On The Present Yoruba-Fulani Ethnic Crisis

I believe that the Yorubas are merely lying against the Fulanis — even as they have been lying against Ikoro Iyineleda for donkey years, that he wants to build his own Boko Haram (who wouldn’t want to? with the afflictions they wield against me) even as Nigeria has been lying against Boko Haram itself for an almost equal number of years. For a culture as dishonest as that of the Yorubas is obviously just as involved in kidnappings and the like as the Fulanis are said to be.

The Yorubas have never been friendly to foreigners. “Oyinbo, pepper! Ippy ippy pepper! You go yellow more more!” is just one of the derisive songs with which their children are taught to jeer Caucasians. “Isobo,” is what they know the Igbos as. “Sule,” is what they call all Hausas — and it’s what they also know imbeciles in their land as. Both derisive taunts.

Even a native of their land that has not been initiated into the norms and culture of the land will be treated with the same lack of regard with which the Yorubas deride every foreigner. I am a living testimony to this truth. And this just now happens to be the bane of the Fulanis today.

Because the Fulanis have been prospering. And when foreigners prosper in a land as unfriendly to foreigners as that of the Yorubas is, and when such foreigners have brothers and kin as notorious as the Boko Haram is, the consequence is the slander that has given birth to the terrible notoriety of the Fulanis in Yorubaland today — despite the plain innocence that I believe is theirs.

- Ikoro Iyineleda; 4th of February, 2021.