Tag: Okeho

Today, I offer the third in my series on Okeho history as the community celebrates the centenary of its return to its origin in 1917 with the launching of my book, Okeho in History, on Saturday, October 28, 2017 in Okeho.

Taking a cue from the Centenary Committee, the concluding chapter of Okeho in History is titled “Taking Okeho to Greater Heights”. It reviews the political, economic, educational, religious and social institutions of Okeho and offers suggestions on how to move Okeho to greater heights.

Regrettably, Okeho has not been well-served by partisan politics. With intense competition, party activists throw everything into the ring and opposing sides often fail to take time to understand the points of view of their opponents. Gradually, positions were entrenched and loyalty to personalities became acceptable substitutes for loyalty to causes and ideologies in healthy competition for the development of the community.

Unfortunately, the community has been the victim of politics of personalities. As the bickering goes on between political opponents, other communities take advantage of the crisis to attract development projects, including higher educational institutions. Thus, despite the loyal support of Okeho party leaders to succeeding governments of different political parties since 1954, none of those governments or the parties they represent has given Okeho its due in terms of development projects.

Okeho is among a handful of major towns in Oke-Ogun without a pipe-borne water supply. And while other towns can boast of one or more institutions of higher education, as of 2017, Okeho has none to point to other than a campus of the Oyo State College of Health Science and Technology which was approved in 2016.

Now, there must be a laser beam focus on a development agenda with traditional political institutions, politicians, and community development organizations working together in a non-partisan fashion on behalf of the community. Above all, politics and governance must focus on its original ideal, which is the good of the community.

In Okeho, we have been fortunate that our religious differences have not conflicted with the original purpose of religion as a controller of our inner impulses. Both major religions have focused on helping us being good human beings and good communal citizens. Therefore, it has been possible for Muslims, Christians and traditional believers to work together in the various social organizations. What politics has unfortunately tried to put asunder, religion has been able to put together. Indeed, the various religious organizations have done more for Okeho educational development than the various political parties.

The purpose of traditional education is to prepare the young for their responsibilities as useful members of the community. For a significant part of our communities across Yorubaland, this is still an operative educational objective. It includes bringing the educated up to their responsibilities to themselves, to their families, and to the larger community of which they are an integral part. This traditional view of education is still relevant in an age of individualism that threatens the survival and prosperity of the community.

For Okeho, it worked very effectively and, despite the emergence of individualistic ethos, those Western educated individuals who had the advantage of growing up in the era when tradition still held sway, have been able to internalize its norms and to see their education as an opportunity for community service. It is evident in the way that they have made themselves available for the development activities of the community.

The challenge for our modern educational institutions and their personnel is to advance the traditional purpose of education as an integral aspect of their mission. The youths of today are going to be adults or leaders of tomorrow. The question that we must ask of our education system is “how is it preparing the youth for the responsibility that they must shoulder?”

First, effective teaching and learning is a must. Our pioneer teachers set the standard which must be advanced. The early years of schooling prepare children for later years and determine their success or failure. Therefore, to take Okeho to the next level, teachers at every level must be diligent and competent.

Second, compassionate mentoring of youths is crucial to making them succeed in life. In the early years of modern education, teachers were like second parents. They modelled good behavior and students knew that they can rely on their teachers for their direction in life. This model needs to be reactivated in our community schools. Excessive interest in material acquisition should not stand in the way of role-modeling.

Third, parents trusted and worked with teachers in the early years of modern education and the cooperation paid high dividends. The ethos of omoluabi is the essence of Yoruba morality and it is a product of parent-teacher and school-family collaboration. That model must be our guide as we crave greater heights for Okeho.

From subsistence farming to trading and transportation, from weaving to tailoring, from logging to carpentry, from pottery to bricklaying, Okeho indigenes have engaged in assorted economic activities in the last hundred plus years. And they still keep keepin’ on. Now, the economy is widely diversified and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, the groundwork for the take-off of this economy has been laid in the embrace of cooperatives in the last five decades. This new emphasis is based on the understanding that one hand is inadequate to carry the heavy load of our economic future. We must now combine our strength in business and processing ventures.

With the government’s renewed focus on agriculture, and with the advantage of location that Okeho has in this area, it is essential for Okeho indigenes to set up joint ventures to further their economic interests. With a large area of gorgeous scenery and attractive landscape, Okeho also offers a great opportunity for tourism. In this area, however, individual ventures are rarely profitable. Therefore, we must learn to combine forces to take advantage of the potentials of the industry.

My discussion of each of the foregoing—governance, religion, education, and the economy—is with an understanding of their significance as a powerful means to the goal of community health and advancement. While each of them is necessary for this purpose, we must not think that it is by itself sufficient.

Therefore, for the advancement of the community and the health of its members, we must ensure that our focus is on the effective combination of all. We have seen, for instance, that when individuals have good education, they tend to use it for the advancement of the community. With those who are fortunate lending a hand to the less endowed, the social life of the community is enriched.

The road to a successful focus on community interests is paved with the arduous efforts of community leaders and social organizations. This was the rationale for age-group associations in the beginning. That rationale still exists today, perhaps more than it used to be. Traditional institutions must lead the effort to put the interest of Okeho above personal interests. They will succeed in this endeavor when members of the community see that they dispense justice with fairness and they attend to the complaints of members with compassion and empathy.

I do not intend to belittle the advances that the community has collectively made in the matter of inter-personal solidarity and empathy. Every adult of today grew up in a loving community where even distant relations and strangers make personal contributions to their education and general well-being.

Okeho must continue in the tradition of generosity and welcoming spirit to all, natives and foreigners alike. We need others as they need us to make the world a habitable and better place for all people. But charity begins at home as the old saying instructs us.

We must make Okeho what we want it to be by investing our intellectual, moral, spiritual, and material resources in its development and progress. Then, as the many became one more than a century ago, we can all effectively and successfully move our beloved Okeho to greater heights politically, educationally, economically, socially, and spiritually.

This is the second of a three-part series on Okeho in History scheduled for public presentation on Saturday, October 28, 2017 at the grand finale of the celebrations marking the centenary of Okeho’s return to its original site in October 1917. Today’s excerpt is from the chapter on education in Okeho.

Indigenous education system in Yorubaland in general, and Okeho in particular, revolves around the whole person. The goal of education is to transform the child into the man or woman of character who can fit well into the service of the community. To this end, the focus of every family is to educate their children to be useful members of the community.

Before the introduction to a life-time occupation, the child goes through formal education in ethical living with gentle reminders at every point of the history of the family lineage, the bravery of his/her ancestors, and the contributions that he/she is expected to make in return. This is the ethics of omoluabi, the person of character….

Ethics matters and indigenous education is good at instilling ethical norms in the members of the community. Hard work, honesty, perseverance, moderation, are among the basic ethical norms that Okeho parents and family members teach their children with the expectation that when they grow into adults they will not depart from the path of honor which these norms inculcate….

The formal education of Okeho children also benefited from foreign efforts that accompanied religious proselytization. On this, both Christianity and Islam played important roles (with the setting up of the first schools with curriculums appropriate to their missions)….

Okeho youths also took advantage of opportunities that opened outside the town, especially with the establishment of secondary schools in Oyo, and much later, Iseyin. The foremost pioneer in the pursuit of higher education outside of Okeho was Mr. Ogunsola Ogundokun. In 1951, as a pupil at N. A. School Olele, Okeho, he sat for and passed the entrance examination to Government College, Ibadan.

That was the flagship of secondary education in Western Region at that time. He performed brilliantly in the school and from there, he proceeded to the United Kingdom for his university education, thus becoming the first university graduate from Okeho and a role model for many Okeho youths. Mr. Ogundokun returned from the United Kingdom and began a successful career at Lever Brothers in Lagos until his retirement.  Others followed in his footstep to pursue higher education….

In the matter of breaking through the glass ceilings of achievement, my generation has an exemplar in the person of Mr. Moyo Ajekigbe, first indigene of Okeho, indeed of Oke-Ogun, to be appointed Managing Director and Chief Executive of a first-generation commercial bank, First Bank of Nigeria, Plc. Moyo was a star in school, excelling in secondary school, higher school, and university. With a work-ethic and home-bred manners that the community instilled in him, he served the First Bank from the first day he entered the front door, giving the job his all, and going beyond the call of duty in customer service.

Such devotion does not go unnoticed even by the most conservative and rule-based establishment. The glory of the sun is uncoverable by mortal fingers. And so, the reward was not long in coming when Moyo was appointed the Managing Director and Chief Executive of First Bank of Nigeria Plc. The appointment itself was an achievement. However, what he made of it from his first day to his retirement was even more remarkable. Through him, many families were blessed. Doors were opened for young ones with excellent resumes. And the community benefitted immensely from his foresight and his generosity….

With teacher training colleges in Iseyin, Oyo, Ede, Iwo, etc., and the high cost of secondary school education, teacher training has been one of the readily available options for generations of Okeho educational products, and many took advantage of this, especially after having completed the secondary modern school…..

As its youths found their ways into these other locations for educational opportunities, Okeho community also decided to open more opportunities for them. Thus, the Okeho-Iganna District Council launched the Okeho-Iganna Grammar School in February 1965, with its first students boarded at the old Oyo Divisional Teacher Training College, Iseyin.

For many years after opening the doors of secondary education to Okeho youths, the community has tried without success to attract higher educational institutions. Even when prominent indigenes participated actively as leaders in the higher echelon of politics over the years, Okeho has been left without public higher education institutions. Shaki has a campus of The Polytechnic which has been upgraded to a full-fledge autonomous institution named Oke-Ogun Polytechnic. Ibarapa Polytechnic is located at Eruwa while Lanlate has a campus of the College of Education.

In view of the aspiration of youths for higher education, and the struggle of the community to make it easier for them, this has been one of the frustrations of the various Okeho community organizations. A recent achievement was the approval of a campus of Oyo State College of Heath Science and Technology in Okeho. This followed the elevation of the 65 year-old School of Hygiene, Eleyele by H. E. Senator Abiola Ajimobi, the Executive Governor of Oyo State.

In January, 2012, shortly after his inauguration, Governor Ajimobi instructed the Office of Commissioner for Health, Dr. Muyiwa Gbadegesin to work on upgrading the School of Hygiene. This required a process of engagement of stakeholders including students, instructors, regulatory bodies, members of the state executive and members of the State House of Assembly.

Subsequently, the Ministry of Health drafted and presented bills to the House of Assembly to upgrade the School of Hygiene, Eleyele to Oyo State College of Health Science and Technology. These bills were finally passed by the House and immediately signed into law by the Governor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi. The College subsequently began a process of establishing campuses to increase its capacity to train and graduate critical staff requirements for public health services in the state. With the kind approval of Governor Ajimobi, Okeho has the fortune of being the home of the first campus of the college.

Indigenous education trains individuals for communal responsibility. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of formal education imparted through foreign paradigm which tends to emphasize and celebrate individualism. Okeho has, however, been fortunate in the sense that the seed of the indigenous approach to education with its emphasis on communal responsibility appears to have germinated successfully in the lives of many educated Okeho indigenes prior to their engagement with foreign education. This has helped in molding their minds toward community activism, which has in turn helped the community in its efforts toward advancement.

Starting in the late fifties, educated folks inaugurated various self-help communal schemes to help struggling youths. The Okeho Literary and Debating Society was one of these initiatives. Due to the dearth of secondary schools in the area, and the limited opportunities for orientation to other professions, the first pioneers of Okeho foreign educational institutions, with few exceptions, took to the teaching profession, received training and were certified as teachers.

Together with the few that gained admission to secondary schools such as Olivet Baptist High School, this group of pioneers put their education to the service of the community by helping the youths during holidays. This was how the idea of a Literary and Debating Society first came up and it helped many of these youths develop skills in public-speaking, use of language, and confidence-building.

Education also opened the eyes of the educated to the world beyond Okeho and to the gap between the facilities available in that world but lacking in Okeho. With this knowledge came the realization of the need for organized action to pressure the authorities to pay attention to Okeho. Organizations such as Okeho Development Association (ODA), and more recently, Okeho Strategic Development Foundation (OSTRADEF) came up as responses to this knowledge…The point here is that education that stimulates in individuals the consciousness of community needs and urges action on the part of the individual has always been the tradition of Okeho.

Today, I begin a three-part series on Okeho in history with excerpts from my new book of the same title. The book is scheduled for public presentation on October 28, 2017 by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu supported by eminent friends and enablers of community and national development.

“Okeho in History was commissioned to celebrate the centenary of the relocation of Okeho back to its original site in 1917 and it comes at a very important stage of the development of our loving homeland. Now, the community is experiencing a much-needed unity of purpose even in the era of party politics, a development that must cheer compatriots who have, for many years, canvassed and labored for such a purposeful agenda…..

“In the beginning, Okeho did not exist as one entity. Instead there were eleven villages separated by hills and valleys, each living in solitude and in fear of aggression from greedy land grabbers and heartless enslavers…..

“However, around 1800, more than one hundred years after Ojo Oronna, legendary founder of Okeho, first settled in Omogudu, the new Onjo, Arilesòire, made the historic move of inviting the ten villages around Ijo to amalgamate as one village.

“Onjo Arilesire was motivated by an enlightened self-interest. It was a time of uncertainties for big towns such as Oòyoò Alaafin. The Fulani had constituted themselves as a present danger to the lives and properties of Yoruba people in their towns and villages….They had the advantage of cavalry raids across the grassy vegetation of Oòyoò North. The Dahomey forces were also a threat from the West. It was therefore in the interest of small villages to combine their strength to wade off the attacks. This was the reason for Arilesòire’s invitation to the neighboring villages, which included Isia, Olele, Isemi, Imoba, Gboònjeò, Oke-Ogun, Ogan, Bode, Pamo, Alubo, and Ijo.

“Arilesire had a good strategic reason for his invitation to Ijo’s neighbors. Apart from the combination of forces, the geographical location of Ijo offered a great security advantage and this played a role in his thinking. The heads of the various hamlets and villages must have been persuaded that it was in their security interests as well. For they agreed to move and become wards and quarters in their new location.

“Okeho was inaugurated as a new village and Arilesire was the first head of the new village with the title Onjo of Okeho. In their native wisdom, without any exposure to Western ideas of governance, the leaders of the eleven villages started a confederal arrangement which has since morphed into a solid community of patriots. In Okeho, the many voluntarily became one….

“It is important to note the significance of the effort at merger and of what inspired it. From the early 1500s until the time of the Yoruba civil wars of the 19th century, Oyo was a great exporter of slaves. From the year that Ojo Oronna moved to Omogudu, to around 1750, about 60,000 Africans were captured in slave raids and exported to the New World. Chiefs and aristocrats across the land were enablers of this sordid practice as they supplied captured war prisoners to the slave raiders in exchange for firearms and other goods. It was reported that during this period, King Tegbesu of Dahomey had an income of £250,000 a year from the export of slaves to Britain and other parts of the world. That would make him a multibillionaire of his time.

“Consider the fact that Dahomey was next door to Okeho and you will begin to imagine the horror that our ancestors experienced. There was no moment of peace and they had to constantly watch their back. The physical and emotional trauma was unimaginable.

“Meanwhile, on the other side of the fear of the loss of sons and daughters to the foreign enslavers and their local collaborators was the achievement of progress and development in Britain and the New World. Africans were forced to work under inhuman conditions to develop Britain which launched its Industrial Revolution in 1750….

“The merger of the villages was thus a matter of self-interest for the villagers. However, with that experiment in voluntary merger and preservation of the heritage of each of the constituents, Okeho also taught us a great lesson in the management of diversity. This should not be misconstrued. They did not pull it off easily. They went through trials and tribulations. They were sometimes unsure whether they would survive. But they persisted.

“What should be noted is that the Okeho experiment was doing very well before the colonial invasion. There was no history of internal violence prior to the introduction of a new governance structure that eclipsed the original arrangement and rendered the heads of the confederating units powerless. It was the reaction of the people to this foreign-inspired arrangement that led to violence against Obas and representatives of the colonial government.

“The new arrangement soon forced itself on the community with a mixed result. On the one hand, modern politics of party affiliation replaced primordial affiliation of the original confederating villages as major political parties drew support across neighborhoods and quarters, though certain neighborhoods favored certain political parties. There was thus the prospect of inter-neighborhood cooperation that was lacking at the onset of colonial administration.

“On the other hand, however, the new party system brought with it a ferocious competition that proved more inimical to the unity of purpose that the community needed for its advancement. It also had a more far-reaching consequence for the traditional institutions of the town. For, within neighborhoods, bitter political enmity due to different party loyalties meant that, even at that level, there was not going to be a united front, talk less of the level of the whole community. This was what affected the effectiveness of Egbe Omo Ibile Okeho in the 1st and 2nd Republics.

“Thankfully, those were times of ignorance. Now, the light of knowledge has revealed itself. Now, the community will not go back to the dark days of division during which no one can really claim to have gained a lot for self or for community. Now, we must move on forward with a common purpose. For it is never too late until it is too late. The sun still shines and its powerful rays are still capable of providing the energy needed to dry up our wet clothes.

“And the community has a lot of wet clothes hung outside to dry, one of which is the all-important jacket of education. Education has never been more important and we have never been so lacking in the matter of good educational facilities. While Okeho has a mix of public and private institutions at the primary and secondary level, it does not have much to offer in the matter of higher education. And the quality of the education that our children now receive is a mixed bag.

There is need to revamp the legacy of quality education that the first generation of teachers labored to pass on. Many of those teachers had no more than First School Leaving Certificate. But they were exemplary in their devotion to excellence. Contemporary teachers must borrow a leaf from the example set by those pioneers.

“Indeed, in every aspect of the community hopes and aspirations that I have identified in this volume, there is yet much to accomplish. The leadership of the initiatives and the efforts needed to accomplish the tasks must, again, naturally rest on those privileged to have the needed insight. After all, to whom much is given, much is expected.”

As Okeho anxiously and gratefully looks forward to welcoming Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, H.E. Senator Abiola Ajimobi, H.I.M. Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III and eminent friends on October 28, I respectfully appeal to the generous spirit of everyone to support the community. The goal of the Planning Committee, which has invested time, energy and resources in this cause is to raise funds for the Oyo State College of Health Science and Technology, Okeho Campus, completion of the Onjo’s Palace, and community health projects.

This successful experiment in voluntary amalgamation needs our encouragement.

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