Femi Obayori

2
Lectures
On

Yoruba
Self-determination
Struggle
1
© Femi Obayori 2002

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First published 2002

By OBABOOKS Publishers
e-mail: ifafemi2001@yahoo.com

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Contents Page
I. Ola Oni and Class Struggle in Yorubaland:
Understanding the OPC Saga 5
1.Preamble 5
2.Stages in the struggle 6
3.Self-determination struggle 10
4.The self-determination struggle and vigilante 12
5.Playing at armed struggle, playing at secession 13
6.Class origin of OPC’s method of struggle 15
7.What is to be done? 18
8.Self-determination struggle and class struggle 20
9.Conclusion 24
II. Self-determination struggle: the journey so far 25
1. By way of introduction 25
2. Stages in our struggle 26
3. Self-determination struggle as such 30
4. Self-determination struggle and crime prevention 33
5. Self-determination struggle and imperialism 34
6. What is to be done:
self-determination as education 35
7. What is to be done:
what the Yoruba want in Nigeria 36

3
 Dedication:
The Boys
who never had the opportunity
to learn the tricks of the process

4
Ola Oni and Class Struggle in
Yorubaland: Understanding the OPC
Saga.
1. Preamble
When comrades gather to remember a departed comrade, it is
not enough to mourn, praise or even recount the good deeds of
the departed. It should also provide the opportunity to appraise
the struggle, which is what defines the essence of the departed
in the first place. The immortalisation of a departed fighter for
the cause of the oppressed is best achieved through the
perpetuation of the ideas he lived for, died for and which
products are visible in the countless devotees of the struggle he
left behind, viz., in which his ideas continue to live and impel
to greater political actions.
In essence, I am saying that the greatest duty that can be
done to a departed comrade – an ideological leader and teacher
of the masses of the working people at that – is to continue to
doggedly defend the idea he lived and died for through
unsparing criticism and self-criticism and correct strategic and
tactical application of positions emerging therefrom to the
practical political demands of the time.
On 23rd December 1999 Comrade Ola Oni departed this
struggle-torn world – a Marxist, anti-imperialist fighter, non-
repentant communist and Yoruba self-determination activist.
At death Oni was less than three years in the Yoruba self-
determination struggle, which needless to say only acquired a
conscious, definitive form with the emergence of the Oodua
Youth Movement in September 1994.
As before Oni’s death, many old comrades today can only
see unreason, degeneration and opportunism in the self-
determination struggle, nay, an abandonment of the class
struggle. The domineering notoriety and abandonment of logic

5
flaunted by a tendency in the Yoruba self-determination
struggle represented by the Oodua People’s Congress seems to
give credence to this, but we aver to the contrary. We dare to
say that the self-determination struggle is a continuation of the
class struggle. We dare to say that it is the lack of
understanding of the class content of the self-determination
struggle, lack of understanding of the anti-imperialist essence
of the self-determination struggle and lack of understanding of
its potentials to foster greater unity and mutual respect among
peoples, in the final analysis, that has led to our abandoning
the leadership to the ordinary masses, who so far have played
the card to the best of their ability and from whom it would be
criminal to expect any miracle in ideological profundity or
practical political assiduity.
On the occasion of the first anniversary of the demise of
Comrade Ola Oni, I think it is only right to take a critical look
at the self-determination struggle from a Marxist-Leninist
perspective using the OPC phenomenon, the populism, the
notoriety, the civil bravado, the unchekered devotion and
unchecked simplicity, as our experimental animal.

2. Stages in the Struggle

We must begin from the beginning. June 12 was the last straw
that broke the camel’s back. The Nigerian union was the
casualty – the camel. The annulment of the June 12 1993
presidential elections by the Babangida regime, the usurpation
of power by Abacha with the overthrow of the Shonekan-led
Interim National Government [ING] and the cavalier
arrogance with which the oligarchy bore themselves before the
Yoruba who deemed the annulment of the election an assault
on them as an ethnic group, the treachery of the Northern left
and democrats, and Eastern complacency and the spiteful
manner in which Basorun M.K.O Abiola was eventually
plucked from his home to the calaboose on June 23rd 1994
6
following his emergence from “retreat” were the immediate
events that taught the Yoruba that their fortunes must be
separated from the fortunes of the nationless state Nigeria. The
shooting down of protesters in Abuja on July 28 1994 when
Basorun Abiola appeared in court and the Abacha fascistic
enunciation of August 17 1994 were mere insults to the injury.
But as it were, while Yoruba elders continued to talk
tough on the pages of newspaper on the platform of National
Democratic Coalition [NADECO] the younger people, as
represented by some of the best strategists the students’
movement had produced in the glorious decades of the 70s and
80s could no longer afford to vacillate or pretend to believe in
a nation that neither believed in them nor grieved over their
dehumanised condition. Thus the Oodua Youth Movement
was born in Ile-Ife, the cradle of the Yoruba, on September 14
1994, and on December 17 the same year after three months of
brainstorming it published the Yoruba Charter of Self-
determination, which advocated an SNC as a minimum agenda
with the objective of attaining a true federation of Nigeria
[restructuring] and in the alternative a maximum programme
with secessionist aim. In short, it put forward an agenda for the
advancement of the Yoruba as a nation whether or not such
would make or mar Nigeria
The foundation of Nigeria was not only shaken but the
corner stones began to fall apart. The days of Awoism as the
leading ideology of the Yoruba and the limitation imposed by
Nigeria came to a close. A new ideology of a people must
emerge. Conscientisation of the Yoruba masses must now
proceed not along the line of electoral partisan politics
favourable to the Yoruba within the Nigerian neo-colonial
arrangement but along the line of consciousness building
around the idea of self-determination with strategic definitions
that transcend mere control of Yoruba states for welfarist ends.

7
 The years 1994 – 1998, so far as the OYM is
concerned, were the years of broadening contacts, propaganda
and ideological development as a result of criticism and self-
criticism.
In the early years of this period the OYM
accommodated either as field workers or patrons some of
those who today find themselves scattered in various Yoruba
self-determination groups. In the beginning Gani Adams was
there, so was Dr Fredrick Faseun as were some in the
Covenant Group and the Oodua Liberation Movement.
September 1995 saw the emergence of the Covenant
Group, December 1995 gave birth to the Oodua People’s
Congress with the OYM losing to same some of its dependable
field workers. 1995 to December 1996 was a period of contact
and structural build-up of the OPC under the leadership of Dr
Faseun. Following Dr Faseun’s incarceration by Abacha in
December 1996 on spurious charges of “bomb throwing,” co-
ordination of OPC fell onto the shoulders of Gani Adams and
his boys.
January 1997 to June 1998 was a period of intense
networking and search by the OPC. It was a year of serious
labour [Travail in French].
The product of this search was the charm against
gunshot. Henceforth, from June 4 1998, the second
anniversary of Kudirat Abiola’s assassination, OPC men could
now bare their chests before the rattling submachine guns of
the Nigerian Police Force.
The murder of Abiola on July 7, 1998, the riot that
followed and the accompanying deaths was what called forth
not only the massification of the OPC and the massification of
charms in the struggle, but also the quest for arming of the
Yoruba masses to defend themselves in the self-determination
struggle.

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 The Pan-Yoruba Congress of 3rd August 1998 where
youths nominated Pa Adesanya as Leader of the Yoruba
without opposition reflected a broadening of the base of the
self-determination struggle and further gave biting teeth to the
struggle. The September 28, 1998 Pan-Yoruba Youth
Conference brokered by the OYM and other groups like the
OPC and Yoruba Koya provided the first opportunity to know
that the romance between the Yoruba elite and the Yoruba
downtrodden in the self-determination groups would not last
forever. But more importantly, it showed the moderating role
and ideological clarity of that section guided by the working
class ideology.
On October 1, 1998 charm again proved its potency in
the hands of OPC; more people were drawn to the Congress.
On October 4, 1998 the police recorded their first casualty
against the OPC at Isolo a Lagos suburb. A month later, in
November, OPC suffered its first major casualty with the
assassination of its Shomolu coordinator by suspected state
agents. December the same year the OPC began to crack with
accusation that Dr Fredrick Faseun was rooting for Obasanjo’s
Presidency. January 1999 Gani Adams-led tendency within
the OPC called a Congress, which declared the OPC leader
expelled from the organisation and Gani unanimously elected
President. Thus emerged the two factions of OPC as Dr
Faseun continues to be addressed and function as Coordinator
of the group he controls.
From then till September 1999 can be summarised as a
period of general confusion marked by the bloom of populism,
opportunism and fratricidal battle within the OPC as well as
unrelenting assault by agents of the State, until the October 14,
2000 failed invasion of Ilorin which was preceded by one
week of factional fight in Lagos suburb of Ejigbo in which not
less than 500 faction members died [the press never reported
this] and followed by the ethnic clash which commenced on
9
the evening of the 15th but only attracted OPC participation in
the evening of the 16th.
The citation of the many startling deeds of the OPC
which on the one hand earned them the popular nod and on the
other earned notoriety and attracted state reprisal we shall
postpone till when we discuss the specific features
characteristic of the struggle they are waging as a lumpen-
proletariat organisation playing at struggle. But for now we
must get our bearings right on the self-determination struggle.

3. Self-Determination Struggle
At the centre of the self-determination struggle is the
contradiction between nationalities, nations or races, one
dominating the other. Among the oppressed people feeling of
oneness is fostered. The sentimental elements of the
consciousness are accentuated. But for all reactions there is
always an equal and opposite reaction, thus hate has always
been part of every nationalist struggle, hate against people of
the oppressing nation, nationality or race. But if care is not
taken such blind unmitigated hatred could also be the death of
the struggle – deprives it of sympathisers, makes it an
instrument of dehumanisation on a large scale and also
dehumanises the strugglers themselves.
Thus the self-determination struggle cannot be led by
a group of people without the ideological weapon to clinically
dissect the contradictions and project a near-faultless pathway
to victory. This is one area where the Oodua struggle is
lacking.
Some of the OPC boys could not see that self-
determination goes beyond defending the interest of every
individual Yoruba. They think standing guard behind Yoruba
elite at parties and graduation ceremonies of their children is
part of self-determination. They simplistically think standing
sentinel behind prominent individual Yoruba is the way to
10
defend Yoruba interest. They have not come to grapple with
the fact that the only thing worth standing sentinel beside is
the self-determination idea itself. And how can this be done?
By popularising it among the people and thus implanting and
rooting it in their consciousness, and by using our correct line
flowing from a clear understanding to explain new situations
as they affect the destiny of the Yoruba. This is the only way
to right the first side of the wrong inherent in the self-
determination coin.
On the other hand, we must admit that nothing good
ever comes of the philosophy of hate or permanent enmity.
The aim of self-determination is not permanent enmity with
the Hausa-Fulani or any other ethnic group. Nor is it an idea
adorned and garlanded in chauvinistic illusions. It is indeed
aimed at putting an end to the noxious notion of ethnic
superiority. It is a drive towards the idea of equal people under
one Humanity.
From the above flows the other extreme, which tries to
draw permanent battle line between those who are for
Ijangbara [fighting to free one’s self] and foot-dragging
politicians, intellectuals and the elite. Two tactical errors are
born by this: one, the failure to know that the self-
determination struggle as an inclusive rather than exclusive
struggle must necessarily aim at rallying the best elements of
the Yoruba, irrespective of class, religion or sub-ethnic
diversity. The worker, the lumpen proletariat, peasant, market
women, bourgeoisie, liberal democrat and even feudo-
conservative capitalists must find relevance in the struggle.
The different classes and interests must be made to contribute
their own peculiar quotas to the struggle. Like we Yoruba
would say, while the hand of the child cannot reach the
kitchen rack, that of the elder too cannot enter the gourd. A
single finger cannot pick a louse from the head.

11
 Hence every Yoruba police/soldier won over to the
side or self-determination struggle is more important to us than
one hundred dead soldiers, just as the aim cannot be to destroy
the bond between the Yorubas on the street and the ones in the
bureaucracy simply in the name of the struggle. Those who
foolishly side with the enemies of the people must be made to
realise their foolishness rather than told they are fools.

4. The Self-Determination Struggle and Vigilante

While it is true that the involvement of the self-determination
activities in the war against armed robbery and vigilante
operations has a way of endearing the self-determination
organisation in the minds of the people thus broadening its
base, it is also true that it broadens the enemy’s spectrum. It
provides a basis for alliance between the criminal underworld
and the State in dealing ruthlessly and unaccountably with the
self-determinationist. In the history of struggles all over the
world, political leaders have been known to exploit the
daringness, the anonymity and fluidity of the underworld to
the advantage of the struggle or at beast define a line of
demarcation between the struggle and the underworld.
The logic that informed the OPC war against robbers
in association with the police that have never hidden their
hatred for Oodua is yet to be understood. Self-determination is
clearly a political struggle and must be guided by demarcation
between long-term objective of national rebirth [redirection of
morals] and the immediate contest for power. The focus must
be clear. Armed robbery, like prostitution, is a product of class
cleavage of the society, it is not a peculiarity of nationality
oppression and as such the extent of its blossoming or
eradication cannot be used as yardstick for the measurement of
its success. Before self-determination were robbers, and after it
would be robbers. The weapon against robbery is not the
weapon of self-determination; it requires a sociological
12
weapon that is neither self-determinationist in essence nor in
form.
The same thing applies to the struggle against 419
Boys and Gbaju e. If the society is interested in finding a
community-based solution to these problems because of lack
of confidence in the capacity of the responsible organ of the
State to do its duty, let the society put together such outfit. But
to continue to shift the responsibility to self-determination
group would go a long way in blurring the focus of the
struggle. After all, just as robbers span ethnic groups so also
419 Boys span all ethnic groups.

5. Playing at Armed Struggle, Playing at Secession.

The self-determination struggle is not secession. Secession is
only a form of it, the form it assumes when the inter-ethnic
contradictions can no longer be resolved within the
frameworks of existing geopolitical structure. Self-
determination struggle is also not essentially arm struggle.
Arm struggle is only a form of struggle, and as Mao well
known for the maxim power flows out of the barrel of the gun,
said, ‘war is a form of struggle for resolving contradictions
when they have developed to a stage where they can no longer
be resolved through other means.’
These clarifications are necessary not in order to
negate the need for drastic measures in addressing drastic
situations but out of the realisation that in waging the struggle
methods with potentials for long-term psychological damage
for the people are only adopted as the last resort. Of course,
this is not to deny that on more than one occasions in our
chequered history [even after the civil war] there have been the
need to bell the repressive cat of the Nigerian State.
Those unarmed young men who watched their
colleagues mowed down by Abacha’s killer squad on July 7,
1993 and those unarmed youths who saw the killings of May
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13, 14 and 15, 1992 in Lagos when NANS under the
leadership of Olusegun Maiyegun called the anti-deregulation
protest were among the men emboldened by charms and dane
guns.
But then can the Yoruba self-determination struggle,
even when it has to assume arm struggle, be won in the 21st
century with the same dane guns with which our forefathers
fought the Owu War [1826] or the Ijaiye War [1862]? The 19th
century Egba fighters in the Dahomey War obviously paraded
more sophisticated weapons than some of our Ijangbara
fighters in 21st century Lagos. Obviously, Yoruba fighters of
21st century can not be expected to form into battle in weapon
rattling, gourdlets cloaked horde or phalanx.
Mystification and fetishism and recourse to ancestral
atavism of all sorts can only help to embolden those who
believe in them. Charms cannot win war. Men win wars;
charm is only a cultural weapon like any other cultural weapon
of struggle. We must be weary of a situation in which a
weapon of struggle supplants the struggle itself.
But more importantly is that those who wage arm
struggle on behalf of people who are scared by the struggle
must know that it is either the time for arm struggle is not yet
ripe or that the way the struggle is being waged is wrong or is
at variance with the level of development of the consciousness
of the people. It is wrong to fight on behalf of a people. The
people must be empowered to wage the struggle by
themselves.
The sentimental support being given to the self-
determinationists by the people must be allowed to concretise
into consistent ideas which they unswervingly subscribe to and
are ready to defend to the death. In essence, am saying the
issue is not just that of territory, of economic power, of what
accrues to the Yoruba in terms of Naira and Kobo, but first
and foremost that of consciousness. The question of self worth
14
of the average Yoruba person is what is at stake. The human
being at the end of the day is the aim of the struggle. And the
moment we realise that changing men is the aim, we can then
begin to appreciate the limits of each of the methods we adopt
in the process of the struggle.

6. Class Origin of OPC’s Method of Struggle

So far the people in the OPC have acted true to type. They
have acted according to the dictate of the class they represent.
First and foremost, we must admit that it is the lack of
patience with the rigorous intellectualist approach of the OYM
which still gives room for the possibility of a Yoruba nation
within the Nigerian union that made those who left for OPC to
leave. The same accounts for the inability of the OPC to take
its proper place in the Apapo Omo Oodua which
accommodates most of the self-determination groups and of
which Ola Oni was leader before he passed on.
The OPC is a lumpen-proletariat response to the
yearnings and aspirations of the Yoruba within the Nigerian
union. It essentially represents the lumpen proletariat in the
urban centre and the peasantry in the rurality, notwithstanding
some bourgeois elements and rich feudo-conservatives’
support that it has. Nor is this nullified by the fact that it has a
considerable graduate and undergraduate following thanks to
the charm against firepower. It is also an organisation that has
the patronage of those whose lots have not been bettered by
the civilianisation process. And they would seem to be
justified if we realised that those who goaded Abacha on to his
grave were exactly the same people that cheerfully ushered
Obasanjo to power.
Economically the lumpen proletariat lives in a very
small world – his tool of trade is limited, either wholly owned
by him, rented or operated as a journeyman. His skills are
limited and woven around the very poor techniques
15
engendered by neo-colonialism. He has been turned from
maker of implements and commodities to a mere repairer. And
as a repairer, fitter, or mechanic his livelihood has become
dependent on fabrication of spare parts rather than fitting. In
short, his existence depends on making the impossible
possible, not on the basis of laws and known rules but on the
basis of conjectures, of assumptions and robust expectations.
But then reality does not depend on expectations or
imagination. Hence the lumpen proletariat wallows in the salty
water of expectation while he lives by the trickling income of
his trade, which at times he gets tired of to follow the life of
vagabondage as area boy.
As daily income earner who occasionally cuts job and
lives in expectation of building a mansion tomorrow, it is not
surprising that in politics the lumpen-proletariat must expect
quick and fat result. His logic is simple and harsh and defines
the rawness with which he dispenses punishment. His alliances
are momentarily strong but enduringly feeble, just as he shares
no understanding of the relationship between classes, so that
any tactical retreat once a battle is joined is seen as an act of
betrayal.
In essence, he is more disposed to sentiment than
consistent response to issues. The psychological elements
rather than the ideological rule him. This is very important
because it is one of the reasons why the lumpen cannot build
any enduring organisation to fight for their interest, and even
when such an organisation emerges it has always been led by
non-lumpen proletariat or lumpen-proletariat who have
committed class suicide ideologically. In their organisation
there must be a Capone who has what the generality do not
have and who rules rather than leads the collective. Their
collective conscience must be congealed in one person – the
Capone who represents, represses and rules them.

16
 As for their attitude towards property, one needs not
go into verbose analysis: they have no property, they do not
accumulate property, but rather property has been accumulated
at their expense, they have been expropriated as were their
parents before them, so if they could not assault the
expropriator, they could assault the product of expropriation -
the property. Hence they burn, loot and destroy so readily.
And what is more, they see a virtue in destroying rather than
appropriating ill-gotten wealth.
As for the police, they represent the number one
enemy of the lumpen in his small, simplistic world. In fact, for
the lumpen-proletariat, the police are the most visible, most
powerful, most preponderant organ of an oppressing State. For
him, the policeman is not a civil servant doing his day’s work
to earn a living, nor is he a friend of the people [the way a
middle class person or worker would see]. The police back up
council officials and tax collectors whenever they come to
harass him, or whenever the creditor comes calling, they hustle
him to detention and drag him to court to be judged and jailed,
they gun him down whenever he feels he should protest his
deprived condition; the list is endless. So he cannot see that
there is a difference between the Police as an institution and
the policeman as an individual. He can hardly make a
distinction between the anti-riot policeman on active duty with
the sole mission being to gun down the ‘rioters’ and the men
of the anti-robbery squad for instance or even the bullion van
escort. Police na police is his maxim.
As for the rurality, it has imparted rural idiocy and
naivety on the struggle. They have not only conjured up the
spirit of wetiee and Agbekoya but also hauled out of ancestral
caves the war dresses and rustic machetes of the Kiriji and
Ekiti Parapo wars of the 19th Century.

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7. What is to be Done?
A struggle as serious as the Yoruba self-determination struggle
cannot be waged on an ad hoc basis; it cannot be waged on the
bases of a blurred ideological vision or on the basis of
impromptu programme founded on momentary agitation and
sentiments. For faulty theory leads to faulty practice.
But it is tragic that such a struggle as ours which
requires breadth of vision, controlled temperament and
strategic initiative, dialectical approach and tactical pliability
that can best be furnished by an organisation guided by the
Marxist ideology is one that appeals more to the lumpen-
proletariat, who naturally are unstable, sentimental and not
given to the ideological/ philosophical niceties of the
intellectual.
More tragic, however, is the fact that the leadership of
the struggle has been forced into the hands of young people
who though sincere have not the sophistication and resources
both intellectually and materially to lead it as a result of the
vacillation and treachery of the elite. Treachery and vacillation
here is being used advisedly because the vacillating elite could
not but vacillate as they benefit more from the unjust
arrangement in Nigeria than what they will gain in a Yoruba
nation founded on equity and where all the traditional weapons
available to the Yoruba for checking traitors and tyrants
among them could be brought to bear without interference by
the Nigeria state.
The only way forward is for us to adopt a minimum
agenda that will embrace everybody and every other thing
shall fall in place as events unfold. What is this minimum
agenda? It is none but bringing the Sovereign National
Conference back to focus. The conference is important
because it is a safe point of departure that does not foreclose
the option of a united Nigeria. We proceed by admitting that
Nigeria is a mere contraption fostered by imperialism and
18
SNC only offers an opportunity of building a nation out of the
contraption or setting free its component parts to pursue
independent courses of development. The only alternative to a
Sovereign National Conference, given the level of
contradictions in Nigeria today, both political economic and
ethnic, is a civilian fascism the potentials of which are already
ingrained in the system as exhibited in the crudity, the
diabolical tendencies, legislative disorder, executive
recalcitrance and judicial complacency.
But then the SNC cannot be decreed. It grows. It
develops. It is not given cut and dried or fully developed. Its
convocation must grow out of the people’s experience led by
their clear-headed leaders. It can only result from practical
political activity of the masses. It is a product of and at the
same time continuation of our democratic struggle.
Those who think anarchy, chaos and breakdown of
law and order are pre-requisites for SNC are getting the whole
thing wrong. Any social breakdown that does not graduate to
the level of organised, ordered and consciously directed socio-
political ferment where the preservation of human dignity,
human lives, and rehumanisation of those dehumanised by the
system becomes the driving force is nothing but a waste.
Once we admit the need for an SNC we Yoruba
cannot afford to go to the SNC as a disordered group. There is
the need for a conference to harmonise the views of the
Yoruba – a constituent assembly of the Yoruba – and good
enough, some organisations are already working in this
direction.
The next thing is also for us to reach out to other
interest groups within Nigeria, dialogue with them, and present
our views and proposals for the SNC. Such groups must
include the Hausa-Fulani. Yoruba elite must put aside the kind
of unreasoning arrogance that has characterised their bearing
since Obasanjo came to power. For Obasanjo is not a Yoruba
19
president, but rather a Nigerian president. And even if we have
a Yoruba as Nigerian President and he starts conducting his
affairs as though the Presidency is a personal property or that
Hausa-Fulani dominance must be supplanted with Yoruba
dominance, it is the duty of those who know better to enlighten
him. Although I must admit that I have not seen in any way the
present regime has advanced the Yoruba save creating enemies
for us.

8. Self-determination Struggle and Class Struggle

Self-determination struggle is a continuation of the class
struggle. Domination of nation by nation or race by race or
region by region or any form of economic and territorial
domination of a section of humanity by another has origin in
the class cleavage of society.
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx
and Fredrick Engels wrote that, ‘The history of all hitherto
existing society is the history of class struggle’ to which
Engels was later to add, ‘except the Primitive Communal
Society.’ This informs the nevertheless correct position that
we must address social contradictions from the class
perspective. It also informs the working class slogan ‘Workers
of all countries unite!’ The position is that workers everywhere
essentially occupy the same position in production relations.
But Marx and Engels also recognised that different peoples
have different levels of economic development, and of course,
levels of consciousness which impact immensely on their
realisation of the oppression and the extent to which they
apply themselves to their struggle, whether at the reformist
stage or at the revolutionary stage. The unity of the working
class is not territorial unity. It is not abstract. It boils down to a
common objective and the development of the working class
consciousness. It is a call that the workers of one country or
nation must refuse to allow themselves to be used as battering
20
rams either in the struggle for dominance between the
bourgeoisie of the various nations, which Lenin said at the
Imperialist stage of capitalism now expropriate fellow
capitalists, or in the repression of workers of other nations
It is instructive to note that the German-speaking
people of Alsace- Loraine that assumed a peculiar importance
during the Franco-Prussian war [1870-71], assumed
importance during the Second World War and also assumed
the same significance in the Maastritch Treaty Election of
1997. A good portion of Revolution and Counter-Revolution in
Germany written by Engels is dedicated to the analysis of how
the different levels of socio-economic development
determined the level of participation of nations and
nationalities in the struggle and how contradictions between
nations also determined their varying disposition to the
revolutionary and counter-revolutionary roles as the case may
be.
The first socialist revolution, the Russian revolution,
led by Lenin, recognised the self-determination of nations not
only generally but also in specific context. According to
Lenin, self-determination is a lying phrase without the right to
secession.
The struggle waged by Chairman Mao was at various
stages self-determination and outright socialist struggle. In
Cuba the struggle against Batista between 1953 and 1959
when the revolution triumphed was a nationalist struggle, a
thoroughgoing self-determination struggle of the Cuban people
against American domination of their economy, politics and
culture. It was a struggle for self-actualisation. Socialist
transformation never assumed an immediate objective until
necessity pointed in that direction.
But more importantly, for those who still live in the
illusory world of empty phraseology and ideological bigotry, it
must be pointed out that the level of ideological development,
21
commitment and practical political relevance of a Marxist is
not measured by his insistence on the class struggle in words.
Marxism-Leninism is a tool of analysis, not fashion. The
measure of any Marxist is in his ability to creatively apply
himself to the popular struggle at any point in time within the
framework of the overall struggle of the oppressed people of
the world. The Yoruba self-determination struggle is part of
the overall struggle against neo-colonialism. It is part of the
anti-imperialist struggle. Nigeria is a product of capitalism at a
stage in its development. It is a product of imperialist quest for
the economic exploitation of Africa. The imperialists therefore
rather than foster unity among the various nations and
nationalities, introduced divisive politics aimed at keeping
them disunited, thus keeping them under perpetual
domination. The Divide-and-Rule policy introduced by Lord
Lugard with immense success in the North, partial success in
the West and resounding failure in the East was part of this.
At independence in 1960 the Nigerian union was made
up of different peoples, different cultures, different traditions,
uneven economic developments and different political
objectives. Forty years of neo-colonialism, mostly under
military dictatorship, did not help matters. Building a nation,
national consciousness, or even people-oriented economic
programme were never part of the aim. The political crisis of
the early to mid sixties, the Civil War [1967-70], the
bureaucratic and political economic banditry characteristic of
the Gowon years post-1970, the political roguery and barratry
of the Shagari years [1979-1983], the Buhari blatant fascism
[1984-85] , the Babangida-Abacha years of human degradation
and national disgrace [1985-98] and the ethnic and religious
riots that have coloured our landscape since the Maitasine
religious riot of 1980 are but pointers to this.
The call for SNC, which first salvo was fired in
September 1990, merely gave an organised, conscious sense to
22
the popular quest emanating from our reality. Proper location
of the self-determination struggle must proceed from the point
of recognition of the Oligarchy as the arrowhead of those in
Nigeria who in conjunction with the imperialists are exploiting
and oppressing our peoples rather than as mere representatives
of the Hausa-Fulani as an ethnic group. The Oligarchy merely
represents that section of the Nigerian ruling class disposed
psychologically and culturally to lead the assault of the ruling
class on the people. On their own the Feudal Lords and
Pseudo-Capitalists of most of the various ethnic groups cannot
afford to exploit their people with impunity without pretence
to some form of welfarism or social democracy. It is therefore
easy for them to dilute the high level of political development
which their people have attained in the political craftiness and
aristocratic arrogance of the northern Oligarchy. In essence,
they have been forced into the arms of the Oligarchy as junior
partners knowing that at home they would be given their
befitting treatment as vagabonds. As for the oppressed of the
north, their leaders can always deceive them so long as they
are able to escape with the illusion that the North is ruling; the
day the wind blows and the cloaca of the hen is exposed will
be their day of judgement. The people will ask questions of
their leaders and either make them responsible or quit.
In essence, am saying any struggle that weakens or
disintegrates the power of the centre is ultimately to the
advantage of the peoples of Nigeria. For the centre is the
bedrock of illusion, while the regions bring people face to face
with the rude reality of their own existence. This illusion must
be dispelled. It is easy to play the Northern worker against the
Southern worker, the Yoruba worker against the Ibo worker,
or Ijaw worker against the Ogoni worker when all parasite on
the resources obtained from only one region. But when the
regions acquire more importance economically or as
independent countries and what is to be shared, looted or
23
gorged is limited and each comes face to face with its own
ruling class as the real enemy, the basis for genuine unity as
people working [not parasiting] would become clearly defined.
Any creative effort to dispel the illusion of the working class
and other oppressed people wherever they are worth more than
a thousand sermons on class struggle

9. Conclusion
The participation of the Left in the self-determination struggle
of the Yoruba is not only correct but also necessary. It is
necessary because the self-determination struggle at a stage in
the struggle of the oppressed people of Nigeria has become the
only way the struggle can be advanced. It is necessary because
the contradictions among the nations and nationalities in
Nigeria have assumed a dimension that threatens to throw the
country into a blind, unfocused and self-destructive conflict, a
conflict that could only lead to genocide. It is also necessary
because keeping the peoples of Nigeria united in a nationless
state in which mistrusts and antagonisms reign, mistrusts
which from time to time boil over the cauldron to religious
riots, ethnic riots, coup de’tat, half-hearted reforms, but never
thorough-going revolution, is to the utmost advantage of the
imperialist forces. It is necessary because it is to the advantage
of the Left that the politicking bourgeoisie of the various
ethnic groups are deprived of their ready armies of the
oppressed in their unending, unprincipled and ethnic-hued
jostle for power.
The Left must fashion out a programme for dispelling
all ethnic illusions by sharpening the focus of the self-
determination struggle. The contradictions must be fully
played out. The peoples of Nigeria can advance outside the
entity Nigeria. We must correct the errors of the OPC, not kill
it. This exactly is how things stand.
- Femi Obayori, 11-18 Dec., 2000
24
The Self-Determination Struggle: The
Journey So Far.
1. By Way of Introduction
I have been asked to do an appraisal of our struggle- the
Yoruba self-determination struggle – and that exactly is what
aim I set out to do. But before proceeding to the particularities
of the problem, I think it necessary to make some
generalisations and also bring some salient points to our
notice, that is, if we have not really reckoned with them before
now as crucial aspects of the struggle we are waging.
Let me begin by saying that self-criticism and
appraisal is one of the most important and difficult aspects of
any struggle. It is important because it is the key to the future
success and difficult because of the essentially difficult nature
of man, the tendency among men to cling to the old and the
egoistic tendency never to easily admit wrong. In our struggle
there have been many wrongs, there are egotists, opportunists
and naïve strugglers. Then there are those peculiarities of the
society in which our struggle is being waged. The appraisal we
are making is therefore necessary not only because in every
struggle there must be moments of self-criticism, not only
because the laws of social change are better apprehended
through self-criticism and theoretical appraisal of our practical
activities but also because our struggle is a struggle for self-
determination with its inherent class struggle-masking
complexity, the complexity and sophistication of the Yoruba
politics and culture and, more importantly, the complexity of
the Nigerian society with its hundreds of nations and
nationalities which are at different levels of economic and
super-structural development.

25
 In this appraisal we are going to try as much as
possible to divest ourselves of eventful or uneventful details,
or rather tales. Rather than cataloguing or chronicling the past,
we are going to do more of dissecting in order to discern the
common threads that run through the sequence of events
without necessarily chronicling the events. What we are about
doing is deciphering the content of Yoruba self-determination
struggle, understanding its essence and defining its basic
principles and laws based on this understanding.
As the saying goes, when an elder fall, he looks at his
rear in order to discern the cause of his downfall; a cursory
look at the stages in our struggle since its inception in 1994
would appear the first important step in this appraisal. Let us
begin from the beginning.

2.Stages in Our Struggle

The annulment of the June 12 election on June 23, 1993 and
the violent protests against the annulment by Nigerian masses
was an indication that Nigeria could no longer be governed in
the old way by the Caliphate. The arrest and incarceration of
Basorun M.K.O Abiola on June 23, 1994 following his
declaration as President of the Federal Republic and the
subsequent fascist onslaught by the Abacha junta was the first
indication that Yoruba must begin to define national interest
outside the imperialist dominated, Caliphate administered
entity called Nigeria. The inaction of the northern masses in
the June 12 Struggle, the vacillation of the East, the victor’s
volt face maintained by the Oligarchy and lack of commitment
on the part of Yoruba elite, whose most advanced section
continued to wage paper-tiger struggle on the platform of
National Democratic Coalition [NADECO] was what
instigated the convention of Yoruba youth at Ife on September
14, 1994 and the birth of the Oodua Youth Movement [OYM].
OYM was the first undisguised Yoruba self-determination
26
group. The watchword then was the restructuring of Nigeria to
attain a true federalism or the creation of Oodua Republic. It
was emancipation for the Yoruba within or outside Nigeria.
The calls for Sovereign National Conference [SNC] which
first came to the fore as the initiative of the National
Consultative Forum [NCF] in September, 1990 and was again
re-echoed in the aftermath of the June 12 annulment again
became the top of the agenda. The publication of the Yoruba
Charter on December 18, 1994 was a landmark event in the
development of our struggle. The Charter was a product of
rigorous appraisal and self-criticism by some of the best
products of the Nigerian students’ movement in its glorious
days of the 80s and early 90s. The tool that engendered it was
dialectical and the tool with which it proposed to achieve its
objective was also dialectical. Dialectical materialists manned
the kick-starter of this engine. The other parts were of various
brands.
Hence in the beginning all those who now people the
various self-determination groups that mottle the landscape
were with OYM, either as active participants, patrons, or
sympathetic onlookers.
Between this period and June 1998, when the
Caliphate Dictator General Sanni Abacha died, was a most
difficult period of propaganda, agitation and organising for the
self-determination movement. It was trying to find its feet and
in the process there were cleavages and coalescence. Thus the
Covenant Group was born in October 1995; the Oodua
Peoples Congress [OPC] in December the same year, the
Yoruba Koya sometime in 1996 and a host of little known
groups, some defining cultural renaissance objective rather
than being self-avowedly political organisations involved in
the struggle for power. This was a period of rigorous
theoretical turmoil and confusion. It was also a period of

27
research into the mystery of armed struggle and that of
charmed struggle [spiritual empowerment].
June 4, 1998, the second anniversary of Kudirat
Abiola’s assassination, was a day that put the charms on trial
as a weapon of struggle, at least as a weapon of self- defence.
The test was positive. And the OPC rejoiced. The death of
Abacha on June 8 of the same year rekindled hope in
revalidation of June 12 election. Less than two weeks later, Dr
Frederick Faseun, founder of the OPC, was released from the
Gulag. The OPC again rejoiced.
Then on July 7, Basorun Abiola was murdered. The
democratic community was shell-shocked; the self-
determination movement stood still in tune with the sun, then
did a furious spin in tune with the centrifugal forces hewn up
in the vortex of social brew. The gun and the charm became
the slogan of the movement, and the OPC, peopled mainly by
lumpen proletariat elements became the organisation of the
moment. It grew from strength to strength as more and more
people, driven by anger and sentiment rushed to it. Rational
thinking was the first victim, and faulty propaganda, faulty
agitation and shoddy organisation its comrades in arm.
But we must also note that the Establishment had a
programme of hastened transition, the very reason for
Abacha’s murder, in view. Hence it would not allow such a
state of “anarchy” to prevail. After the first skirmishes with the
police on October 1st and 4th in which a couple of policemen
were reportedly killed, the State swung into action with the
killing of one of the OPC coordinators in November. By
December of the same year factions had emerged within the
organisation. Factions engendered factional fights. Thus, while
the police on the one hand never gave the OPC a breathing
space, the internal fights continued to rage on until November
1999 when open hostility broke out at their headquarters in
which two armies clashed. The battle would be repeated at the
28
Palace of the Ooni of Ife when the latter brokered a peace
meeting. The murder allegation brought against factional
leader Gani Adams in January 2000, and the factional fight of
October 2000 in which more than 500 fighters were hacked
down, were part of the ploy by the Obasanjo government to
find a permanent solution to the Oodua Question.
But the OPC is not the Yoruba self-determination
movement; it is merely an organisation representing the
lumpen proletariat expression of our struggle. The movement
itself has come to stay. Throughout the period of sentimental
outbursts and agent provocateur-inspired factional fights the
other self-determination organisations, viz., the OLM, OYM,
YOREM etc. and umbrellas such as Apapo drank in the
lessons of the unfolding events and grew fat by same. But
much damage has been done to the psyche of our people. The
OPC remains the movement in the minds of many. And to talk
of Oodua struggle is to conjure the images of charm-wielding,
Dane gun brandishing war dress-clad peasant about to assail
civilisation, or pounce on a lone, innocent policeman. Worse
still is the misconception that the Oodua struggle is a struggle
against armed robbers and 419ers. This notwithstanding that
the struggle is at a stage when the pall of unreason is
beginning to clear from the eyes of builders of foundationless
skyscrapers. The struggle is at a stage when wrong ideas are
being purged out of the movement and our reality is again
being stood on its foot for it to achieve the much needed
balance in the battle against the opposition’s reality. There is
no better time than this to re-examine one by one the wrong
ideas within the self-determination movement and how to
combat them. But first, we must briefly define what self-
determination struggle is or at least what it is not.

29
3. Self-determination Struggle as Such
Our self-determination struggle is not just a struggle for
political power within our own geographical space. It is first
and foremost a struggle for identity and for our humanity. It is
an all-encompassing struggle, a struggle for control over our
life, our economy, politics and culture. It is a struggle that
poises to break all shackling connectivity between the Yoruba
and the artificial enclave called Nigeria.
It is therefore not an exclusive struggle as far as the
various classes and strata of Yoruba people are concerned. It is
an inclusive struggle. The struggle brings together the best
elements of all the classes and strata of our people for the
purpose of emancipation from internal colonialism in Nigeria
and breaking of the yoke of European domination. All classes
and political shades: proletariat, the peasantry, the bourgeoisie,
petty bourgeoisie, liberal, conservative, social democrat etc.
have a role to play in the struggle. It is a struggle that relies on
the revolutionary fervour and potential of the working class,
peasantry and lumpen proletariat as much as on the liberalism
of the bourgeoisie. It balances the extreme radicalism of the
lower classes against the heavy-footedness of the upper class.
What is the immediate objective of this struggle
therefore? This question has become important in view of the
equation of self-determination with secession. The self-
determination struggle is not essentially a struggle for
secession or a struggle for Yoruba Republic. Secession is only
a form of it just as restructuring to achieve autonomy for the
Oodua region is another form. Hence there could be self-
determination of the Yoruba either within or outside Nigeria.
The convocation of a Sovereign National Conference at which
the objective of the Yoruba would be to canvass for the
restructuring of Nigeria to achieve true federalism is crucial in
this regard. Secession, a Yoruba republic is a second and
extreme option determined by either the attempt of the enemy
30
to frustrate the SNC or inability to reach a consensus at the
SNC.
This clarification is important because many of the
misconceptions that have led some of our brothers in self-
determination groups such as the OPC to committing grave
errors stemmed from the wrong notion of self-determination
struggle as that essentially meant to fight for secession.
The self-determination struggle is not a struggle
against individual policeman or against the army. It is not
essentially an armed struggle, nor does it necessarily entail the
acquisition and use of charms. While it is quite true, the
Maoist maxim, that war is the highest form of struggle for
resolving contradictions between classes, nations or parties
whenever they have grown beyond certain levels, an outright
reduction of the struggle to arms struggle without giving
cognisance to consciousness building and mass work among
the people is tantamount to building an air castle. Our duty as
a vanguard organisation is to teach the people how to liberate
themselves, to give them the most enduring weapon of
struggle, which is knowledge, and at best the rudiments or
models of the physical implements of battle.
Self-determination struggle is a struggle that requires
the most rigorous, the most painstaking tempering of mass
anger. It is a struggle that requires more than any other, the
transformation of mass sentiment to concrete ideology of
struggle which tries to draw out the line of convergence of
interests of the various classes in the society. While it is true
that national sentiment and chauvinistic fervour are fuel for the
process, it is important that such is brought under control
under the influence of the party or group that has the most
correct appreciation of the essence of the struggle. Such a
group or party cannot be one dominated by the lumpen
proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie or the bourgeoisie. Only a
party or group whose method is dialectical and which
31
recognises the ultimately determining role of the material
world can do this. A group or class for whom the collective
interest is not central to its ideology cannot play this role. The
scattered peasantry nurtured on the principle of every man for
himself and God for us all cannot do this. The half owner, half
worker petty bourgeoisie, which is already in league with the
bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries and the Caliphate in
the conspiracy to enslave the poor people, cannot also do this.
As for the lumpen-proletariat, always in a hurry, eager for
result from every ounce of input, and whose logic does not
admit of deciphering beyond the crust into the essence and
core of any issue, trusting them with the leadership of self-
determination struggle is like entrusting the captainship of a
ship already taking in water to many deaf and dumb. For this
is a class which even in its own struggle it cannot provide
leadership; leadership has to come from outside. It is a class
that believes in demi-gods and supermen. It is a class that, as a
result of the uncertainty characteristic of its existence, become
enslaved to all sorts of fetishism and mystical expectations. It
is a class that needs a Capone or a “strong” man to direct its
affairs for it, hence how can it play the role of synthesiser of
the goals of all the classes involved in the self-determination
struggle? Mark you, the point being made is not that people
who are not of working class extraction can not lead the self-
determination struggle or that the self-determination struggle
is a struggle of the working class. No, the point is that only
those who have imbibed the ideology can correctly posit the
way forward for the struggle. The workers, the intelligentsia,
petty bourgeois or even bourgeois elements who have
committed class suicide and imbibed the selflessness of the
working class along with its dialectical materialist conception
of history are the only ones disciplined enough to do this.
The errors of the boys in the OPC stemmed from the
very fact that it is a lumpen proletariat organisation. Its naïve
32
appreciation of armed struggle, the ceding of supremacy to
charm rather than reason, the quest for quick result; the non-
recognition of the need for dialogue and diplomacy, the blind
hatred for the propertied class, the blind hatred for individual
employees of the State [soldiers and policemen], the definition
of the enemy to include all Hausa-Fulani irrespective of
ideology, class and the particular role of the individual, the
raising of ethnic chauvinism to the top of the agenda, and the
ease with which the State was able to infiltrate the
organisation, spreading disinformation and instigating mad
actions.
This also determines their vacillation: today they will
support Obasanjo, tomorrow he will become in their eye the
worst enemy of the Yoruba; today they will be engaged in
joint operation with the police against armed robbers,
tomorrow the police will accuse them of robbery and murder.

4. Self-determination Struggle and Crime Prevention

One of the major mistakes of the OPC which deserves special
attention, particularly on account of the extent to which it has
helped the enemy to confuse the essence of the self-
determination struggle, is their involvement in vigilante
activities.
Self-determination organisations are not set up for the
purpose of containing contradictions within the society or
moderating them, but they are actually partisan groupings in
the struggle of the opposing sides. The self-determination
groups have a role to play in transforming the society by
enhancing the development of contradictions to the point
where the existing order bursts asunder to give room to a new
order. As such, it is wrong for any self-determination group to
continue to direct its attention to the superficial aspects of
social contradictions which transcend the contradictions
between nations, nationalities, or a nation and an imperialist
33
power. Such activities as crime control, while they may play
an important role in endearing the self-determination group to
the mass of the people, have the potential of diverting the
group from its primary role and broadening the ranks of the
enemy. It would amount to playing into the hands of the State.
The ruling elite and their State apparatus would be guilty of
mischievousness if they claim not to know how to control
crime without necessarily employing the self-determination
groups. In fact crime and criminals would appear an essential
part of the means by which the elite hold down the rest of the
society.
If the elite are bent on controlling crime or finding
alternative to the regular police, they can create outfits like
special vigilante services such as the Bakassi Boys and must be
ready to take responsibility for the actions of such outfit. Self-
determination groups are not the same as Bakassi Boy. They
are political groups involved in power struggle. But this some
of our friends in the OPC could not see and has led them into
many a ditch.

5.Self-determination Struggle and Imperialism

One major error, which spans the perspectives of most self-
determination organisations in Nigeria today including the
Yoruba self-determination movement, is the non-recognition
of the anti-imperialist content of the struggle. Most of us fail to
recognise that the wrong we are about to right was caused by
the imperialists in the first place. We fail to realise that apart
from being responsible for the lumping together of different
ethnic groups with different cultures and different levels of
socio-economic and political development, the imperialists
played a major role in ensuring that power fell into the hands
of the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy at independence in 1960 and
have always been instrumental to ensuring the dominance of
the North over the rest of us. Reason being that the core North
34
by their feudal political sophistication and cohesiveness are
better placed to play the role of comprador.
Hence the self-determination struggle is aimed at
completing the unfinished job of 1960. It aims at righting the
wrong of ages that commenced with the creation of the Lagos
Colony in 1861 and ended its first phase with the conquest of
the Sokoto Caliphate in 1903. The wrong of the amalgamation
of 1914, which is often the reference point of many a self-
determination activist, is a mere crown at the coronation of the
Beast of Conquest. Today’s self-determination struggle is a
continuation of our anti-colonial struggle; it is part of the
struggle against neo-colonialism. It aims at erasing the gap
between the rich of the world in the metropol and we the poor
in the neo-colony by giving a lease of life and creating the
enabling conditions for our fullest possible development. The
struggle aims at freeing the potentials of our people from the
shackling realities of Nigeria – a Nigeria which is an
imperialist creation.
The role of the western powers in the annulment of the
June 12 election, their role in the death of Basorun Abiola,
their role in the war against the self-determination groups,
their support for Obasanjo in his opposition to the SNC and
their expressed determination to keep Nigeria together at the
expense of the various nations and nationalities that make up
the country are more than enough indications that they have
vested interest in Nigeria – an interest that runs contrary to that
of the people calling for self-determination.

6. What Is to Be Done: Self-determination as Education.

Since the struggle started seven years ago, our agitation, faulty
or right, propaganda, faulty or right, and our organisational
work, faulty or right, have not only brought the need for the
struggle to the notice of the people but also broadened the base
of the struggle. Now the broadened base must acquire a new
35
quality. Extreme sentimentality and populism must give way
to conscious, directed actions.
This can only be achieved by education – cadreship
education and not just education of the broad masses. Apart
from the mass of the people who subscribe to the struggle and
support it, ready to participate in rallies, demonstrations and
riots as the case may be, must be those who are committed
enough to sacrifice their time and if need be life to the
struggle, not for the purpose of position and pelf, but as a
result of clear understanding of the need for emancipation. The
struggle needs people who are enlightened enough to take
initiative, to interpret the organisation’s strategic position on
issues and apply creativity in solving specific tactical
problems. The building of such cadres cannot be left to
chance; it has to be consciously done.
Without cadres the self-determination struggle
platform would remain the kind of rabble-rousers’ platform it
is presently. Our self-determinationists would be little different
from a band of early men on a hunting rampage.
Our cadres must be all-weather cadres, physically,
culturally, morally and technically fitted to the demands of
modern struggle. But more importantly they must be trained to
be very good fighters as well as good administrators; good
destroyers as well as good builders
They are people who are ready to learn the new type
of politics which social development has thrust into our laps.
This is the most fundamental demand of the time; the
education of our cadres will determine the fate of our struggle.

7. What Is to Be Done: What the Yoruba want in Nigeria.

In 6 above we have already pointed out the immediate
objective of the self-determination groups as regards their
organisational build-up. Now what have we got for the mass of
the people? Can we afford to halt all mass work or is it even
36
right to halt all work among the people because we do not
have enough or the right kind of cadre? Definitely not.
Continuity determines the contrary. The fact that practice
remains the best test of theory and is the source of new theory
determines the contrary. What then do we do?
We must present an agenda that speaks to the
yearnings of the people before them. All the ills of the past are
still extant. All the issues engendered by our struggle are still
substantive. Chiefs among them are Restructuring and SNC,
which again have risen to the top of the agenda. Hence the
self-determination group need a more practical approach to
the issue of SNC beyond a mere call for it. There must be an
agenda that not only challenges the status quo in theory but in
practice set it on its toes. Such an agenda can only be one that
draws the mass of our people to the centre of the vortex of
struggle. Beyond making a demand for SNC we must
demonstrate our readiness to convoke one. The SNC has to be
forced. And the only way to do this is by convoking a
constituent assembly of the Yoruba. The Yoruba Constitution –
that must be the order of the day. And thank God there is
already an effort in that direction on the initiative of the Egbe
Alajobi.
The Yoruba Constitution [a working document] is
already a public document and has been discussed by the self-
determination groups and I don’t intent reviewing it here. But
more importantly, the only capital we can make of this
document is to massify it among the people to exploit to the
fullest its revolutionary potential to educate the masses to
reflect their aspirations and to draw them into practical
struggle. This is the only way to purge it of elitist intrigues and
impress the stamp of the entire Yoruba Nation on it.

37
*This paper was delivered by Femi Obayori on July 22,
2001 at a lecture organised by the Apapa Youth
Movement.

38