VANGUARD
On Saturday, April 13, 2024, some Yoruba Nation agitators, armed with dangerous weapons and charms, invaded Oyo State House of Assembly and Governor’s Office in Ibadan, the state capital, in an attempt to secede from the Nigerian state.
Minutes after their scheme was thwarted by security operatives, a middle-aged woman, Mrs Modupe Onitiri-Abiola, wife of the late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, who won the June 12, 1993 presidential election, in a video that circulated online, declared the South-West region a sovereign nation independent of Nigeria.
Onitiri-Abiola, in the video, said: “With the awesome power that God used to create the sky and seven clouds, moon and stars, I, Modupe Onitiri-Abiola, proclaim the Democratic Republic of Yoruba. Yoruba has become a nation without any opposition.”
The development, which sent shockwaves across the country, also startled late MKO Abiola family. In this interview, one of Abiola’s children, Jamiu, speaks on Onitiri-Abiola’s failed plot, the actions the Abiola family intend to take on the issue.
The son, who is also the Special Assistant to the President on Special Duties in the Office of the Vice-President, also speaks on how the family manages their political differences among other issues. Excerpts:
What do you make of the Yoruba Nation agitators who invaded Oyo?
Most of them are not ideologists. They don’t even know what it means to have a vision, talk less of turning a region as dynamic as the South-West into a fruitful nation. God has made Nigeria one country so that it can use its diversity to prosper and pull up the rest of the African continent. Idle hands, as they say, is a devil’s workshop, hence most of these people have been idle for too long, even before this administration.
That is why job creation for the youths featured high on the Renewed Hope Manifesto of President Tinubu during the campaign. He has long realised that the biggest problem we have in this country is the high number of idle youths. These are the people who easily become secessionist agitators, criminal bandits and ruthless kidnappers.
The agitators said they don’t regret their actions because nothing is working in Nigeria. Do you agree?
They might have a point because things were not going well in the country in the past. Now, things have completely changed and this fact is more glaring day after day. As we speak, the Naira is appreciating. As we speak, more and more terrorists and kidnappers are being killed. As we speak, government is clamping down on corruption more than ever before.
What can you say about your stepmom who, in a video that went viral, declared the formation of a Yoruba Nation after the invasion?
I have never met her in my life. It feels strange to hear you call her my stepmom. From what I know of her, she lives abroad and had contested for governorship a few years ago. She is not one of my father’s official wives, so I did not grow up with her in our house.
