, my pen, my tongue, my knowledge and my wits I intend to fight it till the day that I die. If anyone is unhappy with that they can go and jump in the lagoon. I am a Nigerian and I have rights. It is my right to voice out my views and create awareness about the imminent danger that my people are facing of being overwhelmed by others that were never part of them. They say our territory is ‘’no-man’s land’’ yet they will never offer us theirs in return or even allow us to build there. Who is the fool here? And when we complain they have the nerve to insult us. Enough is enough. It stops today. I am not a racist or a bigot but I believe that I have a right to defend that which is mine and to preserve my identity. Though I love being both, let it be clearly understood that I am a yorubaman before being a Nigerian and I make no apology for that.
We ignore our differences at our own peril and this is not only naive but it is also exceptionally dangerous. They made the same mistake in Yugoslavia through the ‘70’s and 80’s until the explosion came out of the blue in the ‘90’s and all hell broke loose. No-one saw the war coming in that country except the more discerning and brilliant minds who had been shouting for decades before it came that their very own ‘’nationality question’’ had to be answered and that Colonel Broznin Tito’s dream of an eternal and everlasting old Yugoslavia was unsustainable. No-one listened to those discerning voices and consequently millions were killed in the most horrendous and vicious civil war that Europe has ever seen. From being one country where the people and numerous nationalities were compelled to ‘’forget their differences’’ by law, Yugoslavia was eventually broken up into five sovereign independent states as a consequence of fratricidal butchery and unrestrained and all-out war. I pray that we never break up and that we never witness or fight such a war in Nigeria. The answer is to understand and settle our differences and not to forget them.