The Sultan of Sokoto and the topmost leader of the Fulani of Nigeria
We Yoruba people have read your statement that was sent to the public through the Deputy National Adviser of the Nigeria Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, Imam Haroun Eze, following the failed attempt to impose Sharia Courts on the Oyo and Ekiti States of the Yoruba people of the Nigerian Southwest. Since your spokesperson, Imam Haroun Eze, made your statement to the public, we hereby make our response also to the public.
Your representative chose to make your statement to the Yoruba people as if you are an overlord of the Yoruba people. Your statement said in effect that Yoruba people must accept Sharia as dictated by you. We have great respect for you as a traditional ruler, Your Highness, but in the current circumstance, because of your chosen approach, we are reluctantly compelled to spell out our response in ways that truthfully uphold our Yoruba nation’s integrity, leaving no doubt about what we know and understand as our nation’s relationship with you.
Your representative, Imam Eze, said you are the head of the Islamic religion in Nigeria. Well, while our Yoruba Muslims faithfully surrender their lives to the Almighty God Allah and fully exalt Allah’s great Prophet Mohammed as their Guide, most do not know you as the leader of their Islamic religion in Nigeria. There is no provision in the tenets of Islam that lays the duty on our Yoruba Muslim people to accept you as leader of Islam while we Yoruba are still part of Nigeria. It has now become necessary to get rid of the presumption that you are the leader of Muslims in Yorubaland.
In the past ten years, your Fulani people have killed countless thousands of Yoruba Muslims in all parts of Yorubaland, have destroyed the farms, villages, and other assets of Yoruba Muslim farmers, have raped and killed countless Yoruba Muslim women, and have kidnapped and extorted millions of Naira as ransom for countless kidnapped Yoruba Muslim men, women, and children. These horrors by your Fulani people are continuing in Yorubaland as we write this response.
At no time in these ten years have you raised your influential voice against these heinous crimes by your Fulani people against Yoruba people – or even, at least, against Yoruba Muslims. We think you should not find it difficult to understand that Yoruba Muslims cannot accept you as leader of their Islamic faith in Nigeria. That is very important. You must have noticed that in the enormous mass of hostile responses among Yoruba people against your representative’s public statement on your behalf, there are as many Muslim as non-Muslim voices – in fact, probably more Muslim than non-Muslim voices.
Our second point is that you Fulani people need to learn to respect other peoples. Your statement through Imam Eze is a very disrespectful statement concerning the Yoruba people. You Fulani think you are the dominant people in every situation in Nigeria. Yes, our Yoruba political leaders and the other political leaders of the rest of Nigeria have made the mistake of giving reality to the British attempts to impose you Fulani on Nigeria.
One of your men wrote in a published statement in 2014 that Allah, through the British, gave Nigeria to the Fulani to rule and to do with as the Fulani please. That your Fulani nation came to that kind of mentality is an absolute disaster. Of course, it is the fault of our political leaders from all nations of Nigeria that a small nation like yours should come to that kind of mentality. Your Fulani nation in Nigeria is just about seven or eight million people in a country of over 200 million people, a country where some nations are as many as 40 million and over in population.
Yes, the British gave you Nigeria to rule and to do with as you please because the British saw you as a non-African people, a people therefore presumed to be superior to indigenous Black African peoples. But it is the fault of our indigenous peoples and politicians that you were allowed to develop the grandiose presumption that Nigeria was yours to rule and do with as you please. The present generation of indigenous Black peoples of Nigeria are now rising to tell you that your presumption has lasted too long and is now coming to an end.
Thirdly, we want you to recognize that what you are trying to do in Yorubaland—trying to impose your fundamentalist and Jihadist brand of Islam on Yoruba people—will never materialize. Your Fulani people have been striving for many decades to import your brand of extremist Islam to the Muslims of the Yoruba Southwest. But it has never worked, and it has no chance whatsoever of being realized. That’s because we Yoruba are a people who honor family, lineage, and kinship relations as very important to a normal, stable, and prosperous society.
We do not accept the view that family, lineage, and kinship relationships should be subdued to religion. We are the most fundamentally tolerant people in matters of religion in the world, and the world now recognizes us for that. Let me quote from two sources to show you that the world recognizes and admires us for our culture of religious tolerance and harmony.
One is from a British professor from the School of African and Oriental Studies London, Professor J.D.Y. Peel, who studied African history and culture for most of his life and who died in old age in 2016. In his very last academic article, he wrote:
“The Yoruba are proud of their religious tolerance, and it is a product of their history and culture. The kind of tree which has produced the poisonous fruits that we now see in Islamic fundamentalism and Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria can never grow in Yoruba soil.”
Some years ago, an agency of the American government sent two researchers to study the Nigerian situation. They wrote their final report under the title _”Nigeria’s Unity: In the Balance”,_ and in it, they wrote that the Yoruba are the model of modern coexistence. They found Yoruba Christians, Muslims, and traditional worshippers living harmoniously together not only in the same cities but also in the same households.
Some non-Yoruba Nigerians, who are not Fulani, recognize and admire this quality of Yoruba life. An Igbo political leader, Dr. Paul Ezeife, former State Governor of Anambra State, wrote that the Yoruba are the model of religious harmony in Nigeria. He added that this Yoruba harmony is endangered in Nigeria because of the fact that there are other peoples in Nigeria deeply sunk into Islamic fundamentalism.
We Yoruba advise you because we love all nations, and we want all nations to prosper in the world. Pay attention to the prophecy by Uthman Dan Fodio as a warning—use it as a warning. Doing so would mean that you would give up your ‘born-to-rule’ presumptions, that you would give up your provocative presumptions that you are leader in everything, that you begin to respect other peoples, that you get ready to immerse yourself in society as equal members of society with all other people.
That is the meaningful path forward. Our sincere prayer is that the current generation of Fulani leaders would not lead the Fulani people to national suicide. It is time to yield to the demands of change. We Yoruba wish you well.
We Yoruba wish you Fulani well—even though we have taken our decision to separate our Yoruba nation from a Nigeria that has been pulverized in sickening detail by lawlessness, anarchy, economic mismanagement, irresistible power of public corruption, economic collapse, Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, inter ethnic animosities and violence, and wrenching, almost all-pervading, poverty.
We take seriously the statement made by one of our most eminent Yoruba leaders recently that: “It is madness to think that Nigeria will work.”
