The open letter, dated April 17, 2024, was signed by both Akintoye, Igboho and one Ola Ademola.

They called on the President to within the next two months set up a negotiation team to negotiate the exit of the Yoruba people from Nigeria.

The letter by the Yoruba Nation arrowheads came about a week after some armed agitators invaded the Oyo State Government House, attempting to hoist their flag on the premises of the state House of Assembly.

The agitators were subdued and 29 of them were last week taken before a magistrates’ court in Ibadan, which ordered that they should be remanded in the prison custody.

Both Akintoye and Igboho dissociated themselves from the violent action.

However, in their open letter made available to our correspondent in Ibadan on Sunday, the Yoruba Self-Determination Movement, said, “We have the honour to send to Your Excellency this important letter on behalf of the many millions of Yoruba people at home in Yorubaland in Nigeria and in the Yoruba Diaspora in almost all countries across the world.

We send this letter as a follow-up to our earlier letter, dated August 06, 2022, which we delivered to your predecessor, President Muhammadu Buhari, in his exalted position then as President of Nigeria.

“Since 2015, the Fulani have been killing widely among the other peoples of Nigeria, including us Yoruba, destroying farms, villages and other assets, kidnapping men, women and children, extorting large amounts of money as ransom from friends and family of the kidnapped, and repeatedly asserting their intention to seize the homelands of all the indigenous peoples of Nigeria for the purpose of turning all into a Fulani homeland.”

The group said in the Middle Belt, horrendous blood-letting was going on with many families forced into Internally Displaced People Camps while many of their villages were seized by the Fulani and renamed as Fulani villages.

“In our Yoruba homeland, our people are resisting somewhat better, but the Fulani attacks and killings and kidnappings are unrelenting and are coming daily, leading to horrific instability, and forcing most of our farmers to abandon farming altogether, thereby dooming Yoruba people to years and years of famine.”

It further alleged that an unofficial estimate showed that Fulani had killed as many as 29,000 Yoruba people since 2015 till date, adding that aforementioned reasons were enough for them to seek breakaway from Nigeria.

“All these actions by the Fulani are, to us Yoruba, a sufficient reason for our seeking to separate our Yoruba Nation from Nigeria. Most of us, Yoruba have no confidence in the ‘restructuring’ that some of our most respected Yoruba leaders (such as our fathers in our highly exalted Afenifere) are advocating.

“And our reason is that we know that restructuring cannot keep the Fulani marauders away from our homeland.  Since, after restructuring, the Fulani would still be Nigerians like us, and would still have full citizens’ rights to come in large numbers, and with weapons and intent to kill and destroy and seize land, to our homeland.

The Fulani elite seem to be saying in effect that they intend to make Nigeria ungovernable for President Tinubu, and that they would never accept any official action of his.

“We are acting for and on behalf of our 60 million Yoruba people of the Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, and Oyo State, respectively, plus the Yoruba Local Government Areas of Kogi and Kwara State, and plus the Itshekiri homeland of Delta State, all together constituting the Yorubaland in Nigeria, hereby most humbly place our crowning request before Your Excellency as follows:

“That the Nigerian Federal Government shall, within the next two months, but not later than June 15, 2024, inform us Yoruba Self-determination Movement that the Nigerian Federal Government has graciously agreed to our proposal for negotiation and that they have set up a negotiation team that will meet and have a dialogue with our Yoruba Nation’s negotiation team.

“That the Nigerian Federal Government shall invite the United Nations, African Union and the Economic Community of West African States, to send observers to the negotiation meetings.”

It, therefore, promised to forward the list of its negotiation team to the government as soon as it received a message in response to its request for the negotiation.

The lawyer defending the aides of Chief Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho, Pelumi Olajengbesi, disclosed this to newsmen as he threatens legal action against the security agency that is still holding on to two others despite the court granting them bail.

According to Olajengbesi, only Tajudeen Irinloye and Uthman Opeymi Adelabu were released on Friday, September 3 while Amudat Habibat Babatunde and Jamiu Noah Oyetunji remained in the custody of the secret police. He said the DSS didn’t give any reason for its refusal to grant freedom to the detainees.

A statement he released reads “DSS selective obedience to court order; an affront to and disregard of the authority of the court”, the lawyer noted that the DSS simply has no right or power to select or unilaterally handpick which order of the court is convenient for it to obey or honour.

The keenly observing world will recall that during our last press briefing on the ongoing case of Chief Sunday Igboho’s aides, it was reported that the DSS is yet to release four detainees on their custody on grounds of bail perfection technicality, in which we were allowed to secure the release of others.

The DSS’ cherry-picking of an order of the court is an open dare and affront on the authority of the issuing court and it lacks legal backing under the extant laws of Nigeria. It is a condemnable action in any sane democratic society and speaks ill of the professionalism of the intelligence agency.

The DSS simply has no right nor power to select or unilaterally handpick which order of the court is convenient for it to obey or honour. Any iota of non-compliance to an order of the court is tantamount to disregard of such an order in its entirety and the same is contemptuous.

Consequently, we want to restate that if by Monday the 6th of September, 2021, the DSS continue with their unlawful detention of the remaining two detainees, we shall not hesitate to proceed with our earlier plans to institute a contempt proceeding against the Director-General of the SSS, Yusuf Magaji Bichi.

The DSS as a law enforcement agency should not be allowed to carry out its official responsibility with impunity and absolute disrespect to the law of the land, especially where the constitutional rights and liberty of citizens are at stake. It is reprehensible conduct unbecoming of an agency which is itself a creation of the law and it will not go unchallenged.”