Yoruba land, due to its geographical location, antiquity, safety, opportunities and exotic cultural practices, has become the preferred destination of many Nigerians who seek safety and greener pastures away from their ancestral lands.
The Nigerian Constitution provides for the freedom to live, own property and conduct business anywhere within the borders of Nigeria, irrespective of ethnic or religious affiliation. The requirement for enjoying this constitutional provision is that one must be a citizen of Nigeria.
While this provision of the Constitution appears to be a strategy for national integration, it has created an enormous burden on the Yoruba Nation within Nigeria and continues to generate serious concerns among the Yoruba people.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics’ Statistical Report on Awareness and Perception of the Danger in Irregular Migration in Nigeria (2020), the Bureau revealed that the South-West geopolitical zone received between 30 and 35 per cent of internal migrants in Nigeria between 2013 and 2020.
This development continues to create serious concerns for many Yoruba people because this lopsided pattern of internal migration comes with a myriad of disadvantages for the Yoruba people and threatens the political survival of Yoruba land.
Over the decades, Nigeria has been confronted with various challenges, including terrorism, which is predominant in the North, violent secessionist agitation in the South-East, unemployment and other socioeconomic challenges. These conditions continue to force internal migration. However, Yoruba land has increasingly become the preferred destination for internal migrants and, consequently, the region consistently bears the consequences of insecurity and lack of opportunities across the Northern and Eastern states.
Yoruba land is one of the constituent regions of Nigeria. It is unfair that the region should bear the burden of the entire country. It deserves equitable treatment, particularly because Yoruba land does not possess any special constitutional status or receive additional funding from the Federation Account to accommodate the growing influx of migrants. Unfortunately, unchecked internal migration into the South-West has placed enormous pressure on the infrastructure and finances of Yoruba states.
Yoruba land remains the most stable, advanced and peaceful region in Nigeria. It is richly endowed with cultural antiquity, demonstrated through its rich cultural practices, festivals, rituals and, most notably, the Omoluabi ethos, which represents a body of unwritten behavioural codes and moral values deeply ingrained in Yoruba society through cultural transmission from one generation to another. Unfortunately, the region is gradually losing the civilisational qualities that have historically distinguished the Yoruba people as a distinct group within the Nigerian entity.
The UN Human Rights Council Resolution 58/4, titled Cultural Rights and the Protection of Cultural Heritage, emphasises safeguarding cultural heritage and rights across both physical and digital environments. Its provisions address integrating heritage protection into humanitarian efforts and peacebuilding, bridging digital divides for inclusive cultural access, and preventing the destruction of cultural sites during and outside conflicts. The resolution highlights the importance of cultural preservation.
Nigeria is a multi-ethnic state. When migrants move to a different region from their homeland, they naturally take their cultures and social practices with them. However, these alien cultural practices increasingly contribute to cultural dilution and threaten to erode Yoruba cultural identity due to the growing population of internal migrants.
The Almajiri system, for instance, is a culture associated with Northern Nigeria. Due to unchecked migration, roads in major cities and communities across Yoruba land are now littered with vast numbers of children of Northern immigrants begging for alms. This culture is alien to the Yoruba people, yet it is increasingly threatening to normalise street begging and the use of minors for soliciting alms across Yoruba land.
The vast number of these children begging on the streets are usually included in datasets considered when research is conducted on the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria, thereby attracting negative educational statistics to the Yoruba region.
Similarly, in one of the recent news reports, six individuals and alleged syndicate members were arrested by the Ogun State Police Command for operating an illegal baby factory and human trafficking hub at Toluwalase Street, Abaren Village, via Gbarinmole, Mowe, in Obafemi-Owode Local Government Area. These individuals included Florence Glory Ogbona, Magdalene Julius, Chidike Egwuonwu, Stephen Ogbona, Onyechu Chidike and Oseni Kusamotu Idaya, the attending nurse who was also implicated in the operation.
The recent discovery of illegal drug manufacturing plants in some ungoverned areas within Yoruba states, including Lagos, alongside the manufacture of fake products, remains another serious cause for concern. Of particular concern is that the major actors involved in these criminal ventures are reportedly migrants, largely from the South-East region.
Another area of concern is the security of the Yoruba region. In May this year, news broke of the abduction of schoolchildren and their teachers in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State. The region continues to experience an unprecedented level of insecurity, with kidnapping and armed attacks increasingly making communities unsafe.
Young people migrate into Yoruba land daily without essential survival skills or identifiable means of livelihood. Many of these migrants are brought into the South-West under extremely dangerous conditions, hanging onto haulage trucks transporting goods and commodities from the North. They arrive in Yoruba land without any meaningful means of survival and, as a result, some resort to criminal activities.
Additionally, some of these individuals from the North practise a version of Islam that accommodates violence and extreme views, different from the kind of Islam traditionally practised in Yoruba land. The importation and spread of such extreme religious ideologies threaten to destabilise the foundational religious tolerance of the Yoruba people. These factors continue to compromise the security and social stability of the region.
Finally, the governments of Yoruba states have been forced to increase their spending on infrastructure and public services, including transportation, healthcare, security, education and other sectors, to accommodate the influx of internal migrants from other regions.
This has not only imposed enormous pressure on the infrastructure and finances of the region but also constitutes an injustice against the Yoruba people. This is because Yoruba states are not given additional resources to cater specifically for these migrants, yet their governments are expected to make the necessary infrastructure and public services available. This has serious implications for the quality, adequacy and accessibility of these facilities and services for the indigenous population.
The implications of unchecked migration into Yoruba land extend beyond cultural dilution, insecurity and pressure on public infrastructure. They also have serious consequences for the political control and future of the land.
As internal migration continues unchecked, the demographic composition of the South-West continues to change. This demographic transformation has increasingly resulted in a bitter struggle for control of the political machinery and governance structures across Yoruba land between indigenous people and migrants.
This is no longer just a question of population movement or the constitutional right of Nigerians to reside anywhere in the country. It is also a question of the political future of an indigenous people in their ancestral homeland.
The real danger is the possibility of a conflict erupting when the indigenous people eventually decide that enough is enough of what they perceive as attempts by non-Yoruba populations to take over their ancestral land and political power.
It is dangerous to ignore this possibility or pretend that the growing demographic and political tensions do not exist. No indigenous population should be expected to watch helplessly as the demographic composition of its homeland changes, its cultural identity becomes increasingly diluted and the struggle for political control intensifies, without expressing legitimate concerns about its future.
The Yoruba people have a legitimate interest in the political destiny of their homeland. The preservation of Yoruba identity, the protection of indigenous interests and the political future of Yoruba land must not be sacrificed on the altar of an unrestrained interpretation of national integration.
Yoruba land cannot continue to bear the burden of Nigeria’s challenges while the interests, identity, security and political future of its indigenous people are progressively undermined.