By Olakunle Abimbola
The Sunday Igboho-Yoruba elite romance brings to mind the fox and cock in Yoruba folklore.
The fox always pounced on the hen. But each time it sighted the cock, it bounded for dear life.
“Wait!” the rooster, one day, cackled at the panic-stricken fox, already belting away. ”Why do you always flee from me?”
“Because,” it pointed to the roaster’s head of fire. “That can burn!”
“Fire?” the cock was surprised. ”On my head? This is no fire! It’s only my comb!”
“Is that so?” The fox crept towards its newfound quarry — and pounced. From that moment, the cock became sweet game!
It’s a powerful metaphor for surrendering your ace — and cropping catastrophe.
If the Yoruba polite society continues to cede space to such a crude soul, then soon the Igboho fox would gobble up the Yoruba elite rooster.
Can that still be rolled back? Maybe. Maybe not. But the prognosis appears dire — except folks change tack.
Still, let’s be clear. Igboho as a person, crude bouncer or savior-vivre, is absolutely of no interest to this column — and this does not issue from any arrogance or empty condescension.
In truth Igboho, like Gani Adams, has somewhat made something of himself, despite his humble beginning. You can’t, therefore, continue to permanently judge both men, by the shackles of tough nativity, which they appear to have admirably thrown off.
Besides, Igboho would continue to be the hero of not a few, particularly for his heroic, if crude, intervention; in the vexed armed herdsmen criminality, on the Ibarapa front of Oyo State; and the Ketu front of Ogun State, both in the Yoruba interior.
Neither would his stock likely fall, among the ranks of giddy Yoruba ultra-nationalists, high on their craving for Oodua Republic, the latest political opium in town — a cause an unfazed Igboho, even in cheering respectable circles, has declared himself a rabid proponent.
Now, the problem is not holding a political view. That’s the democratic right of all.
The problem is a rude, crude and limited fellow, belching ill motives to traduce revered natural rulers; and threatening to kill or harm citizens who hold contrary views — citizens no less covered by democratic norms, in a republic founded on law. That ought to have triggered instant elite alarm.
Indeed, this Igboho crude intrusion on public consciousness; and his continuous stark commentaries, rippling with devil-may-care outlawry, should worry all.
Yet, not a few Yoruba elites have made peace with this dangerous bombast; like the cunning but ultra-foolish one, hiding behind a crooked finger.
As for the media, particularly the (anti)social media hue, it’s morning yet on hugging the sweet plague of sensation! The Igboho end clearly justifies the mean(ness) — to parody that cynical coinage, by our own WS!
Which brings to mind current shakabula happenings, in a high season of shakabula thinking, in the Yoruba country.
Flush from an alleged foiled arrest, for whatever reason, Igboho arrived Lagos, to hold court and claim kin with Gani Adams, who had had cause to earlier rebuke him for his stark penchant to hurt what Adams called the “struggle”.
The one serenading the other is no crime; since both are angling and hankering for elite admittance and approval. A cross-serenade, therefore, hurts no one.
But what could hurt all is an emotive elite, flinging open own gates, in uncritical endorsement of the Igboho essence — push-and-pull, warts and all; just because short-term ethnic plots and conspiracies align. It’s a short-sighted take the Yoruba polite society may yet rue.
Which was why Baba Ayo Adebanjo and his Afenifere rump, holding court with, and proudly touting an Igboho photo-op, appears a near-travesty, even by traditional Awoist standards.
For context, that was akin to the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo, admitting Eruobodo, among the most fearless and most celebrated of that era’s Action Group (AG) “stewards” (polite Awo-speak, for push-and-shove party fixers), into the innermost sanctum of the party — and making a giddy photo-op of it!
Indeed, Pastor Tunde Bakare’s shakabula (Dane gun) metaphor is proving not only robustly analytic but also eerily prophetic!
It accurately portrays the tragic collapse of Yoruba reaction to felt danger: from the clinical rigour of the Awo era, to the scalding emotion of this current post-Awo epoch. That change holds little in stock, beyond strategic ruin.
But again, it’s less about Igboho, as a person. It is rather about the grim metaphor, of Igboho’s grim essence; and the long-term ruin it holds for all.
It’s not unlike the tragedy of military rule in Nigeria, rupturing polite governance, and putting everyone in a bind.
The pristine military that took power on 15 January 1966, was not the most illiterate bloc in the country. On the contrary, subject to the humble human development stats of that era, it still counted among the most elitist and most knowledgable in its field. Certainly, it was the most adept at enforcing its command ethos.
Yet, it made so much hash of governance, that by the time it finally surrendered power in May 1999, it knew it had thoroughly subverted its core essence; and it craved a core rebirth.
The military, despite its strong points, was simply ill-equipped to rule. But it took decades of collective ruin, before Nigeria could figure out that grim reality.
Still, what modern Nigeria took eons to find out, Ibadan, in its rustic paradise of plunder imperialism, never allowed to happen.
Even at the apex of his power, Ibadan resisted the ploy of Latoosa, its last official warlord-in-chief, to combine military and governance duties.
After vanquishing the powerful Iyalode, Efunsetan Aniwura, perhaps the last symbol of elite opposition against Latoosa’s bid to take complete control, Ibadan still told the fierce warlord that he couldn’t combine military duties with the Baale, as he craved.
To that Latoosa scoffed (according to accounts in Samuel Johnson’s The History of the Yorubas), that the Baale was a “woman”, since by Ibadan Constitution, the Baale didn’t go to war.
The Ibadan elite agreed, even if the Latoosa slur hurt. But the constitution held. The warlord faced war while the Baale faced civil governance.
This short blast from Yoruba history underscores that golden rule: in times of crisis, stark fellows and hot heads don’t call the shots. They stay in the streets ready for orders, from more seasoned minds, who fully understand the issues.
That golden rule is what the Yoruba elite buck, with the sweet romance of yielding space to the likes of Igboho and Gani Adams, for short-term gains.
It could end in long-term tears.
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