Yorùbá South-West - Balkanised and Besieged: The Western Region's Painful Political History
Yorùbá South-West - Balkanised and Besieged: The Western Region's Painful Political History The Whipped but Unyielding Stabiliser of Nigerian Unity I was not in Lagos that day. I watched it on a phone. The way we watch everything now. A shaky clip. Voices off-screen. A convoy. And then that chant. Thief. Thief. Olè. Olè. And I sat with it. Not because it surprised me. Because of where it happened. Not in Enugu. Not in Aba. In Lagos. On the way to Bourdillon. In the city that made the man. So I keep asking myself the same questions. Could this happen in their jungle they called their own state? Has he taken anything from their soil? And what kind of person eats another man's food, sleeps under his roof, and then stands at his gate calling him a thief, Olè, Barawo? The questions are multiple and they are not new. I have been carrying them since before I could read. 1963. 1964. 1965. My father counted them. Now I count them. Sixty years of a siege. My father used to...
