Insecurity: Yoruba, beware  ! ( E fu ra ! )

Opinion

By Dr. Bisi  Olawunmi

YORUBA, beware ! ( Yoruba, e fu ra ! ) The creeping upsurge in banditry and kidnapping in Yorubaland, Southwest Nigeria, culminating in the horrendous  mass kidnapping of school children and teachers in three schools in Oriire local government area of Oyo State  on May 15, 2026, has brought the horrors of this violent criminals to the doorstep of Yorubaland in a most jarring way. All states in the Southwest are now under siege of bandits and kidnappers.

Before now, we in Yorubaland read about  mass abductions in places like Katsina State, Zamfara State and Borno State as happenings in distant lands.  There was the complacent feeling that it cannot happen here.  That false complacency has now been shattered  in a most vicious way. Varied reactions have trailed this existential threat to Yorubaland, central of which is the need for people of the region to sink political and religious differences and confront this common enemy. While banditry and mass kidnapping have been largely associated with Fulani renegades, Yoruba must face the unsettling reality  of Yoruba copycat  kidnappers on rampage.

It is instructive and gratifying that the group, Muslim Rights Concern ( MURIC ) whose executive director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, has been pursuing an Islamic agenda seen as divisive in the Southwest, has come out strongly to seek a unified stand among  the various religious adherents to confront worsening insecurity in Yorubaland. Prof.  Akintola’s stand has served to reinforce the primacy of our common Yoruba ethnic heritage over and above religious affiliations.

What has been confounding till now is the apparent laid back attitude, the absence of a sense of outrage and intensity of action by the region’s political elite,  particularly the governors, given the clear and present danger facing Yorubaland. Apart from lack of security coordination among the governors, why has it been impossible for the governors of the Southwest to collectively visit President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to express their outrage at the looming overrun of Yorubaland by bandits, kidnappers and other sundry violent criminals ?  Why ? Before the 2023 presidential election, there was this mantra in Yorubaland about Tinubu’s ambition for the presidency : Omo wa ni, e je o se ( He is our son, let him reign ) But what do we see ?  Omo wa ( our son )  who has been on the throne for three years now seem to be more concerned and preoccupied with  politicking for 2027 re-election  and apparently dismisses the insecurity ravaging Yorubaland as a distraction orchestrated by political enemies !!  Advancing the same puerile argument, incoherent, communication and speech challenged  Monday Okpebholo, governor of Edo State, could even boast  earlier in the week that however escalated banditry and kidnappings across the country, re-election of President Tinubu is assured.  How insensitive, callous !!     

President Tinubu’s seeming attitude of qui sera sera,  ( what will be, will be)  a doctrine of fatalism, could signal an ominous trend to replicate, in the Southwest, President Muhammadu Buhari’s legacy of banditry and kidnapping to his Northwest home region, considering Tinubu’s repeated pledge to continue with Buhari’s legacy. Yoruba, e fu ra ! ( Yoruba, beware ! )

 We need to remind ourselves in the Southwest that it was during Buhari’s presidency that  terrorism, banditry and kidnapping spread, like wild fire,  to the Northwest, with his home state of Katsina becoming the epicenter insecurity.  It got so bad for them in Katsina state  that the then governor, Aminu Masari, surrendered to terrorism and banditry by  hosting an armed bandit kingpin in the Governor’s Office !!!  May Yoruba Southwest not descend into bandit-land under Tinubu,  just as Northwest harvest of horror under Buhari.

Let us also recall Tinubu’s dismissive reaction to the alleged herdsmen killing of the daughter of Chief Reuben Fasoranti, leader of Afenifere, years back.  Yoruba, e fu ra.  In spite of his tragic loss, Chief Fasoranti, aged 100, has remained a staunch Tinubu backer but was recently compelled to issue a public lamentation on the deteriorating insecurity in the Yoruba Southwest. This highlights the gravity of the situation.  We should also ponder what informed Presidential candidate  Tinubu’s choice of  Kashim Shettima as running mate. Now the vice president, this is  Shettima, under whose watch as governor of Borno state, Boko haram, got incubated, took root, germinated and eventually erupted into a murderous terrorist group.  Tinubu also appointed  Bello Matawalle,  former governor of Zamfara state,  under whose tenure the state became  another epicenter of banditry,  as minister of state for defence ! You wonder : what is the agenda ? All of these should give a sense of foreboding to us in the Yoruba Southwest.  

It has , therefore, become urgently imperative for the formation of a non partisan  Yoruba Leadership Lobby ( YOLLO) extending to Yoruba in Kwara and Kogi states, and made up of leaders across political, religious, business, youth and academic spectrum to visit President Tinubu and present him with Yoruba Security Charter.  Such Lobby should be led by Afenifere, the pan Yoruba organisation. However, to put additional pressure on President Tinubu, peaceful demonstrations should be staged in all state capitals in the Southwest to protest exponential spiral of insecurity in Yorubaland.  The proposed Yoruba Leadership pressure on President Tinubu to tackle banditry and kidnapping in Yorubaland should not be seen  as a pull-down-syndrome, but in collective ethnic self interest. We do not want IDP  ( Internally Displaced Persons) camps in Yorubaland.  The Northwest leadership, across board, kept mute during the tenure of their son,  President Buhari, while the region bled, only for a shameless delegation of political leaders from Katsina state, Buhari’s home state, to visit President Tinubu pleading for his help in tackling insecurity in the state !!!.  Had they put pressure on their son, Buhari, the narrative would have been different. The Southwest should, therefore,  be proactive and not get into slumber for a Buhari encore. Yoruba, e fu ra. (Yoruba, beware).

It is a measure of the heartlessness and lack of humanity of some members of the political class that the impulsive, temperamental, loose canon,  Nyesom Wike, minister of the Federal Capital Territory , could dismiss the  kidnap of  39 students and 7 teachers in Oyo state as no big deal, since similar abductions of students had taken place in Abuja without the  public outrage the Oyo incident attracted.  Wike comes from a region of violent militancy and is apparently inured to violence and killing. We are witnesses to the gangster politics being played out in Rivers state, his home state,  of which ex-governor Wike is a principal. Not so in the Southwest and entire Yorubaland, the exemplar region and ethnic group of intellectual approach to issues.

The Yoruba Southwest, the most secured , most educated, most enlightened region in Nigeria as well as the nation’s economic powerhouse, cannot and should not be allowed to be overrun by bandits, kidnappers and sundry violent criminals.

We in  Southwest Nigeria should, therefore,  not allow President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to sleep while Yorubaland is on fire.   

Dr. Bisi Olawunmi, PhD Mass Communication.

Public Affairs Analyst / Mass Communication Scholar.

Former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)

Email : olawunmibisi@yahoo.com  PHONE :  (SMS ONLY)  0803 364 7571

Thursday, 11 June, 2026.

A.I

June 12, 2026

Tags: Bisi  Olawunmi