Isokan Yoruba Magazine,
Fall 1996/Winter 1997 , Volume III No. I, Page 10.
Interview between
Dapo Olorunyomi and Professor Ropo Sekoni, Isokan Yoruba's
President.
D.O: Let me start this interview by congratulating you for recently assuming the leadership of this prestigious and, perhaps, most controversial Yoruba Organization outside of Nigeria.
R.S: You should have wished me good
luck, considering the inimitable record established by my
predecessor, Professor Segun Gbadegesin. Many people have asked
me privately if I knew what I was doing by consenting to succeed
Professor Gbadegesin.
DO: Having indirectly raised the question of the challenge of your new office yourself, let me ask you what your response is to the charges by non- members of Isokan Yoruba that the organization is too political and that there is a need for a culture-only or picnic-only Yoruba association?
R.S: My short answer to this is to
repeat Hubert Ogunde's admonition to the Yoruba nation some 30
years ago: YORUBA RONU. Accusing Isokan Yoruba of being
too political is a thoughtless position for any sane Yoruba man
or woman to take at this historical juncture. I would have been
the first person to castigate Isokan if it had been
getting involved in partisan politics. But Isokan has
remained, since its inception, a non-partisan or supra-partisan
organization. Must the Organization continue to have a space in
its programs for politics as the most important activity that
affects any group of human beings living in an organized space?
Of course, yes. As Professor Gbadegesin, a renowned cultural and
social philosopher, has said several times, culture is a larger
set that has politics - the struggle for power (second only to
nature) to determine the course of actions in a people's life -
as its subset. Those who accuse Isokan of being political
for having the courage to put the problems facing the Yoruba
nation in today's Nigeria on the table can only be members of one
of two groups: 1) a group of people paid by the oppressors of
Yoruba people to distract the Yoruba from confronting their
realities and planning for their future, and 2) people who are
simply naive.
D.O: Are there unique expectations at the present historical time that make the case for articulating a Yoruba call crucial?
R.S: There are several reasons for a
rallying call to all patriotic Yoruba men and women all over the
world. The civilization that the Yoruba people have built for
centuries, long before the slave trade and colonialism, is
gradually being destroyed by years of ethno-military domination
of Nigeria as a whole and of the Yoruba in particular. Our
political and social system for centuries before the coming of
the Europeans had always been tolerant of other points of view,
and rulers or Obas have always known that the will of the people
is supreme and that respect by the ruler for this will is the
only guarantee for staying in power. You must know that many
Yoruba kings were dethroned for being too high-handed. This
balance of power was made possible in precolonial times by a
virile civil society characterized by such groups as the Ogboni,
women's organizations, farmers' organizations, occupational
associations, religious societies, etc. It is this age-old
tradition of political debate and tolerance of opposing
viewpoints that the Yoruba transferred to such received British
institutions as the media, professional and other pressure groups
during and after colonial rule. You must remember that it is the
Yoruba's insistence on living according to the values of
democracy and respect for human rights that earned Yorubaland the
nickname of the rebellious Southwest. The Yoruba tradition of
responsive and responsible governance - for years under gradual
erosion by variants of ethno-military domination - was frontally
attacked in 1993 with the annulment of a free and fair election
won by a Yoruba man or, as our people jokingly say in Nigeria, by
someone who is non-Fulani/Hausa/Kanuri. In addition to the
annulment and the military occupation of Yorubaland, several
Yoruba leaders have since the annulment been going and coming out
of jail without trial for insisting in their pronouncements that
democracy is the only mode of governance that the Yoruba will
find acceptable. Before you ask me for names, Beko Ransome-Kuti,
Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana, Kunle Ajibade, Papa Adesanya, and
Papa Adebanjo (not to mention people from other nationalities)
are those I can easily remember. The present historical juncture
calls for a sober and deep reflection by the Yoruba and, of
course, by other nationalities in Nigeria. Since I am Yoruba, I
believe that no other nationality in Nigeria should be allowed to
tell the Yoruba how to organize toward a free political and
economic space within which their civilization can grow. The
present dominators of Nigeria have put the Yoruba way of life
into a state of coma. Wole Soyinka's observation in his new book The
Open Sore of a Continent is worth repeating to our readers:
no state or country should take its constituent parts or
nationalities for granted. It is up to right thinking Yoruba
people to start looking toward their future, especially now that
the rest of the world is ready for the challenges of the 21st
century. Isn't it ironical that the Yoruba are, on the eve of the
21st century, being pushed back into the 17th century?
D.O: As one of its many and complex formulations, the Yoruba experience is defined largely by its broad Diaspora. How does this tie into your position as president of perhaps the most active Yoruba organization outside of Nigeria?
R.S: As you know, the Yoruba Diaspora is perhaps larger than the homeland population. If the number of people in Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, and the United States who trace their ancestry to the Yoruba nation is anything to go by, one can say that the Yoruba in the ancestral home have a historical responsibility to create a free political and economic space that can serve as a Jerusalem or Mecca for the Yoruba Diaspora. This responsibility has become more urgent in view of the rise in the number of a second layer of Yoruba Diaspora made up of Yoruba immigrants and their American children. In today's Nigeria, people of Yoruba descent whose ancestors came here 300 or 400 years ago and those who have just migrated to this country or are born to immigrants can no longer visit their ancestral home as a result of the cultural and social anomie brought about by military tyranny known all over the world for its human rights violations.
How does this growing Yoruba Diaspora tie into
the agenda of my presidency? There is a need for aggressive
mobilization of the first and second tiers of Yoruba Diaspora
described above. I intend to sell the grim details of the Yoruba
condition in today's Nigeria not only to Yoruba-Americans in the
United States and Canada, but also to the Yoruba diaspora in
north and south America and the Caribbean. I wish that other
nationalities will follow the example of the Ogoni by letting the
world know the extent of their oppression and the systematic
destruction of their way of life. The Yoruba people need to stop
playing the Ostrich game by pretending that there are no plans
for their own ogonization by the current military
dictatorship.
D.O: What, actually, is the Yoruba agenda for the late 20th and the early 21st century?
R.S: There is not much left for the
Yoruba in the 20th century. It is a century of their domination
and exploitation; first by British colonialism which handed them
over to Britain-appointed internal colonizer. Yoruba people used
to console themselves after independence from Britain for their
active participation in the economy, despite their exclusion from
the political realm. Can they say so now that the economy has
been hijacked by an ethno-military rulers and their scions? The
Yoruba appear to have lost the 20th century, but they do not have
to forfeit the 21st if they are ready to be strategic and
proactive in their thinking. First and foremost, the Yoruba
require a free space within which their men and women can use
their minds and talents to improve the their culture and
contribute to the advancement of the world's civilization. Inside
Nigeria, there are about 35 million Yoruba and another 5 - 10
million scattered all over other West African countries from
Benin to Dakar. There is a need for a well-developed blueprint
for Yoruba participation in the global economy of the 21st
century. The potentials for an effective participation are,
though presently stultified by military tyranny, abundant: highly
trained manpower, a tolerant religious culture with built-in
recognition for the separation of church/mosque/shrine and state,
and a growing pool of hightech-ready experts and workers trained
in north America and Europe. Despite these potentials, the Yoruba
people may have a delayed entry into the 21st century if they
lack a space of freedom within which to actualize their
potentials. Africa and , indeed, the rest of the world will be
enriched by unfettered participation of Yoruba people in the
global economy of the new century. It is important for the
civilized world not to look away while one of the world's most
vibrant cultures is endangered by freedom- and justice-hating
military dictatorships.
D.O: Please give us a sense of the Isokan progrma for your tenure.
R.S: Let me start by saying that this is a
regime of consolidation. It appears that Professor Gbadegesin, my
predecessor, has left no stone of program initiation unturned.
This administration will continue the well-conceived programs
started by the last Executive in such areas as publications,
education and outreach, Alajeseku/thrift projects, the Isokan
House initiative, and the Yoruba Youth International project.
More emphasis will be placed on publications as a way of reaching
the large Yoruba Diaspora and sensitizing them to the growing
threats to their ancestral culture in today's Nigeria. All of
these activities should be enough for a 12-month tenure. What do
you think?
D.O: You are right. Let me end
this interview by wishing you the good luck you asked for
earlier. Thank you very much for your time.
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