By Kunle Olawunmi
Nigeria is approaching another presidential election under conditions that demand sober judgment from the Yoruba people. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is seeking a second term in 2027. His candidacy has already become the centre of an increasingly polarised struggle over power, hardship, federal appointments and the future of the Nigerian federation.
The Yoruba face a dangerous political dilemma. If President Tinubu wins, the actions and failures of his government may increasingly be presented as the collective project of the Yoruba. If he loses, the Yoruba may be exposed to political retaliation by interests that treat his presidency as an ethnic conquest. In either outcome, millions of Yoruba people who neither selected his appointees nor designed his policies could be made to carry the consequences of one politician’s record.
This danger does not arise because every Nigerian outside Yorubaland is hostile to the Yoruba. Such a claim would be false and irresponsible. It arises because Nigerian politics repeatedly converts the conduct of an individual officeholder into the presumed conduct of an ethnic nationality. That practice makes whole communities responsible for decisions they did not take. It turns elections into struggles for communal survival and makes the presidency a source of fear rather than common citizenship.
We must therefore state a hard truth. Bola Tinubu is a Yoruba man, but he is not the Yoruba nation. His presidency must be judged as a government. The Yoruba people must not be treated as its owners, beneficiaries or guarantors. No ethnic nation should have its future attached to the electoral survival of one person.
The accusation of lopsided appointments has deepened this risk. Public figures, including members of the governing party, have criticised what they regard as the concentration of important offices around the President’s ethnic and political circle. The Presidency has denied that its appointments violate the principle of federal character. The political effect of the controversy is nevertheless real. Even where appointments benefit a small network, resentment may be directed at the entire Yoruba population. Private advantage for a few can therefore become public danger for millions.
The same distinction applies to economic policy. The removal of the petrol subsidy and the liberalisation of the exchange rate were defended as necessary reforms. They also contributed to a severe cost of living crisis. Some fiscal indicators later improved, but inflation and insecurity continued to burden households. These policies were decisions of the Federal Government. They were not resolutions of the Yoruba people. Yet the ethnicisation of national power makes it possible for the hardship of Nigerians to be remembered as the work of a Yoruba presidency.
The Yoruba should refuse this transfer of liability. We should neither defend bad government because the President shares our ancestry nor accept collective blame for policies over which ordinary Yoruba citizens had no special control. Our task is larger than Tinubu’s victory or defeat. It is to secure a political order in which our people can hold the government that rules them directly responsible for their security, development and future.
That is the central logic of Yoruba self determination.
The Yoruba constitute a historic national community. We possess a widely shared language, a recognised cultural inheritance, a substantial population, an identifiable and largely contiguous homeland, established cities, educational institutions, markets, ports, professional capacity and long traditions of organised public authority. Yoruba society is internally diverse, but diversity does not cancel nationhood. No modern state is perfectly homogeneous. The relevant question is whether a people possess a sustained identity, a territorial base, the capacity for government and the political will to determine their collective future. The Yoruba meet the first three tests. The fourth must be established democratically.
The case for self determination is strengthened by the persistent separation between responsibility and power in Nigeria. State governments are blamed when communities are unsafe, while the police remain substantially under federal command. Regions require long negotiations to exercise authority over matters central to their development. Public revenue is pooled and redistributed through a system that often weakens the connection between taxation, performance and accountability. When several levels of government can blame one another, failure acquires no clear owner.
A sovereign Yoruba state would place final political responsibility closer to the people who must live with its consequences. It would allow the Yoruba political community to determine its security institutions, economic priorities, education policy, public administration and external relations. This is the strongest argument for independence. It concerns accountable power, not ethnic superiority. It concerns the capacity to govern ourselves, not hostility toward our neighbours.
The events of 1993 remain relevant. Moshood Abiola won support across ethnic, regional and religious divisions, yet the presidential election was annulled. That injury demonstrated that even a broad national mandate could be destroyed when power stood above electoral consent. The lesson should not be used to cultivate permanent hatred. It should teach the Yoruba that participation in a federal contest does not by itself guarantee that their democratic mandate, security or future will be protected.
The coming election presents another warning. If the political safety of the Yoruba rises when one Yoruba candidate wins and falls when he loses, then the federation has failed to create equal citizenship. A durable people cannot plan its survival around access to Aso Rock. Presidency is temporary. Nationhood is intergenerational.
Self determination must be pursued with discipline. Nigeria’s Constitution declares the federation indivisible and contains no direct procedure for secession. International law recognises the self determination of peoples, but it does not provide an automatic route by which every national community can leave an existing state. A declaration alone would therefore change little. Violence would endanger the very people the movement seeks to protect and destroy the legitimacy it requires.
The credible path is peaceful, democratic and negotiated.
First, Yoruba political and civic leaders should establish a representative self determination congress. It must include the six southwestern states, relevant Yoruba communities outside them, women, young people, traditional institutions, professional bodies, organised labour, business, religious communities and residents who are not ethnically Yoruba. Its finances, leadership terms and decisions must be transparent. No individual or organisation should appoint itself the permanent voice of the nation.
Second, the congress should prepare a clear demand for an authorised referendum. The question must be direct. The electorate, territory, voting rules and means of resolving disputes must be agreed before voting. Support for independence should be demonstrated through a verifiable public mandate, not inferred from rallies, social media or private surveys whose methods cannot be examined.
Third, the movement should build constitutional support within Nigeria. Section 9 provides demanding procedures for constitutional alteration. This means that Yoruba representatives cannot achieve an agreed separation by speaking only to Yoruba audiences. They must persuade the National Assembly, state assemblies and the wider Nigerian public that a peaceful decision is safer and more just than indefinite coercion. The proposal should offer continuing trade, transit, security cooperation and protection of citizens on both sides.
Fourth, the campaign must adopt nonviolence as an enforceable principle. There should be no armed wing, ethnic intimidation, forced compliance or attack on Nigerians living in Yorubaland. Every lawful resident must be treated as a human being with rights. A movement claiming freedom must demonstrate in its conduct that it can be trusted with power.
Fifth, Yoruba elected officials should be required to state their positions publicly. Candidates for state and federal office should tell the people whether they support a negotiated referendum. Those who support it should pursue enabling legislation, resolutions and lawful negotiations. Self determination must move from occasional declarations into sustained democratic politics.
Sixth, the movement should engage the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the United Nations and democratic partners with a documented case. External institutions can encourage dialogue and provide technical assistance where the parties consent. They cannot manufacture a mandate that has not been established at home. International engagement should therefore follow evidence of organisation, public consent and constitutional seriousness.
Our case must remain independent of President Tinubu’s personal fortunes. This is not a campaign to save him, punish him or use the threat of separation to improve his bargaining position. His government has made choices for which it must answer to Nigerians. The Yoruba must examine their own future on a longer horizon.
We call upon President Tinubu to recognise the danger created when federal power becomes identified with his personal and ethnic network. He should uphold federal character, protect competitive democracy and accept that peaceful advocacy for self determination is a political question to be answered through dialogue. Repression would not resolve the demand. It would confirm the argument that consent has become subordinate to force.
We also call upon Yoruba leaders to end the politics of dependence. The Yoruba should not wait for defeat before organising, and they should not mistake victory by one politician for national security. The time to establish a democratic mandate is before the next crisis, while dialogue remains possible.
The choice before us is deeper than the 2027 election. It is whether the Yoruba will continue to entrust their collective safety to a federation in which every presidential contest can expose an entire people to suspicion, blame and retaliation. Our answer is that no people should live under that condition indefinitely.
We seek a Yoruba nation through consent, law, disciplined organisation and negotiation. We seek friendship with the peoples of Nigeria, secure borders, peaceful commerce and mutual respect. We reject collective guilt and collective vengeance. We insist that the Yoruba possess the moral and political capacity to decide their own constitutional future.
Tinubu will one day leave office, whether through election or the completion of his constitutional tenure. The Yoruba people will remain. Their future must be secured by institutions and democratic consent, not by the uncertain protection of one presidency.
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