by Moses Oludele Idowu
Few days to the Muslim Sallah festival of this year my ram and goat suddenly disappeared from the compound without trace. We searched everywhere to no avail. Few weeks before then the goats were poisoned and they died. Out of a flock of seven today nothing remains – a lost or wasted investment.
My neighbour’s fate was even worse. His two goats with pregnancy were poisoned and they died. His two rams also disappeared days before the Sallah festival. He is a native of Ibadan where we both live and he told me that has been the trend everytime the sallah is approaching.
The most painful one however was the case of the old woman several houses to mine. Whenever I was searching for any of my flock I would visit her place because my ram usually fraternised with her sheep and rams. This woman had a good collection and breed of hefty rams and goats and sheep in her shed and she is elderly. When I visited her to seek for mine she told me a calamitous story. All her rams and goats, as hefty as they were had been stolen. They didn’t even leave a single one for this elderly woman for her upkeep. All these just days before the Sallah, 2026.
They told me later those who had stayed in that part of Ibadan longer than I that it was a usual occurrence. Every Sallah you must either lock your goats and rams inside the house or they will disappear.
In a place where there are night watchmen paid by Community Development Association ( CDAs) and contributions from landlords it seems to me a mystery that no one has been apprehended for this recurring pillage.
I felt pity for that elderly woman. Losing a ram or goats or even several of them means nothing to me because I have a means of livelihood. So is my other neighbour. But what of this elderly woman that everything she had more or less has been wiped out?
The people perpetrating and perpetuating this mess are not Fulani or Hausa or Berom or Ebira or Igbos; they are fellow Yorubas with insiders in the community. The night watchmen too are Yoruba from the immediate community. The watchmen, the local collaborators, informants and insiders and the actual perpetrators from outside become a triangular web all of which are of Yoruba ethnic nationality.
The Yoruba demons do not do evil to outsiders they do it to their own kinds and to their own children. I sometimes think that a Yoruba man derives some pleasure at hurting those of his own kind. It is a terrible conclusion but it is an uncomfortable truth. All the principal prosecution witnesses, police investigators and judge who sent Awo to prison were all Yoruba.
I digress.
I visited a lady, a former colleague of mine and a professor of UI and wife of a professor also a friend of mine with another female teacher and wife of a professor of the same institution in their official residence. I was surprised at the heavy security and anti- burglary devices and panoply installed at the entrance door in a place that is supposed to be the residential quarter inside a university.
Why this care when the university has security network?
Then they told me tale of woes and burglaries, incidents that they won’t forget for time to come. My host the female professor started with her own tale of woes. She had some guests who resided in her house who came for Convocation and while they were all at the convocation program her house was burgled and all the laptops of her own and the guests disappeared. Hence she had had to now install heavy security locks and anti- burglary mechanism on her doors to prevent recurrence. The other lady who brought ne corroborated her stories of similar experiences. The women were unanimous however in their verdict: the security men of the institution knew about these incidents. In point of fact they accused them of being behind it. I hope you know that universities usually recruit their security agents from around the immediate communities with a view to preventing this kind of thing. The perpetrators are not Fulanis, Igbos or Berom – they are most likely Yoruba from the immediate community.
Kayode Williams the repentant and confessed armed robber turned evangelist did posit in his thesis that if a robbery takes place in a certain community or area it is because robbers have an insider or link in that area. I want to believe him.
I have cited several cases here across different areas and communities. Let me cite one more.
A friend cultivated a farmland of yams in the same Ibadan environs. This professor invested out of his meagre resources and got people employed to cultivate and plant. He laboured and spent and sweated waiting for harvest. And then harvest time came. Meanwhile, the “other people”- our friends- were also monitoring the farm they didn’t plant or cultivate. Then just before he could plan the harvest these marauders went there and harvested everything without leaving even some ridges for the owner. Everything. They stole everything. This is the kind of action that provoked the curse of God and even of the ancestors.
The perpetrators were not Fulani or Berom or Hausa or natives of Niger Republic; alas, they were most likely Yoruba, his own kinsmen in Ibadan and of the same nativity and surrounding as he is. There is 95% chance it is so and the assumption corroborates the circumstantial evidence. Certain things an outsider cannot do. Only someone close to you.
Would a Fulani have known a Convocation is taking place and when the professor and her guests would leave the house and return? Inside a university’s residential quarters? Come on!
Would a stranger have known when a farm is ripe for harvest? And when the owner is planning to come for the harvest to beat him to it?
Would truants from Zamfara have known the number of rams in a community and the time the security watchmen retire and the road network to ferret the goats and rams without being detected or discovered?
These are insider works, perpetrated by natives and indigenes – Yoruba themselves against their own. “Kokoro idi igba ni jegba, ara ile eni ni seni” – as one of the Yoruba proverb says: “The germs devouring the locust bean tree dwells with it, it is the nearest of kin that hurt people the most.”
It is a fact.
Of the 371 tribes in Nigeria the Yoruba is cerebral, first among equal and highly distinguished in many good things. The others know it. The Yoruba – and let me be clear about this and leave no room for any ambiguity- is distinguished in many solid acts and virtues even much more than most of her other competing tribes. In terms of defence of truth and standing for the truth, culture of honour, love and accommodating others, tolerance, respect for alien values and practices, industry, hardwork, humility, high culture, respect for elderly… the Yoruba is number one. I do not deny this and do not minimise it. But the Yoruba has one terrible flaw, one major debility and ailment. For lack of a better word I will call it self- hate or self- loathing. It is a curse that needs to be exorcised. This Aoleian curse based on whatever pronouncement in time past is real and it’s still working against the Yoruba.
The Hausa work for each other.
The Fulani work to protect each other even if they must bring the house down over everyone.
The Berom pool together and fighting existential threat with everything at their disposal.
The Tiv, Langtang, Nupes, etc are not many but they refused to succumb to a fate dictated by their enemies.
All these band together and fight together for a common survival.
Don’t even talk about Igbos. Touch one of them and the rest will come after you, whether right or wrong is immaterial.
Only the Yoruba are different. Only they hate themselves and hurt themselves on purpose.
We know from reality that it is a mad man who beats himself. No one goes on the road and start flogging himself; it would be a sign of advanced mental incapacitation and insanity. The Yoruba is heir to great wisdom, ancient wisdom; their Oral Tradition is laden with great wisdom that is beyond this world. But Yoruba too is capable of great insanity and the history confirms this beyond reasonable doubt. All the bloodiest wars and carnage of the 18th and 19th centuries ( the 100 – year war) were perpetrated by Yoruba against themselves. Great wisdom can subsist with great insanity. The truth of Nikola Tesla’s saying is hereby confirmed and validated: “One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
Did you hear that? It is true. Yorubas are deep, their Oral Tradition is full of depth, wise sayings beyond this world, prophecies that have not even failed once to attain fulfillment, wise sayings that are beyond the wisdom of this world… Indeed Yoruba are deep spiritually. But a person can be deep and be insane. Perhaps this explains why they are also the ones who hurt themselves and fight themselves the most.
Many are excited and jubilant about State Police. I am not. Because if care is not taken and appropriate security and monitoring precautionary safeguards put in place those State police men would become tools and thugs in the hands of Yoruba politicians and they will use them to hunt down their foes and critics. They will kill more of your own kinsmen than even bandits. Just wait and see.
How long have we been crying in Igbomina and Okun lands for help over insecurity and banditry? Who cares, who listens? But then, what goes round comes round. They finally struck at Ogbomosho and took children and teachers away and killed some. Then all hell broke loose. So Yoruba can shout? So Yoruba can act and make noise even at Olympic stage for her children? Where was that solidarity, that rousing response all these months when Igbomina was besieged and Okunland was surrounded? You see what I am saying? Schools have been shut in many parts of Igbomina land for long due to insecurity depriving children access to education and no is worried and no one is complaining in the Southwest.
Does that mean that one Yoruba life is deemed more important than the other? Do you see what I am saying? There is evil in your hands.
Why do Yoruba do evil to themselves? Why do Yoruba naturally appear to loath each other? I do not know but can hazard a guess. However, that will be the story for another day. Our hiistorians even can’t tell us. Neither will sociologists, behavioural scientists or even theologians be able to decode this mystery. They will try but they will not hit the real problem.
Before us is a problem that everyone and anyone can identify but which no one is addressing. Something is not right among the Yoruba and about the Yoruba. Something need to be exorcised from among the Yoruba, from their psyche, belief and behaviour and actions and attitude. Who will bell the cat? Who will fire the first shot? Who will raise or lift the first axe against this evil tree?
The earlier this is done the better.
I have not written this to tarnish anyone or any institution or town or city or impute criminal motive or instinct against any town or particular people. Neither have I tried to accuse any city or town or people of criminality or criminal intent or behaviour. I have told my experience and the experience of a few close friends and I have expressed personal opinion which are within my rights. You don’t have to accept them or even believe them or even read them.
It is still a free world.
*For Joseph*
Happy birthday, Joseph. As you mark your birthday today I wish you all the best in life. Always remember what your father stands and lives for and be ready to stand for the truth even if you must stand alone.
Concluded.
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Moses Oludele Idowu
July 15, 2026
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