ARG News

10/09/2021

Our navy’s NNS absurdity

By Dare Babarinsa

09 September 2021

One announcement that has raised more than a few eye brows and even bewilderment is the news of a naval base in Kano, the ancient entrepot of the Trans-Saharan Trade. Kano is a great city. For several centuries, it was the centre of Hausa civilization and the epicenter of Islamic scholarship. In the 19th Century, the Hausa sultan was toppled during the jihad that swept throughout Hausa land and the sultan was replaced by a Fulani emir. But despite its long history and power, no one could have predicted that one day, the city would have a naval base. Now it has come to pass. Thanks to President Muhammadu Buhari’s Chief of Naval Staff.
The Chief of Naval Chief in most dispensation is often regarded as a thorough professional man. He is a man of the sea and the vastness of that space allows the seafarer a larger outlook of life. During the Nigerian Civil War, the Nigerian Navy under the command of Admiral Akinwale Wey and Vice-Admiral N.B Soroh, were seldom celebrated. But here comes Vice-Admiral Awwal Zubairu Gambo, the Chief of Naval Staff, CNS. He is the man who brought a naval base to the Sahel-Savanah region of Kano.
The reason for this naval base is not clear. The navy’s constitutional duty, just like the army and the air force, is to defend the territorial integrity of the nation. Occasionally, members of the armed forces may be involved in internal security with the permission and directive of the Commander-in-Chief. But still, the armed forces duty is really to protect the nation from external enemies. The army deal with the enemies by land, the air force by air and the navy by the sea. There must be very few countries in the world that deploy its navy to its internal rivers. That is the job of the marine police. Nigeria has a marine police under the command of a police commissioner.

Now the unthinkable has happened. Kano now has a naval base, thanks to the first indigene of Kano State to be ma

06/09/2021

PRESS RELEASE
ARG to MACBAN: there is no indigenous Fulani in Yorubaland

The claim that some Fulani people do not know any other place as their ancestry other than their place of birth owes its plot to mischief, deliberate distortion of facts, and a devilish plan to warp the indigenous demography of Southwest Nigeria.

READ Full statement here:
https://jo.my/no-indigenous-fulani-in-sw

The claim that some Fulani people do not know any other place as their ancestry other than their place of birth owes its plot to mischief, deliberate distortion of facts, and a devilish plan to warp the indigenous demography of Southwest Nigeria.

01/05/2020

Making do with the warriors in white

By Dare Babarinsa
THE GUARDIAN
30 April 2020

Rotimi Ireti Akinola is my friend. He is one of the few Nigerians who look trouble in the face and match boldly forward to embrace it. Akinola is a teacher of doctors. He is one of Africa’s leading gynaecologists and obstetricians and he is currently leading a national campaign to stem the tide of cervical cancer. Akinola is also a professor at the Lagos State University College of Medicine as well as a specialist gynaecologist at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, Ikeja. Of course, Adeyanju, his wife and closest collaborator is also a professor.
I wonder even now why Akinola decided to join Idile Oodua, the Yoruba revolutionary group that was one of the underground movements against military rule during the General Sani Abacha dictatorship. He took the risk despite his position as a medical practitioner in the full employment of the Lagos State government. He took the risk, like many others, that our country must be free from military dictatorship so that we can have what American President Abraham Lincoln called the “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Whether we have succeeded in having that now is open to debate. The truth is that many of those who participated in that epochal struggle against the military dictatorship was not among the ones who took the rein of power after the battle was won.

Akinola’s interest in social engineering reminds one of the exploits of medics like Dr. Michael Okpara of Nigeria who succeeded Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe as the Premier of the defunct Eastern Region and Dr. Antonio Agostinho Neto, the first President of Angola. His background must have affected his social conscience and his willingness to take a personal risk in the pursuit of social justice. His father, a surveyor, had sent him to Comprehensive High School, Aiyetoro, in Ogun State where he made distinctions in his school certificate examination. He was offered a scholarship by the Federal Government to study medicine in Russia, where he attended the Lvov University, one of the oldest medical institutions in Europe. He later attended the State Medical Institute, Kiev and bagged his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1981.
Akinola is one of the leaders of Nigerian warriors fighting on the frontline against the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly we now realised that our leaders cannot leave the rest of us on the battlefield and flee to better hospitals in Europe and the United States. We are here together and whether we like it or not, it is bringing the best out of those on the frontline. We now know that our doctors, nurses, medical laboratory scientists, paramedics and other on the frontline are equal to the task. They are the miracle workers of this era and when the war against COVID-19 is won, these outstanding people would be our heroes.
While we stay home with our children and taking the opportunity of the lockdown to eat like termites, the medicals are on the frontline. Every morning, afternoon, evening and night, they are going out on shifts to confront the enemy. I have no doubt that this challenge would bring out the best in us. Already, the Nigerian Army Medical Corps has developed cheaper ventilators that would be used in the Intensive Care Units, ICU, by COVID-19 patients. They said they could produce at least 100 of those machines every month.

Hundreds of Nigerian scientists are spending days and nights in their laboratories to help find what Chief Olusegun Obasanjo would have called “home-grown” solution to this challenge. Indeed, some Nigerian leaders, led by His Imperial Majesty, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, has advised that we should also look at the other side of epistemology and tap from the abundant knowledge of our people in herbal medicine. Some traditional doctors have claimed they could provide cure to the pandemic. Whether this claim has been put to test I am not sure. However, Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, who was a COVID-19 patient, said he survived the ordeal partly by generous application of Yoruba traditional medicine.
What is clear is that we have a corps of men and women who are ready to prosecute this war on behalf of the Nigerian people. Like all warriors, the warriors in white overalls are also at risk. Many doctors and nurses have already fallen to the pandemic. Among the first victims in Lagos was a medical doctor who unknowing was made to treat a COVID-19 patient. As of now, the brave medics who treated the Ekiti State index case are also fighting the infection. They too have become victims.
We remember with painful nostalgic the heroism of Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh, daughter of our late Vice-Chancellor, Professor Kwaku Adadevoh of the University of Lagos. Dr. Adadevoh was also a descendant of the great Bishop Ajayi Crowther and Herbert Macaulay, the father of Nigerian nationalism. She was the one who stood guard at the gate and did not allow the Ebola epidemic to cross into the market place. Without her heroism and that of her colleagues, Ebola would have wreaked untold havoc in Nigeria. I hope when this pandemic is over, the Nigerian government would give the expected and rightful honour to the memory of Adadevoh so that future generations would take inspirations from her deeds.

Nigerian doctors are noted for their stamina and heroism all over the world. In an era past, many world leaders use to come to the University College of Hospital, UCH, Ibadan, for their regular medical check-up and treatments. One of those coming to UCH was King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. His personal doctor was the late Professor Kayode Osuntokun, the world-famous neurologist. Later King Faisal built a state of the art hospital in Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia and invited Osuntokun to come and help run. Osuntokun, however, declined, saying he would prefer to stay in Ibadan, helping Nigeria to train generations of medical doctors.
Those medical doctors trained in Ibadan, Ife, Zaria, Ilorin and other Nigerian universities are proving their worth all over the world. One of them, Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye, who was trained at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, led a team 21 doctors to perform a marathon operation on a 23-week old fetus, to remove a large tumor. After the operation, the baby was again returned to its mother’s womb and then was born again on its ninth month. It was the first of its kind in the world and Olutoye received universal applause for his feet. A children hospital is now named in his honour in Texas, United States.

In 2010, my cousin, Fakorede Ajayi, was referred to an Indian Hospital for a complicated orthopaedic surgery necessitated by an earlier accident on the line of duty as a top official of the Department of State Security, DSS. The cost was enormous and he needed help. We later met Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State (during his first term) who decided to help. Ajayi was preparing to travel to India only for him to be told that the leading consultant for his kind of operation in India was a Nigerian! The man was in high demand all over the world including in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Germany. In the end, the great Dr. Nasir, a neuro-surgeon, led the team to perform the operation on Ajayi at the Usmanu Dan Fodiyo Teaching Hospital, Sokoto.
It is good that Nigerians are building hospitals of world standard and equipping old ones to meet modern challenges. The COVID-19 is making our leaders experience our hospitals and subject themselves to treatment at the home front. In the past, they prefer to be treated in Europe and America. For them, Nigeria was only good enough as their burial place. Now two outstanding medical practitioners, Osagie Ehanire, the Minister of Health and Olorunnimbe Mamora, the Minister of State, have the opportunity to prove the case for better recognition for Nigerian doctors and other practitioners of the art of healing. They are our warriors in white overall and without their effort, our great country would lie prostrate at this time of the angry and rampaging COVID-19 pandemic.
It is a notorious fact that knowledge has no native country. Anyone who cultivates it would be rewarded. It is time our leaders realise that knowledge is the weapon of the present and the future. If you are in doubt think of Rotimi Akinola.



© 2020 Guardian Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.



23/01/2020

Amotekun and why Oranmiyan should stay in its grove

By Dare Babarinsa

23 January 2020
THE GUARDIAN

It is not too surprising that the Amotekun security initiatives of the South-West is creating a flurry in many quarters. The Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami sees it as a challenge to the exclusive powers of the Federal Government as far as security is concerned. The irony is lost on Malami, a lawyer of great education but limited understanding, that it is the consistent failure of his masters that made the case for Amotekun and similar outfits in the federation so compelling.

The governors of the Yoruba heartland have not shied away from defending their position. Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State who is the chairman of the Nigeria’s Governors Forum, affirm that the governors are only doing their duty to their people. Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State, a lawyer of national stature and former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, reminded Malami that the Attorney-General of the Federation is not a judge. Only the court, according to the 1999 Constitution, can interprete the laws of Nigeria. In an interview, Ishola Williams, a retired major-general, said Malami must be suffering from Strategic Thinking Deficit, STD.

It is good that the governors and the people of the South-West are united in their support for the Amotekun initiative. Often in the past, it has always been difficult for the governors to seat together and hold regular meetings. Now something pressing is compelling them to understand the old dictum that unity is strength. Not everyone would agree to the strategies and tactics being used for this Amotekun. First what is delaying the bill for its establishment from being presented to the six Houses of Assembly? Why are Kogi and Kwara States not invited as strategic partners in this project knowing the importance of these two states with substantial Yoruba population and as gateways to the South-West? What are the structures and other modalities for its operations? We have seen the vehicles. We are eager to see it in action.

There has been rumblings from certain quarters over the true implication of all these moves. Aare Afe Babalola, the legal titan and founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Abuad, said the laws and the Constitution permits the governors to take the initiative. “The Amotekun outfit is a protective and supportive outfit established by the governors of the Southwest,” Babalola said. “It has its roots in the 1999 Constitution and the previous Constitutions before it – 1960 and 1963.”

What I find strange is that some people who believe fervently that unity is good for Nigeria do not believe that unity is good for Yorubaland. Indeed, for the past 200 years, disunity has been the lot of Yorubaland where every little disagreement is allowed to develop into a millennia battle. The Action Group Party of Chief Obafemi Awolowo was able to bring a semblance of unity to Yoruba land when most of the Yoruba people found themselves under one government, the government of Western Region. Alas! It was not to last. By 1962, three years after Awolowo left the premiership, a rebel faction had ruptured the unity of the party and the effect lingers till today.

Nothing could show the weakness of the Yoruba more than the needless 100-years Civil Wars of the 19th Century which was ignited by the rise of the military class. Afonja, the Aare Ona Kakanfo, the commander-in-chief of Oyo Imperial Army, had rebelled against his overlord, the Alaafin and proclaimed the independence of Ilorin, the provincial town where he was based. The Alaafin tried to rally round the other commanders against the rebels but failed and that began the devastation of almost the entire Yoruba country. Other generals, perhaps envying the temporary success of Afonja in Ilorin, used the opportunity to seize the initiatives and in most places, the kings ruling in most of the kingdoms became nominal heads.

Despite the pressing danger to their independence, the Yoruba would not unite. Even after the Ibadan forces devastated the Ilorin hordes at the battle of Osogbo in 1840, the Yoruba could not press the advantage. The Fulani and their Yoruba supporters held on to Ilorin and later they took Offa and many towns in the Ibolo District. So much was the division in Yorubaland that when the Oba of Lagos, King Dosumu, sent emissaries to the Ooni, the Alaafin and the Awujale, to help him in his confrontation with the British, they were too busy to respond and it was easy, after a few artillery barrage, for the British to annex Lagos and turn it into their colony in 1861.

Though the Yoruba had 500,000 men under arms by the end of the 19th Century, the British seized Yorubaland and make it part of their Nigeria experiment. They quickly built the Agodi Prison in Ibadan and when some of the old commanders, including Ogedengbe of Ilesha, were reluctant to cooperate, they simply threw them into prison. Note that most of the towns destroyed and devastated in the 19th Century wars; Owu, Igbon, Iresa, Ikoyi, Ijaiye and others, met their fate in the hands of Yoruba soldiery and not their enemies.

It is good to learn now at this early stage that the enemy within is more dangerous. That is what should worry those who are in charge of this new initiative. In recent years, the Federal Government has shown disturbing incapacity to rein-in the terror gangs of kidnappers, robbers and sundry merchants of death. There is no doubt that the police have made tremendous progress especially with the special unit of the Inspector-General of Police, but a lot still needs to be done. It is good now that the governors are doing something.

The challenge would not only come from the Federal Government and those who fear that the Amotekun initiative is a ploy to break the country. The governors need to do the needful quickly and get the law passed in the Houses of Assembly. One ridiculous man always in funny headgear who called himself a professor was reported to have said that Amotekun was a ploy to oppress Muslims. How many Nigerians can recognize a Yoruba Muslim from a Yoruba Christian and one who is an Ifa devotee? There are many who navigates between the three!

The truth is that Yoruba don’t care too much about religious differences. It is of very little consequence or relevance to them. In his heydays as the Father of Nigerian Nationalism, Herbert Macaulay’s strongest support base were the Muslims of Lagos. So influential was he that he got one of his supporters elected the Chief Imam of Lagos. Alhaji Azeez Arisekola Alao, the late Aare Musulumi of Yorubaland contributed in building many churches across Yorubaland. My friend, Prince Bisi Olatilo, a staunch Christian, contributed in building a mosque in memory of his father-in-law in Ibadan. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a Baptist Christian, led others to raise money to build a mosque as part of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library complex in Abeokuta. Therefore, we need to watch out for this funny professor who may be serving the interest of foreign masters who are not necessarily in love with Yorubaland or Nigeria.

Amotekun is here to stay. The genie is out of the bottle. This initiative would serve as inspiration to other geo-political zones to come up with ideas about how to safeguard the Nigerian Commonwealth. It is also a pointer to us that we need to look at the grassroots for the Constitutional changes that people like Aare Babalola are advocating for. It is no good expecting the President and the Federal Government to take all the initiatives. What is important is that whatever is done must take into account the good of the majority of our people.

Amotekun has simply put paid to any attempt at self-help as some people have been advocating earlier especially after the brutal murder of Papa Reuben Fasoranti’s daughter by suspected rogue Fulani herdsmen. In 1969, peasant farmers, fed up with what they alleged was punishing taxation, organized a revolt against the government of Western State. The Agbekoya Revolt was a serious challenge to the Federal Government of General Yakubu Gowon who was then pre-occupied by the Nigerian Civil War. To bring peace, Chief Awolowo, who was now the Vice-Chairman of the Federal Executive Council, volunteered to meet the Agbekoya High Command.

The meeting took place at Akanran village near Ibadan. Members of the Agbekoya High Command, led by a gangly old man, Chief Tafa Adeoye, wore the old purple uniform of the traditional Yoruba officers corps (the ordinary soldiers wore indigo blue). They had with them the Apete Oranmiyan (Oranmiyan Standard) which were only brought out in times of war. The last general to take it to war was Aare Latoosa who died at the Igbajo camp during the Ekiti Parapo campaign. After negotiation was concluded, Awolowo persuaded them to return the standard to its groove.
Every Yoruba should work hard to keep the Oranmiyan Standard in its grove for war and upheaval cannot benefit anybody. Amotekun should be used to keep that peace so that everyone living in Yorubaland should feel safe and secure no matter his or her roots or ethnic background. That is what the ancestors would want. That is what would keep the Oranmiyan Standard in its resting place.

06/01/2020

In a publication titled "Reflections on Nigeria in 2019", Afenifere Renewal Group has called for the suspension of the proposed Visa on Arrival policy to allow for appropriate consultation and preparation.
Read the entire publication, which was also published today on Page 16 of The Nation newspaper, via the link below. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/promoted/371322-reflections-on-nigeria-in-2019-by-afenifere-renewal-group.html

Y2020 is significant to Nigeria's policy environment and direction for two reasons. First, it is the year the country should be taking stock

25/07/2019

March of the Shiites

By Dare Babarinsa
25 July 2019 THE GUARDIAN

It is a lot of journalists to fish in troubled water. It is his duty to mind other people’s business. When the government declares a curfew, the journalist would go out to cover it. When there is war, the journalist would be there to bring the shooting game of death to the public. Sometimes, people do get killed on the beat.
On Monday, Precious Owolabi, one of our youngest colleagues stepped out on the line of duty as a reporter for Channels Television, to cover the angst of the Shiites against the Nigerian State on Monday, July 22. Unlike other demonstrations by the group in the past, this time around, some members of the group had come with arms.
Usman Umar, the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the Abuja Federal Capital Territory, who had approached the phalanx of the Shiites protesters to calm them and appeal that they should not cross the line of control, was fired on. As he fell, stones were rained on him. The police fired back and under the cover of fire, they were able to retrieve the body of their commander. In the melee, a bullet also caught Owolabi.

He has joined the statistics of Nigerian journalists who died in the line of duty including the likes of Dele Giwa and two Nigerian journalists killed in Liberia by the Charles Taylor rebel group, Tayo Awotunsin and Krees Imodibe. A top Nigerian journalist was also killed during the Maitatsine riot of 1980 during the regime of President Shehu Shagari.
It is apparent that Owolabi’s death, like those of the other victims of last Monday’s crisis, was avoidable. And they were also totally needless. The violence may also be an indication that the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, also known as the Shiites, is ready to change the tempo of their struggle to enforce the freedom of their leaders, especially Ibrahim Yaquob El-Zakzaky and his wife. Next Monday, a high court in Kaduna would deliver its ruling whether to grant bail to El-Zakzaky or not. The protesters apparently are not ready for the methodical process of the court.
There is no doubt that the Federal and Kaduna State governments may be in possession of information that may make freedom for El-Zakzaky risky and even dangerous for the republic. However, keeping him indefinitely may not be a strategy that can be sustained permanently in the long run or else the government is able to secure a conviction for him at the open court.
In a democratic dispensation, the government, even if reluctantly, must obey the dictates of the courts. When the government holds the pronouncements of the court in contempt, it directly threatens the pillars of the Republic.
Before the coming of El-Zakzaky, Nigeria has been dominated by the Sunni branch of Islam which is the majority in the world.
Despite their relentless muscle-flexing, the Shiites are a tiny minority among Nigerian Muslims. El- Zakzaky was to bring them into the reckoning. He attended the School of Arabic Studies (then known as the Islamic Law School) in Kano before proceeding to the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria, where he graduated in 1979.

El-Zakyzaky, who hails from Kogi State, became a dominant presence in the Muslim Students Society, MSS, during his days at ABU, emerging as the national president of the organisation.
Since his graduation, he has remained rooted in Zaria where he established his Islamic movement, advocating radical departures from the traditional mores favoured by the Hausa and Fulani gentry. He must have been inspired by the Iranian Revolution which brought to power the radical cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his revolutionary mullahs after the toppling of the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979. It was at the time he acquired an internationalist view of Islam, becoming associated with the Mullahs of Iran, converting into their own brand of radical Shiite ideology.
Ironically, the Nigerian state did not see the Shiites as much of a threat. Most Nigerians Muslims remain anchored into the Sunni orbits and its various denominations. Therefore, El-Zakzaky was able to make an impact in Zaria and some other parts of Kaduna and Sokoto states and not much else.
But the ideology they preach and their radical activities in Zaria woke up the elites of the core North who were mostly inheritors of Usmanu Dan Fodiyo’s brand of Sunni Islam. El-Zakyzaky denounced the Sultan and the emirs, stating that the highest authority recognised by Islam is the Imam. He denounced also the authority of the Nigerian state and its agents; the military, the police and the civil authorities that embodied its essence.
In Zaria, they turned their enclosed main ground into a republic within a republic, with its uniform guards and set of rules. The authorities in Kaduna, the state capital, watch them with consternation and sometimes with horror.

Before El-Zakyzaky was born in 1953, the Northern Region of Nigeria has seen different variants of radical Islam, especially in the poverty-stricken North-East where Kanuri forces halted the Caliphate armies in the 19th Century.
By the time El-Zakyzaky was getting a grip of his radical thoughts, the youths of the North were fascinated by the Izala Movement led by the contemplative Sheik Abubakar Gumi. The Izalas were Sunnis who were preaching reforms until they became part of the establishment.
The greatest challenge of that era was Mohammed Marwa who led the group called Yau Tatsine which was also called Maitatsine. Marwa hailed from Northern Cameroon and made Kano his home where his radical preaching and Spartan lifestyle attracted sizeable followership. Maitatsine wanted to create its own Islamic state, threatening the secular authorities of Nigeria and denouncing the emirs.
In 1980, they attempted to seize control of Kano city, igniting the bloodiest unrest in Nigerian history since the end of the Civil War. The Maitatsine uprising led to the death of about 5000 people. Marwa too was killed in that uprising.
But the Movement was not spent yet. In 1982, the Maitatsine attempted to size the cities of Maiduguri and Kaduna. The second uprising of the Maitatsine led to the death of at least 3000 people. In defeat, the Maitatsine was not finished yet. They retreated under a new leader, Musa Mekaniki, and took refuge in Gombe.
In Gombe, they confronted the police and the military again were more than 1000 people died in the riot of 1984. In defeat, Mekaniki fled to Cameroon, changed his identity and lived like a local imam in one village.

In 2004, he was captured during the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo, when Mekaniki visited Nigeria in disguise and under an assumed name. He was thrown into prison. I cannot remember now what finally happened to Mekaniki. It is believed that the Boko Haram terrorist group is a direct offshoot of the Maitatsine Movement.
The Shiites are decidedly different from the Maitatsine and the Boko Haram. First, the Shiites value knowledge and scholarship. Their ideology, radical and sometimes menacing, does not promote mindless violence like the Boko Haram and their ilk. It is believed that the Shiites are heavily supported by Iran, a country that has been ruled by the Shiites Mullahs since 1979.
This is indeed the international dimension of the Shiites Movement. Iran is seriously opposed by the conservative House of Saud which has been ruling in Saudi Arabia for almost a century. Saudi Arabia is the heartland of the Sunni Movement and they are in serious collaboration with the elite of the North and the imams that controls the mosques.
The Nigerian state has to navigate its way out of this catacomb. We should not allow the Shiites to morph into a terrorist organisation.
As of now, the international situation does not favour a total crackdown on the group. We have seen how international terrorism has taken advantage of our inability to contain the Boko Haram gang. Tact and diplomacy may be needed to halt the march of the Shiites. That the group has hired radical lawyer Femi Falana to defend its leaders is an acceptance of the Nigerian state system. They believe that the system can give them justice. That system should also give them an escape route to end their march into perdition. We know if this is not done, they would carry many more victims with them on their march.

Copyright © 2019 Guardian Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.



13/07/2019

ARG mourn death of Afenifere leader's daughter, demand appropriate action

Afenifere Renewal Group condemn the murder of Mrs Funke Olakunrin, the daughter of our revered leader and father, Pa Ruben Fasoranti.

ARG share in this colossal loss and condole with the bereaved family, especially Pa Fasoranti and Mrs. Olakunrin's nucleus family. This loss is a burden too heavy and a steep price to pay for steadfastly serving this nation and our people.

Mrs. Olakunrin's death at the hands of these savage herdsmen could not but have been part of a grand plan to break the soul of Yorubaland and set the roof on fire. But the fire this time will consume the perpetrators and their collaborators.

ARG therefore challenge the Yoruba governors and the sociopolitical leadership to rise up to the occasion, as it would now seem that the Central government and its clinging to central policing has failed woefully in providing Nigerians the needed security.

Our governors must realise that they shall be held responsible, individually and collectively, should they fail to prioritise and support one another in securing their people. The time to act is Now.

We dare say that Mrs Olakunrin's is the latest victim of Nigeria's wobbling and ineffective unitary governance structure. The gory stories of kidnapping, maiming, ra**ng and killing that emanate daily from Yoruba land should be stopped by whatever mean possible including pursuing the dismantling of this unworkable Unitary Constitution and replacing it with a truly Federal Constitution.

The time for our governors to stand up on our behalf is now, they can count on the support of our people in their bid to drive out these senseless criminals from our land. It is only by doing this that Mrs. Olakunrin and all those murdered by these beasts would not have died in vain.

Signed
Hon. Olawale Oshun
Chairman, Afenifere Renewal Group