It is gravely unfortunate that Soyinka has repeated his anti-Igbo sentiments at Harvard. More disturbing is the fact that the Igbo people he has been lambasting so much hail from southern part of Nigeria just like Soyinka’s Yoruba people. The people of Southern Nigeria— especially the Yoruba and the Igbo—actually need to come together to wrest their freedom from the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy in the northern part of the country. This oligarchy is irrevocably determined to continue ruling or misruling Nigeria at the expense of the people of southern Nigeria. It is this oligarchy that ensured that Abiola, a Yoruba man, died a prisoner over a presidential election he won convincingly and went further to assassinate his beloved wife. And when in 1995, the Hausa-Fulani murdered Professor Bamidele Bandipo, a Yoruba academic and chief medical director of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, the murderers complained that the university itself was
beginning to look like “Ogbomosho university.” It made no sense to the felons that although southern academics dominated the academic senate of the university, they were there on merit. The same manner in which the Hausa-Fulani has been extinguishing the lives and properties of Igbo people in the north is the same way they have been unleashing terror at the Yoruba people or any other Nigerian ethnic group at any given time. The Yoruba should not be misled into thinking that the current pair of Buhari and Osibanjo is a valid sign of solidarity between the Yoruba and the Islamic north; let’s recall what happened between Abacha and Diya. In my view, unless Nigeria is finally divided or embraces confederation, the country will remain a mere acquisition of the Hausa-Fulani irrespective of the ethnic identity of any incumbent president or head-of-state. It is beyond obvious in post-independence Nigeria that it is either the Hausa-Fulani is ruling the
country or all hell will let loose. For how long shall we continue like this?
Dr. Chima Osakwe.
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