LAGOS – A TV presenter in Nigeria, Reuben Abati, has criticised Yoruba activist Dr. Chief Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho for urging President Bola Tinubu to call Vice President Kashim Shettima to order over attacks on the leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch.
Abati, a controversial TV presenter and politician – popularly known for his unprofessional conduct on live TV program – criticised the activist during a recent Arise TV’s The Morning Show program.
Shettima had chided Badenoch for commenting on corruption in Nigeria while proclaiming her true identity as true Yoruba and saying she has nothing in common with northern Nigeria – filled with Islamic extremists and terrorists.
Sunday Igboho in a personally signed statement made available to reporters on Sunday – called on Tinubu to caution Shettima against launching verbal attacks on the leader of the British Conservative Party for emphasising her true identity as a member of Yoruba ethnic group and expressing her view on corruption, which had been the bane of development in the West African country, created by Britain.
When asked by a co-anchor to react to Igboho’s statement, Abati said the activist’s statement is “illiterate” and “ridiculous”.
But during his speech, he highlighted Nigeria’s disunity, throwing up a popular question that “are we truly a nation?”, and recalling a statement by late sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo that “we are just a geographical expression”.
According to Abati, the issue between Kemi Badenoch and Kashim Shettima is not a fight between northern and southern Nigeria.
“Sunday Igboho’s statement is just like pouring petrol on a matter that could just be overlooked,” he said.
Abati is known for displaying a level of indignation that no longer shocks his other colleagues who are apparently accustomed to his tactlessness.
Abati’s on-air conduct enrages netizens and others who wonder how he acts towards his younger colleagues off-air, given his brashness on live television.
KASHIM SHETTIMA
Kashim Shettima, is a Nigerian politician who is the 15th and current vice president of Nigeria. He served as governor of a terror-ravaged northeastern Borno State, from 2011 to 2019. His term in office was dominated by the deadly Boko Haram insurgency
Shettima, 58, became the governor without setting out to be one. He was brought in as a replacement after the winner of the governorship candidate of the All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP) Modu Fannami-Gubio was shot dead by Boko Haram insurgents in January 2011.
He was accused of masterminding the killing of the late candidate. But the allegation did not stop him from being elected governor. The allegation of having a hand in the death of Mr Fannami-Gubio continued even after his first term in office. He repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder.
Shettima was accused of being the brain behind Boko Haram terror group.
The abduction of 276 pupils of Government Secondary School Chibok in 2014 almost caused Shettima his integrity. The president at the time, Goodluck Jonathan, and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said Shettima masterminded the abduction to help his new party the All Progressives Congress (APC) win election.
On several occasions, Shettima was also accused of not reaching out to Jonathan to discuss security issues. But the former governor said it was the president who should be reaching out to governors in states battling insecurity.
Shettima left office in 2019, and was elected to the senate. After winning primary for Senate election in 2022, he withdrew from the nomination to become Bola Tinubu‘s running mate.
On 1 March 2023, Bola Tinubu was declared as the winner of a controversial and violence-marred presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) . Thus, Shettima became the Vice President-elect of Nigeria.
Kemi Badenoch became the Conservatives’ new leader and the first Black woman to a head a major British political party on Saturday, after winning a leadership contest on a promise to return the party to its founding principles.
First black woman to head a major UK political party
Kemi Badenoch became the Conservatives’ new leader and the first Black woman to a head a major British political party on Saturday, after winning a leadership contest on a promise to return the party to its founding principles.
Badenoch, 44 replaced former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and has pledged to lead the party through a period of renewal after its resounding defeat at Britain’s July election, saying it had veered towards the political centre by “governing from the left”.
She came out on top in the two-horse race with former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, winning 57 percent of the votes of party members.
Badenoch was born in London in 1980, but spent her childhood living in Lagos, Nigeria, and in the United States – where her mother lectured. She has frequently described her upbringing as being overshadowed by fear and insecurity in a country plagued by corruption.
She returned to the UK at the age of 16 to live with a friend of her mother’s due to the deteriorating political and economic situation in Nigeria, which had affected her family.
Sunday Igboho
Chief Dr Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho is a Yoruba activist and philanthropist, who boldly demanded end to Fulani herdsmen attacks that have cost lives of thousands. He asked the Fulani people to vacate all the forests in South-West.
As the Akoni Oodua of Yorubaland, Sunday Igboho is known for fighting for the rights of the Yoruba people. He is currently advocating for a sovereign Yoruba country.
On Thursday, 1 July 2021, the combined team of the operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigerian Army and other security agencies – carried out a deadly raid on Adeyemo’s Ibadan residence around 1 am in the mid-night.
The raid — which lasted for nearly 2 hours left 2 unarmed persons dead, the security operatives went away with their bodies. The remains of the victims are yet to be released.
About 12 of Igboho’s associates were also whisked to Abuja in the operation that occurred during former President Muhammadu Buhari administration, they were later granted bail by a competent court.
An Oyo State High court sitting in Ibadan branded the invasion of Adeyemo’s residence a breach of his fundamental human rights, and subsequently ordered the federal government to pay him N20 billion for damages. The verdict was set aside by an Appeal Court.
The conflict between Fulani herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria has been a longstanding issue, resulting in violence and loss of lives.
The Fulani people are believed to be the largest semi-nomadic group globally, found across West and Central Africa. In Nigeria, some continue to live as semi-nomadic herders, while others have moved to cities. Unlike city dwellers, the nomadic groups spend most of their lives in the forest and are often involved in clashes with farming communities, and also engage in kidnapping for ransom. They herd their animals across vast areas, frequently clashing with local farmers.
The herders now bear sophisticated weapons and use them to terrorize many parts of the country, with security operatives ignoring many of the attacks for allegedly not getting orders to go after the criminals.
Several brutal attacks happened under former President Muhammadu Buhari, who was born to a Fulani family on 17 December 1942, in Daura, a town in Nigeria’s northwestern Katsina State.
The continuous unprovoked attacks triggered resistance in South-East region, inhabited by Igbo people and South-West region, inhabited by the Yoruba people.
No fewer than 29,000 Yoruba people have been killed by Fulani terrorists in South-West Nigeria, according to the National Leader of the Yoruba Self-Determination Movement, Professor Emeritus Adebanji Akintoye.
Prof Akintoye said that the suspected criminals continue to rape women and subject others to all sorts of atrocities.
HOW NIGERIA WAS FORMED
On January 1, 1914, Lord Frederick Lugard, the governor of both the Northern Nigeria Protectorate and the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, signed a document consolidating the two, thereby creating the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. Forty-six years later in 1960, Nigeria became an independent state.
Anniversaries are times for reflection, and given that today, just 110 years after amalgamation, the country is still grappling with its national identity and a reanimated separatist movement, it is worth reflecting on how exactly Nigeria became Nigeria.
Before Europeans arrived in the territory that is now Nigeria, a number of different civilizations existed whose presence is still felt today. For example, in the north, Islam was predominant. In the nineteenth century, there were two Islamic empires, the Sokoto Caliphate and the Bornu Empire. To the southwest lay numerous Yoruba city-states that generally had in common animist religion and were only sometimes united. To the southeast was an Igbo kingdom, Nri, and a collection of semi-autonomous towns and villages in the Niger River delta. Such regions were linguistically, religiously, and politically distinct.
While other colonial powers, such as the Portuguese, became involved in the region by way of the slave trade as early as the fifteenth century, the British arrived in force only in the eighteenth century. It was not until 1861 that they formally occupied their first Nigerian territory, Lagos, in a bid to protect Christian converts and trading interests, and to further their anti-slavery campaign.
In 1884, the British occupied what would later become the Southern Protectorate and the Northern Protectorate piecemeal from 1900 to 1903. By 1903, the British controlled the territory that comprises modern-day Nigeria, but as three separate administrative blocks.
As early as 1898, the British considered combining the then-three protectorates to reduce the administrative burden on the British and allow the rich south to effectively subsidize the much less economically prosperous north. (The Lagos colony was later incorporated into the Southern Nigeria Protectorate for budgetary reasons).
This is what Lord Lugard was referring to in his infamous description of how a marriage between the “rich wife of substance and means” (the south) and the “poor husband” (the north) would lead to a happy life for both. Some have suspected that Lugard was also referring to the political supremacy of the north over the south.
The name “Nigeria” was coined by the future Lady Lugard in an 1897 London Times article.
With Lord Lugard’s arbitrary conception of Nigeria in mind, one can begin to see the many and varied problems colonialism created in Nigeria, across West Africa, and around the world.
Not least among these problems, for Nigeria in particular, was the problem of a unifying national identity. It is no wonder that diverse peoples, forcibly united into single states, sometimes turn to separatism. Contemporary examples range from Biafra (Nigeria), to Ambazonia (Cameroon), to Somaliland (Somalia), and to Azawad (Mali).
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