Group links Bayero’s attack to succession

The police authorities have been urged to probe the strong suspicion that the attack on the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, was orchestrated to prevent one of his sons, Alhaji Nasiru Ado Bayero, from becoming the next Emir of Kano, after his father’s future demise, on the grounds of his mother’s Yoruba heritage.
In a statement on Monday, Apapo O’odua Koya, the Yoruba self-determination group, said it has it on good authority that the attack might not have been orchestrated by Boko Haram but by a group of Fulani irredentists who are bent on ensuring that the Emir’s son, whose mother is a Yoruba woman from Kwara State, does not succeed his 83-year-old father.
The statement said: “This attack is another way of demonstrating the deep seated hatred the Fulani hegemony harbours against other nationalities that are non-Fulani.
“We are convinced that the Emir was not the target of the assailants, but his son whom the sponsors of the attack think must be prevented at all cost from becoming the next Emir of Kano at the demise of the current Emir.”
The statement was signed by Dr. Wunmi Olutona, the group’s Head of Northern Affairs.
AOKOYA said the solution to the seemingly intractable problem facing Nigeria is to dissolve the country and allow each ethnic group to determine its future.
It said: “Nigeria is tottering on the precipice of a full blown war.
“This assassination attempt shows the sophistication of the armed insurgents in Nigeria and the helplessness of the Nigerian state.
“It now appears that any ethnic nationality that is not armed will have itself to blame and the crisis seems inevitably on the pathway to partition.”
The group said it suspects that the attack was sponsored by high profile elements in the North, dimming the prospect of fishing out the attackers.
AOKOYA said: “There is a blood-bound attachment to the stool of the Emir of Kano, a city originally owned and administered by the dark-skinned and less hateful Hausa people which was taken over by force of arms by the Fulani during the 1804 Jihad.
“Since that Islamic revolution, the Fulani emirate has been guiding the stool with a mixture of jealousy and high-pitched encirclement of the throne preventing the stool from biological cross fertilization of genes.
“It is one record that for over 60 years, the owners of the land, the Hausa people, have fought in vain to reclaim what belongs to them.
“This led to the formation of the Northern Elements Progressive Union, led by the late Aminu Kano, an Hausa person, and his successor, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, who is also of the Hausa stock.
“While there is a general categorization of the Hausa-Fulani by the media, a tin but intolerable line separates the two distinct nationalities which cleavages are bound to be exposed at the fullest of time.”