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IN his article: "The bitter truth about the Igbo", Femi Fani-Kayode spectacularly exhibited his ignorance, narrow-mindedness, xenophobia and a penchant for lying. The three part article is a shameless convulsion of Nigerian history, brazenly, skewed against the Igbo. It is tendentious rubbish, just a piece of trash that should be consigned to the dustbin. The first part of his article, a rambling outburst on who owns Lagos, is some nonsensical rhapsody. He wrote, “Lagos and the South-West are the land and the patrimony of the Yoruba and we will not allow anyone, no matter how fond of them we may be, to take it away from us or share it with us in the name of being nice, patriotism, one Nigeria or anything else.” At some other point, he wrote, “One Nigeria, yes, but no one should spit in our faces or covet our land, our treasure, our success, our history, our virtues, our being and our heritage and attempt to claim those for themselves simply because we took them in on a rainy ...

By Akin Osuntokun As the cliché goes, all this would have been laughable if it is not so tragic. In the heat of the subsisting venom and vitriol, it seems nobody now cares that the first set of “deportees” from Lagos were no other than Yoruba indigenes of Oyo and Osun states. I say this because this knowledge is not reflected in the way and manner protagonists have been conducting the debate on the so-called “deportation” of Igbo from Lagos. This precedent completely nullifies the presumption and dangerous peg of tribalism on which the mutual trade in personal and ethnic slurs, derision, denigration, demonisation, and hubris has been hoisted. It tells us that Governor Babatunde Fashola’s action was not motivated and informed by ethnic calculations neither was it intended and directed against any particular group or nationality. It is a detribalised act but it is not a good policy. It is a joke carried too far. It is a conduct unbecoming of any government that aspires to be taken seriou...