The protest that recently took place in Lagos was said to be against the war involving Israel, Iran and the United States. But for many of us who grew up believing that the soil of Oduduwa represents reason, enlightenment and intellectual courage, that protest raised a deeper and more disturbing question.
The unexpected has happened. Something I never imagined would occur on the soil of Oduduwa has now happened before our very eyes.
The same Yoruba land that once produced intellectual giants, fearless thinkers and world-class scholars is gradually becoming a playground for blind religious extremism. That reality is painful to admit.
This is the land that gave birth to the legendary Obafemi Awolowo, a man whose vision built modern Western Nigeria. This is the same land that produced the courageous activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a woman who stood up to colonial authorities when many men were still trembling in fear. This land also produced brilliant minds like Ayodele Awojobi, the engineering genius whose intellectual capacity amazed universities around the world, and the fearless educationist Tai Solarin, who dedicated his entire life to raising young Nigerians to think independently.
These were people who believed that knowledge, science and reason should guide society.
So how did we arrive here?
How did the sons and daughters of Oduduwa begin to abandon the culture of deep thinking and replace it with blind religious fanaticism?
Sometimes I ask myself that question, and honestly, I struggle to find the answer.
Last year, a friend sent me a disturbing video from Iwo in Osun State. In that video, a man was leading a group of innocent schoolchildren on the street to protest the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
I looked at the video and shook my head.
What exactly do children in Iwo know about the complex geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East? What business do they have marching on the streets of Iwo over a war thousands of miles away?
At that time, I brushed it aside. After all, there are always a few misguided people everywhere in the world. Every society has its own share of attention seekers, hungry manipulators and ideological extremists.
So I ignored it and moved on with my life.
But yesterday something else happened that made me pause.
I was inside my private library searching for a book on science and technology when another video suddenly appeared on my phone. This time the video came from Ogbomoso.
In the video, a man who claimed to be Immam of that ancient city and clearly sounded educated was making a shocking statement. He declared openly that anyone who refused to follow a particular Northern traditional ruler directives on Ramadan in the South West deserved to be killed.
Killed.
That was the word he used.
I had to pause the video and rewind it to make sure I heard him correctly.
Then I asked myself a painful question.
Is this the same Ogbomoso that produced one of the most formidable politicians in Yoruba history, Samuel Ladoke Akintola?
Chief S. L. Akintola was once regarded as one of the sharpest political minds the Yoruba race ever produced. Whether people agreed with his politics or not, nobody could deny his intellectual strength.
So how did we move from producing political giants to producing educated extremists?
That is when I began to reflect deeply.
There is a saying I have always believed in: if a society is technologically backward, then no matter how polished the grammar of its people may sound, they are still living in intellectual darkness and educated illiterate.
Education is not about certificates.
Education is about reasoning.
Education is about questioning.
Education is about understanding the world beyond the narrow walls of religion and tribal sentiment.
Sadly, that spirit seems to be fading.
What we are seeing today across parts of Yoruba land is the rise of what I call “Alakatatiki esin” — educated religious bigots who hide behind academic certificates but lack intellectual independence.
These people can quote scriptures from morning till night, but they cannot analyze the world around them. They cannot separate faith from fanaticism.
From Iwo — a town deeply rooted in Yoruba culture — to Ogbomoso, once known as a center of intellectual development, something strange is happening.
The vacuum created by declining intellectual curiosity is now being filled by empty brain religious extremism.
And unfortunately, foreign observers are watching closely.
Two months ago, I had an experience that made me understand that the world is paying attention to these developments.
I received an invitation to visit the office of the Assistant Inspector General of Police in charge of Interpol in Abuja.
The meeting had to do with a case involving the disappearance of a Nigerian citizen in the Republic of Ireland many years ago.
Because I was the first Nigerian to publish a free Nigerian newspaper in Ireland at the time, investigators believed my newspaper had reported the incident in 2004. They wanted to see a copy of that edition.
Unfortunately, more than twenty years have passed, and I no longer have that particular copy in my archive.
But what happened after I left the Interpol office surprised me.
I received a call from contacts in Ireland. Our conversation moved beyond the missing person case and drifted into broader discussions about Nigeria’s current situation.
One of the issues that came up was the rising wave of religious extremism.
The caller reminded me of something many Nigerians have forgotten.
For decades, Irish missionaries quietly worked across Nigeria. They built schools. They built hospitals. They trained teachers and nurses. They helped educate thousands of children from poor families.
At one point, more than two hundred volunteers from Ireland were working in different parts of Nigeria.
But today, that story has changed dramatically.
Many of those missionaries have left.
Some of the schools they built have been destroyed by attacks from armed groups, including bandits and terrorists operating in certain parts of the country.
Knowledge itself is slowly becoming a dangerous pursuit in those regions.
Only a few months ago, the last Irish volunteer working in parts of northern Nigeria reportedly died in Gombe.
That conversation left me deeply troubled.
When you step back and examine the bigger picture, the signs are not encouraging.
A country that once prided itself on education is now battling ignorance.
A society that once produced fearless thinkers is now producing loud extremists.
A nation that once welcomed teachers and missionaries from around the world is now watching many of them leave.
When knowledge begins to disappear and fanaticism begins to grow, history shows us that danger is not far away.
If Nigerians refuse to confront this reality honestly, the future may become even more uncertain.
And that is why the events we are seeing today — whether in Lagos, Iwo, Ogbomoso or elsewhere — should not be dismissed as ordinary street protests.
They are warning signs.
Clear warning signs that Nigeria is drifting toward dangerous waters.
If we continue to replace reason with blind religious emotion, we may soon wake up in a country we no longer recognize.
And by then, it may already be too late.
Mogaji Wole Arisekola, Publisher of The Street Journal Newspaper, writes from Ibadan.
