Public statement by The Yoruba Party in the UK (9 November 2024)
On 12 October 2024, Sunday ‘Igboho’ Adeyemo submitted a letter on Yoruba self-determination to No 10 Downing Street. Nigeria at once reacted by summoning the High Commission in Abuja for an explanation. Britain has now sent David Lammy, its Foreign Secretary, to Nigeria for reassurance. In a patronising anti-self-determination speech totally lacking in subtlety, David Lammy guaranteed that if Nigeria remained as one and accepted the Mother Britain know-how, Nigeria would become the 5th largest economy in the world by 2075, placing Nigeria ahead of Mother Britain, currently at number 6. David Lammy linked his optimistic forecast to a Nigeria with ever increasing population, presumably as now with 15% under the age of 5, 50% under the age of 15 and 10 million born every year.
We have heard the chanting of such misguided optimistic economic mantra before. Nigeria’s economic miracle has been coming for a long time. Independence was going to bring it, then it did not. Oil sale was going to bring it, then it did not. Military dictatorship was going to bring it, then it did not. Creating states was going to bring it, then it did not. Unitary system of government was going to bring it, then it did not. According to David Lammy, what Nigeria needed all this time was Mother Britain’s guiding hands. Apparently, Nigeria more than 6 decades after independence has not yet grown up enough to build a prosperous economy for itself.
The likes of Goldman Sachs have pointed out how lack of infrastructure, insecurity, and bad governance hampered Nigeria’s economic health. Bad governance is the disease, lack of infrastructure and insecurity are the symptoms. Bad governance they say was caused by the inferior quality of Nigeria’s politicians. Let the righteous be let loose they daily pray, and prosperity was automatic. 6 decades of independence, 47 years ruled by the north, 17 years ruled by the south, 3 decades of military interregnum, still no politicians of quality have emerged in Nigeria. The only rational explanation for this failure is that Nigeria is not conducive environment for breeding quality politicians. Period. There are no angels in hell because hell is not conducive environment for angels. Nigeria itself is the problem. Britain created a failed state on 1 January 1914.
The British knew at amalgamation in 1914 that polyethnicity was going to be Nigeria’s Achilles heel. During 46 years of colonisation, the British grappled with the polyethnicity, and tried and failed to give Nigeria good governance. Since independence on 1 October 1960, Nigerians themselves have grappled with the polyethnicity, and tried and failed to give themselves good governance. As the saying goes, it does not matter how long you travel on a wrong road, you are still travelling on the wrong road. Nigeria is the wrong road for all Nigerians, not just for the Yoruba. Britain wants the mess that it created in 1914 to continue ad nauseam regardless of pain daily suffered by the ordinary Nigerians. Why?
The British know what is possible with an independent Yorubaland. When in the 1950s Yorubaland was governed on its own, by its own for its own, as Western Nigeria, the Yorubaland economy was streets ahead of those of Singapore and South Korea. Infrastructure development in those halcyon days included a television service that predated TV service in France. Estate development in Ibadan, the capital city, included an Olympic stadium, a skyscraper, and suburbia at Bodija. Children had free education and a free health service. A minimum ‘living’ wage was decided and paid. The Yoruba paid for all these developments entirely from money they raised from the sale of cocoa. The Yoruba can do the economic miracle again but only outside of the Nigeria bubble. Anyone who says otherwise is enemy of the Yoruba, and the Yoruba must never forget that.
British politicians like David Lammy who peddle economic ‘strategies’ with ‘one Nigeria’ do so only to burnish political egos knowing as they do that Nigeria is not working. British politicians like David Lammy deceive when they proclaim a rosy economic future for Nigeria as one country. The fact is, economic future for Nigerians is bleak unless the country breaks up, and as soon as possible too. Polyethnicity hampered the Soviet Union. Polyethnicity hampered the former Yugoslavia. In each instance, the problem was solved by dissolving the country into its ethnic parts. Britain and its western allies know that polyethnicity hampers the governance of Nigeria, and its economic health, yet they do not want Nigeria to breakup. Why?
The Transatlantic Slavery is the Yoruba Holocaust deserving of recompense with a Homeland. The British and other Europeans, over 400 years from the 1500s onward, murdered 5 million innocent Yoruba people, in barbaric and inhuman internment in slave pens on the west coast of Africa and in the bowels of slave ships bound for the Americas. Britain will not apologise for the Yoruba Holocaust as it did, and still does, with the Jewish Holocaust. Britain will not compensate the Yoruba for their loss as it did with the British slave owners, borrowing billion of pounds which it was paying till 2015. The British show arrogance towards the Yoruba Holocaust because the Yoruba are black-skinned and economically weak. It is our duty to make clear that a Britain that does not support a Yoruba Homeland, as it did for the Jews with the State of Israel, is for ever an enemy of the Yoruba people.