Nigeria is approaching another presidential election under conditions demanding sober judgment from the Yoruba people. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a Yoruba man, is seeking a second term in 2027. His candidacy has become the center of a polarized struggle over power, hardship, federal appointments, and the future of the Nigerian federation. The Yoruba face a dangerous political dilemma, with potential consequences for millions of Yoruba people who neither selected his appointees nor designed his policies.
The Yoruba people must not be treated as owners, beneficiaries, or guarantors of President Tinubu's presidency. No ethnic nation should have its future attached to the electoral survival of one person. The accusation of lopsided appointments has deepened this risk, with public figures criticizing the concentration of important offices around the President's ethnic and political circle. The Presidency has denied that its appointments violate the principle of federal character, but the political effect of the controversy is real.
The ethnicization of national power makes it possible for the hardship of Nigerians to be remembered as the work of a Yoruba presidency. The removal of the petrol subsidy and the liberalization of the exchange rate were defended as necessary reforms, but they contributed to a severe cost-of-living crisis. These policies were decisions of the Federal Government, not resolutions of the Yoruba people. Yet, the Yoruba may be exposed to political retaliation by interests that treat President Tinubu's presidency as an ethnic conquest.
The Yoruba constitute a historic national community with a widely shared language, a recognized cultural inheritance, a substantial population, and an identifiable homeland. Yoruba society is internally diverse, but diversity does not cancel nationhood. The relevant question is whether a people possess a sustained identity, a territorial base, the capacity for government, and the political will to determine their collective future. The Yoruba meet the first three tests, but the fourth must be established democratically.
The case for Yoruba self-determination is strengthened by the persistent separation between responsibility and power in Nigeria. State governments are blamed when communities are unsafe, while the police remain substantially under federal command. Regions require long negotiations to exercise authority over matters central to their development. Public revenue is pooled and redistributed through a system that often weakens the connection between taxation, performance, and accountability.
A sovereign Yoruba state would place final political responsibility closer to the people who must live with its consequences. It would allow the Yoruba political community to determine its security institutions, economic priorities, education policy, public administration, and external relations. This is the strongest argument for independence, concerning accountable power, not ethnic superiority. The events of 1993 remain relevant, with Moshood Abiola winning support across ethnic, regional, and religious divisions, yet the presidential election was annulled.
The coming election presents another warning: if the political safety of the Yoruba rises when one Yoruba candidate wins and falls when he loses, then the federation has failed to create equal citizenship. A durable people cannot plan its survival around access to Aso Rock. Presidency is temporary; nationhood is intergenerational. Self-determination must be pursued with discipline, through a peaceful, democratic, and negotiated process, starting with a representative self-determination congress including the six southwestern states and relevant Yoruba communities.
Key points
- The Yoruba people must not be held collectively responsible for President Tinubu's policies and actions.
- A sovereign Yoruba state would allow the Yoruba people to determine their own security institutions, economic priorities, and education policy.
- The Yoruba self-determination movement must be pursued through a peaceful, democratic, and negotiated process.
