Today’s article in this column is not new. It was first published in 2014 when a self-acclaimed Yoruba social cultural group called Afenifere rolled out its obsolete drums with which it invited the entire Yoruba people of the Southwest to dance to the euphoria of the past glory. Recently, some ardent readers of this column called yours sincerely for a repeat of the publication of this article as a reminder of the reality of the moment against the futility of the yore. Thus, as an open-minded columnist, I have no choice other than to concur to such a demand since readers, like customers, are Kings and Queens in their own right. Here goes the article:
Genuine Versus Fake Leaders
Leaders are not those who ascribe leadership to themselves by whim and thus become arrogant impostors. Genuine leaders are those who, through their words and actions, are acknowledged as leaders by their followers and are willingly assisted by those followers to pilot the affairs of the people in general.
A Yoruba proverbial adage which informs that “all sorts of knives surface on a day of an elephant’s death” may be axiomatic after all. Politics in Nigeria today is like that proverbial elephant. It throws up all hidden agendas and exposes all clandestine motives by certain dubious characters in the society who still see the world of today with the eyes of yesteryears. In other words, the satanic cloak under which some obscure, chameleonic politicians masquerade deceptively in a bid to selfishly benefit from Nigeria’s new political paradigm called ‘stomach infrastructure’ seems to have become an implacable calamity seeking to devour the fragile vestiges of peace in the land.
The Plight of Yoruba Muslims
The Yoruba Muslims of the current generation in the Southwest of Nigeria who were never privileged to witness the political and religious trauma which their parents and grand parents suffered in the in the hands of oppressors in the 1950s and 1960s in this region, when Yoruba Muslims had not fully imbibed Western literacy, are still feeling the impact of that trauma today. They may however take advantage of today’s atrocious spectacle to retrospectively view the religious cloak of those years and use same to unmask some dubious characters, who hid under those evil cloaks to stifle lives our of their parents socially and psychologically in those years to the detriment of today’s muslim generation in the region.
The Sun and the Brook
An Arab poet once observed in one of his poetic stanzas thus: “…It does not bother the sun that some blind people are claiming not to recognize the existence of its rays just as it does not bother a brook that some wandering herds are threatening to boycott its water”.
If the above quoted poem is thoroughly and digestively analyzed by men of literary prowess, it will be discovered that the blind men who refuse to recognize the existence of the sun rays are the ones to lose out permanently in their blind animosity against the sun. Their refusal to acknowledge the sun rays neither diminishes the grandeur of the sun nor enables their blind eyes to see the light of the day. Yet, they will suffer severely under the burning heat of the sun rays.
Likewise, the threat of boycotting the brook water by some herds can never affect the brook in any way. If anything, it is the herds which threaten to boycott the brook water that may end up dying of thirst. And the world will continue without noticing their plight.
The Parable of the Owl
The similitude of the above analogy is like that of a self-adulated group in Yoruba land calling itself AFENIFERE. Like an owl, that group cannot freely interact with credible, well-meaning Yoruba men and women of substance on real issues of relevance. As of today, the reasoning faculty of AFENIFERE is in Ijebu; its rubber stamp is in Akure and its ‘Yes Sir’ scribe is based in Ibadan. All of them, men and women including the so-called Board of Trustees are Christians. They do not even see the glaring oddity in portraying such a group as the representative of the Yoruba people of the Southwest where Muslims are in the majority.
A Pariah Group
Like the owl which, by its own design, is essentially a bird of the night that cannot comfortably associate with other birds in the day, AFENIFERE is seen as a pariah group that can only arrogate leadership to itself on the pages of some pariah newspapers in its search for relevance. But unfortunately, it does not see itself in that frame. If we may ask, at which forum did any well-meaning Yoruba leaders of thought appoint the so-called AFENIFERE to act on their behalves as the megaphone of the Yoruba tribe?
Even if the group was clandestinely appointed characteristically by its cronies as the megaphone of the Yoruba tribe does that confer Yoruba leadership on it? When did Yoruba leadership become so cheap that any pariah group can rise from an obscure corner of the region to start claiming it on the pages of newspapers? The theory of stomach infrastructure which just crept into Nigeria’s political thesaurus seems to have brought a new dimension to the well known cultural value in Yoruba land.
The Nature of Owl
For people who know the owl very well with its queer operation in the forest, the antics of the AFENIFERE political demagogues cannot be strange. Here are people of yesteryears who had spent their time and the time of their children as well as that of their grand children and are still seeking to spend the time of their great grand children for their own parochial benefits alone. At a time when vision rather than improvidence is the order of the day, it is strange that this group’s deleterious political activities are still geared towards the search for self relevance even where and when relevance for their primitive wish has become anachronistic. But what else can be said of a group that once claimed to be progressive but has now retrogressively turned round to become ultra-conservative in the belief that conservatism is the real bastion of stomach infrastructure for people in the twilite of their lives? Isn’t that a euphemism for advanced corruption?
Arrogation of Leadership
Still living in the dark days of dead woods in Yoruba land even in the 21st century, it is not strange that this so-called AFENIFERE group is currently arrogating Yoruba leadership to itself and claiming to be the megaphone of that Nigerian major tribe as it once did unchallenged in the remote past. That group’s primitive past now seems to be too visionless to cultivate a contemporary lifestyle for itself other than that of its primogenitor in the 1950s when Muslims in the Southwest region were subjected to sheer political servitude. Thus, in its failure to keep pace with the modern reality, the group still believes that the situation of the 1950s is the same as that of today; an indication that it has long outlived its time and its relevance.
Religious Politics
In recent time when an election was approaching, the group told a particular Presidential candidate that Yoruba people had decided to give him their block voting. That unsolicited pronouncement in the name of Yoruba tribe was in anticipation of a richer stomach infrastructure for its obscure members alone and that is its permanent, aggrandized political hallmark consistently pursued to the detriment of the tribe it fraudulently claims to represent. It is necessary to ask here of what eventually happened to the results of the referred presidential election. Did the promised candidate win? It is obvious these days that you cannot give what you do not have. The days of abracadabra in local politics are gone gone forever.
National Confab
Sometime early in 2014, this same group whch sold the idea of national confab to President Goodluck Jonathan desperately hijacked the Southwest list of the Presidential nominees to that confab and chose 15 of its members (all non-Muslims) to the exclusion of the entire Muslim populace in the region whose numerical strength cannot be underestimated. It took the rebellious formation of a splinter group named A’fenifere Renewal Group’ for the greedy Afenifere to concede only one seat to the leader of that splinter group to represent the Southwest Muslims at the national confab.
When, in reaction to that clandestine act, the Muslim Ummah of the South West of Nigeria (MUSWEN) wrote a memo to the National confab to put the records straight, Afenifere quickly but deceptively wrote a letter to MUSWEN inviting the latter to a meeting of mutual understanding. But characteristically, that deceptive meeting never saw the light of the day as AFENIFERE displayed its usual chameleonic prank as a way of dodging the meeting which it initiated.
If a group of octogenarian members like AFENIFERE can still be known for these pranks even at the twilight of their lives, what legacy will they leave behind for the future leaders in the region?
Evidence of Ignorance
What these people do not and may not know in a foreseeable future is that with the coming of internet and social media the definition of literacy has tremendously changed from mere reading and writing of tales and fables to that of modern browsing and messaging through the internet in the 21st century. And without such standard of literacy this time around any person who still claims to be literate is half-dead. However, it takes only the seeing to recognize the light and make the best use of it. Therefore, it cannot be a surprise that the members of AFENIFERE group are still snoring in their primordial bed while expecting others to be off
line like them.
Even in Yoruba land where AFENIFERE is supposed to be based the group merely operates in a certain obscure corners of the region only to randomly roar out to impress its ignorant allies in the Middle Belt and the Southeast on the pages of some obscure newspapers. But since the dance of a dragon fly on the surface of a brook can only be in a mandatory rhythm of the drummer beneath the water, no one should expect the owl to come home to roost for a meaningful purpose.
Judged by the public utterances and conducts of its members, AFENIFERE has become a ridiculous paradox between yesterday’s fictitious dream and today’s disappointing nightmare. Had the members of the so-called AFENIFERE group known how much they have become a laughable stock in Nigeria today, they would have probably reclined into their obsolete shell and stopped behaving like the owl among birds.
But how can they know when they can hardly realize that the trend of literacy which once gave them advantage of occupying the upper echelon of relevance in the region has since changed with the inability of most of them to put their fingers on the computer let alone prying into the modern world of literacy through the internet.
Yoruba Muslims in the 21st Century
To this so-called AFENIFERE group, the usefulness of the Muslim multitudes in the Western region does not transcend voting and clapping for the region’s ‘lotus eaters’ which AFENIFERE typifies. Despite the glaring difference between the Muslims of the 1950s who were treated like slaves and those of the 21st century who are highly sophisticated in essence and substance, the group still plays an ostrich by pretending not to take note of that conspicuous change hence the ignorant wish to maintain its primordial status quo.
Warning
Let it be known to this self-elevated group that the antics of the yore with which the so-called AFENIFERE outsmarted and relegated Yoruba Muslims to the background in the past have gone with the irritating particles of the past. And any further attempt to want to continue such primitive antics to the detriment of Yoruba Muslims will be adequately resisted in letters and in law. We have paid our due in terms of tolerance, patience and endurance. Elasticity has its limit.
No group of sheer opportunists that still ignorantly believes in the deceptive gimmicks of the past will be allowed anymore to ride roughshod over the Muslims of the Southwest. Enough is enough. Gone are the days when wisdom was genuinely attributed to old age because old age then personified sagery with experience. Today, from the experience of technology and its effect on the modern society, the human wisdom of the bicycle age seems to have been rendered anachronistic by that of the internet age. Like the rise of a modern building from the debris of the old mud building, the Yoruba Muslims of this generation have come of age and can no longer be swept into the refuse bin with the rubbles of the past. We do not need a borrowed mouth to speak out for us and nobody has a right to speak for us without our mandate.
As it takes two to tango it must also take a give and take relationship to ventilate a peaceful environment in a multi-religious society. No group should assume any vain superiority over others and expect peace to thrive. To live side by side and cohabit in harmony, mutual respect must be in the front burner of our relationship.