“Please let our fathers in the Afenifere group appeal to all the South-West governments not to disrupt the religious tolerance and understanding which the zone is noted for.”
“The new order in Lagos State authorising the use of Muslim hijabs in public schools is an invitation to anarchy in the schools where others would want to wear their own religious dresses to schools. A similar thing occurred in Iwo, Osun State, a few years ago. It was only God who averted a religious violence then shortly after a visit to the state by Nasir el-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State, to Governor Rauf Aregbesola.
“The legacy of peaceful co-existence bequeathed to the Yoruba by Chief Obafemi Awolowo should not be rubbished by any true Oduduwa descendant of whatever manner. The Yoruba should be extra vigilant of any external influence to truncate the peace in the Oduduwa house. Yoruba are a sophisticated race that should not be intimidated by any imported morbid ambition. Religion is a private affair between individuals and whatever they believe in.”
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THE above mail I received from Oluwaseyitan Adeyemi reinforces my belief that Chief Obafemi Awolowo did not labour in vain and that the seed he planted while alive will stand at the gate in Yorubaland in all ages against strange children who want to remove the ancient landmarks of our fathers.
We are in a troubling season in Yorubaland today where the “morbid ambition” of some scallywags is threatening the natural admixture of religious faiths within individual families and communities which, nevertheless, live happily together, and, this level of tolerance is the direct effect of tolerance inherited from the traditional religion whose accommodation and toleration paved way for Islam and Christianity co-existing in a beautiful way that did not escape the attention of even President Muhammadu Buhari months ago when he commended the Yoruba way to Nigeria.
In his 2018 New Year address to Nigerians, President Muhammadu Buhari touched on the liberality of Yoruba spirit which has made it a land where religious upheavals are rare.
“As the electioneering season approaches, politicians must avoid exploiting ethnicity and religion by linking ethnicity with religion and religion with politics. Such must be avoided at all costs if we are to live in harmony. In this respect, the rest of Nigeria could learn from the South Western states which have successfully internalised religion, ethnicity and politics,” President Buhari had said.
The Yoruba way has been of diverse studies across the globe as a space where the people place their commonality above religious divisions. It is a community where you will find different religions collocating under the same roof. The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi was a devout Muslim while his wife, Ganiat was and is still a practicing Christian. Their children have made their choices but they are all Fawehinmi. That is the spirit of a nation of freedom where a slave can become a king and a king can turn himself to a slave. It is our abiding faith that a all men are born equal.
When the Spiritual Head of the Yoruba, Oonirisa Adeyeye Ogunwusi, took an evangelist for a wife recently and she went through all the necessary rituals of marriage within the palace, it was in furtherance of the Yoruba spirit where culture is superior to religion.
The syncretism of the Yoruba made us as toddlers to carry foods to and receive from neighbours during festivals of different religions. Children from Christian homes were educated in Muslim schools and vice versa. We didn’t go to any Tolerance Academy as it was already infused in our DNA!
There are clear anthropological arguments that within the Yoruba context, shared Yoruba-ness and other forms of communal identity, including shared humanity, are considered to be more important than religious difference. The subordination of religious difference to both shared Yoruba-ness and humanity relies on the importance the Yoruba place on respect. This is why even in external relations, we respect the bounds of our hosts which is expressed in the philosophical saying that we must close our fists when we get to the city of lepers so they think we are not different from them.
It was a celebrated thing when Nigeria elected the Abiola-Kingibe ticket in 1993 but it was not novel to the Yoruba people as the best years they remember in governance was under Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo as Premier and Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola as his deputy. When 500,000 pupils were unleashed against ignorance in the Universal Free Education Programme in 1955, it was Yoruba kids that were enrolled and not Christians or Muslims.
When the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) came in 1979 to continue the trajectory through the Four Cardinal Programme, Yoruba were so fascinated to care whether it was James or Lateef that would carry them out. That was why Lagos elected Alhaji Lateef Jakande as governor and Alhaji Rafiu Jafojo as his deputy. In Ondo State, it was Michael Adekunle Ajasin as governor and Chief Akin Omoboriowo, another Christian, as his deputy.
Awolowo had leveraged on the liberality of the soul of the Yoruba to make them rise beyond petty and silly squabbles and focus on the large picture and big dreams, people who watched television before Southern France and, a year after, Britain became development-focused and not as barbarians. Those who had to raise their heads to look at the peak of Cocoa House could not have brought them down to be looking at a Muslim feet stepping on a Christian toe.
The decline of quality leadership and the ascendancy of the basest in Yorubaland is now reversing our strides. Strange and pernicious doctrine are being brought to segregate our people because their limited or non-vision leadership cannot sustain any hold on the Yoruba character that thirsts and yearns for progress. They must keep our people divided.
So it was that after Governor Rauf Aregbesola ran Osun State to the point that salaries were being owed for almost two years and a revolt was a matter of time, when a divisive scheme was hatched to divide our people by introducing hijab in public schools, in a state where we grew knowing those who were Christians or Muslims in schools only in their names. It provoked the spirit of Yoruba revolt. Christian regalia and Egungun attires surfaced in schools in resistance. The peace of Osun was seized temporarily. A religious war loomed and the owners of Yorubaland watched in amusement.
A meeting of Osun elders was called when the tension became unbearable. The meeting turned a humbling experience for the governor who was thoroughly embarrassed as Islamic leaders rose at the meeting to say they knew where to send their children to for hijab wearing but the schools they have sent them to for western knowledge is known for uniform. That ended the whole sordid development. Mr Governor had to find answers to unpaid salaries and other afflictions plaguing Osun under him.
This is why the disturbing news of the hijab being sanctioned by Lagos State recently, though troubling, should not comfort those who want to destabilise the Yoruba entity. Like it happened in Osun, the Yoruba spirit will triumph even when Ambode is currently a hostage and would do anything to keep his seat for the few months remaining. In any case, Speaker of the state House of Assembly, who has been giving Executive Orders, could have taken over the assignment if the lame duck dithered.
Those who lack the mental magnitude to study a people they aspire to lead will only burn their fingers if they do not desist from the odious attempt to set the Yoruba space on fire.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a Yoruba when he spoke at a forum in Britain, where he addressed leaders of different faiths during a mission to the city of Birmingham in 1989. He spoke on the theme: “God Is Not A Christian.”
He told the story of a drunk who crossed the street and accosted a pedestrian, asking him, “I shay, which ish the other shide of the shtreet?” The pedestrian, somewhat nonplussed, replied, “That side, of course!” The drunk said, “Shtrange. When I wash on that shide, they shaid it wash thish shide.” Where the other side of the street is depends on where we are. Our perspective differs with our context, the things that have helped to form us; and religion is one of the most potent of these formative influences, helping to determine how and what we apprehend of reality and how we operate in our own specific context.
My first point seems overwhelmingly simple: that the accidents of birth and geography determine to a very large extent to what faith we belong. The chances are very great that if you were born in Pakistan you are a Muslim, or a Hindu if you happened to be born in India, or a Shintoist if it is Japan, and a Christian if you were born in Italy. I don’t know what significant fact can be drawn from this— perhaps that we should not succumb too easily to the temptation to exclusiveness and dogmatic claims to a monopoly of the truth of our particular faith. You could so easily have been an adherent of the faith that you are now denigrating, but for the fact that you were born here rather than there.
For Yoruba people, God is not a Christian or a Muslim. He is the Father of all His creatures who must respect one another and lively in peace and harmony. That is not going to change.
and then