The Historical Duty Awaiting the Yoruba in Today's Nigeria
By Ropo Sekoni, Ph.D
As the Yoruba people say: OKO KII JE TI BABA ATI T’OMO KI O MA LAALA. The crisis facing the Yoruba in Nigeria today may threaten the development of Yoruba culture worldwide. It is important to recognize that it is the Yoruba of Nigeria — those at home as well as those that now pass for a segment of the African neo Diaspora in north America — that are the direct target of the ethno-military politics of repression and impoverishment. To look for a parallel elsewhere in Africa, the unfortunate problems in Zaire threaten the Tutsi descendants in Rwanda and Burundi, but the xenophobic arsenals of Mobutu’s security agents were directed frontally at the Tutsi descendants in eastern Zaire, among other groups.
I am therefore using this edition’s presidential corner column to have a frank discussion with the Yoruba of Nigeria, as defined in the preceding paragraph. Chief Obafemi Awolowo said some thirty years ago that if the Yoruba continued to live their lives the way they appeared to have gotten used to, their future would be difficult. The future that Awolowo spoke about some three decades ago is now, unfortunately, with us!
How did the future Awo spoke about come upon us so unheralded and so fast? The reasons must be myriad, but one that cannot be ignored is the pervasive influence of money on Yoruba values over the last thirty years. Though since the beginning and until now the most critical nationality group in the West African subregion in terms of political sophistication, the Yoruba have unwittingly over the years brought their economic concerns to the front burner while pushing their political interests in Nigeria’s multiethnic environment into a disabled oven.
Before political independence came to all of Nigeria, the Western Region, the home of most Yoruba people, was a trail blazer in development efforts and projects: free primary education scheme, social welfare programs, agricultural modernization projects, a gender-balanced commercial culture, and a politically sophisticated citizenry that is jealous of its human and civil rights. All of these were facilitated not only by the ideology of progress that characterized the ruling party in the West, but also by a cultural headstart created by the ancestors of the Yoruba, the urban network in Yorubaland, and the big population that made such capital intensive projects like free primary education cost effective.
The Yoruba section of Nigeria moved fast to create its own regional university to absorb students graduating from the bludgeoning secondary schools, and lay a solid foundation for the production of manpower for future development. All of these efforts paid off until the crisis in the Western Region in the 1960s and the coming into power of ethno-military federal regimes. Gradually and almost imperceptibly, the Yoruba started to lose grip over their destiny as one military ruler after the other eroded the powers of the regions through the appointment of prefects or military governors who were not expected to be accountable to Yoruba people but only to their appointing military officers, who invariably, except during the short tenure of General Obasanjo’s regime, came from Northern Nigeria.
The University of Ife, the Liberty Stadium, the Western Broadcasting Service and the Western Nigerian Television (the first in Africa), Cocoa Board, Odua Investment enterprises were all taken over by the federal military government under the control of Northern-born soldiers. Such projects as the Farm Settlement (training and capital formation projects for young modern farmers), Overseas scholarship programs, and road networks in Yorubaland were brought under the control of the federal government only to be killed gradually through starvation of funds. Furthermore, efforts designed to create self-sufficiency in protein production through the cultivation of southern cows (Kete or Erinla) that are capable of resisting the tsetse fly, as well as piggery and goatery projects in the farm settlements were quickly abandoned by military governors appointed by Northern heads of state. I can still remember vividly the response of one of the military governors or administrators of Oyo state some years ago to the question by some Ife professors of agriculture on the need to be self-reliant in agricultural produce: "No, no, no; that is going too political. We do not want to compete with federal government projects." What this governor called federal projects were agricultural efforts in the North that relied for survival on the dependency of the centers of population in the South. It is common knowledge that the Yoruba have the most aggressive culture of consumption in West Africa.
Despite these setbacks, the Yoruba remained confident that their resourcefulness was adequate for them to take advantage of any situation. They released their energies into business and small-scale industries, as well as foreign training of their young ones. Thousands of Yoruba members of the newly emergent African neo Diaspora in the United States are descendants of people who were sent to this country for higher education in the 1960s and the 1970s with cocoa and timber money.
Ironically, those Yoruba men and women who trained in Europe and America in the 1970s are returning to these countries today in their advanced middle age after over two decades of honest service to Nigeria only to look for positions as nursing aides, taxi drivers, security guards, etc. Many Yoruba people who came to this country in the 1980s dare not return to Nigeria to work and assist their aging parents. Why?
The Yoruba political space, made to shrink gradually by successions of ethno-military regimes since 1966, was finally taken over by an unpretentious ethno-military dictatorship in 1993. The 1993 presidential election, expected to launch Nigeria on the road to democratic modern nation building, was annulled to allow for the return of a new variant of ethno-military control. The details of the destruction of the infrastructures for development in Yorubaland since the return of military governance are too palpable to merit any elaborate restating here.
Between 1993 and now, thousands of Yoruba civil servants, army, navy, and air force personnel have been forcibly retired from their positions to allow for the advancement of members of the ruling nationalities. For the juicy details, read any of the following publications from Nigeria: Tempo, Tell, The News, Tribune, etc. Several pro-democracy activists (those that have not been killed like Kudirat Abiola or Suliat Adedeji or Alfred Rewane) or are being profiled for death penalty for treason charges (like Wole Soyinka, Alani Akinrinade, Olu Falae, and Frederick Fasehun), have been called names as descendants of the wild wild West or Southwest.
At present, several Yoruba men and women are in detention for offenses yet to be identified by their jailors. Another "transition to democracy" has been launched to prepare the political space of the Yoruba for seizure by collaborators and praise singers who are now paraded by their master’s news media as Yoruba leaders, despite the fact that none of these people could have made the 8th eleven within the Yoruba community.
Despite all these problems foisted on the Yoruba by power-seeking non-Yoruba and their Yoruba sycophants, many Yoruba men and women are noticeably afraid to let other Nigerian nationalities know that it is time for each nationality in Nigeria to give notice that unless genuine democracy and federalism are restored, they as Nigeria’s largest single nationality group will take the lead in taking the case of continued denial of the human and cultural rights of the Yoruba to the United Nations and other countries in the civilized world in the same manner that the Ogoni people have done.
Let me use the remaining space to answer some of the questions that some of our readers have asked via E-mail, phone, or snail mail: Is it a return to primordial nationalism or primitive tribalism for the Yoruba to use the current repression of their sons and daughters as a reason to problematize the existence of Nigeria as a viable political entity?
NO. On the contrary, calling attention to the denial of human, civil, and cultural rights of the Yoruba in today’s Nigeria under an ethno-military post-annulment dictatorship is a creative way of reinforcing the earlier whistles blown by the Ogoni. Doing this may encourage other nationality groups (such as the Edo, Ibibio, Efik, Ijaw, Igbo, Idoma, Igala, Nupe, Bachama, and Tiv, to mention a few) to make similar statements and thus draw the attention of the international community to the dangers being covered up by highly paid image rehabilitators for Nigeria's military dictatorship in the capital cities of Europe and America.
There is nothing extraordinarily creative or original about the construction of Nigeria that raising queries about its political or cultural viability as one country at a time like this will banalize. The only group that can justifiably claim any originality and some credit for creativity, if at all, is Britain. If the descendants of the British officers and politicians who constructed Nigeria are to be honest, they are likely to say that their ancestors created Nigeria primarily for the good of Britain, and that if the contraption turns out to benefit other people, it is an added value that nobody ever contemplated or invested in. Why must the Yoruba themselves taboo the discussion of the assemblage of nations done by British conservative politicians and colonial administrators at the beginning of the Cold War?
Using the nationality approach to the solution of the present crisis in Nigeria may create a better environment for national unity than we are prepared to contemplate. It may enable the world to know how many of Nigeria’s nationalities really desire the restoration of democracy and functional federalism. What if the country turns out to be polarized on these issues; for example, if the Fulani or Kanuri or even the Igbo refuses to establish a struggle group for these rights? This will only provide a clear guide to the rest of the world on how to help Nigeria out of its present self-annihilating impasse.
What about allegations by some Igbo pro-democracy activists in Britain and the United States that major pro-democracy organizations are dominated by Yoruba and that this raises the fear of post-struggle domination by the Yoruba? Organizing pro-democracy struggle around distinct nationalities for a start will obviate such fears. A lot of good energy that could have been saved for struggling against repression and the denial of democracy that is now being expended on allegations of domination of other ethnic groups by the Yoruba in a multiethnic pro-democracy organization may now have to be used for forging collaborative programs among like-minded nationality-based organizations. Aren’t there logistic or strategic implications for this nationality approach to the issue of democracy in Nigeria? What if the brave Igbos and the daring Tivs are able to make their spaces less prone to human and cultural rights violation before other nationalities? All other democracy-loving nationalities will only need to ask the Igbo or the Tiv for support, and this will lead to the forging of a community of values and unity among several nationality groups in Nigeria.
The Yoruba people need not shy away from or be apologetic for encouraging pro-democracy organizations that are constituted solely by Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, or Ogoni. It is the common goals that will unite these groups and other groups in Nigeria that may later join the bandwagon of democracy, not the appearance of unity that is represented in General Abacha’s recent claim in his Washington Times’ interview: I think the major problem was the unity and the stability of the nation itself, its territorial integrity and existence as it is. [emphasis added]
Abacha’s understanding of the problem facing Nigeria contrasts sharply with Gani Fawehinmi’s recent statement in Nigeria: If we do not end dictatorship in Nigeria, dictatorship will finish Nigeria. [emphasis added]
If the Yoruba or other nationalities fail or shy away from mobilizing their people in the language and imagery that they are familiar with, it may be too late to bring the pro-democracy nationalities together after the nation has been destroyed by dictatorship.
AABO ORO LA N SO F’OMOLUWABI O.
For More Information Contact:
Egbe Isokan Yoruba
P.O. Box 90832, Washington, DC 20090
Tel: (202) 270-6382
FAX: (301) 499-5386
Internet: isokan@yoruba.org