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One of the decisions of the Jonathan National Conference, which is patently anti-Federalist and a denial of one of the major achievements of the Western Region(the Yoruba Nation), is on the need for what the Conference calls “self-funding regional institutions” in order to encourage developmental efforts among cooperating states.
In the Western Region, the Action Group government created the Western Nigeria Development Corporation, which, among other things, was responsible for the industrial and economic development of the Region through the mechanism of the various industrial and residential estates as well as other economic entities. It was also directly involved in human development via the provision of educational scholarships.
When the Region was turned into Western State, as the successor entity to the Western Region, the WNDC continued its historical mission and when the State was further carved up into the three States of Oyo, Ogun and Ondo, as successor entities, the then Secretary to the Government of Western State, the late Mr.C.S.O. Akande led others to set up a holding company known as “Oodua Holdings” in order to prevent the outright collapse of the institution as such was what the then military administration in Nigeria favored. That holding company is what we now know as Oodua Investments Ltd, with all of the Yoruba successor States as shareholders.
Some of its companies went into the doldrums, especially when Nigeria’s economic policies came under the hammer of the Structural Adjustment Program, which among others, saw to the demise of the Marketing Boards, which was loudly hailed as an important element of economic liberalization but which in the end turned out to be an avenue to economic suicide via making local production unattractive and untenable because of the proliferation of imported substitutes thereby turning a formerly productive sector into an absolute consumer of imported, finished goods which also led to our political and cultural strangulation. In spite of these, some of the ventures retained their viability while some that went under are now being resuscitated by the current APC Governments in Yorubaland.
This brief excursion is to let us know that what the Jonathan Conference decided upon is nothing new as it already existed in a very functional form in Yorubaland, in spite of efforts to destroy it or take it over by interests sympathetic to the Center.
The WNDC concept was part of a political paradigm that saw to the combined and even development of a Region just emerging from colonial underdevelopment and midwifed by the Action Group as its core demand for decolonization. Whereas the Jonathan Conference denied this core political necessity in its approval of further balkanization of the Region via creation of more states which are no longer successor entities of the Western Region and giving us a sop in the form of any form of cooperation between and among the states and which cooperation is dependent upon an approval of the National Assembly.
A “self-funding economic agency” without its political basis is a non-starter, a priori; and a denial of economic self-actualization for an economic platform in a center of antagonistic political configuration is a panacea for economic failure.
When the Yoruba delegates now accept this as an “achievement”, questions are bound to arise if the negation of our past in its totality is the requirement for such achievement; for it can be said that such an issue ought not even be debated in the first instance; especially when even the Yoruba States are also currently collaborating on non-commercial economic integration via the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria and the states in the South-South Zone are already pursuing similar collaboration. By rejecting the Zones(which are the real successor entities of the former Regions) as the minimum definition of a Federating Unit and replacing it with “states”, the Jonathan Conference has denied those examples their right of self-fulfillment.
Therefore, whether “self-funding” or not, this is an area Yorubaland has gone beyond and it is a major setback for the Region if we have to submit ourselves to some scrutiny by a National Assembly controlled by Goodluck Jonathan’s political platform, especially when such an Assembly and platform have both been unable to create similar entities for the economic development of the entire country or parts of it.
Besides all of these is the fact that such an economic paradigm does not depend on contiguity of participating states and if it does, the National Assembly may as well make it a nullity as any of the States, especially when they are considered as the “Federating Units” can collaborate on any “self-funding” activity as the projected outcome will not necessarily have a cultural inference but will depend solely on its economic benefits. Thus, such collaboration does not depend on physical location as it could be financial which then reduces its socio-cultural value to the financial partner as such financial investments could be undertaken anywhere on the planet without its necessarily being a function of “regional cooperation”, self-funding or not.
Yet cultural renaissance is a fundamental function of decolonization which the current Nation State has so far proved incapable of resolving. Which is why the “modern Nation State” as conceived by the colonial and imperial powers are now falling apart all over the world, with its attendant loss of human lives mostly in countries without a colonizing background but with a “civilized” methodology in those with such background as evidenced by Scotland, Catalonia and Belgium. In the Middle East and North Africa today, what the imperial powers influenced, manifesting as the “Arab Spring” has either led to the crumbling of the Nation State in countries like Libya, Yemen or complete militarization in Egypt, Algeria and the threat of same in Tunisia. And the crumbling of similar Nation States being experienced in Iraq and Syria only to be replaced with an emerging Islamist structure is also tied to the denial of this cultural necessity.
To all intents and purposes, these Nation States embarked on some form of “self-funding” economic ventures even if it is conceded that they acted as sovereign entities, unlike what is being proposed in Nigeria. The issue is that Nigeria’s proposition is aimed at enthroning the same type of Nation State paradigm that is crumbling all over the place such that the minimum requirement for solid and peaceful solution in these countries always revert back to some form of Cultural Federalism in consonance with their specific realities; which is what is being advocated for and in all of these countries with the crumbling Nation States.
Thus, the Jonathan Conference already assumed the singularity of the geo-political space called Nigeria and all of its solutions to its problems are relegated to maintaining that singularity while turning issues of Federalism into an administrative convenience even when it is obvious that the problem is exactly in that singularity.
By acceding to this ridiculous solution, the Yoruba delegates fail to contextualize the Nigerian problem within the global context whereas that was the driving force of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa and later the Action Group in formulating its responses to the then emerging anti-colonial battles.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo drew extensively on the global parameters in arriving at the Federalist option when the anti-colonial struggle was at its peak, globally; and now, when a similar situation presents itself, Yoruba delegates to the Jonathan Conference relegated this global imperative into nothingness by allowing other forces in Nigeria to dictate what it should or should not accept thus limiting Yoruba capacity to take both the Yoruba Nation as well as the entire country itself out of the cul-de-sac of the crumbling Nation State anchored on mere reinforcement of the failing State and individual political permutations centered on what Jonathan is able or unable to achieve in his political quest for dominance.
Taking all of these into consideration with the elections in Ekiti and Osun states, it becomes glaring why a Jonathan would be so audacious to try to force his way into reckoning in Yorubaland when he had already captured what he thought were the leaders of the land, both outright fascists as well their enablers claiming Awo as their political foundation.
Having surrendered to Jonathan, there is no way they can situate themselves within the necessary paradigm of negating the Nation State as conceived by the colonial powers hence their admonition for us to accept what we can at the Conference, which was the position canvassed by Segun Mimiko of Ondo state and the Afenifere group. Apparently, “accepting what we can” is actually surrendering what we have. The Yoruba Nation cannot and will not allow these political renegades to lead us into their perdition.