How can these elders expect Yorubas to vote a man who treated them with unequalled disdain for all of his six years in office?
The name PDP Afenifere cropped up some two years ago when the Yoruba nation began to see the likes of Iyiola Omisore, the forever wannabe-be governor of Osun State – attending Afenifere meetings. But it has since got worse, with even Igbos now routinely attending, probably bearing President Jonathan’s election-related gifts or there to attest to the loyalty of our elders to their new leader. It doesn’t get more horrible for a proud Yoruba people. And, for a certainty, the Ikemba must be smiling in his grave; he who had wanted, but failed, to make Col Banjo an Igbo viceroy in Yoruba land when, during the Biafran war, he armed him to go conquer Lagos, now seeing his Igbo brothers, Peter Obi and Udenta, resplendently seated, like conquistadors, at a once revered Yoruba conclave. A single one of our Yoruba elders is yet to attend an Ohaneze meeting.
Could these elders have forgotten the Ore war?
A defining election is here with us, one in which the Yoruba nation must not permit itself to be obfuscated, especially by self-lovers who should ordinarily be our guarding lights. Unfortunately, a Pauline conversion, on an industrial scale, has since happened, and today, those who used to lead us are themselves now being led by a ‘youth’. Yet, however odious the situation, we still must be careful how we approach this delicate matter that fouls the mouth, but instantly adds salt; lest we be confused with that insufferable PDP Goebbels, who manufactures a lie, a day.
I am a student of history and learnt at the feet of the very best – Akinjogbin, Fajana, Anjorin, Afolayan, Igbafe, Omosini, not to mention the incredible duo of Segun Osoba and Banji Akintoye, about both of whom I have written copiously on this column, these past ten years, beginning with the rested Comet. That was at the Great University of Ife, close on fifty years ago, and it is on that legacy I will leverage to shred this unprecedented attempt by so tiny a few – you can now count them on your finger tips – to mislead the entire Yoruba nation; a people with a history dating back thousands of years and a people you would never describe as foolish. Worse is it, that this is in a subterfuge aimed at corralling them to queue behind, unarguably, the most corrupt government in Nigerian history. After all, the essence of history is using the past to illuminate the present, and the future, so that mistakes are rendered negligible. How can these elders expect Yorubas to vote a man who treated them with unequalled disdain for all of his six years in office?
And how do I do this in a manner that will so resoundingly blow off the shibboleths they are ceaselessly hawking about, running from Akure to Ibadan, and herding thousands of our youth to Akure for no other reason than to socialise bribery, in the forlorn hope that these young people Jonathan’s government could not give jobs, will now give him victory in Yoruba land. All I have to do is present to the sons and daughters of Oduduwa, their long standing demands for proper restructuring as contained in the YORUBA AGENDA which I urge them to compare with the dead on arrival recommendations of the Jonathan Confab they now equate to a silver bullet for the myriad problems currently hobbling Nigeria. This will convince our people that these elders’ merchandise is nothing but a pig in a poke. Happily, we are too smart to be sold on the cheap, especially since we are well aware that, deep down, all this showboating is targeted at oil pipeline contracts and political rehab.
The Yoruba Agenda, 2005, represents the culmination of efforts and ideas which have been canvassed in Yoruba land since the agitation for a return to true federalism energised those seeking a solution to the perennial crisis of governance in Nigeria. After its adoption at a Yoruba Assembly, it was submitted to a meeting of the Southwest Governor’s Technical Committee and it formed the kernel of the report submitted to the 2006 National Conference which was aborted. Unlike any other document, it enjoys the singular attribute of having every stratum of the Yoruba nation making a contribution.
It contains some specific, and, immutable demands which you would think these elders ensured were incorporated in the recommendations, but for where? Among these are the following: a self-governing and autonomous region to mobilise the energy of the Yoruba for progress and development and to ignite their collective resolve for cultural renaissance, educational resurgence and social stability; a right for the Yoruba to live under a regional government within the Nigerian Federation with its own constitution and which will be the master of its own internal affairs. One which will function as one out of six regional governments which will form the federating units in a federation operating federal and regional constitutions.
Naturally, the new federation will undergo structural changes which will touch on, among others, the scope and limits of the powers of the federating units; the form of government, revenue allocation and fiscal federalism which will ensure that each region can develop at its own pace; resource control, police and policing and a judiciary which will have a federal Supreme Court for strictly constitutional cases and at the regional level, the apex court will be the court of Appeal. Indeed, under these Yoruba demands, membership of the National Judicial Council shall be so representative that excessive power would no longer be concentrated in the hands of the Chief Justice of the Federation. The present archaic, unproductive, centralised, single and unified police system would be jettisoned for a system of federal and regional police.
The above are only some of the original Yoruba demands as contained in the Yoruba Agenda. Were PDP Afenifere to have based its endorsement of President Jonathan on their inclusion, or even only a majority of them, I could very well have elected to be their orchestra’s drummer boy.
But what is the testimony of Mr Femi Falana, SAN, who, like them, was a conference delegate but one you would never find running between Akure, Owerri, Delta, Ibadan or Abuja? In an interview he granted The Nation newspaper and published on Thursday, 5 March 5, 2015, Falana said as follows in answer to the question: Can you be more specific on the Yoruba Agenda at the national conference?: ”Frankly speaking, answered him, the Yoruba agenda was anchored on regional autonomy, restructuring, parliamentary system or Westminster model, fiscal federalism or resource control, unicameral legislature, a ceremonial president and a prime minister with full executive powers, a special status for Lagos State, state police and deletion of the Land Use Act from the Constitution. Those were the items which constituted the core Yoruba Agenda. The items were defeated in to-to at the confab. Of course, the establishment of State Police scaled through on the basis of the role of the civilian joint task force in the fight against insurgency in the Northeast region. I challenge the authors of the Yoruba Agenda to point to other items that were adopted by the Confab. Indeed, the approval of State Police, we learnt, was not based on the initiators’ advocacy. Falana went further to explain that the Confab made three types of recommendations on policy direction, statutory amendments and constitutional review which require the promulgation of over 50 new laws and amendment of about 80 existing legislations and that although some of the bills were prepared and submitted to the government, the President did absolutely nothing in the past six months except set up the Adoke committee to study the report. Or could our elders have forgotten that the legislature has a role to play in its implementation in which case they must have to endorse all the federal legislators too?”
Given the above, one can only conclude, like this column did last week, that this is all a poorly calibrated ploy to mask their support for a government which Chief Obafemi Awolowo, by whose name they swear, would never have touched with the longest pole.
I wish, therefore, to plead with my Yoruba compatriots that while we continue to accord these elders all the respect they so richly deserve, a single one of us must not make the mistake of voting a man who has so ill-served the Yoruba race and Nigeria.
