The Yoruba Party in the UK (YPUK) 1st Annual Party Conference
Saturday 16 November 2024 at the Blue Room, Walworth Methodist Church, 54 Camberwell Road, London SE5 0EW
What next after the Igboho letter to Number 10 Downing Street
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.
Fellow party members it is with a deep sense of pride that I stand before you today to address you as party leader. Something undreamt of only a year ago. The rise of the party has been a surprise to me. It is due in no small measure to the hard work of a small number of individuals. I shall not embarrass them by revealing their names. I thank you for believing in the project, for joining me on this unlikely journey.
The objective of YPUK is to make the UK Yoruba community a politically active community. The UK is our home. We must stop treating it as a Transit/Departure Lounge. Nevertheless, championing the interests of the Yoruba Homeland is part of being politically active in the UK. This is the theme of my speech today.
On 12 October 2024, Sunday ‘Igboho’ Adeyemo submitted a letter on Yoruba self-determination at No 10 Downing Street. This act has generated ‘gestures’ from Abuja and from London.
First, the Nigeria government immediately summoned the British High Commission in Abuja for consultation.
Second, David Lammy, British Foreign Secretary, on 3 November made a reassurance visit to Nigeria.
Third, Dabiri-Erewa, Nigeria Special Adviser on the Diaspora resident in the UK, publicly questioned the ‘Nigerianess’ of Kemi Badenoch, UK’s Leader of Opposition
YPUK too, as participant in the rally that accompanied Igboho to Downing Street, has an obligation to provide its response. The act of submitting the letter at No 10 Downing Street patently put pressure on the British by asking their government to do something. YPUK has an obligation to optimise this pressure to help the British government decide on the ‘something’ it can usefully do.
The first ‘something’, and urgent ‘something’, that Britain could usefully do, regardless of potential cost to itself, is denounce and repudiate the atrocities going on in Nigeria, publicly and without equivocation. The Fulani, and the Fulani alone, are the perpetrators of these atrocities. Fulani herdsmen killers graze their cattle on Yoruba farmlands uninvited, pollute the drinking water with cattle waste, shoot to death or behead Yoruba farmers, and rape the women folk. Fulani terrorists laid waste villages raping, pillaging and killing everyone in their path including children and the elderly, and then asserted ownership on the villages they had destroyed. Fulani jihadist barbarians bomb and burn down churches murdering worshippers in their pews, and they abduct school children for ransom or to make into sex slaves. The Yoruba have no military or police protection. The Fulani perpetrators never face justice. Graphic details of these atrocities are published in a March 2022 report by the HART organisation of Baroness Cox. It is this grim reality of Nigerian life that forces its people to flee to Britain; 140,000 of them in the last year alone. Nigeria is the 3rdlargest source of immigration to Britain. The numbers are likely to be even higher this year. Britain knows this. YPUK has an obligation to make sure that the British public knows this too. The British public oppose mass immigration. British governments fruitlessly spend millions and millions of pounds on treating immigrants very harshly, contrary to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol on the care of asylum seekers. This has not worked. Eliminating Fulani atrocities would drastically reduce, if not totally eliminate, mass immigration from Nigeria. Britain must give Nigeria an ultimatum with monies for aids and assistance as quid quo pro. Tying immigration to the troubles in Nigeria is a potential pressure point that the Reform Party could be persuaded to exploit. This might mean YPUK making common cause with Nigel Farage.
The second ‘something’, and immediate ‘something’, that Britain could usefully do is refer the legal status of the Yorubaland to the British Supreme Court for judicial review. Under international law, Yorubaland is a state in its own right. This conclusion is based on the treaty of trade and friendship that Britain (Queen Victoria) concluded with the Yorubaland (Oba Adeyemi, Alaafin of Oyo) on 23 July 1888. Britain ratified the treaty on 16 June 1890. Britain consolidated the treaty into domestic law by paying a contractual stipend to the Alaafin. Lord Osborne’s Niger Committee report of 1890 stated unequivocally that Britain did not have jurisdiction over the ‘Yoruba country’. In other words, as the Yoruba were not consulted, and they did not give their consent, the incorporation of the Yorubaland into Nigeria in the act of Amalgamation on 1 January 1914 was unlawful, ultravires, and of no legal effect. Further, the British government used prerogative power rather true parliamentary power to create the Colony of Nigeria on 22 November 1913. The British government took this legislative route to evade parliament’s decision on 26 June1865, to ban the creation of new British colonies in West Africa with ‘no exception’. In other words, the 1913 Order in Council creating Nigeria too was unlawful, ultravires, and of no legal effect. YPUK has an obligation to make sure that this matter was litigated in the British courts no matter the cost of hiring lawyers.
The third ‘something’, and the atonement ‘something’, that Britain could usefully do is commit and declare support for the return of the Yoruba Homeland to the Yoruba. The Yoruba Homeland was an uncontested territory of the Yoruba since time immemorial, bounded by the natural barriers of the River Niger to the North and East, and the Atlantic to the south. In 1914, the British unilaterally took over the Yoruba Homeland without the consent of the Yoruba or their rulers. Furthermore, the British inflicted a Holocaust on the Yoruba during the 400 years of the Transatlantic slavery. The British starved or infected to death 2 million Yoruba in prison camps they had built on the coast. The British starved or infected to death another 3 million Yoruba on the decks of their ships transporting Yoruba captives to the Americas. YPUK is of the view that a Yoruba Homeland was adequate ‘reparation’ for the Yoruba Holocaust just as the State of Israel was adequate ‘reparation’ for the Jewish Holocaust. The Yoruba like the Jews have an ‘international certificate’ of suffering mass genocide at the hands of others. A Homeland as ‘reparation’ will elevate and enhance the status of all Black men in the world. Confining the Transatlantic slavery to the dustbin of history is evidence that Black lives did not matter. Other races – Caucasian, Chinese, Indian etc – view the Black man with that negative lens. That is just not acceptable. The debt of the Transatlantic slavery must be paid to its victims. Britain had a compensation scheme, the equivalent of £30 billions, for the perpetrators, its slave owners, about 40% of the Treasury’s annual income that was repaid over several years from 1833 to 2015. Britain has no excuse, other than skin colour, to deny equivalent compensation scheme in respect of the Yoruba victims. The Yoruba were the most enslaved Africans. The persistence of Yoruba culture, tradition, religion etc in the Americas attest to that. The British were the primary enslavers of the Yoruba. Britain therefore owes the Yoruba a specific debt that Britain must pay by itself to the Yoruba. YPUK wants a Yoruba Homeland, not cash, as ‘reparation’; Britain owes the Yoruba unreserved support for reactivating their Homeland. The 2024 Samoa meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of government discussed ‘reparatory justice’ for harms inflicted with the Transatlantic Slavery. The Heads described the Transatlantic slavery as a crime against humanity that should always have been so, and that should never be forgotten. The British owe the Yoruba a Homeland for the abhorrent barbarism they committed with the Transatlantic slavery. If necessary, YPUK would make cause with the Commonwealth in the quest for ‘reparation’ for the Transatlantic slavery.
The fourth ‘something’, and the moral ‘something’, that Britain could usefully do is support a Yorubaland application for membership of the United Nations. The relevant rules for membership are set out at Article 4 of the UN Charter. The rules have, an exhaustive character so that no other conditions could be imported into it. The ‘judgement of the Organisation’ is the only requirement for deciding UN Membership. An applicant would be admitted if it persuaded the Security Council and the General Assembly that it ought to be admitted (see Advisory Opinion on Conditions of Admission of a State to the membership of the United Nations (Article 4 of Charter) ICJ Rep. 28 May 1948). The Yorubaland qualified by having a viable territory in terms of land and people. The Yorubaland qualified by having a track record, between 1952 and 1959, of achievement with internal as well as international obligations. Britain knows the Yorubaland fulfilled the requirements for statehood demanded by the Montevideo Convention of 1933. That Convention recognised that the political existence of a state was independent of recognition by other states (Article 3) and that rights did not depend on the power that a state possessed to assure its existence but on the single fact of its existence (Article 4). A written application to the Secretary-General is all that the UN required of an applicant (UNSC Rule 58 and UNGA Rule 134 of the rules of procedure). UN rules do not specify who should make that application on behalf of an aspiring state. YPUK will submit that application to the UN on behalf of the Yoruba. YPUK expects unequivocal support for the application from Britain, a friend of the Yoruba as documented in the 1888 Britain-Yorubaland Treaty. Britain is a permanent member of the UNSC. Britain has international influence, for example, with Commonwealth nations, with European countries, and with the United States. YPUK is certain that British support for a Yorubaland application for UN membership would immediately trigger support from other countries. Germany’s support for Croatia and Slovenia announced on Christmas Eve 1991 instinctively triggered the support of other states. British support for our application does not amount to betrayal of Nigeria. Nigeria is not a natural country. It was an artificial creation of the British. YPUK accepts that the UN application would involve lobbying, and that is a task to which we must diligently apply ourselves.
Fellow party members, the tasks before us feel and look daunting but we must not despair. The reward, when it comes, would be worth it. Thank you for listening.