Until Tinubu’s election in 2023, the Yoruba never had a real voice in Nigeria’s political affairs. The Fulani and the Igbo have been the only actors.

The British negotiated Nigeria’s independence with the Fulani and Igbo. The only contribution from the Yoruba was providing the voice of reason that led to ‘regionalism’ in the 1950 McPherson Constitution. At independence, the British handed power to the Fulani and Igbo. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Igbo) was President  whilst Nwafor Orisu (Igbo) was Senate President. Tafawa Balewa (Fulani) was Prime Minister whilst Ibrahim Waziri (Fulani) was Speaker of the House of Representative. Blinded and intoxicated by their new powers, the Fulani and Igbo were totally dismissive of the Yoruba and daily humiliated them.

Within a year of independence, the Fulani-Igbo partnership had contrived to use their newly acquired political powers to destabilise the Western Region (the Yoruba Nation). In June 1962, Balewa appointed Moses Majekodunmi as sole administrator for the Western Region. In November 1962, they arrested and charged Obafemi Awolowo (Yoruba leader) for treason. In July 1963, they conducted a referendum to carve out from the Yoruba Nation, the Midwestern Region, area inhabited in parts by Igbo people. No such referendums were conducted in the North where the Middlebelt was agitating for a region or in the East where the riverine people were agitating for their own region.

The Fulani-Igbo Federal government formented the agitation that led to the appointment of Majekodunmi as administrator in June 1962. A month before, members of the Action Group, the ruling party in the Western House of Assembly, had removed Oladoke Akintola as their leader. The rules obligated Akintola to resign as Premier. Rather than resign, Akintola asked the Governor, Adesoji Aderemi to dissolve the House, which he refused to do as he was entitled to by the constitution. Next, Akintola asked the Speaker of the House to convene a session, which he too refused to do as he was entitled to by the Standing Orders. Dauda Adegbenro, as the new leader of the Action Group, and entitled, asked the Speaker to convene a session of the House, which he did. The Akintola faction went and disrupted the session, and ‘rioted’, which caused (sic) the police to intervene and seal the House. The Fulani-Igbo House of Representatives thereafter imposed a state of emergency on the whole Western Region even though the ‘rioting’ was confined only to the premises of the House. The nearby second chamber, House of Chiefs, was not even involved.

As a matter of fact, Balewa put the Majekodunmi regime in place to enable the Fulani-favoured Akintola faction to regroup and take over the administration of the Western Region, which it did six months later. Unfortunately for Akintola he was never accepted by the region as a whole. The ongoing unrest was pretext for the Igbo military coup of 15 January 1966 but the true reason in fact was the Igbo fear of a Fulani-Yoruba partnership that Akintola was cultivating at the time. The 1966 Igbo coup was not spontaneous as often claimed by history revisionists. The coup was designed to decapitate the political leadership of the Fulani and Yoruba and preserve the political leadership of the Igbo. The underlying intention all along was to hand over control of the government of Nigeria to the Igbo.

On 15 January 1966, Nwafor Orisu (Igbo) was the acting President of Nigeria. He had only two constitutional routes that he could take. The coup plotters had murdered Tafawa Balewa, the Prime Minister. Section 92(1)of the 1963 Constitution of Nigeria gave Orisu the power to appoint a ‘member of the Council of Ministers’ to perform the function of Prime Minister. Section 69(5)(c) of the 1963 Constitution gave Orisu the power to dissolve parliament for new elections if the office of the Prime Minister could not be filled in reasonable time. Orisu exercised neither of those powers. Instead he took the unconstitutional and unlawful route of handing power to his fellow Igbo, Aguiyi Ironsi, Nigeria’s military leader at the time. In their arrogance, the Igbo were blind to the untenability of their actions.

‘If they [Igbo] could do it without us [Fulani], we too could do it without them’ was the theme of the Fulani coup of 1967. And to ensure that only the Fulani voice would for ever be heard, the Fulani, through Gowon, Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalami, restructured Nigeria in the Fulani image.

Tinubu when he leaves office must not take the Yoruba voice with him into retirement. Tinubu must ensure that the Yoruba voice would never be silent again, and would forever be heard. Tinubu can do this by returning Nigeria to the 1963 ‘regionalism’ constitution, which enabled each of three regions to govern itself. There must of necessity be updating of that constitution, but it must be region based; each region to write its own update and in it indicate if and how it wished to participate in a confederation of Nigeria.

The ‘Patriot’ group led by Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary General, have asked Tinubu to set up a National Constituent Assembly. Tinubu must reject their proposal. There is no indication whatsoever that the nationalities making up Nigeria wish to have a unitary constitution. In the new scenario, constitution writing should be bottom up not top down. The regions must do it first before the centre.

Baasegun (Dr) Olusola Oni

(email: info@yorubapartyuk.org)