By Farooq Kperogi
Amid the grief of the heartrendingly tragic collapse of the 21-storey luxury apartment building in Ikoyi, Lagos, a sadly familiar, barely acknowledged but nonetheless insidiously widespread anti-Muslim bigotry in Yoruba land came to light.

A Yoruba Muslim by the name of Adebowale Sikiru revealed in an interview with a YouTube news channel called AN 24 that he was rejected for a job at the Ikoyi construction site because of his Muslim faith. He applied for the position of a site engineer and was found qualified enough to deserve being invited for an interview by Femi Osibona, the MD of Fourscore Homes, the firm that managed the construction of the ill-fated multi-storey building.

After the interview, Sikiru said Osibona asked him what church he attended, and he responded that he was a Muslim. “Ah, I can’t work with a Muslim,” Sikiru quoted Osibona to have said. Osibona reportedly said in Yoruba that he couldn’t work with someone whose response to his chant of “Praise God!” would be “Alhamdulillah!”
When Sikiru told him of his struggles with getting gainfully employed after graduation, Osibona also reportedly said it was probably because of his Muslim faith that he was not “able to make a headway” in life. “He said that in front of even the bricklayers” and many others at the site, Sikiru said.

Sikiru left the site sad, humiliated, and deflated, but a friend of his who brought his attention to the job he had interviewed for called him while he was on his way back home. The friend wanted to find out if he was trapped in the building that had collapsed a few hours earlier. That was the time it dawned on Sikiru that his rejection and humiliation on account of his faith ironically saved him from death.

Unfortunately, Osibona died in the collapsed building, so we have no way of getting his own side of the story. Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem plausible that Sikiru, who didn’t even come across as a devout Muslim during his interview with AN 24, would just wake up and invent the encounter with Osibona. Plus, videos that have emerged of Osibona’s meretriciously outward displays of his Christianity and evangelical exhibitionism are consistent with Sikiru’s account of his encounter with him.

More than that, though, it merely instantiates the casual bigotry that Yoruba Muslims routinely contend with in their own natal region on account of their faith, which I’ve known for years.

I followed the social media conversations that Sikiru’s encounter with Osibona triggered among Yoruba Muslims and came away with the distinct impression that many Yoruba Muslims are seething with frustration and deep-seated inferiority complex on account of their faith-based systematic exclusion and demonization, but they are grinning and bearing their fate in smoldering silence out of social pressure, out of anxieties about social ostracism. We call this the spectacle of the spiral of silence in communication theory.

A Facebook friend of mine by the name of Ganiyu Oludare Lasisi who now lives and works in Scotland narrated how he was denied a job to teach high school geography in his hometown of Abeokuta because of his Muslim faith. He has an Upper Second-Class honors degree in Geography and a distinction in the subject in his “O” level. But “on the day of the interview,” Lasisi said, “the school owner/founder (also a pastor) rejected me because of my Muslim name (Ganiyu). I was so sad and angry then. He even suggested that I can convert to Christianity and change Ganiyu to Gabriel.”

In their safe spaces, multiple Yoruba Muslims shared similar such anecdotal encounters of causal bigotry. They say they are habitually ridiculed for their faith, sneered at for their Muslim sartorial choices, alienated and rhetorically marginalized, and outright denied opportunities by people with whom they share the same ethnicity. Several of them are forced to convert to Christianity or hide their faith to fit in.

Just the other day, on November 3, Premium Times published a story of the appointment of a 45-year-old professor of geo-technical engineering by the name of Afeez Bello as acting Vice Chancellor of the Osun State University in Osogbo. The photo of Bello that the paper used to illustrate the story was of a heavily bearded man with a Muslim felt hat.

Apparently, that sartorial symbol of male Muslim identity was like a red rag to a bull among Christian Facebook commenters, most of whom were Yoruba. The man was called “Boko Haram,” “Shekau’s reincarnation,” a “fanatic,” and all sorts of other cruel slanders and unwarrantedly unmentionable vituperations. I was emotionally distraught after reading a sample of the comments. I inflicted self-torture on myself.

The truth is that the famed religious ecumenicalism and tolerance of the Yoruba people is often achieved at the expense of Yoruba Muslims. It is they, and not their Christian brothers and sisters, who must always perform religious tolerance. (In his interview with the YouTube news channel, even Sikiru felt compelled to say that 95 percent of his friends are Christians and that he hadn’t closed off the possibility that he could convert to Christianity at some point in his life.)

It is Yoruba Muslims who are required to downplay or hide their religious identity in the interest of an overarching Yoruba identity because, over the last few decades, Christianity has been rhetorically constituted in the popular imagination as a core constituent in the construction of Yoruba identity. That’s why prominent Yoruba Muslims almost always have to invoke their connection to Christianity to fit in.

The late Gani Fawehinmi always had a need to show that his wife was a Christian. Bola Ahmed Tinubu has a need to strategically let it be known that his wife isn’t only a Christian but a deacon. House of Representatives Speaker Olufemi Hakeem Gbajabiamila concealed his Muslim identity until he needed the support of the Muslim North to become Speaker. After the fact, his handlers played up the fact that his wife and his mother are Christians.

Prince Bola Ajibola, one of Africa’s finest jurists who happens to be a devout Muslim, doesn’t openly bear Abduljabar, his Muslim name—unlike his father who bore Abdulsalam as his first name—perhaps, not being married to a Christian, it was his only way to reassure his Christian Yoruba brothers and sisters that he is Yoruba. Yet, he is so strong in his Muslim faith that he established the Crescent University, one of Nigeria’s first private Islamic universities, in his hometown of Abeokuta.

Although Muslims constitute a numerical majority in Yoruba land, they are a symbolic minority and are perpetually put in a position to prove their “Yorubaness.” For instance, in the heat of the debate over the formation of Amotekun to ward off “Fulani bandits,” Bolaji Aluko, who was a professor here in the United States and who is now a prominent Ekiti State government official, used the moment to stealthily alienate Yoruba Muslims in his state.

In a January 25, 2021 article titled “Sunday Musings: On the Matter of Farmer-Herdsmen Clashes in Ekiti State,” he wrote, among other things, “Our Muslim Yoruba citizens must decide whether the Umma principle of brotherhood is greater that [sic] the collective security of our Yoruba citizenry." As I told him then, there are at least four ways in which he was wrong.

First, he exoticized, needlessly put Yoruba Muslims on the spot, and created a false binary between being Muslim and being Yoruba, even though (nominal) Muslims constitute the majority in Oyo, Osun, Ogun, and Lagos states. Islam has been in Yorubaland since at least the 1400s. The first mosque was built in Oyo-Ile, the ancient capital of the Oyo Empire, in 1550, that is, centuries before colonialism.

Second, Yoruba Muslims are themselves victims of the homicidal fury of Fulani brigands. If being Muslim hasn't immunized Yoruba Muslims against sanguinary clashes with Fulani people, why should they be singled out as people who are suspect, as people who might betray non-Muslim Yoruba people to the Fulani out of "the Umma principle of brotherhood," which, by the way, is nonsensical, meaningless verbiage?

Third, Aluko’s claim assumes that all Fulani brigands are Muslims (they are NOT) and that they are committing their crimes on behalf of Islam, which would predispose them spare Yoruba Muslims in the spirit of "the Umma principle of brotherhood." But nothing can be more ignorant and bigoted than that.
If "Umma principle of brotherhood" (whatever the heck that means) were a thing, Muslims in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, Niger, and elsewhere (who are also incidentally Fulani, Hausa, or "Hausa-Fulani" wouldn't be killed, kidnapped, and overawed by criminally bloodthirsty Fulani brigands. Mosques wouldn’t be invaded, and imams and worshipers kidnapped and murdered. That should tell anyone that this isn't about religion or even ethnicity.
Sadly, Yoruba Muslims have no voice and seem to have accepted their fate with listless resignation. Not being a Yoruba myself, I know I will be viciously attacked by the people who lubricate and enjoy the current hegemonic high ground that puts Yoruba Muslims at the lower end of the totem pole, but I am not one to shy away from telling the truth because of fear of attacks. I resist injustice no matter who the victims or the perpetrators are.

https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/11/ikoyi-tragedy-and-casual-bigotry.html

Osibona isn't a Christian. He is a pure Cultist who hides behind the Church. We know them. He is from my State. We can go to Church at 8:00AM on Sunday, then in the evening we go to see Alfa Sule for Islamic.consultation. Later in the night, we will still go to Ogboni meeting.

Check out who started the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity, it is our father Archbishop Oluseyi Ogunbiyi.

Yorubas don't discriminate against Religion, we do all.


But how does this concern the Almajari who was born by the roadside by destitute parents? He should face his Sahara desert that is flowing with Sorrow, Tears and Blood.

Farooq Kperogi is MAD. He should mind his business

APCNig:
Osibona isn't a Christian. He is a pure Cultist who hides behind the Church. We know them. He is from my State. We can go to Church at 8:00AM on Sunday, then in the evening we go to see Alfa Sule for Islamic.consultation. Later in the night, we will still go to Ogboni meeting.

Check out who started the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity, it is our father Archbishop Oluseyi Ogunbiyi.

Yorubas don't discriminate against Religion, we do all.


But how does this concern the Almajari who was born by the roadside by destitute parents? He should face his Sahara desert that is flowing with Sorrow, Tears and Blood.

Farooq Kperogi is MAD. He should mind his business

I need you to present indisputable proof that Femi Fourscore was a cultist. Name the group, its location and some other members.

The Femi that i know in his lifetime was a bible class teacher, evangelist and a philanthropist. His open disdain and rabid condemnation for anything beyond praising Jehovah, praying to God and acting our faith was well known.

It even made him enemies with thise who for like open office for him head based on vision things...the guy no dey even reason their matter at all.

Me myself, I am a Yoruba man and i have never in my life stepped outside of church for anything. So did my father and my brothers. Even common campus cult self i no belong. So your assertion is false that all Yorubas are syncretic by nature.

This is zainab a corper that was trapped in the collapse too

She is Muslim

I don't know what is wrong with Yoruba Muslims

You people should let us hear word this nonsense spread across all religious.

For too long

That's an old story

NaijirianKing:
For too long Muslims living in the SW have been marginalized even though if a proper census was conducted we would be shocked to find out that Islam is quietly the dominant religion in the SW.

Many erroneously assume that Islam is the religion of only the North, but Islam is the dominant religion in the SW as well. It is time for the quiet majority of Muslims in the SW should unite with their brothers in the North and fight for equal rights through out the nation. Wearing a hijab is not a crime nor should it be criminalized.

Yoruba Muslims why do you hate Yoruba Christian's like this

Ekiti, Ondo is pure Christian

Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Lagos there is no where Christian's are less than than 50% in each

otipoju:


I need you to present indisputable proof that Fourscore was a cultist. Name the group, the location and some other members.

Femi in his lifetime was a bible class teacher, and evangelist and his open disdain and rabid condemnation for anything beyond praise, prayer and applying faith was well known.

I am a Yoruba man and i have never in my life stepped outside of church for anything. Even common campus cult self i no belong. So your assertion is false.

Bible class teacher ko, Quran class teacher ni. Better go and face your life and leave rge dead Cultist to face his judgement.

Leverage2021:
This is zainab a corper that was trapped in the collapse too

She is Muslim

I don't know what is wrong with Yoruba Muslims

I think you should mind your business and leave Yorubas alone. We practice all Religions. I mean all.

Quitam:
By Farooq Kperogi
Amid the grief of the heartrendingly tragic collapse of the 21-storey luxury apartment building in Ikoyi, Lagos, a sadly familiar, barely acknowledged but nonetheless insidiously widespread anti-Muslim bigotry in Yoruba land came to light.

A Yoruba Muslim by the name of Adebowale Sikiru revealed in an interview with a YouTube news channel called AN 24 that he was rejected for a job at the Ikoyi construction site because of his Muslim faith. He applied for the position of a site engineer and was found qualified enough to deserve being invited for an interview by Femi Osibona, the MD of Fourscore Homes, the firm that managed the construction of the ill-fated multi-storey building.

After the interview, Sikiru said Osibona asked him what church he attended, and he responded that he was a Muslim. “Ah, I can’t work with a Muslim,” Sikiru quoted Osibona to have said. Osibona reportedly said in Yoruba that he couldn’t work with someone whose response to his chant of “Praise God!” would be “Alhamdulillah!”
When Sikiru told him of his struggles with getting gainfully employed after graduation, Osibona also reportedly said it was probably because of his Muslim faith that he was not “able to make a headway” in life. “He said that in front of even the bricklayers” and many others at the site, Sikiru said.

Sikiru left the site sad, humiliated, and deflated, but a friend of his who brought his attention to the job he had interviewed for called him while he was on his way back home. The friend wanted to find out if he was trapped in the building that had collapsed a few hours earlier. That was the time it dawned on Sikiru that his rejection and humiliation on account of his faith ironically saved him from death.

Unfortunately, Osibona died in the collapsed building, so we have no way of getting his own side of the story. Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem plausible that Sikiru, who didn’t even come across as a devout Muslim during his interview with AN 24, would just wake up and invent the encounter with Osibona. Plus, videos that have emerged of Osibona’s meretriciously outward displays of his Christianity and evangelical exhibitionism are consistent with Sikiru’s account of his encounter with him.

More than that, though, it merely instantiates the casual bigotry that Yoruba Muslims routinely contend with in their own natal region on account of their faith, which I’ve known for years.

I followed the social media conversations that Sikiru’s encounter with Osibona triggered among Yoruba Muslims and came away with the distinct impression that many Yoruba Muslims are seething with frustration and deep-seated inferiority complex on account of their faith-based systematic exclusion and demonization, but they are grinning and bearing their fate in smoldering silence out of social pressure, out of anxieties about social ostracism. We call this the spectacle of the spiral of silence in communication theory.

A Facebook friend of mine by the name of Ganiyu Oludare Lasisi who now lives and works in Scotland narrated how he was denied a job to teach high school geography in his hometown of Abeokuta because of his Muslim faith. He has an Upper Second-Class honors degree in Geography and a distinction in the subject in his “O” level. But “on the day of the interview,” Lasisi said, “the school owner/founder (also a pastor) rejected me because of my Muslim name (Ganiyu). I was so sad and angry then. He even suggested that I can convert to Christianity and change Ganiyu to Gabriel.”

In their safe spaces, multiple Yoruba Muslims shared similar such anecdotal encounters of causal bigotry. They say they are habitually ridiculed for their faith, sneered at for their Muslim sartorial choices, alienated and rhetorically marginalized, and outright denied opportunities by people with whom they share the same ethnicity. Several of them are forced to convert to Christianity or hide their faith to fit in.

Just the other day, on November 3, Premium Times published a story of the appointment of a 45-year-old professor of geo-technical engineering by the name of Afeez Bello as acting Vice Chancellor of the Osun State University in Osogbo. The photo of Bello that the paper used to illustrate the story was of a heavily bearded man with a Muslim felt hat.

Apparently, that sartorial symbol of male Muslim identity was like a red rag to a bull among Christian Facebook commenters, most of whom were Yoruba. The man was called “Boko Haram,” “Shekau’s reincarnation,” a “fanatic,” and all sorts of other cruel slanders and unwarrantedly unmentionable vituperations. I was emotionally distraught after reading a sample of the comments. I inflicted self-torture on myself.

The truth is that the famed religious ecumenicalism and tolerance of the Yoruba people is often achieved at the expense of Yoruba Muslims. It is they, and not their Christian brothers and sisters, who must always perform religious tolerance. (In his interview with the YouTube news channel, even Sikiru felt compelled to say that 95 percent of his friends are Christians and that he hadn’t closed off the possibility that he could convert to Christianity at some point in his life.)

It is Yoruba Muslims who are required to downplay or hide their religious identity in the interest of an overarching Yoruba identity because, over the last few decades, Christianity has been rhetorically constituted in the popular imagination as a core constituent in the construction of Yoruba identity. That’s why prominent Yoruba Muslims almost always have to invoke their connection to Christianity to fit in.

The late Gani Fawehinmi always had a need to show that his wife was a Christian. Bola Ahmed Tinubu has a need to strategically let it be known that his wife isn’t only a Christian but a deacon. House of Representatives Speaker Olufemi Hakeem Gbajabiamila concealed his Muslim identity until he needed the support of the Muslim North to become Speaker. After the fact, his handlers played up the fact that his wife and his mother are Christians.

Prince Bola Ajibola, one of Africa’s finest jurists who happens to be a devout Muslim, doesn’t openly bear Abduljabar, his Muslim name—unlike his father who bore Abdulsalam as his first name—perhaps, not being married to a Christian, it was his only way to reassure his Christian Yoruba brothers and sisters that he is Yoruba. Yet, he is so strong in his Muslim faith that he established the Crescent University, one of Nigeria’s first private Islamic universities, in his hometown of Abeokuta.

Although Muslims constitute a numerical majority in Yoruba land, they are a symbolic minority and are perpetually put in a position to prove their “Yorubaness.” For instance, in the heat of the debate over the formation of Amotekun to ward off “Fulani bandits,” Bolaji Aluko, who was a professor here in the United States and who is now a prominent Ekiti State government official, used the moment to stealthily alienate Yoruba Muslims in his state.

In a January 25, 2021 article titled “Sunday Musings: On the Matter of Farmer-Herdsmen Clashes in Ekiti State,” he wrote, among other things, “Our Muslim Yoruba citizens must decide whether the Umma principle of brotherhood is greater that [sic] the collective security of our Yoruba citizenry." As I told him then, there are at least four ways in which he was wrong.

First, he exoticized, needlessly put Yoruba Muslims on the spot, and created a false binary between being Muslim and being Yoruba, even though (nominal) Muslims constitute the majority in Oyo, Osun, Ogun, and Lagos states. Islam has been in Yorubaland since at least the 1400s. The first mosque was built in Oyo-Ile, the ancient capital of the Oyo Empire, in 1550, that is, centuries before colonialism.

Second, Yoruba Muslims are themselves victims of the homicidal fury of Fulani brigands. If being Muslim hasn't immunized Yoruba Muslims against sanguinary clashes with Fulani people, why should they be singled out as people who are suspect, as people who might betray non-Muslim Yoruba people to the Fulani out of "the Umma principle of brotherhood," which, by the way, is nonsensical, meaningless verbiage?

Third, Aluko’s claim assumes that all Fulani brigands are Muslims (they are NOT) and that they are committing their crimes on behalf of Islam, which would predispose them spare Yoruba Muslims in the spirit of "the Umma principle of brotherhood." But nothing can be more ignorant and bigoted than that.
If "Umma principle of brotherhood" (whatever the heck that means) were a thing, Muslims in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, Niger, and elsewhere (who are also incidentally Fulani, Hausa, or "Hausa-Fulani" wouldn't be killed, kidnapped, and overawed by criminally bloodthirsty Fulani brigands. Mosques wouldn’t be invaded, and imams and worshipers kidnapped and murdered. That should tell anyone that this isn't about religion or even ethnicity.
Sadly, Yoruba Muslims have no voice and seem to have accepted their fate with listless resignation. Not being a Yoruba myself, I know I will be viciously attacked by the people who lubricate and enjoy the current hegemonic high ground that puts Yoruba Muslims at the lower end of the totem pole, but I am not one to shy away from telling the truth because of fear of attacks. I resist injustice no matter who the victims or the perpetrators are.

https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/11/ikoyi-tragedy-and-casual-bigotry.html

At least Osibona did not kill him

Thousands of Christians have been murdered up north simply for being Christians, what did Kperogi have to say about such killings?

What are we gonna gain from this religious ewar?

APCNig:


I think you should mind your business and leave Yorubas alone. We practice all Religions. I mean all.

shut up

The writer is not Yoruba

Quitam:
By Farooq Kperogi
Amid the grief of the heartrendingly tragic collapse of the 21-storey luxury apartment building in Ikoyi, Lagos, a sadly familiar, barely acknowledged but nonetheless insidiously widespread anti-Muslim bigotry in Yoruba land came to light.

A Yoruba Muslim by the name of Adebowale Sikiru revealed in an interview with a YouTube news channel called AN 24 that he was rejected for a job at the Ikoyi construction site because of his Muslim faith. He applied for the position of a site engineer and was found qualified enough to deserve being invited for an interview by Femi Osibona, the MD of Fourscore Homes, the firm that managed the construction of the ill-fated multi-storey building.

After the interview, Sikiru said Osibona asked him what church he attended, and he responded that he was a Muslim. “Ah, I can’t work with a Muslim,” Sikiru quoted Osibona to have said. Osibona reportedly said in Yoruba that he couldn’t work with someone whose response to his chant of “Praise God!” would be “Alhamdulillah!”
When Sikiru told him of his struggles with getting gainfully employed after graduation, Osibona also reportedly said it was probably because of his Muslim faith that he was not “able to make a headway” in life. “He said that in front of even the bricklayers” and many others at the site, Sikiru said.

Sikiru left the site sad, humiliated, and deflated, but a friend of his who brought his attention to the job he had interviewed for called him while he was on his way back home. The friend wanted to find out if he was trapped in the building that had collapsed a few hours earlier. That was the time it dawned on Sikiru that his rejection and humiliation on account of his faith ironically saved him from death.

Unfortunately, Osibona died in the collapsed building, so we have no way of getting his own side of the story. Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem plausible that Sikiru, who didn’t even come across as a devout Muslim during his interview with AN 24, would just wake up and invent the encounter with Osibona. Plus, videos that have emerged of Osibona’s meretriciously outward displays of his Christianity and evangelical exhibitionism are consistent with Sikiru’s account of his encounter with him.

More than that, though, it merely instantiates the casual bigotry that Yoruba Muslims routinely contend with in their own natal region on account of their faith, which I’ve known for years.

I followed the social media conversations that Sikiru’s encounter with Osibona triggered among Yoruba Muslims and came away with the distinct impression that many Yoruba Muslims are seething with frustration and deep-seated inferiority complex on account of their faith-based systematic exclusion and demonization, but they are grinning and bearing their fate in smoldering silence out of social pressure, out of anxieties about social ostracism. We call this the spectacle of the spiral of silence in communication theory.

A Facebook friend of mine by the name of Ganiyu Oludare Lasisi who now lives and works in Scotland narrated how he was denied a job to teach high school geography in his hometown of Abeokuta because of his Muslim faith. He has an Upper Second-Class honors degree in Geography and a distinction in the subject in his “O” level. But “on the day of the interview,” Lasisi said, “the school owner/founder (also a pastor) rejected me because of my Muslim name (Ganiyu). I was so sad and angry then. He even suggested that I can convert to Christianity and change Ganiyu to Gabriel.”

In their safe spaces, multiple Yoruba Muslims shared similar such anecdotal encounters of causal bigotry. They say they are habitually ridiculed for their faith, sneered at for their Muslim sartorial choices, alienated and rhetorically marginalized, and outright denied opportunities by people with whom they share the same ethnicity. Several of them are forced to convert to Christianity or hide their faith to fit in.

Just the other day, on November 3, Premium Times published a story of the appointment of a 45-year-old professor of geo-technical engineering by the name of Afeez Bello as acting Vice Chancellor of the Osun State University in Osogbo. The photo of Bello that the paper used to illustrate the story was of a heavily bearded man with a Muslim felt hat.

Apparently, that sartorial symbol of male Muslim identity was like a red rag to a bull among Christian Facebook commenters, most of whom were Yoruba. The man was called “Boko Haram,” “Shekau’s reincarnation,” a “fanatic,” and all sorts of other cruel slanders and unwarrantedly unmentionable vituperations. I was emotionally distraught after reading a sample of the comments. I inflicted self-torture on myself.

The truth is that the famed religious ecumenicalism and tolerance of the Yoruba people is often achieved at the expense of Yoruba Muslims. It is they, and not their Christian brothers and sisters, who must always perform religious tolerance. (In his interview with the YouTube news channel, even Sikiru felt compelled to say that 95 percent of his friends are Christians and that he hadn’t closed off the possibility that he could convert to Christianity at some point in his life.)

It is Yoruba Muslims who are required to downplay or hide their religious identity in the interest of an overarching Yoruba identity because, over the last few decades, Christianity has been rhetorically constituted in the popular imagination as a core constituent in the construction of Yoruba identity. That’s why prominent Yoruba Muslims almost always have to invoke their connection to Christianity to fit in.

The late Gani Fawehinmi always had a need to show that his wife was a Christian. Bola Ahmed Tinubu has a need to strategically let it be known that his wife isn’t only a Christian but a deacon. House of Representatives Speaker Olufemi Hakeem Gbajabiamila concealed his Muslim identity until he needed the support of the Muslim North to become Speaker. After the fact, his handlers played up the fact that his wife and his mother are Christians.

Prince Bola Ajibola, one of Africa’s finest jurists who happens to be a devout Muslim, doesn’t openly bear Abduljabar, his Muslim name—unlike his father who bore Abdulsalam as his first name—perhaps, not being married to a Christian, it was his only way to reassure his Christian Yoruba brothers and sisters that he is Yoruba. Yet, he is so strong in his Muslim faith that he established the Crescent University, one of Nigeria’s first private Islamic universities, in his hometown of Abeokuta.

Although Muslims constitute a numerical majority in Yoruba land, they are a symbolic minority and are perpetually put in a position to prove their “Yorubaness.” For instance, in the heat of the debate over the formation of Amotekun to ward off “Fulani bandits,” Bolaji Aluko, who was a professor here in the United States and who is now a prominent Ekiti State government official, used the moment to stealthily alienate Yoruba Muslims in his state.

In a January 25, 2021 article titled “Sunday Musings: On the Matter of Farmer-Herdsmen Clashes in Ekiti State,” he wrote, among other things, “Our Muslim Yoruba citizens must decide whether the Umma principle of brotherhood is greater that [sic] the collective security of our Yoruba citizenry." As I told him then, there are at least four ways in which he was wrong.

First, he exoticized, needlessly put Yoruba Muslims on the spot, and created a false binary between being Muslim and being Yoruba, even though (nominal) Muslims constitute the majority in Oyo, Osun, Ogun, and Lagos states. Islam has been in Yorubaland since at least the 1400s. The first mosque was built in Oyo-Ile, the ancient capital of the Oyo Empire, in 1550, that is, centuries before colonialism.

Second, Yoruba Muslims are themselves victims of the homicidal fury of Fulani brigands. If being Muslim hasn't immunized Yoruba Muslims against sanguinary clashes with Fulani people, why should they be singled out as people who are suspect, as people who might betray non-Muslim Yoruba people to the Fulani out of "the Umma principle of brotherhood," which, by the way, is nonsensical, meaningless verbiage?

Third, Aluko’s claim assumes that all Fulani brigands are Muslims (they are NOT) and that they are committing their crimes on behalf of Islam, which would predispose them spare Yoruba Muslims in the spirit of "the Umma principle of brotherhood." But nothing can be more ignorant and bigoted than that.
If "Umma principle of brotherhood" (whatever the heck that means) were a thing, Muslims in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, Niger, and elsewhere (who are also incidentally Fulani, Hausa, or "Hausa-Fulani" wouldn't be killed, kidnapped, and overawed by criminally bloodthirsty Fulani brigands. Mosques wouldn’t be invaded, and imams and worshipers kidnapped and murdered. That should tell anyone that this isn't about religion or even ethnicity.
Sadly, Yoruba Muslims have no voice and seem to have accepted their fate with listless resignation. Not being a Yoruba myself, I know I will be viciously attacked by the people who lubricate and enjoy the current hegemonic high ground that puts Yoruba Muslims at the lower end of the totem pole, but I am not one to shy away from telling the truth because of fear of attacks. I resist injustice no matter who the victims or the perpetrators are.

https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/11/ikoyi-tragedy-and-casual-bigotry.html

You imagine what other ethnic groups are facing in Yoruba land if such wicked treatment is meted on a Yoruba person because he is a moslem. Awolowo a Yoruba man brought tribalism into Nigeria. Yorubas are tribal bigots, an attitude that is not helpful.

Meanwhile, uncountable number of Christians died in the rumbles of the collapsed building while others are being senselessly killed especially down north for the mere fact they are Christians.So what is Farooq up to?

First of all, RIP to Femi and the other casualties of the tragedy. My takeaway from the late developer's encounter with the Muslim fellow is that, religion is very overrated. In spite of his apparent religious zealotry, Femi still couldn't escape the tragedy that befell him and the other victims. Las las, religion is is a scam. Yes, I said it with my full chest.

The Writer is 100% right but I think the advent of Pentecostal churches spread so much hatred @ Deloitte were asked to joined morning devotion, looking for IT were asked to join Vigil. If you're a Muslim driver for a Christian you're in trouble they will do everything to convert you, in the office is like a war to have a Christian boss but despite that We tried everything to leave with each others and I think it's high time we speak Up and stop pretending that everything is fine because of few extremists. While serving in South South is like hell one Christian friend got angry because of the treatment I received.

NaijirianKing:
It is time for the quiet majority of Muslims in the SW should unite with their brothers in the North and fight for equal rights through out the nation.

What brothers in the north? Did you say equal right? Northern Nigeria? Where do you live?

Now I think this incident is politically motivated

Just to score in some points

Leverage2021:
This is zainab a corper that was trapped in the collapse too

She is Muslim

I don't know what is wrong with Yoruba Muslims

Because a girl bears zainab that means she is a muslim?

NaijirianKing:
For too long Muslims living in the SW have been marginalized even though if a proper census was conducted we would be shocked to find out that Islam is quietly the dominant religion in the SW.

Many erroneously assume that Islam is the religion of only the North, but Islam is the dominant religion in the SW as well. It is time for the quiet majority of Muslims in the SW should unite with their brothers in the North and fight for equal rights through out the nation. Wearing a hijab is not a crime nor should it be criminalized.

He be like say you dey craze, we should unite with you? Humans and animals can never be together fooooooool

APCNig:


Bible class teacher ko, Quran class teacher ni. Better go and face your life and leave rge dead Cultist to face his judgement.

Whoever is behind this moniker, the way you have maliciously slandered this man without any iota of proof is the way that you will be maliciously slandered without proof...and it will lead to your destruction ..except you do not read this.

Keep getting paid peanuts to do dirty work for politicians you hear. Make you no go find something meaningful to do with your life.

motymop:


Because a girl bears zainab that means she is a muslim?

No, it means she is a Jew

otipoju:


Whoever is behind this moniker, the way you have maliciously slandered this man without any iota of proof is the way that you will be maliciously slandered without proof...and it will lead to your destruction ..except you do not read this.

Keep getting paid peanuts to do dirty work for politicians you hear. Make you no go find something meaningful to do with your life.

Your head no correct. Go and find work lazy youth.

motymop:


Because a girl bears zainab that means she is a muslim?

No, it means that she is Buddhist.

APCNig:


Your head no correct. Go and find work lazy youth.

Were...your papa na lazy youth. You for say amen na. Shebi your mouth dey drive rough dey talk wetin you no know. You don because of your miserable 30k monthly collect original gift. You will remember today when they accuse you falsely and your are totally destroyed for it. You will cry for help and no one will be able to save you.

For me as a Yoruba man, I will choose my tribe over any religion.

Collyweed:


No, it means that she is Buddhist.

Both Christians and muslims bear zainab.

tubolancer:
For me as a Yoruba man, I will choose my tribe over any religion.

Mumu the issue is tribe, Yoruba Muslim, Yoruba Christian, who will you choose?

APCNig:


No, it means she is a Jew

Ignorant is your name. Zainab is beared by the both religion

motymop:


Both Christians and muslims bear zainab.

Yeah, including some Hindus and Buddhists.

The Southwest is a deeply complicated society when it comes to religion and religious beliefs.

For instance, it's not uncommon to see a Yoruba who is a christian but seek spiritual consultation with Alfa or Yoruba Muslim that attends church service for spiritual encounter.

The huge chuck of Yoruba people are more spiritual than they are religious, although one cannot deny that the rise in modern pentecostal churches amongst Yorubas have led to a rapid rise in the number of christian religious fanatics amongst the Yorubas, but they are largely in the minority.

Notwithstanding, I may have to agree with the writer that christian fanatics are often given easy pass within the Yoruba society than muslim fanatics. Thus, a Yoruba muslim may have to find ways to constantly prove to Yorubas of other faith that is he or she is not a fanatic, while a Yoruba christian fanatic is seen as a regular guy.

I will also have to point out that this problem is not peculiar to the Yorubas but generally a universal problem. I believe it can be attributed to the activities of terrorist groups like islamic state amongst others, it can also be attributed to the way popular culture portrays islam.

The bias against islamic faith is even more pronounced in the western society in which the writer is currently residing.