The Ijaw, Yoruba and Hausa/Fulani

CERTAIN recent happenings have made it critically impossible for me to expunge certain putrid memories. Sans a scintilla of doubt, you can call me a Nigerian. Yes, no one believes in the ‘one-Nigeria’ phenomenon as much as I do… Born in the ancient Benin Kingdom of Edo State and originally from the creeks in Bayelsa, I grew up in the plains of Owerri, in the South -East, got educated in the cradle of the Yoruba people in the South-West, searched for greener pastures in the Sahelian region of North-West Nigeria, Kano, the commercial city and today, I reside within the rusty brown roofs that houses two important South-West kings – the Olubadan and the Alaafin.

I have made all of this crystal so that by the time I delve into the crux of today’s discourse, you may want to think twice before hauling words like tribalism at me. I have lived amongst the people of this nation, eaten their food, spoken and still speak their languages and I believe that gives me clearance to have this opinion. Ile-Ife, where the Yoruba sun rises, a land of rich cultural heritage and a place of history, has been for several years a home to me. As a matter of fact, I wrote elegies for the late Arole Oduduwa, Oba Okunade Sijuwade Olubuse II. I mourned with the Ife people like it was my king who had transited. And it was, for Ife has been my home for several years. So, it is only natural that my ears would twitch each time Ile-Ife is mentioned and sorrow would take me over each time negative news proceeded forth from the heart of the cradle.

Therefore, downtrodden I was when news of the communal clash between the Hausa and Ife people hit the newsroom. Silence, I had believed would be golden in this case but my muteness transmogrified into sharp pain and ‘mouth-diarrhea’ in the face of the post Ile-Ife crisis events and the deafening silence/inaction of the several political lords of the South-West. Even the Lion of Lagos failed to roar as sons of Ile-Ife were hurled in trailers like sardines and detained at the Federal Capital Territory. It was while ruminating on those occurrences that I caught an epiphany…. A soldier who values his life must kowtow to superior fire.

In retrospect, it would have been a different ball game if this communal clash had occurred in the days an Ijaw man steered the ship of this nation. Had it been when Goodluck Jonathan was president, would the lions of the South-West have played dumb at the hauling away of their children for detention in the North?

The headlines would have been flooded with insidiously calamitous bemoaning of the lions of the South-West. It would have been played out like an orchestrated kidnap of Yoruba sons by a kinsman of the prolific pipeline wreckers and infamous expatriate kidnappers. Media would have gone agog and GEJ’s name would be written on bold letters on international papers as he is being castigated and tagged inept as the drill was back in the day.  However, the reverse is the case today. Aside from the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, which said it had constituted a legal team for the 20 Yoruba suspects taken and the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), the great lions have failed to even let out a hiccup.

While the National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, Mr Yinka Odumakin, described the parade of 20 Yoruba suspects as illegal, unconstitutional and sectional and the National Coordinator of the Oodua Peoples Congress, Chief Gani Adams, condemned the outcome of the police investigation and described it as lopsided, highly biased and full of elements of foundation of injustice, the lions yet remain mute.

Unfortunately, the North has never been loyal to the Yoruba. Sadly, as it was in ancient times when leaders of the North broke deceitful bread with elders of the South-West, but didn’t include them in the actual decision making, so it is today.