Yoruba secessionist and leader of Ilana Omo Oodua Prof Banji Akintoye has warned southwest governor of planned attacks by Boko Haram, Fulani terrorists, ISWAP on strategic targets in the region.
In a statement issued on Wednesday by his media aide, Maxwell Adeleye, the historian advised governors, religious leaders to protect their assets.
“A combination of Fulani terrorists, Boko Haram and ISIS, have occupied Niger State, which is immediately north of Yorubaland, thereby providing for themselves very easy access into Yorubaland through the Yoruba parts of Kwara and Kogi states,’ he said.
Quoting as recent the US statement that ISIS had infiltrated Southern Nigeria from the sea, Akintoye concluded that means coast of Lagos, Ogun and Ondo states have been infiltrated.
But the statement by the US Africa Command’s Maj.-Gen Dagvin Anderson was not as recent as the professor claimed. Anderson didn’t state categorically the terrorists have penetrated the southwest either.
…We stay fully engaged with the Government of Nigeria to provide them an understanding of what these terrorists are doing, what Boko Haram is doing, what ISIS-West Africa is doing, and how ISIS and al-Qaida are looking to expand further south into the littoral areas,” the AFRICOM commander said during a digital briefing August last year.
However, the Yoruba nation agitator insisted he was raising an informed alarm.
He then speculated based on Boko Haram’s mode of operation what the targets would be in the southwest
“It is very well known that the signature action of these foreign terrorist organisations is to first destroy prominent assets of the society that they attack,” he said, listing public and private edifices across the region.
“These include bridges, important public and private buildings, churches and such eminent church estates as the Redeemed, Winners, Deeper Life, Mountain of Fire Church camps and the unique Synagogue building of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, and even our most prestigious central mosque buildings in Lagos, Ibadan and our other cities.”
Akintoye is a lone voice that no southwest governor reckons with.
Ondo state Gov Rotimi Akeredolu was the first to blast him when the professor first fixed a date Yoruba should break away from Nigeria.