For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, (or the Yoruba Nation) but their own belly; and by fair words and good speeches deceive the hearts of the simple”- Romans 16: 18
Unlike those years of the locust when the Southwest found itself, wily nilly, under the yoke of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, a new vision for progress and development is emerging in Yorubaland. Our homeland strategy is being properly-structured and coordinated. Our development process is being institutionalised and an economic governance model is already in the works to accompany a well-defined political system. We have now clearly defined our goals, our priorities and our timelines. We are in the process of building the critical stakeholder inclusion and inclusiveness that is required for all these hard work to succeed. And to ensure that all these efforts are not aborted by the mandarins of a clueless PDP, we must ensure that a fit and proper leadership character prevails, as now, to direct the affairs of our land. I have quoted above, mutatis mutandis, the invigorating speech by Dipo Famakinwa on Regional Integration at the Oodua Foundation conference which held, April 26-27, 2013, in Delaware, U.S.A.
With the negativity of the PDP years of decrepit infrastructure, run down school system and general insecurity in the Southwest already etched in our medullar oblongata, the Yoruba must give their all to fight back these revisionists so we can say again in one voice: never again!.
And my teacher came handy again at the Delaware Conference. My teacher, Professor Banji Akintoye, the evergreen griot, at whose feet I studied in two different institutions of learning, was there to remind the race, and tell the world, from where the Yoruba is coming from and one can only hope that on reading his masterly address, the resurrectionists and revisionists amongst us will rethink their slavish assignments and permit a continuation of the present regime of peace and development in Yoruba land.
In reminding us of our enviable pedigree, the author of the must- read 452 page ‘A History Of The Yoruba People’, must have had in mind the conspirators: these modern day ‘troublers of Israel’ who think nothing of once again railroading the Yoruba nation into another era of servitude like they did in 2003 with dire consequences to our well-being.
We quote at some length from the address:
‘The responsibilities of today’s leaders of the Yoruba Nation are truly heavy. The Yoruba Nation that we were born into, and that we are called to guide, is one of the most important nationalities on the African continent. At 40 million in population, we are one of the three largest nationalities in Nigeria and in Black Africa. In population, we are about 24% of the population of Nigeria, a country of about 300 nationalities, with a total population of 165 million. But our importance in Nigeria does not end with our population weight. We stand in the forefront of Nigeria, and even of Africa, in educational development and literacy.
According to some unofficial estimates, the Yoruba, though only 24% of Nigeria’s population, account for about 52% of all Nigerians who hold university degrees. By the 1860s, many Yoruba parents were already sending their children for higher education in Europe. By the 1870s, a considerable literate professional class had emerged – of doctors, lawyers, engineers, surveyors, journalists, etc. No other people in what later became British-ruled Nigeria produced a university graduate until the middle of the 1930s. By the 1950s, we became the first people in Africa to establish a Free Primary Education Programme.
In comparison with the countries of the world, the Yoruba Nation is, in population, bigger than many of the richest and most influential countries of the Western world – a little bigger than Canada, about as big as Spain and about four times as big as Sweden. In Africa, besides Nigeria, only three countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, and Congo (Kinshasa) have bigger population.
At about 105,000 square miles (168 square kilometers), it is bigger than the United Kingdom and over nine times the size of Belgium just as there are sizeble populations of the Yoruba in Benin Republic, Togo ,Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Bahamas, Suriname and the United States.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Yoruba Nation has consistently belonged in the front line of modernisation on the African continent – in education, scholarship, literature, art, commerce, industries, entertainments, etc. Some gems of indigenous Yoruba thought and philosophy have been classified by UNESCO as significant parts of the “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” and it has made impressive contributions to scholarship in the sciences, the humanities and the arts, and produced the first African recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature’.
Now, that is the huge Yoruba nation some otherwise respected elders and their over ambitious young acolytes are now working assiduously to turn over to a party in which even a Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, statesman, Yoruba’s foremost politician alive, former President and one time Alpha and Omega of the same party, is being routinely turned inside out with his group being daily decapitated by Chairman Tukur and ‘the Ogas at the top’ even as ‘Mr Fix it’ is being unerringly promoted and celebrated. And to imagine that these ‘elders’ would have to subsume both their resurrected party and the one anachronistically being called a mega party would have to subsume their identities under fringe parties like Labour or Accord simply because they are too ashamed to actually join PDP.
Now under the lead of a good friend of mine, a party organisation freak, Jonathan is being assisted to encircle Yoruba land in a pincer-like arrangement, recruiting old men we once relied upon to hoist the chequered race in its historic place. Now they are having in Afenifere individuals Chief Awolowo would not have touched with the longest pole just like a caricature of the Avatar’s party is supposedly being resurrected by those without Awo’ rigour or honesty.
The other, a man of integrity no doubt, but who had abandoned his loyal troops some twelve or so years ago now claims to be at the head of a so-called mega party none of which amalgamating party has a single Councillor anywhere in the country. How more anachronistic can a party name get! Interestingly, the big man took about his most loyal supporter to a serving governor for a contract over a year ago. My friend is still waiting. Such relevance!
Happily, the Yoruba know their leaders just as they know those who are angling over nothing but security contracts and, probably oil blocks. They know only too well those who are no longer capable of winning their own wards. With all due respect, they have since become what my dear aburo perspicaciously calls yesterday men. But their recruiters and patrons are well aware of these facts since all they need are muscle men to destabilize the Southwest. Their primary assignment is to ‘uproot the tree and its branches’, recreate a Boko-Haram -like situation in the West, and make the 2015 election impossible. That, they believe, will be enough to take the wind out of the sail of the APC, among whose leaders is the man they love to hate -Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
It still would have been tolerable if that were all. But the conspiratorial, clueless party, through sundry surrogates, old and young, is now aggressively recruiting some of our respected young men from the progressive camp, who apparently cannot see the irrationality of their being gubernatorial candidates on a platform as odious in the Southwest as the PDP. It will be nice to remind them again of the current trials of the Obasanjo group and what a state governor, Rotimi Amaechi is being made to go through in that party. The Yoruba, in their collective wisdom say when the front man runs into a ditch, those coming behind should learn appropriate lessons. They wont say we did not warn them when the chickens come home to roost, as they sure would.
It can be restated again, in conclusion, that what is heartening is the fact that the Yoruba, unlike many others, can very easily differentiate between the ongoing massive, multi-sectoral developmental strides in the region and the developmental aridity of the PDP years when even the road leading to Ota could not be completed in eight years.
Our people have said, and will surely vote: Never again to governmental cretinism.
