By Bisi Olawunmi
The upsurge in banditry and kidnapping in Yorubaland, Southwest Nigeria, culminating in the horrendous mass abduction of school children and teachers in three schools in Oriire local government area of Oyo State on May 15, 2026, has brought the horrors of the violent criminals to the doorstep of Yorubaland in a most jarring way.
All states in the Southwest are now virtually under siege by bandits and kidnappers. Before now, Yorubaland only read about mass abductions in other parts of the country, especially Katsina, Zamfara, and Borno States in the north, as happenings in distant lands.
There was the complacent feeling that Yorubaland was insulated. That false sense of security has now been shattered most viciously. Varied reactions have trailed this existential threat to Yorubaland, one of which is the need for people of the region to sink political and religious differences and confront the common enemy. While banditry and mass kidnapping have been largely associated with Fulani extremists, Yoruba now face the unsettling reality of copycat kidnappers on the rampage.
It is instructive and gratifying that the group, Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), whose executive director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, has been pursuing an Islamic agenda seen as divisive in the Southwest, has come out strongly to seek a unified stand among the various religious adherents to confront worsening insecurity in Yorubaland.
His stand reinforces the primacy of a common Yoruba ethnic heritage over and above religious affiliations.What has been confounding till now is the apparent laid-back attitude, the absence of a sense of outrage and intensity of action by the region’s political elite, particularly the governors, given the clear and present danger facing Yorubaland.
Apart from a lack of security coordination, why has it been impossible for the governors of the Southwest to collectively visit President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to express their outrage at the looming overrun of Yorubaland by bandits, kidnappers and other criminals?
Before the 2023 presidential election, there was this mantra in Yorubaland about Tinubu’s ambition for the presidency: Omo wa ni, e je o se (He is our son, let him reign). But what do we see today? Omo wa (our son), who has been on the throne for three years, seems to be more concerned and preoccupied with politicking for 2027 re-election and apparently dismisses the insecurity ravaging Yorubaland as a distraction orchestrated by political enemies.
Amplifying the same puerile argument, incoherent, communication and speech-challenged Monday Okpebholo, governor of Edo State, has even boasted that no matter the escalation of banditry and kidnappings across the country, Tinubu’s re-election is assured.
How insensitive and callous! President Tinubu’s seeming attitude of que sera sera, (what will be, will be), a doctrine of fatalism, could signal an ominous trend to replicate in the Southwest, late President Muhammadu Buhari’s legacy of banditry and kidnapping in his Northwest home region, considering Tinubu’s repeated pledge to continue with Buhari’s legacy.
Yoruba, e fu ra! (Yoruba, beware!). We need to remind ourselves in the Southwest that it was during Buhari’s presidency that terrorism, banditry and kidnapping spread, like wildfire, from the Northwest, with his home state of Katsina as an epicentre of insecurity.
It got so bad in Katsina state that then-governor Aminu Masari surrendered to terrorism and banditry by hosting a bandit kingpin in the Governor’s Office.
May Yorubaland not descend into bandit-land under Tinubu, just as the Northwest harvested horror under Buhari.Recall Tinubu’s dismissive reaction to the alleged herdsmen killing of the daughter of Chief Reuben Fasoranti, leader of the pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, years back.
Despite his tragic loss, Chief Fasoranti, aged 100, has remained a staunch Tinubu backer, but was recently compelled to issue a public lamentation on the deteriorating insecurity in Yorubaland.
This highlights the gravity of the situation. We should also ponder what informed Presidential candidate Tinubu’s choice of Kashim Shettima as his running mate? Now vice president, it was under Shettima, as governor of Borno state, that Boko Haram got incubated and eventually erupted into a murderous terrorist group. Tinubu also appointed Bello Matawalle, former governor of Zamfara state, under whose tenure the state became another epicentre of banditry, as minister of state for defence in the Buhari administration.
All of these should give a sense of foreboding to the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria.The formation of a non-partisan Yoruba Leadership Lobby (YOLLO), extending to Kwara and Kogi states, made up of leaders across political, religious, business, youth and academic spectrum has become imperative to visit President Tinubu and present him with a Yoruba Security Charter.
Such a Lobby should be led by Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba organisation. However, to put additional pressure on President Tinubu, peaceful rallies could be staged in the capitals of Southwestern states to denounce the exponential spiral of insecurity in Yorubaland.
The proposed Yoruba Leadership pressure on President Tinubu should not be seen as a pull-down syndrome, but in collective ethnic self-interest. We do not want IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps in Yorubaland.
The Northwest leadership kept mute during the tenure of their son, President Buhari, while the region bled, only for a delegation of political leaders from Katsina state, his home state, to visit President Tinubu, pleading for his help in tackling insecurity in the state.
Had they put pressure on Buhari, the narrative would have been different. The Southwest should, therefore, be proactive and not slip into slumber for a Buhari encore. Yoruba, e fu ra. (Yoruba, beware).
It is a measure of the heartlessness and lack of humanity of some members of the political class that an impulsive and temperamental Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, could dismiss the kidnapping of 39 students and seven teachers in Oyo state as no big deal, since similar abductions had taken place in Abuja without public outrage.
Wike comes from a region of violent militancy and is apparently inured to violence and killing.
Nigerians are witnesses to the gangster politics being played in Rivers, his home state, with the ex-governor as a major dramatis personae. This cannot be said of Southwest Yorubaland, the exemplar and ethnic group of an intellectual approach to issues.
The Yoruba Southwest, which prides itself as the most secure, most educated, and most enlightened region in Nigeria, as well as the nation’s economic powerhouse, cannot and should not be allowed to be overrun by bandits, kidnappers and sundry criminals.
The region should not allow President Tinubu to sleep while Yorubaland is on fire.
(Dr Bisi Olawunmi is a Public Affairs Analyst, Scholar and Former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
He can be reached at olawunmibisi@yahoo.com and 0803 364 7571 (SMS Only).