14 Days ago, terrorists bombed Ibadan. Since then, silence. The Governor and the Olubadan are keeping calm. Those whose innocent relatives were murdered in cold blood have been left to bury their dead in personal rather than collective grief. The innocent souls whose businesses and houses were damaged or destroyed have been left to struggle alone to put their buildings and their lives together again.

Now imagine if people had been holding protest rallies every day on the streets of Ibadan or other Oyo State towns. Would the Governor and the Olubadan be keeping calm? Almost certainly not.

In 1946, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti led 10 thousand or so women in rallies to the Alake’s palace against the unfair taxation of the colonial government. The women also demanded representation on the local council. The initial reaction of the colonial government to the women’s rallies was swift and brutal – tear gas, arrests and beatings. But the violence did not stop the women. At one stage for 2 days, they set up camps outside the Alake’s palace. What was the eventual outcome?  The women got 4 seats on the local council and taxation of women was ended. Even the Alake was forced to abdicate.

Now imagine that the Abeokuta women did not hold the rallies. The colonial government would have continued to marginalise them. At the 1959 general election, whilst Yoruba women could vote, Northern women could not.

Between 1955 and 1968, when he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Nobel laureate, took part in several rallies. 1961, he was arrested and jailed during the Albany protests. The Birmingham rallies of 1963 opened up public places to all races. The march on Washington in aid of the poor (famous for the ‘I have a dream’ speech) attracted more than 300,000 people. 1965, Selma to Montgomery rallies for voting rights was marred by the violence of police brutality (one rally was dubbed ‘bloody Sunday’). 1966, Chicago rally was marred by thousands of white people throwing bricks, bottled and fore crackers at the protesters. The violence did not deter Martin Luther King and others.

Now imagine that America’s blacks did not hold rallies. Imagine that they were deterred from holding rallies because of the dangerous situation for them. Remember, it was the civil rights rallies that got America a black president in Barack Obama and a black female vice president in Kamala Harris.

There are several lessons to learn from these two examples of rallying. 

 Lesson 1: Rallies are effective means of airing and communicating grievances. The people are invisible to the politicians except at election times. Endless media events, formation of campaign organisations, and elections of leaders have not achieved Yoruba self-determination. Rallies personalise grievances.

Lesson 2: Rallies are effective means of attracting people to a cause. Rallies empower people. Rallies enable people to identify with the like-minded. Rallies trigger the inner obligation to participate, to share experiences, to show collective anger, and to encourage the belief that change was possible.

Lesson 3: Rallies are effective means of attracting the attention of the authorities. Authorities almost always react to rallies. Rallies make them feel humiliated, inadequate and threatened so they almost always panic and react negatively at first. In 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. On 20 October 2020, Buhari’s presidency massacred ENDSARs protesters at the Lekki Tollgate in Lagos. In 2021, Buhari agents attempted to assassinate Sunday Igboho for his part in leading Yoruba self-determination rallies in the capital cities of the Yoruba states.

Lesson 4: Rallies are effective means of achieving change. Rallies are propaganda tools. The Arab Spring was ‘wildfire’ protests that engulfed the entire Arab world. The rallies brought political change to the region. The rallies toppled Ben Ali of Tunisia, Muhammad Gaddafi of Libya, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Abdullah Sale of Yemen. 

Lesson 5: Rallies are effective means of providing leadership. Where leadership is inherently docile, ineffectual and/or weak, rallies by providing a focus also provide much needed leadership. Although Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Martin Luther King could claim to be leaders in their own right, they realised that that was not enough, that they could not achieve on their own. So they rallied others to the cause. Without rallies Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Martin Luther King would not have achieved emancipation for their peoples.

Lesson 6: Rallies are public meetings of a large group of people to show support for a cause. Ideally, the rally should last long enough to enthuse participants and allow them to interact and bond – a route of at least 2 miles long should do it. The rally must have ‘meet and end’ locations that are significant to the Yoruba cause – in London perhaps from Nigerian Embassy to Abuja House, both of which belonged to the Western Region; in Manchester from City Council to Nigeria House. The rally must entertain – colourful banners and wears, music and speeches by celebrity invitees. In Nigeria, organisers should stick to the ‘Igboho’ format of rallying in State capitals in rotation, but this time in a repeating loop. 

We Yoruba must return to the mega rallies of 2021 that were so successful that they got Buhari and the Fulani hierarchy to panic. Tinubu is likely to react like a true democrat, and like an Awoist. The purpose of mega rallies for the Yoruba emancipation is two-fold: first, to make people aware of the Yoruba name, and secondly, to make people aware of the Yoruba desire for emancipation, immediate emancipation. 

Nigeria will dissolve. It is a certainty. It is only a matter of time. The question is whether Nigeria dissolved in chaos or in an orderly fashion. There is no likelihood of a civil war because no side – East, North or West or Nigeria’s military – could win it. Mega rallies would showcase the Yoruba position and bring others to the negotiating table sooner rather than later. The emancipation negotiators would be the signatories to Nigeria’s independence, that is to say, the 3 ‘protectorates’ (ie Eastern, Northern and Western Regions). Negotiations would be concerned only with the terms of the dissolution since dissolution itself would be a given.