YORUBA: THE WORST IGBO ENEMY IN NIGERIA.

ICHEOKU says the worst enemy anyone can ever have is that enemy who pretends to be a friend and so are the Yoruba people to Ndigbo. Yoruba people are the Brutus of Igbo people and they know how to cleverly mask their resentment of Ndigbo just because they are feeding fat from Igbo toils and sweat. Igbo people have helped them develop their Lagos into a booming mega city and are helping in developing other Yoruba towns and cities including Ibadan. But what have Ndigbo gotten from the Yoruba people for all their many years of hard work, developing the Yoruba region and building up their GDP? What has Ndigbo benefited from the Yoruba for all their bestowed love and affection and the never ending clamour for a brotherly handshake across the Niger? Rather it is constant backbiting and conspiracy with the Fulani to continue to visit unending havoc on Ndigbo. 

The current Igbo tribulation going on in the Southeast was as a result of advise given to Muhammadu Buhari by Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, who is now playing the unfortunate role which Obafemi Awolowo played with Yakubu Gowon that resulted in over 5 million Ndigbo being massacred during the Biafran civil war. But unlike Obafemi Awolowo whose own Igbo hatred was not hidden, Bola Tinubu is clandestine about his and dispenses his advise behind the curtains of Aso Rock with each visits. He assured Buharii of Yoruba support by tacit silence if and when Bhuari clamps down on Igbo Southeast. A man who is shamelessly running for president in 2023 despite the fact that Yoruba Southwest produced Olusegun Obasanjo 8 years in Aso Rock and now producing 8 years of Vice President Yomi Osibanjo. This is a man who during the #EndSARS protest and without any evidence, pointed his dirty accusatory finger at Ndigbo as being the ones who destroyed Lagos. 

But for the timely intervention of Iba Ganiyu Adams, the Aaree Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land, who corrected him and said that it was not Ndigbo that caused the destruction in Lagos, there would have been a reprisal and even pogrom against Ndgibo Lagos in retaliation.  The same Asiwaju and Jagaban of Borguland during the election of 2019 threatened Ndigbo with seizure of their market stalls in Lagos unless they backed his candidate and voted for him. The threat worked as Ndigbo were cowered and voted as he instructed. It was the same Tinubu who made sure that no Igbo person was ever reappointed into Lagos State government cabinet again, not minding the fact that Ndigbo make up more than 40% of Lagos population and contributes billions of Naira in tax revenue into the State's coffer. Then add the pronouncement of their Oba Akiolu that he will drown Ndigbo in his Lagos lagoon and the list of other anti Igbo Yoruba disposition goes on. 

The Yoruba people are always very quick to point out that they are very accommodating and that Ndigbo literally owns nearly all the properties in Lagos at their behest. But they fail to add that all the properties were purchased and paid for in full; and that Ndigbo sustain Lagos economically and otherwise. Even their media seem to be incohoot with the anti Igbo disposition as they constantly report things to make Ndigbo look bad, while suppressing the atrocities and pervasions of the Fulani against Ndigbo and other peoples of Nigeria. Now their Sahara Reporters is beginning to "fact-check" even stork pictures used to illustrate terrorism, insisting that the picture was misleading because it was Malian Fulani terrorists and not Nigerian Fulani terrorists that were in the picture. Just ask yourself who doesn't use stork pictures to elucidate a point, but an Igbo person used it and therefore it must be discredited. 

With the preamble now set, Ndigbo were very active during the MKO Abiola June 12th struggle  and actively supported the effort. Many of Igbo people lost their lives during the resulting riot and have been in lock-step with the Yoruba over the injustice done to one of their own. But since the 1966 to 1970 Biafran war leading up to the current reignited struggle by Ndigbo against the Fulani lordship over Nigeria, Yoruba people have not deemed it fit to reciprocate the affection which Ndigbo have countlessly exhibited towards them. It is not in a vociferous condemnation of the injustice and acute marginalization against Ndigbo or the wanton killing of Igbo people in Nigeria have they weighed in heavily as a people. Rather they see the Igbo problem as an opportunity for them to curry favor from the same Fulani people who have been holding Nigerians hostage and for too long. 

Is it possible that they are comfortable with what the Fulani people are doing in Nigeria and that they see nothing wrong in the manner the Fulani are running Nigeria down, where nearly everything hat once made Nigeria a promising power have totally collapsed? Could Nigeria not have been better if managed more properly and why are Yoruba people comfortable with a Nigeria in total complete dysfunction, where there is no electricity, good roads, running water, security, developed infrastructure, health care, jobs, less corruption and where the younger generation dream for a better future have turned into their worst nightmare. 

Why have they, in their anti Igbo disposition, allowed the degradation and deprivation in Nigeria to continue to fester, thus making Ndigbo to always stand out alone and isolated as the seemingly "trouble makers" of Nigeria. An appellation which is not right because Ndigbo are only asking for a better and more functional Nigeria for everyone to thrive and aspire for their goals unhindered by parochialism, nepotism, tribalism and religionism. But without other nationalities in Nigeria, particularly the Yoruba people, joining forces with Ndigbo to highlight these problems, the rest of the world have come to the sad conclusion that it is only Ndigbo who are unnecessarily creating trouble in Nigeria. Their "logic" is that if things are as really bad as Ndigbo are making them out to be, why then are other nationalities in Nigeria especially the Yoruba people, not similarly fighting back. 

This indifferent attitude of the Yoruba people to the problems in Nigeria which Ndigbo is fighting so hard and making countless sacrifices to fix has made the task more daunting for Ndigbo as Ndigbo are being continually marginalized and isolated as the common enemy of Nigeria and that they must be vanquished in order for Nigeria to survive. But ICHEOKU says Nigeria cannot survive without Ndigbo and woe betide those other nationalities that will be left in a Nigeria without Ndigbo. Imagine the difference it would have made had Yoruba people been more considerate by not allowing their hatred for Ndigbo cloud the general malaise in Nigeria, which is also eating their ordinary population right from the inside. How any person would accept the situation in Nigeria and not seriously desire and work for a change in status-quo is simply unfathomably mind numbing. Where is the Yoruba outrage?

How could a few paltry handouts from the Fulani be so satisfying to the Yoruba people that they have sold their conscience and mortgaged their soul to the devil to accept such brazen complete takeover of Nigeria by a very tiny minority Fulani people. Their usual refrain is that they are a peace loving people and do not want war to come to their homeland as they do not want their region to be destroyed. But they forgot that things can always be replaced and that destroyed structures are mere steel, glass, timber, bricks and mortars and they can easily always be rebuilt. They sometimes see themselves as special royals, yet they willingly submit themselves  under the jackboot of the Fulani and suffering the same degradation like every other Nigerians. Somebody please tell ICHEOKU that the Yoruba people see this situation as being normal and that there is nothing wrong somewhere inside their faculty. 

As always, a lean freedom is better than a fat slavery, but when will the Yoruba people wake up from their slumber to realize that they have been foot dragging in the effort to salvage the ship of the Nigeria State; and that it is about time they wake up and stop playing this role of favors seekers from the Fulani oppressors. They should join hands with Ndigbo in fixing what is broken in Nigeria but in order to do this, they must first jointly chase the marauding Fulani people out of Nigeria and if they must remain, back to to their own region where they belong. But be that as it may, ICHEOKU appreciates the current effort by the much younger Yoruba generation led by Sunday Igboho and Ganiyu Adams as well as the able fearless Governor Akeredolu of Ondo State for finally doing what needs to be done to challenge the overbearing arrogance of the Fulani people. 

ICHEOKU prays they will someday very soon join forces with Ndigbo by creating an alliance with Ndigbo to forge a formidable force to push against the Fulani madness in Nigeria. A madness which the Fulani has sustained for far too long by putting wedges among other nationalities in Nigeria through their divide and conquer strategy of always isolating Ndigbo as the common enemy. May God grant the Yoruba people the strength to do what is right and the mental fortitude to realize that Ndigbo is not their enemy and that the common foe of Nigerians is the Fulani people. Fulani people who have usurped everything in Nigeria and for themselves alone such that even the Yoruba supposed Vice President Osibanjo is permanently sidelined in Aso Rock and not even when Muhammadu Buhari is indisposed is he allowed to wield and exercise the powers of the office. 

Julius Caesar would have still died without the added Brutus stab and he knew that other 60 Roman Senators were involved in the conspiracy to kill him that resulted in 23 stab wounds. But it was only the Brutus stab that affected him most because it came from someone he had considered a dear friend. This is why what the Yoruba people are doing in Nigeria affects Ndigbo mostly in a very special way because the Yoruba people are supposedly civilized, well educated, widely travelled and exposed to understand and appreciate what is possible in a Nigeria run well by competent heads. Yet they have so acquiesced in what very incompetent Fulani herders are doing in Nigeria, which have led to the very parlous state of affairs in Nigeria, that they could easily pass for collaborators and accomplices to the near death throes where Nigeria finds itself presently. It is sad.