SUNDAY IGBOHO'S SURRENDER WILL BENEFIT ODUDUWA NATION AGITATION.

ICHEOKU says whether the message was received and its impact felt will be known in due course. Time will also tell whether the Nigerian government successfully intimidated Sunday Igboho into silence and inactivity, which the added measure of declaring him wanted was purposed for. He has gone into hiding but unfortunately, he is so attached to his base and cannot survive outside his base for long. 

Without his base, he will be feeling like a fish out of water which will make capturing him much easier or even hasten his surrender. Unlike other people who have at one time of the other been forced into self exile, including Gani Fawehinmi, Bola Tinubu and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu until his recent capture in Kenya, Sunday Igboho is not an exile material. He is a traditionalist who strongly relies on his juju which does not work abroad and he has a very limited education and vocation to pursue a life in exile. 

The purpose of the DSS raid was to break him and deprive him the will to carry on with the agitation for an independent Oduduwa Nation. They want to isolate him from the rest of Yoruba people and leave him hanging dry; and it seems they scored on that note as so many Yoruba people have gone radio silent since the raid. It is possible too that the Nigeria government first got the blessings of Bola Tinubu and other leading Yoruba Obas and personalities before they struck at Igboho's house. The DSS also seized his amulets and without them, he now fears for his life; which has forced him into hiding. But for how long can he hide without being caught or possibly even betrayed by a Yoruba person or at worse, being killed. 

But can he escape from Nigeria and go into exile until such a time when the country becomes conducive for him to return or at least until Muhammadu Buhari serves out his term in 2023? It might be difficult as he did not plan for such a contingency and he does not have a well oiled and functioning organization that would risk it all to help him escape from Nigeria and also caters for him outside Nigeria. He was surprised by the raid and the seizure of his amulets, destruction of his property and the killing of his two very close lieutenants left him devastated and the shock will be with him for a while. A traumatized and most likely now penniless Sunday Igboho was shafted by the raid and recovering enough to strategize on the way forward will not be an easy task. 

But if ICHEOKU were to advise him, will recommend that he surrender and hand himself over to the Nigerian government without any further delay, go through the whole process of arrest, detention and trial; and watch himself acquire a status which he does not have currently. He will become a larger than life personality and endear himself more in the hearts of millions of Yoruba people. He will become a bona fide Yoruba hero who paid the price for their liberation and they  will appreciate him more because of the sacrifice. Another good news for him too is that Yoruba have a good number of very senior lawyers, many of who will volunteer their service for him as soon as he surrenders. It comes with the territory as most people always want to identify with a hero and many of these lawyers will readily jump at the opportunity to be seen as  defending a Yoruba defender. 

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was a few years ago an unknown quantity and relatively a nobody until the Nigeria government made him a world recognizable personality by the mistake of arresting him in his hotel room in Lagos. Thereafter IPOB grew in number and many more people rallied around him as a person who was doing something on behalf of the people and being penalized as a result. They took his cause as their own cause and that was exactly how Muhammadu Buhari created the "Frankenstein monster" Mazi Nnamdi Kanu that has become a wishbone in the neck of Nigeria today. Without Muhammadu Buhari giving Mazi Nnamdi Kanu the huge profile, "an existential threat to Nigeria" and giving oxygen to his IPOB organization, may be the organization would have since fizzled off alongside Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. 

But Buhari erred by providing him and his IPOB the fuel and rocket with which they launched into the stratosphere; and the invasion of his Afaraukwu Ibeku country home where over 28 IPOB were killed boosted their profile and it became fully established that the people were ready to die for the cause of Biafra restoration. What other manner of commitment is stronger than blood sacrifice and once done, many more people continue to lay themselves up to be sacrificed at the alter of the Nigerian State by confronting the Nigerian authorities, Army, Police, DSS, Navy, Customs and with it, IPOB and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu are now world wide names. With death fear is forever removed, otherwise what else can any government do to intimidate a people who are ready to die for a cause which they believe in. 

So, this is the fate which beckons on Oloye Sunday Igboho and he should take it with both hands now by surrendering himself to the Nigerian authorities and not give them a reason to waste him and be easily forgotten. He should transcend that fear of being detained or even being killed and watch himself transmute into a hero of the ranks of Obafemi Awolowo.  By going into detention on behalf of the Yoruba people, he will secure his insurance against even being killed by the Nigerian government. He will thereafter become the property of the entire Yoruba people whose cause he is fighting for and they will make sure that no harm comes to him in detention; and that he is protected and that he will not be another MKO Abiola without consequences. 

He was lucky to escape when the DSS raided his home and should count his blessings that the killer squad of the Nigeria government did not find him when they called because they would have summarily eliminated him at sight. That was their primary mission objective, otherwise they would not have come at such odd hour of the night with guns blazing. The two men they killed were also on their "elimination" list and they killed them in cold blood, with one of them shot at the back of the head while reciting his Islamic Koranic verses Muslim prayer on a mat. The DSS could have killed the rest but they were not on their to kill list and the destruction was purposefully maximized for a "shock and awe" effect; and to intimidate the agitators out of commission. But he might not be as lucky next time, the reason he should surrender now and not allow himself to be killed like a stray dog.

The shedding of blood at his home was a necessary sacrifice for the agitation and it should strengthen and take it to the next level. But first, Sunday Igboho must surrender in order for it to come full circle. His detention will force the Yoruba controlled media to go into an overdrive and it will also awaken other rather lukewarm Yoruba personalities into bracing the agitation. It happened with IPOB where despite the Nigeria government's killing of over 4000 Biafrans so far, they have not deterred IPOB nor diminished their resolve on the renewed clamor for an independent State of Biafra. The killing of the two Sunday Igboho's men is a much needed shot in the arm for the Oduduwa Nation agitation, but Sunday Igboho needs to do the needful by handing himself to the Nigerian government without any further ado and watch what follows next. #SundayIgbohoSurrender.