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Yorubaland became colonized at the height of Pax Britannica’s dominance in world affairs even as it contented with the attempt by early Yoruba leaders in the mold of Samuel Johnson to create a Yoruba Nation State from the ashes of the Yoruba civil wars which had decimated the land and which made it very difficult, if not impossible to challenge Pax Britannica’s intrusion into the land as part of the imposition of its hegemony. The second attempt, undertaken by the Egbe Omo Oduduwa and later the Action Group political party also faced similar obstacles, this time under a direct colonial State apparatus. In both of these instances, the emerging state apparatus was predicated upon subsuming Yorubaland and its leadership under colonialism’s preferred local agency; which was the Northern political establishment.
This establishment was also predicated on an assumption that the colonial state and its post-colonial replacement must be subordinated to the armed forces created by the colonial forces for its own use, first and foremost of which is the subjugation of the colonized—hence what we have all experienced at the hands of this military as a force of occupation. Thus, all political contradictions are resolved against this background. It would therefore not matter how these contradictions are resolved as long as the raison d’etre of this institution is not negated.
This requires the establishment of a clear driving force superimposed on the formal military formations acting out the colonial and post-colonial political script; the violation of which ended up precipitating the Nigeria-Biafra war.
Over time and after some political crises, this led to the emergence of the PDP, not only as a creation of the military but also its political face.
It will be recalled that the AD was formed as a response to the emergence of the PDP, which was actually the first post-Abacha political formation before Chief Bola Ige walked out. He walked out because he rightly perceived PDP’s historical mission, to wit, the establishment of a one-party state. What he did not know was how this was to be achieved. He agreed to serve in Obasanjo’s cabinet only because of their personal friendship and he was eliminated when he decided to return to his political base in order to revamp and reinvigorate the AD as a political powerhouse in Yorubaland.
In early 2001, a Yoruba coalition group known as Alajobi wrote a memo to all Yoruba leaders in the academia, politics, professions, alerting them of the impending neutralization of all Ethno-National centers of power by the PDP as its main road towards the one-party state. While this was not taken seriously, the assassination of Chief Bola Ige later in the year, sealed the deal for the PDP, especially in Yorubaland. Most of the AD/Afenifere, the then dominant political tendency, capitulated to Obasanjo on the premise of a promise made by Obasanjo couched in terms of Restructuring Nigeria. The only stand-out was the then AD Governor of Lagos and now leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Of course, we all knew what happened, as the Obasanjo forces neutralized the AD as a political party and its “socio-cultural” Afenifere twin ended up in political wilderness.
Obasanjo was acting the one-party state military script, and as is usually the case, the main opposition to any form of one-party state is the West/Yorubaland, right from its choices in the anti-colonial struggles. Hence the need to neutralize that bastion of opposition. What Obasanjo failed to realize, at the time, was that a stable post-colonial state in a multi-cultural, multi-national entity cannot be built on the foundations of a colonial paradigm which unilaterally forced these multiplicities into a singularity, through the agency of force, and that the military, as a child of colonialism, cannot midwife such a stability simply because of its own process of being. It must, therefore, as an institution, establish its dominance through a political machinery, which did not come with its establishment hence had to rely on existing political formations to promote its pan-Nigerianism.
Thus, when Obasanjo removed “politically” active military officers from active duty, majority of whom were from the geo-political North, he was unable to neutralize its political underpinnings hence, it was possible for the same geo-political North to scuttle his “Third Term” agenda in one swift move at the National Assembly.
In todays’ circumstances, Goodluck Jonathan, as an interested party to the internal struggle for power within the PDP, has embarked on the subversion of the Nigerian Constitution in order to promote the same agenda of making Nigeria a de facto one-party state. He couches his subversion under the pretext of “fighting” against the geo-political North’s insistence on having a shot at the Presidency as a matter of right.
More importantly, this viewpoint is being articulated in Yorubaland by the same forces that succumbed to Obasanjo’s promises that led to the demise of the AD. It is the same set of promises made to them by Jonathan that enabled them to become Jonathan’s spokespersons in Yorubaland. But for Jonathan to fulfil his promises, he had to subvert the Nigerian Constitution via all sorts of impunity against the opposition; utilizing the military for electoral heists; turning all aspects of State power into his ramrod against the political opposition etc etc.
What Obasanjo failed to do, Jonathan is succeeding because he is able to combine the neutralization of both the “socio-cultural” and the political; that is, Afenifere and its “socio-cultural” fellow travelers having been registered on the Jonathan Conference train coupled with the Ekiti electoral heist as well as such heists being planned for the rest of Yorubaland; thus making the coast clear for the formal institution of a one-party state via the PDP.
All of these are going on with the active connivance of the military as an institution. A mass angst or uprising against the one-party shenanigans will invite the same military as a “corrective” measure and the cycle for “democracy” will begin all over again. On the other hand, acquiescence by the masses of the people to the one-party state would make its establishment a fait accompli and the quest for Nigerian leadership or presidency would have to be fought within the PDP itself and any quest for Autonomy or even “True Federalism” would have been neutralized.
“ooduapathfinder” had once stated that Jonathan is working towards the attainment of geo-political North’s political ascendancy in the process of which any and all progressive forces all over Nigeria would be neutralized and rendered politically impotent. Hence, the demonization of the APC, especially in Yorubaland, was and is meant to reduce APC’s impact as a possible challenger, not to the presidency as such, but to the conservative and reactionary take-over of Nigeria under a one-party platform.
It can be argued that Jonathan’s re-election is the driving force for all the subversion he has embarked upon. This can be discarded in the sense that his re-election can only come about through the successful imposition of a one-party state. This imposition, however, is also within the context of the fact that his main ethno-political adversary, the geo-political North, is not shy about staking its claim to political power, in the process of which it ensures the dominance of its interest—as the outcome of the National Conference showed; as such, his re-election, alone, is not sufficient grounds for the shenanigans. This leaves the option of the one-party state as the driving force, which cannot be created simply for its own sake, but for the promotion of a particular worldview, in this case, anchored on the conservative world view, in its broadest sense.
The Yoruba Nation, pre-and post-colonial, had always favored the “welfarist society”(hence the translation of Action Group philosophy of “freedom for all, life more abundant” as “Afenifere”) and all the struggles of the AG had always been the promotion of this philosophy. That subsequent political formations which saw themselves as “off-shoots” of this paradigm had to operate under circumstances totally different from that of the AG meant that the Yoruba Nation has to decide if continuous existence under such unstable political conditions, where we will be going one step forward and two steps backwards, will suffice.
“ooduapathfinder” believes that if the SW APC is neutralized, the only way we can pursue the establishment of our settled socio-economic and political credentials is to begin to “work” the system, once again. And that is not a choice.
We know that elections, in Nigeria in general and in Yorubaland in particular, and now especially against the backdrop of a looming one-party state, are primarily against the post-colonial State apparatus whose practice is in direct contradiction to elementary forms of democratic practice. Hence, the quest for our settled socio-cultural and economic issues must establish its own legitimacy, NOW; thus placing us in good stead to confront the emerging one-party state. That is the urgent task of the moment.