No To Restructuring, We Want Plebiscite

"The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free."

- John F. Kennedy.
"Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change."

- Jim Rohn
Do Yorùbá really want Oòduà Nation? Do they really want to get out of Nigeria? Is this the desire of their majority? Or this demand is just a rant of the vocal few? What exactly do the Yorùbá want? Nigeria or Oòduà Nation?

What does the majority Igbo want? Do they really want Nigeria? Or they want their Biafra? Is the noise about Biafra that of the grassroots or "misguided" few? What exactly do the Igbo people want, Nigeria or Biafra?

Do the ethnic nationalities in the Middlebelt still want Nigeria or they want out? Are they excited to remain the willing tools of feudalism only to be beheaded when they are no longer needed? What exactly do they want? Nigeria or their freedom?

Well, there is only one way to find out. - plebiscite. In any polity, including the ones presided over by divine Kings and or emperor's, the people are the ultimate. They are the final arbiters. They determine the survival or the eventual death of a polity by submitting to the extant authority or by rebelling or revolting against it.

Cross sections of the Nigerian State, through their various leaders have been asking for Restructuring of this Country for a long time. But those identified by the Great Osagyefo, Kwame Nkrumah, as neo-colonialists, the purveyors of the next stage of imperialism, who are in control of the appurtenances of political power in Nigeria would not allow it. The reason they are against Restructuring is that the subsisting crooked structure is to their advantage.

But unfortunately for them, the time for RESTRUCTURING OF NIGERIA has expired. We no longer want restructuring. No more. What we now want is to determine our destiny. We want to be the ones to determine where we go from here. We want to vote on our next course of action. We want plebiscite to decide whether we want and are ready for Oòduà Nation or not. We want to decide whether we want Biafra or not. We want to decide whether we want Niger Delta Confederacy or not. We want to decide whether we want Middlebet Federal Republic or not.

Yes, the time for Restructuring of the Nigerian State is far gone into the sunset. Restructuring as at this moment has become a prolepsis . It has become anachronistic. It has become outdated. The Yorùbá Nation does not want any Restructuring any longer. We are no more interested. Any effort to engage in any form of Restructuring of this dead contraption called Nigeria is solecistic.

What the people of Oòduà land want right now is to decide on Nigeria. They want to decide whether they want to remain in Nigeria or bail out of this denigrating slavery. They want to decide about their future. They want to make a decision for the posterity. The Yorùbá people today are worried about what to bequeath to their children, their grandchildren and their great grandchildren and those coming after them.

All the taxi drivers of Yorùbá extraction, all the bricklayers, the students, the market women, the nurses, the doctors, the lawyers, the architects, the unemployed, the civil servants, the farmers, the tailors, the vulcanizers, the carpenters, the painters, the traders et al want to have a say in the direction of their destiny. It is their right. They are entitled to it and they would have it. Yes, the people must decide.

Whether they agree to the creation of Oòduà Nation or they're opposed to it, they want an opportunity to have a say. It is their inalienable right. It is their right to self-determine their own destiny. They are the captains of their own souls. They are the ones in the driver's seat. They are the people. They are the final arbiters.

The Yorùbá people are tired of being second class citizens in Nigeria. They are tired of limitations placed on their potentials. They no longer want their destiny to be determined by others. They have seen their talents wasted. They have witnessed their capabilities cinctured. They have been denied several times what should be theirs. They no longer have rights in Nigeria. That are tired of the nonsense.

They have seen the people they voted for, shortchanged several times. They have witnessed the contamination of their values. They have witnessed the corruption of their culture. They have seen how their brilliant children are repeatedly frustrated and forced to serve characterless and colourless goons. They have seen how their children have been forced to worship on the altar of mediocrity. They have witnessed how they have become third and fourth class citizens is a country they have not chosen for and by themselves.

Currently, the Yorùbá Nation wants its freedom. They want to extricate themselves from the Fulani bondage. They want to disengage from all aprons of feudalism. They want an end to apartheid system where the minority is ruling the majority using weapons of war, by opting out of Nigeria. It doesn't make any sense to be in a marriage where the parties involved are diametrically opposed to each other and the relationship itself.

The Yorùbá people would like to discuss the possibility of an Oòduà Nation as a matter of courtesy. But essentially, the final decision is theirs. The choice is theirs to make. And at the time they choose. The Yorùbá are determined to be free in a Nation they could call their own and where they could dictate the directions and the dimensions of their destiny.

The Yorùbá want to control their resources by themselves. They are tired of their resources being taken to the North of the Niger to sustain rabid incompetence and rancid values that are foreign to them. We don't think we are better than any group of people. But we reserve the right to live our lives according to our own dictates, our own values and Culture.

Feudalism was never part of our culture. It was never part of our History. Every Yorùbá man and woman have always had the right to be free within his or her milieu. He or she has always determined how and where to live his live. Merit has always been a watchword. Fairness has always been a guidance. Justice has always been their framework.

At this point in the membership of the Yorùbá Nation as a component of this subjugating gizmo called Nigeria, what we want right now is a plebiscite. We must be allowed to decide. If at the end, we decide to stay in Nigeria, then we would sit down to determine how. At that point, anyone could speak of Restructuring. But right now, plebiscite is what we want. We should not and could not put the cart before the horse. For the cart to be moved, the horse has to come first.

When this PLEBISCITE is going to be done, it must be completely organised and supervised by outsiders and monitored by the people themselves. The Nigerian State and its vestiges must not have anything to do with it either overtly or covertly, immediate or remote by any acts of omission or commission. It must be free of the Nigerian involvement. It must be free of the Nigerian poison.

Plebiscite is not just what we need, it is what we want. It is the desire of our hearts right now. We are no longer interested in Restructuring. No, not anymore. Plebiscite is what we want. We should, we would and we must get it. And the time is now!

"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it."

-John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1960.
©Remi Oyeyemi