Last Thursday, I spent two hours between Kara Bridge cattle market and Berger bus stop, a distance of about two kilometres as a result of activities of ram sellers and ram buyers. On Friday, motorists and other road users were stranded in the Kara traffic gridlock for hours with some residents of Isheri North in Lagos State and those of Mowe, Ibafo, and Arepo in Ogun State choosing to put up with friends for the night in Omole Estate. With the traffic build-up stretching as far back as the Third Mainland Bridge from early hours of Saturday, it was a nightmare for motorists and residents who were forced to spend several hours in the gridlock.
By “Sunday (Eid day), the situation according to Punch newspaper report “became worse with a loaded truck falling to its side on the Otedola Bridge area of the expressway and spilling its contents on the road with a similar incident along the Long Bridge section”. Added to this was the plight of outside-bound travellers and Muslims on last minute rush to buy rams at cheaper rate. Unfortunately, the presence of men of the Rapid Response Squad, (RRS), complemented by men of the Federal Road Safety Commission, (FRSC) brought little relief to Nigerians.
The Kara ram market tragedy is cyclical as it is re-enacted during every Muslim ‘IIeya’ season. As successive governors of Ogun and Lagos states, neck deep in ‘politics of cow and ram’ writhe their hands in helplessness over the odious comparison as to who between cows and humans should enjoy citizenship status, our politicians especially the over-paid lawmakers in Abuja are playing the ostrich pretending not to know the difference between citizenship rights and privileges and animals right.
In fact ex-President Buhari’s Attorney General, Abubakar Malami, to drive home his crooked syllogism, tried to equate the rights of Ibo traders in the northern cities to those of marauding cows in the reserved forests of Ondo State, protected by AK-47 wielding immigrant criminal herders. On the same page with Malami was President Buhari’s first Defence Minister, Mansur Mohammed Dan Ali. He once asked a rhetorical question “if you block the old grazing routes for cows, what do you expect” as a reaction to the murder of over 90 farmers by herders in Benue State. Their crooked logic was that cows and human beings have similar citizenship rights in Nigeria.
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They were not alone. In the eighth assemblies, some northern lawmakers spoke of consequences of shooting down the laws that would have allowed cows to graze freely on the farmlands of farmers in the federating states. And as late as last week, during the passage for second reading of “A Bill to Establish a National Husbandry and Ranches Commission for the Regulation and Control of Ranches sponsored by Senator Titus Zam, Senate President Godswill Akpabio had to remind Senator Aliero who was opposed to the bill, that “cows are no citizens of Nigeria”.
But back to Kara ram market where successive Ogun State governors have been playing ‘politics of ram and cow’, apparently to be in the good books of powerful northern politicians. Governor Gbenga Daniel had an opportunity to relocate the Kara ram market some 21 years back during Obasanjo’s presidency. But Daniel chose to serve his own personal interest. He deployed huge resources to sand-fill a portion of the Kara swamp, paved the roads and erected structures he called ‘Journalists Rendezvous’ which collapsed after his tenure. By his admission during his recent interview with Channels TV, he founded his own newspapers to fight Aremo Olusegun Osoba, his predecessor and a veteran journalist believed to have the sympathy of the media following the way he was rigged out of office by Obasanjo and Tony Anenih’s rigging machine that secured for him more votes than the total registered Ogun voters.
Governor Ibikunle Amosun, with his one-metre long cap was also at Kara ram market for a road show after his election some 13 years back. He was said to have given the ram sellers an ultimatum to relocate to an alternative place, a directive which was ignored all through his eight years in office while cows enjoyed more privileges than his Ogun State citizens. It is also on record that Governor Dapo Abiodun threatened fire and brimstone to uphold the rights of his Ogun State people over cows when he first assumed office in 2019. Five years on, his besieged Ogun State citizens and motorists are still at the mercy of cows and rams at Kara market.
Many have wondered if self-proclaiming Yoruba politicians whose only claim to “Awoism” is adorning his cap, created time to read some of his books or understudy his economic management blueprint which focused on development of human capital, through free education up to primary school in 1952, extended to secondary school by UPN that in 1979 “ran free education and free health programmes, created industrial and residential estates, and established universities, etc.”?
And this only calls to question the preparedness of successive Yoruba governors since the beginning of the fourth republic. Their forebears starting with Obafemi Awolowo, the sage, his lieutenants including Bisi Onabanjo, Adekunle Ajasin, Bola Ige, Lateef Jakande and Ambrose Alli, set a pattern to follow with their citizen-centred policies.
And their legacies ‘were in the areas of education, agriculture and food security, industrialization, employment generation, and massive physical and social infrastructures development’. The ill-advised balkanization of the region led to the ceding of some companies including the Odua Textiles, Okitipupa Oil Palm Limited, etc. to Ondo State, while Western Livestock Company, among other agricultural projects, went to Oyo State with Ogun State inheriting Apoje and Lomiro Oil palms, as well as Ilushin and Ikenne rubber plantations etc.
But “regrettably”, as observed by a concerned Ogun citizen at a time, “none of the professed ‘Awoists’ that governed the state during the last two decades took any concrete steps to save Apoje, Lomiro, Ilushin and Ikenne plantations from destructive exploitation and progressive deterioration. It is the hope and fervent prayers of the good people of Ogun State that Governor Amosun would take proactive and measurable steps to resuscitate all Awo’s agro-economic legacies”.
How can new inheritors of power in a region whose economic management revolved around the production of human capital, which found expression in the introduction of “free education up to the primary school level as far back as 1952 and extended to the secondary school level under the Unity Party of Nigeria, that in 1979, introduced education support at tertiary level, introduced free health programmes, created industrial and residential estates, established universities in Edo, Ondo, Ogun and Lagos be playing games with citizenship in 2024?
How can the governors defend the fact that a region which once had an elaborate “agriculture infrastructure including the Cooperative Bank (WEMA Bank) that provided credit facilities to farmers during planting seasons through agricultural cooperative societies and the marketing boards that provided facilities for the sale of produce through marketing cooperatives” depend on rice, beans, millet, yam, tomato, pepper from other regions while consuming 10,000 cows daily without producing one?
While federating member states are at liberty to confer citizenship on cows in their own areas, I think the current crop of Yoruba governors must re-event themselves. It is hoped their recent joint meeting would go beyond singing of Yoruba item to a more productive endeavour along the paradigm set by their illustrious forebears.