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Tag: Yoruba people?

A day in Ibadan

This last Thursday, a historic gathering of Yoruba leaders took place in the iconic parliamentary hall of the old Western Region. Summoned by the much respected and admired General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, it brought out the very best and the brightest of the race. It has been said that the Yoruba people are always at their best when under grave political pressure. This meeting did not disappoint.

The cream of Yoruba intelligentsia, traditional leaders of thought, business barons, traditional rulers, technocrats, religious leaders, our consanguineous relations from the South South and battle tested representatives of the dominant political tendency gathered to chart a way forward for the region in the turbulent and tumultuous waters of contemporary Nigerian politics. Snooper was there.

In an important sense, the Ibadan summit was something of a watershed in the post-independence politics of the Yoruba people. It marked the formal end of hegemony of a certain kind of Yoruba leadership and the ascent to full dominance of another. There was a certain political élan and briskness of purpose in the air. Although regicide was in the air, there was not a word about the old political royals. The Yoruba, like all people of empire, can be very clever, classy and circuitous when dethroning their own kings.

The choice of venue could not have been more apt. It was an act of political wizardry, worthy of the greatest Yoruba political cognoscenti. Abiola Ajimobi, the urbane and witty host governor, was at his best as a discerning aficionado of the history of theYoruba race and his Ibadan people. Rauf Aregbesola, the politically focused governor of Osun state, electrified the audience with his grim agitprop. When Yemi Osinbajo made his late entry as if on cue, the entire hall erupted in wild jubilation. It was clear by then where the dominant spirit of the Yoruba resides.

It was in this storied building that the Yoruba people were first forcibly dispersed in post-independence Nigeria in a federally engineered disruption whose echoes reverberate up till this moment. Agents of the federal government acting in concert with political renegades and internally disaffected members of the ruling party conspired to unleash a memorable mayhem on the most sacred sanctuary of democratic governance.

Before that historic rupture, the Action Group led government had taken a clear lead in the political, economic, educational and social fields of the nation. Such were the radically humane policies, the revolutionarily innovative programmes, that in five years of the Great Leap Forward, the Action Group had completely transformed the Yoruba society in a way that could not have been imagined.

In one generation, the Yoruba people moved from the farm to the factory. Even our traditional western traducers were impressed. Television came to Western Nigeria before some backward and backwater European communities. It was too good to be true. But while our former colonial patrons nodded in admiration, other sectional Nigerian leaders also noted in affronted envy and cynical malice. For them, it became a question of the west and the rest of us.

Fifty three years after that historical dispersal, the nuclear fallout is still very much with us. It fed directly into the disputed and violence-suffused federal elections of 1964, the first coup, pogrom, the civil war and decades of untrammelled military despotism. It has also led to the political and economic retardation of the country on an industrial scale. As it was in the beginning, so it is at this end of the beginning; a conjuncture brimming with ruinous possibilities and fearsome portents.

Once again, the Yoruba society has been turned into a theatre of war and political hostilities with the barely literate trying to lord it over the vastly literate. Only in Yorubaland is this kind of “America wonder” possible. Those who are incapable of learning have taken to teaching, as Oscar Wilde would famously put it. In times of strife and stress and of a bitterly polarized political elite, the Yoruba political mob have always tried to seize control, as this column once warned. Have guns and cutlasses and the elite will travel out.

The consequences of this unending political gridlock are too horrendous to contemplate. In the course of time, the Yoruba nation and people have lost many of their illustrious scions and icons. From MKO Abiola who won a federal election only to be brutally murdered in incarceration, Architect Layi Balogun, another presidential aspirant, who died in cloudy circumstances, to James Ajibola Idowu Ige who was murdered in his bedroom.

Neither our women nor illustrious military scions have been spared. Kudirat Abiola was brutally gunned down in broad daylight. Mama Bisoye Tejuoso, a self-made billionaire and Iyalode Egba, and Suliat Adedeji were subject to unimaginable ritual torture before being callously dispatched.

Francis Adekunle Fajuyi who was despised and constantly dismissed as an Action Grouper by his Commander in Chief was killed while protesting the abduction of the same boss while Victor Anuoluwapo Banjo, a literary genius going by the power and potency of his letters, was finally silenced after several Biafran volleys had been emptied into him. “I am not dead yet”, Banjo continued to moan in heroic defiance of inevitable fate.

The question to ask and which was not addressed by the Ibadan summit is why the Yoruba elite have been such agreeable grist to the federal crushing mill. Morbid fear, hatred and envy we can understand as the inevitable pathologies of boxing people in different stages of spiritual, intellectual, political and economic development into a colonial cage of contraries. But the question we need to ask is why succeeding federal government, irrespective of its core ethnic affiliation, have always found it convenient to turn the Yoruba nation into a theatre of war.

It is not a question of pride or ethnic chauvinism, but as a result of their history and developmental trajectory, the Yoruba have come to accept certain minimum standards and bar of governance which they are not prepared to lower not even for any of their own wayward children. As this column noted a few weeks ago, it is a question of post-colonial political habitus. In the post-colonial colonium, all the nationalities retain their pre-colonial vibrancy and sense of identity. Here, the group-think and group-feeling are so strong that you do not need to meet at midnight to come to a consensus about what is best for your ethnic group.

The consensus emerges from the blues so to say and there is no political magic about it. It inheres in the subliminal subconscious of the people or what is known as the political unconscious. For example, nobody has begrudged Professor Ben Nwabueze when he noted that it was in the best political and economic interest of the Igbo people to vote for Goodluck Jonathan.

That was before the great constitutional lawyer began flying the famous Government of Unity kite. Intuitively, the Ijaw people also know who to vote for without being railroaded. Wise leaders know how to tap into the dominant mood and the political unconscious of their people. When they try to alter the dynamics without any corresponding historic shift in the mood of the people, they become political fools who are out of touch with the political habitus of their own people.

To repeat, the bane of modern post-colonial Nigeria is the fundamental incompatibility of habitus of its diverse people which has made it impossible for it to evolve into an organic nation. An organic nation is a cohesive community of shared values, ideals and aspirations. In the absence of an overriding national veto and ethos which can homogenize the diverse values of the diverse constituents, a restructuring of the huge amalgam of a nation into properly federating units is imperative. This is why after independence, the Yoruba people and their allies have been at the forefront of the struggle for genuine federalism.

Going forward, it will take an exceptional historical figure to override the veto of habitus by appealing to the best national instincts of the diverse people of Nigeria. This cannot be done by a leader who out of spite and contempt marginalizes a whole hegemonic bloc or who out of fear puts a vital region under military siege just to secure electoral advantage.

The Ibadan summit has gone a long way in distilling the contemporary political essence of the Yoruba people. As speaker after speaker, particularly those who were delegates to Jonathan’s confab, mounted the rostrum to denounce the confab in its entirety, it became very obvious that the main plank on which Jonathan seeks electoral reprieve in the old west has collapsed under the weight of its own inner contradictions. So also has the last shred of credibility of those who have been clinging to the sham confab as their political talisman.

In the flux and fluidity of post-colonial politics, it is not the betrayal of known enemies that hurts but the perfidy of known colleagues and former comrades in arms. In the past fifty three years in Yoruba land beginning with the decimation of the Action Group, going on to the struggle for the de-annulment of the June 12 presidential election and now the malignant presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, the fiercest battles in Yoruba land have always been between progressives and former progressives.

It may well be that these external battles are a reflection of the internal battles within the Yoruba soul itself, torn in traumatic ambivalence between a radically heady engagement with an unknown and scary future and a rearguard conservative action to preserve the gains of the immediate past. Without the colonial incursion, it is arguable that the Yoruba nation might have figured out its own engagement with modernity on its own terms and in its own right and with the flair for the dramatic peculiar to the race.

But there is no need crying over split milk. In the post-colonial hell that we have found ourselves, no Nigerian nationality or constituting units is exempt from the millennial horrors. The first step out of the debilitating debris and chaotic ruins is to see off the Jonathan calamity which is the regnant manifestation of a neo-military fascist machine gone haywire. It is only after this that we must all sit down to figure out what to do with a nation in permanent deferral and denial.

The beauty of the historic summit in Ibadan is that it is neither a vote against particular individuals nor a vote for particular individuals. It is a guarded endorsement of the future with all its scary shortcomings and shenanigans and of all the people who valiantly struggle for a seismic shift in Nigerian politics, personal foibles notwithstanding. A nation is a permanent work in progress and process and we cannot be slaves to the past. The problem is not in failing and falling but in falling and failing to get up. This is what we must keep in mind as the Nigerian ship of state once again trawls uncharted waters. It has been a historic day in Ibadan.

March 22, 2015
Too late in the campaign to ‘talk federalism’?

What is wrong is for Yoruba groups to confuse the demand of the Yoruba for restoration of federalism with the recommendations of the 2014 national conference convened by President Jonathan.

With apology to my other readers, this column today will focus on persistent questions in the last few days from my politically-charged readers about the place of federalism in a presidential campaign that is supposed to be about good governance, anti-corruption, national security, employment, etc.

On ‘why it is the Yoruba people that are shouting loudest about federalism this close to the presidential election,’ there is nothing wrong with any nationality or region choosing to introduce an issue or agenda that is of significance to it at any time during the campaign. The Yoruba have been in the forefront of the demand for restoration of federalism since Alao Aka-Bashorun popularised the phrase ‘Political Restructuring’ of Nigeria and Chief Enahoro’s Movement for National Reformation, NADECO, and PRONACO included the matter of sovereign national conference in the list of demands during and after the struggle against the last phase of military dictatorship. In another sense, it is conceivable that the absence of federalism has thrown up such problems as corruption, unemployment, lack of security, etc.

There is also nothing wrong with Yoruba political or socio-cultural groups choosing to bring the issue of federalism into the campaign at this point. In fact, to not do so now is not to be sufficiently honest with the next administration, regardless of who wins the election. What is wrong is for Yoruba groups to confuse the demand of the Yoruba for restoration of federalism with the recommendations of the 2014 national conference convened by President Jonathan. Even President Jonathan himself said several times that he did not convene the conference to gain any political advantage but to provide a platform for a national dialogue. This may be why President Jonathan had not campaigned on the strength of his involvement in the campaign in regions other than the Southwest until his supporters in the Yoruba region sponsored special campaign events on the conference.

That other concerned citizens and groups (such as the Yoruba Assembly) have joined the fray of discussing federalism almost on the eve of the presidential election is also in order. It is important for the two presidential candidates to be made aware of minimalist and maximalist positions on the matter of federalism and to know the difference between those who are clamouring for devolution of a few administrative functions and those who seek fundamental changes in the sharing of power and responsibilities among federating units and the central government. It is proper for each of the presidential candidates to know the specific demands of each of the constituent units of the country, ahead of voting and assumption of power. Electoral democracy is not only about those seeking power to present a programme of action to the electorate, it also allows citizens to bring their own programmes to the attention of those seeking to govern them. Thus, bringing the issue of federalism back to the table at this time is in order.

What is out of order is for any group to claim that the recommendations of the 2014 national conference represents what the Yoruba want in 2015 and beyond. That two Yoruba groups plan to meet on the same day (one in Lagos and another in Ibadan) to push the matter of federalism into the campaign rhetoric is not unusual. The Afenifere and its supporters have a right to sell the Jonathan conference to voters, but they are wrong to say that the recommendations from the conference represent what the Yoruba want from the next political dispensation. Nothing is also amiss about the Yoruba Assembly, an organisation that has championed in the last few years the call for genuine federalism, to remind Yoruba people about which programmes to push to the table of the next president and the next legislature, as no president can unilaterally restore federalism.

The Yoruba Assembly must let voters know the views of Yoruba self-determination groups on recommendations of the 2014 national dialogue, as stated by its promoters below:

“States can now create employment and develop their own states. Each state can have its own constitution, its own police force, can have its own prison service, can create its own local governments and in addition, in the economic domain, solid minerals that had been the exclusive preserve of the federal government since independence, have now been brought to the concurrent list; creation ofself-funding regional institutions” in order to encourage developmental efforts among cooperating states”

a.           Creation of Self-funding Regional Institutions among Cooperating States

Recommending a self-funding economic agency without fiscal federalism that gives the power to raise revenue for development at the sub-national level is nothing more than self-deception. A country in which the states or federating units depend on allocation from the centre cannot call itself a federal system. None of the federations in the world: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirate, and the U.S.A., operates on the model of state dependency on allocations from the centre recommended by the 2014 national conference. A self-funding regional institution is another bureaucracy to occlude the removal of the power of sub-national governments to generate revenue for its own development and pass some of such revenue to the central government for national projects.

b.           States as “federating Units” that can have their own Constitutions

Insisting that existing states are federating units without giving any consideration to economic viability of such units is to deliberately endorse the erosion by military dictators over the years of the political structure and government system upon which the peoples of Nigeria obtained independence as one country in 1960. It should be left to a plebiscite in each state to determine if it wants to join other contiguous states to form a region or remain as discrete units with constitutions. What is the use of the power of writing a constitution given to a state that has to go the central government for monthly allocation? What is significance of a suffocating federal presence in each state for citizens’ human and civil rights and good governance? For example is Ekiti State today, where we now have 6 legislators in control of the State Assembly as the majority while the remaining 17 are considered minority because the centre is supporting that abnormality, a federating unit or a subjugated one? It will be an insult to the memory of Chief Obafemi Awolowo for any group to say that the recommendations from the conference have complied with the federal system that Chief Awolowo practiced in Western Region and upon which he struggled to demand improvement in his writings.

c.            Each State can create its own Local government.

If the central government will retain and disburse all the funds for local governments, it is dishonest to say that the power to create local governments at the state level is a gain in the direction of federalism. The reluctance to move away from the structure imposed by military dictators instead of returning to the autonomy of each state to fund its local governments is what makes the 2014 national conference a distraction that must not be passed to the next administration by Jonathan or Buhari. This represents further distortion of the federal system.

d.           State Police

State police is a consequence and not the cause of federalism as supporters of the Jonathan Conference want people in the Yoruba region to believe. Right now, states depend almost entirely on federal allocations to pay their workers’ salaries. State police is to be funded from received allocations at the same time that the number of states is to move to 54. We have also been told that the allocation accruing to the centre is reduced by 10%. But the increase in the number of states would have already made nonsense of the increase to states, as 54 states (rather than 36) would still share the new percentage of allocation to states. Reducing or increasing the amount of allocations is not fiscal federalism by any stretch of imagination. Such determinations are precisely what is wrong with the unitary system the Jonathan conference has ‘panel beaten’. Fiscal federalism proceeds from the shared control of economic and fiscal policies by national and sub-national governments.

Nigeria before and after elections needs contestation of ideas to improve governance of the country. The Yoruba Assembly should have no apology for challenging exaggerations about the significance of the 2014 national dialogue.

March 22, 2015
In memory, and for memory

(On the passing of Yoruba Paterfamilias)

Once again, the Yoruba people have been thrown into a state of joyous mourning, if ever there could be such an oxymoron. They are mourning the passing of some of their most respected and revered fathers who recently joined the ancestors. But at the same time, they are celebrating the lifetime achievements of these Yoruba avatars, and the honour and respect they have brought to their ethnic group and their nation.

The grim reaper has been busily at work. One after the other, the old men have been falling, like the last lap of honour after a great race. At the last count, there were five of them who had bid the nation a final farewell, and in quick succession, too. When shall we see the likes of these great men again? When shall the Yoruba race be host to such exemplary individuals who made a shinning difference to their community and country at large?

The youngest of them was the legal luminary, G.O.K Ajayi , who was buried at Ijebu Ode on Thursday on what should have been his eighty third birthday. Next was the urbane and quietly cultivated Sir Michael Otedola, a former governor of Lagos state, who was interred in his idyllic village of Odoragunse on Friday. Then there was Chief Degun, the distinguished civil servant. After them the duo of the nonagenarian OtunbaO.A Osibogun and the centenarian Professor C.O Taiwo.

In Godwin Olusegun Kolawole Ajayi, you had the exemplary legal genius who deployed his formidable forensic endowment in the service of progressive social engineering. In Chief Degun, you had the quintessential technocrat and unblemished public servant who joined others in laying the foundation of Yoruba bureaucratic modernity. In Otunba Osibogun you had the exemplary community leader who left his society much better than he met it.

In the refined and ever urbane Sir Michael you had a man of amazing grace and courtly civility who retreated in retirement behind a wall of statesmanlike rectitude and almost prudish decorum. In Pa Oledele Taiwo, you had a man who refused to deploy his outstanding intellect for selfish personal gains. They no longer come like these avatars.

Of all these titans, it was perhaps G.O.K Ajayi who struck the cord of affection and wild adulation with the Yoruba public imagination. Yet he was ever so retreating, so self-effacing and so modest. He was a star lawyer in every material respect. He brought class, elegance and a natural distinction to bear on the profession. With his quiet imperial carriage and aristocratic bearing, there was something about the man which reminded one of an ancient Roman proconsul. He looked noble and acted like a nobility.

His dazzling gifts could have propelled him to the highest echelon of politics. Yet he shunned partisan politics like a plague. After the epic battle to restore Chief Ajasin’s stolen mandate, snooper recalled the great man warding off with a polite but firmly disobliging frown the mob that wanted to carry him shoulder-high. He had merely done his duty to his profession, his community and country at large. It was time to go home. Thirty one years after, G.O.K has truly gone home to join his ancestors but the Yoruba people would not be in a hurry to forget this man particularly when recalling their electoral traumas in the hands of a diseased Nigerian post-colonial state.

Yours sincerely attended Professor Taiwo’s final burial rites in his Oru Ijebu homestead. It was like the departure of a major royalty. The crowd would have been unprecedented for that rural community. From Ijebu Igbo through Oru and on to Ago Iwoye and Ilishan, the entire Ijebu outpost rose as one to give their departing illustrious son a resounding send off. The reception that followed interment would have made even a bi-centennial egungun cringe in envy.

Yet, It says something about the seemingly Sisyphean fate of Nigeria that after contributing so much to the development and upliftment of their fatherland these titans should depart at a time of great stress and strain for the nation. Nigeria is in desperate straits. The omens are not too good. The tumult and turbulence arising from the abduction of the Chibok girls is merely a sub-text for something far more threatening. These are mere symptoms of a deeper national malaise, an organic crisis of the state in which the main actors appear perplexed and disoriented, in which the very structure of the state is in danger of being overwhelmed by forces of adversity.

As we have had cause to note once or twice in this column, an organic crisis of the state occurs when the ruling class fails in a fundamental national project. It may be failure to safeguard the territorial integrity of the nation, leading to widespread insurrection. It may be due to failure to sustain or valorize democracy leading to a situation of anarchy and disorder. It may arise from the endemic inability of government to satisfy the basic yearnings of the populace for food, shelter and transportation manifesting in widespread discontent and edgy distemper. It may also arise from the inability of the state to protect the citizens and the failure of the army to uphold the territorial sanctity of the nation.

To be sure and to be fair, this organic crisis of the state preceded the Jonathan administration. In a sense, it can actually be argued that Jonathan himself is a product and manifestation of the crisis. To be precise, Jonathan himself looked originally like a polytechnic pawn on the vast chessboard of political intrigues. It is therefore no surprise that under him the organic crisis has worsened to include all the major indices of state failure.

As usual with every major crisis of the state in post-independence Nigeria, the Yoruba have been caught in a double-bind in this one as well. It reflects a deep ambivalence about a Nigerian project that has turned into a horrific human abattoir; a roiling hell on earth. Going forward and oscillating between a rationally conservative Pentheus and a radically idealistic Prometheus, the Yoruba character as it has evolved over a thousand years of empire-building and empire-dismantling is also marked by a deep ambiguity.

It is this ambiguity which is often a source of deep frustration and perplexity for their ethnic cohabitants in the Nigerian nation-space . It often leads to charges of double-dealing and perfidy. Historical evolution often determines national character. For example, as empire builders themselves, the conserving and conservative aspects of the Yoruba character may lead to the conclusion that not everything about empires is evil and abhorrent. It is not impossible that the Yoruba aristocracy nurse a deep fascination and even respect for the Hausa/Fulani power masters and their hankering after order, stability and societal coherence.

But the obverse of the coin is that the libertarian and forward looking side to the Yoruba nature also harbours a deep admiration and approval of the fiercely republican ethos and the revolutionary dynamism of the Igbo society. No society can progress without its revolutionary firecrackers. Where the Yoruba seem to part way with the Fulani oligarchy is in the stagnant and stagnating vision of human society which abhors inevitable change and the transition to modernity. It is sheer bunkum to imagine that some group of people are pre-ordained to be slaves. On the other hand, the Yoruba will balk and shudder at the radical disorder, the anarchic steamrolling, the sheer human wastage and perpetual convulsion of the Igbo permanent revolution.

It will be stupid in the extreme to argue for the superiority of one social model over another. Such analysis always comes with a freight of primordial prejudice. Nevertheless, it is often crucial and even critical to isolate these traits with as much analytical integrity as possible with a view to throwing light on the social contradictions that drive contemporary Nigeria. Had these major nationalities been independent nations, they would have found within themselves the inner strength and internal resources to overcome these internal contradictions.

For example, the flame throwing Yoruba dissidents of the First Republic had virtually succeeded in overthrowing their local tormentors but for the Federal might which kept the local tyranny going. But flame throwing was not nearly going to be enough to throw off their tormentors hiding under the federal might. It would require the radical republican daredevilry and fire power of mid-ranking Igbo officers whose worldview could not abide stability and order anchored on feudal injustice.

Yet a few months later when the Igbo leadership wanted to bid a precipitate goodbye to Nigeria, Chief Awolowo demurred. It was either out of the Yoruba traditional fear of the unknown or fear of radical anarchy precipitated by a revolutionary rupturing of the old order. This tact and restraint when the chips are down and the temple is terminally threatened, the measured discerning to know when to pull the plug on the rampaging mob, is what many neutral observers see as a reflection of Yoruba political sophistication. Others not so sanguine are not impressed. They see it as evidence of rank dishonesty.

It is a classic conundrum. Since they know how much it takes and costs to conjure order and stability in any society, natural empire builders can never be natural revolutionaries. No one can accuse Awolowo and his lieutenants of political cowardice. They were very clear in their mind about the radical frontiers of human endeavour to be traversed in the Yoruba march to full modernity. Yet It is also the law of nature and logic of human evolution that in any society at a given point, the most radical segment and most natural agents of change are those with little or nothing to lose.

This classic conundrum and historic ding-dong in which conservative fear of the unknown mixes with radical optimism about the future has shaped and framed the nature and terms of Yoruba engagement with Nigerian post-Independence politics. By paradoxical default, it is what has ensured a measure of stability for Nigeria and boosted its chances of survival. In times of stress, the howls of secession may loudly emanate from certain Yoruba trenches, but it is also the very moment the hegemonic political leadership of the race act in concert with others to find a way forward for the nation.

In coming months as the crisis of the state deepens, the Yoruba political leadership will be forced by historical pressures to take some decisive steps which may well affect the stability and continued survival of the Nigerian nation. For example, it is well known that the dominant faction of the Yoruba leadership has been trying to forge a fraught alliance with the core north in order to heave the country forward.

But it is becoming clearer by the day that the forces of entrenched status quo in the old north are bent on frustrating this alliance by insisting it is either their way or the highway. With its political back to the wall, the old north is in no political shape to give preconditions or to suborn attempts to craft a consensus from contending contraries. The west has nothing to seriously gain from this alliance. It is borne of the typical Yoruba obsession that this nation can still be fixed. But if the west were to pull out of the alliance, it will leave the road very clear for the return of the inept and clueless PDP piranhas. Whether the country can then survive another four years of such rule is another matter.

From a different perspective, is also clear that the few patriots who went to the so called National Conference with the forlorn hope of radically restructuring Nigeria have had their balls smashed by the forces of entrenched status quo. It is now clear that if Nigeria is ever going to be genuinely restructured it is not going to be at a tea party. With the hope of radical restructuring dashed and the door of political redemption closed, the continuous slide into anarchy and anomie now appear to be irreversible. The Yoruba mob is already abroad. The nostrils pick the familiar smell of Mushin circa 1965 with much trepidation. There may just be a new Omo Pupa around the corner. Oh Yello!!!!

It is just as well that these Yoruba exemplars have gone to join their ancestors. They have made their mark. Only a glutton for punishment would insist on living longer with such grim conditionalities. It is well. Goodnight sirs.

June 1, 2014
Who are the Yoruba people? (Part 3)

Up until 1292 BC and the ascension of King Menpehtyre Ramesses, all the Pharaohs of Egypt were black. These include some of the better known ones such as King Horemheb (who preceeded King Ramesses), King Khafra (who was depicted by the Great Sphinx of Giza), King Tutankhamun (the young Pharoah whose tomb was discovered with enormous riches and a terrible curse by a British archeologist and explorer called Howard Carter), Queen Cleopatra (whose beauty was enchanting, who captured the emotions of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, who divided the Roman Empire and whom this writer honoured with a poem titled ‘’The Nubian Queen’’), Queen Nefertiti (who was the wisest of the wise and the most compassionate of all the Egyptian monarchs), King Piye (who was the conqueror of Egypt, the master of Nubia and the greatest of all the Cushite warrior kings) and the two Pharaoes that the biblical Moses and the biblical Joseph knew respectively and that had such a great impact on Jewish history and the fortunes of the Jewish people. All these Pharaohs were black African Nubians who were to be later referred to as the ‘’Sudanese’’. The fact of the matter is that right up until the establishment of the 19th dynasty and the coming of King Ramesses in 1292 BC the rulers of Egypt were all Nubians and not the ‘’brown and olive-skinned’’ Euroasiatics and Arabs that the Ramessesian era ushered in.

The Nubians not only ruled Egypt for thousands of years but they also constituted the majority of those that made up the Egyptian middle class and intelligensia including the clerics, theologians, artists, writers, poets, medics, artesans, builders, architects, astrologers, mathmatecians and professionals. The Ancient Egyptians themselves referred to their homeland as ‘’Kmt’’ (which is conventionally pronounced as ‘’Kemet’’). According to the celebrated historian Cheikh Anta Diop, the Ancient Egyptians referred to themselves as “Black people’’ or ‘’kmt’’ and ‘’kmt’’ was the etymological root of other words, such as ‘’Kam’’ or ‘’Ham’’, which refer to ‘’black people’’ in Hebrew tradition. Diop, William Leo Hansberry, and Aboubacry Moussa Lam have argued that ‘’kmt’’ was derived from the skin colour of the Nile valley people, who they claim were black. And they were absolutely right. These are the facts though some western and Arab Egyptologists find it hard to accept and often seek to deny it. Yet whether anyone likes to accept it or not the fact remains that the greatest civilisation that the world has ever known, which is the Egyptian civilisation, was led and established by people of colour and those same people were the custodians of the deepest mysteries and secrets of our world and of the human race.

The final batch of ancient Cushites that remained in Arabia for thousands of years after all the others had left and that had refused to leave those lands for Africa with their Ethiopian brothers and sisters eventually migrated to the Egyptian Nile Valley from Mecca and Medina. Thousands of years later this last wave of Cushite migrants were to be referred to as the ‘’yoruba’’. Yet for thousands of years before the word ‘’yoruba’’ was even conceived and after their arrival in the Nile Valley these same people constituted an essential and vital part of the ruling and middle class of the Sudan, Nubia and Ancient Egypt. The Cushite forefathers of the yoruba were a learned and mystical people that were well versed in philosophy, the arts, history, the mysteries of the age, science, anthropology and the secrets of the spirit realm and human existence. Their contribution to Ancient Egyptian culture and art was second to none. Most importantly the pantheon of gods that they had worshipped, guarded jealously and served for thousands of years whilst in Mecca and Medina before their migration to the Nile Valley were accepted by the Egyptian ruling elite and were fully integrated and superimposed on the Egyptian religious stratosphere. As a matter of fact those gods were not only accepted but they eventually became the cornerstone and foundation of Ancient Egyptian culture and religion. That is the level of input that the yoruba made into the affairs and development of Ancient Egypt.

In our quest to further explore the ancient Egyptian roots of the yoruba permit me to qoute copiously from an excellent contribution titled ‘’YORUBA- THE EGYPTIAN CONNECTION’’ which was written by Olomu and Eyebira. The write-up is utterly fascinating in terms of it’s depth and research. In the section titled ‘’The Oduduwan Revolution’’. The authors wrote the following-

‘’In this chapter, we shall talk of a possible migration from ancient Egypt. Many traditions point to a fact that an alien group (Egyptians) immigrated to Yoruba land and mixed with the original population.Many oral traditions are replete with these stories. The Awujale of Ijebu land has shown that the Ijebus are descended from ancient Nubia (a colony of Egypt). He was able to use the evidence of language, body, scarification, coronation rituals that are similar to Nubians’ etc, to show that the Ijebus are descendants of the Nubians. What the present Awujale claimed for the Ijebus, can be authenticated all over Yoruba land. The Awujale even mentioned (2004) that the Itsekiri (an eastern Yoruba dialect) are speaking the original Ijebu language. Since the Nubians were descended from the Egyptians, the Ijebu, and by extension, all Yoruba customs, derived from the Egyptian as well. Many traditional Yorubas have always claimed Egypt as their place of original abode, and that their monarchical tradition derives from the Egyptians.

Apostle Atigbiofor Atsuliaghan, a high priest of Umale-Okun, and a direct descendant of Orunmila, claimed that the Yorubas left Egypt as a result of a big war that engulfed the whole of Egypt. He said the Egyptian remnants settled in various places, two important places being Ode Itsekiri and Ile-Ife.Chief O.N Rewane says “Oral tradition has it also that when the Yorubas came from South of Egypt they did not go straight to where they now occupy. They settled at Illushi, some at Asaba area – Ebu, Olukumi Ukwunzu while some settled at Ode-Itsekiri,.” (O.N. Rewane Royalty Magazine A PICTORIAL SOUVENIR OF THE BURIAL AND CORONATION OF OLU OF WARRI, WARRI 1987). Since these oral traditions are passed on by very illiterate people, we can augment whatever is recorded with written sources.

Concerning the migration of some of the Yoruban ancestors from the east, Conton says: ‘’The Yoruba of Nigeria are believed by many modern historians to be descended from a people who were living on the banks of the Nile 2,000 years ago, and who were at the time in close contact with the Egyptians and the Jews. Sometime before AD 600, if this belief is correct, these people must have left their fertile lands, for reasons which we can not now discover and have joined in the ceaseless movement of tribes west wards and south-wards across our continent.We can only guess at the many adventures they and their descendants must have had on their long journey and at the number of generations which passed before they arrived. All we can be certain about is that they were a Negro people and that one of the many princely states they founded on their arrival in West Africa…..was Ife’’- Conton.

Although we agree with Conton that some of the Yoruban ancestors migrated from Egypt, we tend to toe the scientific line of Cheik Anta Diop, that the ancient Egyptians were pure Negroes. Aderibigbe, an indigenous scholar, also accepts that the Yorubas migrated from Egypt. He says:”The general trend of these theories, most of them based on Yoruba traditions, is that of a possible origin from “the east”. Some scholars, impressed by the similarities between Yoruba and ancient Egyptian culture – religious observation, works of art, burial and other customs – speak of a possible

migration of the ancestors of the Yoruba from the upper Nile (as early as 2000BC – 1000BC) as a result of some upheavals in ancient Egypt”. (AB ADERIBIGBE 1976). Unlike Conton, Aderibigbe was able to pinpoint a cause for the Yoruban migration – war. Olumide Lucas did a lot of job to show similarities and identities between the ancient Egyptians and the Yoruban peoples. The date that Aderibigbe gave (2000BC – 1000BC) is much earlier than that given by Conton. Aderibigbe’s date corresponds to that of the Hyksos invasion of Egypt 2000-1500BC.

On the possible eastern origin of the Yorubas, Tariqh Sawandi says:”The Yoruba history begins with the migration of an east African population across the trans-African route leading from Mid-Nile river area to the Mid-Niger. Archaeologists, according to M. Omoleya, inform us that the Nigerian region was inhabited more than forty thousand years ago, or as far back as 65,000BC. During this period, the Nok culture occupied the region. The Nok culture was visited by the “Yoruba people”, between 2000BC and 500BC. This group of people was led, according to Yoruba historical accounts by king Oduduwa, who settled peacefully in the already established Ile-Ife, the sacred city of the indigenous Nok people.This time period is known as the Bronze Age, a time of high civilization of both of these groups. According to Olumide J. Lucas, “the Yoruba, during antiquity, lived in ancient Egypt before migrating to the Atlantic coast”. He uses as demonstration the similarity or identity of languages, religious beliefs, customs and names of persons, places and things. In addition, many ancient papyri discovered by archaeologists point at an Egyptian origin’’ (Tariqh Sawandi: ‘’Yorubic medicine: The Art of divine herbology).

(TO BE CONTINUED)

June 16, 2013