Obasanjo declares they’re people not fit to live in Lagos saying #IgboMustLeaveLagos

By KEMI KASUMU

Those saying ‘Igbo Must Go From Lagos’ will be the ones to leave – Ex-President Obasanjo

Former President said he doesn’t believe anybody in Nigeria should be driven away from any part of the country.

Former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has reacted to the calls by some groups of Yoruba resident in Lagos, who recently launched a hashtag #IgbosMustLeaveLagos campaign asking Igbo people to leave Lagos State.

Obasanjo spoke through a statement by his Special Assistant on Media, Kehinde Akinyemi, on Friday, wherein he said  Abeokuta, Ogun State, dated August 16, 2024.

The DEFENDER reports that the former Nigerian Leader had played host to leadership of Ndigbo Amaka Progressive Market Association, an umbrella body of major markets in Lagos State, at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta, Ogun State capital, on Friday.

According to the statement, the former President said he doesn’t believe anybody in Nigeria should be driven away from any part of the country, asserting that, “we own this country together”.

He said, “Having ensured that the Yorubas, Igbos and Hausas all came together to fight the war of unity in Nigeria and “not to fight Igbos to go, but to come.

“So, if anybody says to me that somebody should leave any place, he will be the one to leave.”

A X social media handle named on ‘LagosPedia’, believed to be that of Yorubas from other South West who are plotting that Lagos indigenes tgey have deprived from enjoying the benefits of their indigeneship since they used Afenifere to smuggle themselves to power in 1999, had recently demanded the forced relocation of Igbo people from Lagos and other South West states within one month.

Through the hashtag, they also called on all Yorubas living in the South East to return to South West.

“Lagosians and every South-West stakeholder should prepare for the massive protest of #IgboMustGo on the 20th – 30th of August.

“They have one month from now to leave and relocate their businesses from all South-West states. We urge all Yorubas living in the South-East to return home,” the handle had tweeted.

The statement added that Obasanjo for the first time spoke about the claim of his Igbo paternity, declaring that such insinuation makes him laugh.

There has been an allegation that Obasanjo’s father hailed from Anambra State.

Obasanjo was speaking days after De Renaissance Patriots Foundation, a socio-cultural organisation established to run a better state for Lagos State indigenes, warned elements behind the #IgbosMustLeave campaign to desist as what they were calling for was not part of them.

De Renaissance Patriots

In an exclusive reaction to Vanguard and published by The DEFENDER, titled, “#IgbosMustGo campaign in Lagos is not organised by indigenes” De Renaissance Patriots said: “The state government has reacted to the campaign on #”IgbosMustLeave”. But De Renaissance Patriots Foundation has nothing to do with the campaign for the Igbos to move out of Lagos State. It is the handiwork of South West Yorubas, who are non-indigenes in the state. They are either residents or sojourners, whose aims and intentions are to capture the state permanently and dominate the natives.

“Anyway, we are currently mourning the passing of our President, who passed away yesterday (Friday August 2, 2024). Prince (Omo Oba) Adelani Gbogboade Adeniji-Adele was a dynamic leader whom we cherished for his courage. As one of our leaders said, and I quote: “Tragedy has struck the heart of Lagos, leaving an irreparable void in its wake”… “a vocal voice of the people.”

“The tensions that are seemingly running high in Lagos State as a growing concern on social media are fake and self-generated to serve some non- indigenous interests. Our reaction is to call on the state government and the police to learn some lessons from the bloodshed we are observing in the Northern part of the country.

“The current level of peaceful coexistence the citizens are enjoying should not be allowed to dissipate. The #IgbosMustGo campaign in Lagos is not organised by the indigenes. The DSS and the Police should set to work and nip the crisis in the bud.

“The indigenes of Lagos State unequivocally condemn the protest and campaign of calumny against our Igbo residents. We categorically dissociate ourselves from the #”IgboMustLeave” campaign and planned protest. We advise that the indigenes of the South West states take their protests to their various states from 20th to 30th August 2024.

“We once again seize this opportunity to reiterate that we welcome the Igbos and the South West residents living in Lagos State while recognising that GEDEGBE L’EKO WA,” the De Renaissance Patriots Foundation said in its reaction from its Media Office, on Saturday August 3, 2024.

Abanikanda

Recall that one of his regular articles titled, “Let Lagos owners speak for themselves, they don’t see Igbo as their problem”, a Nigerian in the Diaspora United Kingdom, Abanikanda Olumoro, had warned fellow South West Yoruba circulating the experience of EndSARS to blackmail suffering Lagos people complaining and planning to protest against their suffering to stop.

To him, the South West Yoruba, who carry around the wrong notion that they own Lagos as the “Yoruba farmland”, pretend to believe that the EndSARS protest of 2020 was plot by igbo to destroy Lagos and so that they would now them to do another one in Lagos, making their audience to believe that the #EndBadGovernance protest planned by all hungry Nigerians was Igbo plot to destroy Lagos.

The Diasporan warned against any attempt by occupants of Lagos, who are Yoruba from other South West states causing problems for fellow Yoruba indigenes of Lagos, to think anybody will believe their ethnic profiling of Igbo as those that destroyed Lagos during the October 20, 2020 EndSARS protest.

“Pertinent, however, to say that the EndSARS protest was a mass movement and a coalition of people whose composition included mostly Yoruba of South West origins and who co-led the movement with South East and South South youths. So, leave Igbo out of this.”

Abanikanda Olumoro started the article on a note of a grammatic expression.

“One is flabbergasted to read or listen to some occupants pretending to be more Lagosians than the indigenes claiming the protectorship of the former Colony and capital of Nigeria, and doing so with hypocritical motives to profile some fellow Nigerians for stigma. It is unacceptably wrong.

“They are using the “ebi npawa” mantra that is now rampant in the land to blackmail the criers, who are truly hungry but will not be expected to complain. They say there is hunger in the land and, truly so, they are attestably hungry, poverty afflicted and, it is said a hungry man, as an angry man, can spark into protest at any time.

“Their blackmailers know this imminent yet inevitable protest but are using a case scenario that is general for the entire country to rope the Igbo living and doing their legitimate businesses in Lagos to say they want to, again, launch a protest to destroy the state like, according to them, they (the Igbo) did during the EndSARS protest of October 20, 2020. This is unfair an accusation to make against fellow citizens.

“Criers over hunger in Nigeria cut across the entire country. Afterall the other time, Northern Nigerian traditional rulers raised alarm as impact of the economic policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in one year has been unbearable for their subjects particularly the restive youths, who they said had been pacified all along not to spark into violence.

“So, there are same tendencies in the South East as people question, what kind of economic reforms would make people now begin to jump into their early death and the President, who plonged them into the crisis, would insist saying, “There is no going back?” It has never been this bad for Nigeria and its citizens but those in positions of authorities, who benefit from from the system unlike the masses that bear the brunt, want the poor public to believe it is global problem. How global?

“How do people, who live in mansions of N20 billion each, urge the common man with barely a space to rest his head to be the one to sacrifice and endure hardship situation of over 40 percent inflation, while they as the cause and beneficiaries flaunt the common wealth of the people in hard currencies? This isn’t a holy reform of the economy but a wicked one against the entire nation.

“So, to say, “If there is any campaign for uprising or protest we won’t allow protest to take place in Lagos, lagos is no longer capital of Nigeria,” is a talk unpopular. Perish it.

“Yes, during EndSARS, over 300 BRT buses were destroyed, but the grand cause for the protest was known to all, especially those that are now screaming as if they care about Lagos for the good of Lagos people other to steal the patrimony and take it back to their own states of origin to benefit their own people to the detriment of Lagos natives,” he said in the article published by many local media during the just concluded week.

He said, “If people say they are feeling hardship and difficult, they deserve their constitutional right of freedom of expression. If they choose to protest as the only power the masses have to express displeasure with a failing government, why not?

“How much of lesson from the violent situation of that EndSARS have these propagandists and their sponsors worked upon in order to ensure that no repeat of such most deadly protest situation reoccurs either in Lagos, Abuja or anywhere in the country? Was it not after the EndSARS the non-indigenous South West Yoruba – occupying political power of Lagos – still went ahead in 2023, less than three years after, to run an election that was characterised with violence, deprivations, disenfranchisement, using thugs to suppress voters and this making it impossible for the people to perform their civic right of voting the candidates of their choice at the election? Thanks to United States Department of State for attesting to this in a major report, recently.

“Lagos continues to be a centre of control for hoodlums where a thug collecting unconstitutional taxes at motor parks and various bus stops are so much more powerful than the police, the constitutionally recognised security agents for ensuring security and safety, still these occupants of Lagos believe they are Igbo doing it. How possible could that be? How many motor parks in Lagos have Igbo as chairmen, and how many of the land grabbers or those that used Oro (occultism) to chase people away from performing their civic rights at 2023 elections are Igbo? They are all Yoruba either from Ekiti, Ogun, Oyo, Osun or Ondo.

“So, perish the wrong notion of saying the “Igbos attitude is to bring Lagos down if they can not to control it.” Do not say so. Do not speak for Lagos. Let the owners of Lagos speak for themselves and they have been speaking saying “We know who are our problems but they are not Igbo. They are Yoruba who are non-indigenes of Lagos from other South West states that are grabbing our land, inflicting hardship on us and ate making it impossible for us to run our state by ourselves.”,” he said.