Sunday Igboho’s Iru Ekun as Sòbìà, the guinea worm

Make no mistake about it: Yorubaland is encircled by terrorists. And Nigeria is today as sour as vinegar. The president’s birthplace is now a terrorist enclave. Since the Ahoro-Esinele tragedy in Oriire LG of Oyo State on May 15, a lot more blood has been spilled. Blood spillage has become, in the words of Bob Marley, a natural mystique and “many more will have to suffer; many more will have to die.” Ondo, Ekiti, Ogun, and Osun have since been taking bites of their own blood. On Friday, bandits stormed the Igbosi area of Idogun in Ose Local Government Area of Ondo state. They destroyed two buildings and kidnapped a nine-year-old boy. On the whole, Nigerians can taste the bitter feel of blood in their mouths. Or see a picturesque scene of blood flowing on the horizon. News of violent deaths in the hands of terrorists, kidnappings for ransom and violent abductions have become daily existential realities.

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Sending children to school today is risky. It is like hopping over an IED-buried land. The victory of Boko Haram terrorists, who declared war on education, against a Southwest which prides itself as a beacon of education, couldn’t receive more fitting finality than now. Late last week, an unverified claim was made that terrorists keeping vigil with menacing guns over our children and their teachers inside the forest of Oyo National Park have made depressing ransom demands.

War has indeed begun. But, for the president, 2027 votes seem more precious than his people’s blood. And since, as his people say, even if one beholds a thousand heads in the marketplace, it shouldn’t be difficult to identify one’s, the people are bothered whether the president has identified his in this cadaver-counting arithmetic. The president has effectively mutated from his constitutionally guaranteed role as actor-in-chief into a national mourner-in-chief, running a government of bereavement and weekly national condolences.

As I write this, news filtered in that terrorists have again struck Borno State, beheading soldiers and vigilante members. Like other parts of Nigeria, Southwest Nigeria is terrified. It is almost a crime to celebrate. Killings no longer make front-page news. Nor the number of our countrymen sent to the graveyards. You can compare our situation to someone whose mother was offered as a sacrifice to Yemoja, the goddess of the river, for whom smiling is an anathema. Killings by terrorists have become a roulette. Since they stormed Ahoro-Esinele and Yawota, killing a teacher, abducting 46 pupils, teachers and decapitating one, Southwest has been the proverbial cycle of conspiracies (Egbìnrìn òtè) which, as you attempt to grapple with one, a multitude spring up.

Many parts of Nigeria bear virtually all chaotic symptoms of rebel-occupied spaces in far-flung places of Africa. Anarchy is fast becoming the new normal. Indices of ungovernable Nigeria are evident.

The chaotic, violent and blood-soaked situation today in Southwest Nigeria is almost akin to that of the 19th century. According to J. F. Ade Ajayi and S. A. Akintoye, in their “Yorubaland in the Nineteenth century” published in Groundwork of Nigerian history (1980) edited by Obaro Ikime, it was the century the Binis succeeded in making incursion into Northern Yoruba towns of Owo, Akoko, Ekiti and Ikare. Between 1830 and 1850, extreme Northeastern Yorubaland towns of Oworo, Bunu, Iyagba, Owe and Ijumu had been taken over by Jihadist Fulanis. Led by the Nupe Malam Dendo, the Jihadists later made incursions into Igbomina, Akoko and northern Ekiti. Ilorin cavalry’s forays also met with huge success. The rivalry between the Ibadan and Ijaye for dominance left blood and sorrows. By 1847, highly feared Ibadan forces had occupied Ekiti, expelled the Ilorin and by 1860, spread their tentacles of dominance over it, Ijesa, Akoko, Igbomina and vast territories of Osun and Ife kingdom. The 16-year war against the Ibadan in the Kiriji war, also known as the Ekitiparapo war, was to later truncate Ibadan’s dominance.

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