For quite some time now, octogenarian Professor Emeritus Banji Akintoye, along with his younger assistant, Sunday Adeyemi, more popularly known as Sunday Igboho, have been touting the idea of the southwestern region of Nigeria seceding to establish a separate country named “Oduduwa Republic” which comprises parts of Kogi State, the whole of Kwara State and the entire states of Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, and Lagos. A SWEXIT of sorts from Nigeria.
I observe that the calls have been intermittent, depending on the opportunity of circumstance, especially when issues of national importance that involve the interests of the southwestern region come up. Then the good professor will dredge up the issue from his hibernation as if to impress other Nigerians to the abiding but false narrative in the public space that the South West region is the numero uno in Nigeria. It is rather like a petulant child, which, if things do not go the way it likes, then it begins to throw things out of the tram.
Last week, in the heat of the ongoing debate on President Tinubu’s Tax Reform bills, which appear to be gaining widespread opposition across the nation, Professor Akintoye and Igboho brought up the subject again, apparently prompted to do so on cue. The professor said in a statement that 60 million south westerners have concluded plans to exit from Nigeria and that the proposal is currently being studied by the government of the United Kingdom. Igboho on his part called on the South East and South South to activate their plans to also do the same, either separately or as a whole, in conjunction with the South West.
This caper floated by the two is seen as a ploy either to distract Nigerians from the debate or to darkly hint at us that if President Tinubu, who is from the region, is not allowed to have his way on the bills or if down the line the president does not get his wish to be re-elected in 2027, the South West region will create enough political disturbance as happened in the First Republic to truncate the country.
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I want to put it on record here that I have read Professor Akintoye’s history books at my ‘A’ levels and I can say with pride that the professor has helped in no small way to my knowledge and understanding of Nigerian history. In many ways, this article is about a student engaging his teacher on some of the contemporary issues he learnt thereof. I do not think the unlettered Igboho needs to be responded to because, as he was not born when Nigeria was tragically plunged into the civil war between 1967 and 1970, he may not have known that it was the sort of narrative he is now pursuing that was responsible for that.
Professor Akintoye, on the other hand, was not only old enough to have witnessed and understood the events that led to the tragic civil war and its effects, but perhaps under the present circumstances, he more than anybody else knows that the subject he is presently pursuing and the trajectory he is going about it cannot by any stretch of the imagination result in any success.
If Nigerians do not appear to attach any seriousness to the calls for exit from Nigeria by the professor and Igboho, it is mainly because for all these years their actions have not transcended from media ballyhoo to real action on the ground. And what is more, Nigerians know too well that the grandstanding claims of their push to split the South West region from Nigeria are receiving relevance and recognition from foreign countries and institutions that are not only false but over-exaggerated at best.
For instance, why would Britain, which is grappling desperately with issues arising from post-Brexit and separatist agitations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, concern itself with Nigeria, which it granted independence to over 60 years ago? Or is the professor banking on the expectation that Kemi Badenoch, the Yoruba lady who is the leader of the opposition Conservative Party in Britain who has shown an unwise disdain for Nigeria’s existence, would oblige him his request when she leads the Tories to power in the next general elections in Britain?
In this regard, I would advise the professor not to put too much hope on that because even Kemi Badenoch, should she become Prime Minister of Britain, would not be able to do that. I expect Professor Akintoye to know that even if she may wish to implement that proposition, the more nuanced and more responsible elements of the British government and establishment, whether Labour or Conservative, will not just advise against it but take steps to stop her from implementing such over enthusiastic nonsense. There are folks in the British establishment still living with the memories of the last civil war in Nigeria and who know the potential humanitarian crises another civil war will cause in Nigeria and indeed Africa that they will not allow such a proposition, even if presented for optic purposes, to go beyond the dustbin.
The EU, which did not look with favour on Basque and Catalan separatists in Spain and is now coping with extreme difficulties in the ongoing Russia/Ukraine war, will not even give any request or attempt for secession in Nigeria more than a cursory interest if at all. And we can expect a Trump America not to even give the issue any attention. This is the reality of international politics rather than the rhetoric that the professor knows but is attempting to bamboozle Nigerians about the efficacy of his dubious cause.
Come to think of it, on what grounds is the push for secession by the professor and Igboho from Nigeria?
Both of them attribute their agitation to what they consider, in their own thinking, the lopsided nature of Nigeria’s political structure. They also claim that a part of Nigeria is “dragging” the country behind in terms of development aspirations and that the “good, progressive and sophisticated people’’ of the South West are being stymied in their quest for development by being attached to a ‘’backward, lazy and parasitic” part of Nigeria.
That’s rich, to say the least, and who in the world will be convinced to throw his weight behind such an unsubstantiated and outlandish claim and request? To the best of my knowledge, every country in the world contains such disparities in wealth distribution. And that is why governments exist to resolve issues using good governance interventions.
In the case of Nigeria, the South West cannot claim to have been excluded in the scheme of things. They have been part and parcel of crafting and implementing the ideas that have shaped Nigeria since independence to date, during military and civilian administrations. The good professor himself is a former senator from which position he helped to shape the laws of the country. So it follows that the South West shares in the success and failures of the Nigerian project and to turn around now and make such claims of absolving the area from the existential issues of Nigeria, especially as a Southwesterner, President Tinubu is currently in power, is to say the least outrageous and hare-brained. It is an embarrassing resort to blackmail.
Let it be said that this frequent resort by Nigerian politicians to use secession as a weapon for political blackmail is an ill will that will not do anybody good eventually. No region or group should consider itself as doing this country any favour by belonging to it. We have all profited from being Nigerians one way or the other and it will profit us more if we realise that Nigeria has come to stay. In the course of building this country thus far, we have all experienced ups and downs, and it will be to our ultimate benefit to fix the challenges we created together rather than add more to it by embarking on potentially self-destructive unrealistic actions.
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