The Yoruba in 2017 Nigeria

Today is supposed to be the first working day in the new year but the queer Nigerian system has declared a public holiday to celebrate January 1, 2017 which was yesterday. This is the first Monday in the year 2017 and they said we must waste it. I feel we can set the tone for a rejection of waste this year by making this day work. We can make it work by setting out what we need to do in the new year. A new year calls for stock taking and projections. It will be nice to start the new year by carrying the cake of one’s charity from home. I am a Yoruba by birth, so I am qualified to speak to the Yoruba. I am also by birth, in law and in fact a Nigerian. So, in equal measure, I can talk to Nigeria. But today, I am taking an ethnic position on the national question. Sometimes you say what ordinarily should be too heavy for the mouth to say. But words can’t be too big that you opt to put them on a chopping board and slice them with a kitchen knife. I intend to speak to the intrepidity of the Yoruba; their unrelenting love for self-attack and self-immolation on the altar of national politics.

This new year will define so many things and so many people. It will tell if Nigeria will ever work for the Nigerian people. It will also be momentous in the politics of Yorubaland. Somehow, I feel that Nigeria will work only if Yorubaland works. That should explain my new year ethnic standpoint.  When you hear desert encroachment, your mind races to the arid North and its geography. But desertification is much more than having rainless years and fruitless soil. Can’t you see that because of the choices it made in the past, the North has become a veritable desert in politics and economics? The world today thinks of making tight productive forces out of populations but Nigeria’s northern governors spend scarce public funds to organise mass weddings and mass procurement of coffins. What misfortune can be greater than baldness of the mind? Do I need to remind you then that desertification is much more than geography? And today, that desert that you see ravaging the north is racing down the tropical south. The threat is real and my interest today is the Yoruba which is on the cusp of losing it too.

Sometimes I wonder why outsiders are unaware of the easiest way to tame the Yoruba. How come they do not know that the surest way to tie them down is for the other parts of Nigeria to permanently cede the leadership of the country to them. You hiss? Just wait and listen. Is it not true that the only periods we did not hear accusations of ethnic bias were when the Yoruba presided over the affairs of Nigeria? And when there is such silence, it can only mean that the persons in power do not know how to use what they have for their own good.  The Yoruba love others more than they love their own brothers. They please others to the sorrow of their sisters. Whenever Nigeria hurts them, they visit the pains on their own. They are the only ones who still believe that Nigeria is worth keeping if certain restructuring steps are taken. Others have moved on. The North now routinely talks of a strange 1000km crude pipeline from Niger Republic to Kaduna and of oil finds in the Boko Haram corridors of Borno.

I said the new year would be momentous for the Yoruba. Yes. As I write this, some of those who sold change to the Yoruba are quietly moving around under the cover of darkness, telling us they were wrong.  There is a movement canvassing a recoil of the Yoruba into their abandoned cocoon. What could have informed the new position so soon after the epic celebrations of the shift of 2015? There is a counter-movement asking what has changed between the campaigns of dance and promise and what we have today? Those opposed to the new movement know they will soon hear their names recast in the mould of betrayers. It is very dangerous to play politics in Nigeria. It is much more dangerous among the Yoruba. Politics, in Yorubaland, is almost synonymous with suicide. It is there that the people you serve believe they are the ones serving you. And it is frightening today. There are masses of political soldiers preparing for battle. And you ask: battle over what? What are we fighting over?  Did you read Kayode Fayemi during Christmas crying out loud that he wasn’t fighting anyone? Did you hear Ibikunle Amosun also shortly before Christmas mentioning same persons as his friends? I have not heard Babatunde Fashola and Adebayo Shittu, ministers of the federal republic. But do they also not represent Abuja which the new movement appears to have repudiated so soon after celebrating their landing at the centre? And you ask at what point did they realise the wrongness of their judgement? Was it before they lost their bearing in the desert of Nigeria’s cavalier politics or after the buccaneers pushed them into the depths of irrelevance? Where is the interest of the people in these movement creations and cancellation of movements? The new year will answer so many questions and resolve many issues.

But a people are lost whenever they ignore their elders and the golden words of the ancestors. What really do the Yoruba want in Nigeria? Should they even be in Nigeria? Those questions were asked in the past — and they were answered. The Yoruba of today do not ask such questions. They only listen to strange voices of raw cash and power in their rotten essence. They have become rent collectors from their own marketplace. Today’s Yoruba do not ask questions. The only question they ask is ‘what is in that thing for me?’ And that is their tragedy. But, they, interestingly, have a goodly heritage and a history of political engagements that pre-answer all questions of today. The Asiwaju of Yorubaland, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, 66 years ago, defined where and why the Yoruba should be in national politics. He told the first conference of leaders of the Action Group held in Owo on 28 April, 1951 that promoting the greatest good of the greatest number of the people should be the essence of party politics. He strongly advised against using regionalism as a vehicle for personal leadership enhancement. Awo stated clearly that “it is not the intention of the Action Group to embark on regional  politics exclusively.  It is sheer necessity that has compelled us to decide to get together to put our own house in order.” Hmmmm. Did the Yoruba put their house in order before they took the plunge of 2015? If they did, why are the warlords rearming so soon after a victory celebrated with gusto? Why is the air so heavy today with poisonous insinuations on who is with us and who is against us? And, is recoiling into ill-defined isolation the solution to the perceived poverty of relevance the race faces today?

Power tussles garnished with dangerous politics reign here. There is a thick plume of intolerance in the air. Independence of mind and critical evaluation of issues used to mark out the Yoruba. But they are capital offences today among the so-called progressives. Awo, in that speech, after clearly enunciating the people-centred programmes of his new party, warned against his people getting bogged down by the pettiness of fake patriots who were already showing their faces even in those early days. Hear him: “Strong, courageous, resourceful and self-confident people are never afraid of rivals or competitors.”

What we see these days are parties that change names every year. Masquerades, big and small, herd their sheep from one brown pasture to another. Politics, to them, has become an end in itself. Fulfilling election promises and making life better for the people are distantly secondary. Again, Awo’s 1951 words ring loud and alive: “What our people want to know above all things else is not the defect or incapacity of this or that organisation, but the plans and programmes which we have for improving their lot and the relative merits of such plans and programmes… Whilst our enemies and detractors busy themselves with abusing and decrying us, we should direct all the machinery of our publicity towards the propagation of the excellence and the relative superiority of our programmes and the suitability of the men whom we will put forward to execute them. In this way, we would succeed in commending ourselves to the public by our sheer merits and our merits only.  This, in my view, is a nobler attitude;  and if we remain true to it, we are bound to succeed where our detractors fail.” That was Awo. His words are eternal just as his memory is evergreen.

Now, listen. In this year of our Lord 2017, there will be moves to demonise dissenters in Yorubaland. Indeed, there is already a struggle for space acquisition and territorial protection. Sad. What confronts the Yoruba people today is more than the petty politics of who controls where.  The people are suffering, businesses are dying. The people have lost all to a generation of leaders stuffing everything into their cheeks of gluttony. The almajiri is no longer a northern problem; it is a reality among the South West Yoruba kids. They scramble and fight for leftovers at every gathering where food is served. It is horrible, sad and bad. Who have we offended? They ask as they demand to have their lives back. But how and from whom? Rome is burning while the self-chosen Neros of Yorubaland are fiddling, fighting over the inanities of power. The desert is approaching, encroaching. Should those who claim leadership of the race be seen fighting personal battles when the real enemy is advancing? When the desert encroaches on the fertility of your existence, what do you do? We were taught to stop it, whatever it takes. This strain of encroaching desert will take much more than ceremonial tree planting by effeminate emperors to conquer. A divided people can’t confront a determined enemy. They will lose their present and their future. I hope someone listens — before it is too late.