A new pan-Yoruba group, Apapo Oodua Koya, (AOKOYA) said today that it has “trusted” information that Boko Haram, the dreaded extremist Islamic group, is likely to attack Lagos and Ibadan in the next few days or in the month of July.
“Boko Haram thinks the best way to get attention is through sustained attacks, but the surest way to dominate national discuss and stir critical opinions is to take the battle to the country’s economic hub, which is Lagos and Ibadan,” the group said in a statement in Ibadan signed by its Secretary for Internal Affairs, Alhaji Mufatau Adedoyin.
“That is the new thinking of the Boko Haram leadership.”
AOKOYA expressed regret that the political leadership of the South West has no concrete plans to curtail the “almost inevitable” suicide bomb attacks that the Islamic group may unleash on the largely urbanized Yoruba region.
It said that the frequent activities of Boko Haram in Kogi State, plus last weekend’s bomb attacks on Kaduna city are clear indications that cities in South West Nigeria must be prepared for their own dose of suicide attacks from Islamic fundamentalists pushing for sectarian leadership of the country.
The group described the bombing of ECWA church in Kaduna as a calculated attack on the Yoruba people, as they are the most notable worshipers in ECWA churches across the country.
Said the statement: “We have intelligence information that Boko Haram will attack the largely vulnerable Yoruba cities on or before the month of July this year.
We fear the carnage that will result from violent attacks on Yoruba cities. It is naïve to assume that Boko Haram will spare Lagos, Ibadan, Warri or any of the Yoruba cities. At present, the Yoruba political leadership relies on the Nigerian Police and the State Security Service, (SSS).
These groups are too polarized, corrupt, inept, politicized, ill-motivated and hunted by low morale to be able to offer any hope for the Yoruba people.”
AOKOYA, which describes itself as a Yoruba self-determination group, noted that as Nigeria inches towards 100 years of the forceful amalgamation of the country by imperial lords, “the dissolution of the country should be a natural expectation given the tear, sorrow and blood” that has been Nigeria’s story since 1914.
“There cannot be any redeemer for a nation that is destined and designed to collapse,” it said.
“We urge the Yoruba people to rise up and work hard to ensure minimum casualty in our search for the inevitable Oduduwa Republic. We seek alliance with the Middle-Belt, Igbos and the South-South, for the greater future of a traumatized population that have been pushed into the cesspool of underdevelopment, hunger and starvation in the hands of a hateful social and political system that offers nothing but destruction and the spilling of human blood.”
Calling for the assistance of the international community to Nigeria “to prevent the carnage that may arise from the inevitable break-up of the country,” AOKOYA said the bombings will not abate simply because the social and political contradictions of a diverse, plural society being forced to live under one law and value has reached its breaking point.
“The issue is no longer whether the country will break-up, the real issue now is when and how,” the statement said. “The people face the grim reality of either a violent break-up or ceaseless confrontation with blood and anguish in the hands of extremist forces.
