By SOLA EBISENI

SHOCKED by the attack on the ancient city of Owo in Ondo State, I have elected to dedicate this column this week to the incident. It came as a shock because just the previous week, I was still in the city attending the High Court.

I was still savouring its ancient ambience, particularly the sprawling territory of the Olowo palace. My mind could only bring to our readers, the full text of the Afenifere Process Statement on the carnage.

The horrendous incident at the St. Francis Catholic Church in the ancient Yoruba city of   Owo, Ondo State, where scores of worshippers were killed by herdsmen wielding most sophisticated weapons is not just an attack on the Church and the psyche of all decent people all over the   world but a deliberate show at testing the self-defence strength of the Yoruba people in resisting the importation   of the horrible culture of violence into our land.

St. Francis Catholic Church, the site of this inhuman carnage, is not only at the heart of Owo, but, in fact, sandwiched between the Oba Market and the Palace of the Olowo of Owo, an ancient Yoruba monarchical heritage, long declared a national monument, and epicentre of human civilisation.

It is an attack on our traditional economy typified by an Oja Oba and the enduring political culture rated even by colonialists as of immemorial global significance. We observe that this attack is coming less than a week after the Methodist Prelate was kidnapped by herdsmen and was only ransomed with the huge sum of N100 million with the respected clergy alluding to the complicity of the nation’s security forces in tandem with   the earlier allegation by General Theophilus Danjuma, a former Chief of Staff of the Nigerian Army.

In all of these, the Federal Government of Nigeria, which against federal precepts, continues   to monopolise security and its architecture, has proven most helpless and irresponsible in securing life and property, an irrefutable sign of the failure of the Nigerian State.

The world be told to hold the Federal Government of Nigeria responsible for  the ensuing consequences of this deliberate assault on the will of the Yoruba people for peace in our land in our unstoppable strives for development matching with the rest of the civilised world. We say in clear terms that the noiseless glides of the Amotekun is no sign of fear and that this stamp on the tail of the viper is one too many.

We commiserate with the scores of families who have lost their loved ones, the Church which even in innocence have been bruised; Kabiesi, the Olowo of Owo, whose sacred eyes must not behold the corpse of his subjects and the Governor of Ondo State, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, who, in spite of all constitutional odds, has held his head high on the issue of our people’s security .

We may only use this opportunity to remind Nigerians, the Federal Government and all still concerned about the unity and corporate existence of this country that its restructuring is urgent and inevitable.