FROM THE OFFICE OF THE LEADER OF THE YORUBA, PROF. BANJI AKINTOYE

   SELF-DETERMINATION MOVEMENT,YSDM

I greet our Yoruba people all over the world, particularly those of our people in our ancestral homeland in the southwestern part of Nigeria – in our states of Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo Oshun and Oyo, as well as the Yoruba parts of Kogi, Kwara and Delta States.I bring you warm Christmas and New Year greetings and wish to let you know that God has finally answered our prayers and is working marvelously on our behalf.

You may recall that the United States government designated Nigeria as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ in November 2025 following the escalating genocide by the Fulani and allied terrorist groups in Nigeria. In the week or so before Christmas, fears of terrorist attacks grew so high that some of our Christians wondered whether it was safe to hold Christmas services at all. In the midst of such fears, the question grew whether President Donald Trump and the United States would go through with their promise to tackle the insecurity in Nigeria by deploying US military resources to Nigeria.

I am pleased to inform all of our Yoruba people that yesterday, Christmas Day, the US army performed precision strikes on the Islamic State terrorists’ network in Nigeria. This is not only a welcome development, but a step in the right direction in eliminating the curse of terrorism from the lives of the over 200 million citizens of Nigeria and particularly from the lives of our 60 million Yoruba people in Nigeria. For many decades, Nigerian Christians, moderate non-fundamentalist Muslims and devotees of indigenous religions have been suffering ever-escalating pain from systematic persecutions by the Islamic Caliphate which the former British colonial rulers of Nigeria imposed on all the peoples of Nigeria at independence of Nigeria in 1960.

We are grateful that God in His infinite mercies has raised a champion in the person of President Donald Trump of the US to intervene in this matter. I sincerely thank President Trump for allowing God Almighty to use him to bring God’s gift of liberation in these trying times to the Nigerian people. President Trump’s commitment of US military resources to fighting terrorism in Nigeria is a historic act that we are very grateful for and that we shall ever be grateful for.

I equally want to thank the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, for his Christmas eve broadcast message in support of the Christians in Nigeria. We say to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we hear your prayers on our behalf, and we are pleased to inform you that we Yoruba people and the entire Christian communities all over Nigeria are friends with the US and Israel. We will continue to stand for the faith that we profess and stand for our people wherever they may find themselves anywhere in the world.

We Yoruba are glad and grateful too that the Federal Government of Nigeria, under the current president, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is reported to be collaborating with the American forces in the fight against terrorism. This is a major and welcome departure from his predecessor, President Muhammadu Buhari, under whom terrorism reached its highest peak in Nigeria with the coming of foreign terror networks such as ISIS.

I implore our Yoruba people to go about their daily lives and to be security conscious, especially in this festive season. The US military is a reputable professional outfit with the utmost discipline and international reputation and are no threat to the good people of Nigeria. We welcome their timely intervention in the worsening security situation of Nigeria, and we use this medium to send a strong message of solidarity for their actions.