By adminadmin



This presentation by Prof Ropo Sekoni is to commemorate the anniversary of the Kiriji War being celebrated today as an introduction to brainstorming on where the Yoruba are at present within the context of the post-military structure of Nigeria and where they need to go, if they are to realize their potentials and sustain their age-old civilization which is expected to spur the beginnings of a fundamental rethinking on the part of the Yoruba Nation. Thank you for reading.

The state of the Yoruba Nation is not as bright as it should be. In fact, the state of our civilization has never been under so much threat, internal and external. Those who grew up in the 1950s and are now in their 60s cannot but wonder what had happened to a civilization bolstered with modernity in the era of Chief Obafemi Awolowo as the premier of Western Region, then the heartland of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. In the 1950s, the Yoruba region under the leadership of Chief Awolowo was able to serve as a model for modernization in many respects: education, physical and social infrastructure, political party organization, and development and implementation of a pro-people social democratic ideology. But the position of the Yoruba today is starkly different from what it used to be in the years between 1952 and the 1983.
The situation got worse for the Yoruba in the era of the military’s final push for de-federalization of the country, in particular during the reign of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha. Many people including several Yoruba men and women who struggled against military rule between 1993 and 1998 expected that their struggle for democracy through demands for restoration of the mandate given to Chief MKO Abiola in June 1993 and for a sovereign national conference would lead to de-militarization of the polity and restoration of federalism, and thus give the Yoruba an opportunity to use their core values to drive the governance of their region within a federal system. Sixteen years after the exit of military dictatorship, the states of Nigeria carved out of the three regions remain hobbled by a central government that can choose to be overbearing and to unleash its forces on any part of the country even during peace-time activities as voting for state officials.
Consequently, Yoruba states have remained the vassals of a central government that is either defined or projected as a Northern or Ijaw or Southern rule. Instead of using their energy to plan for development of their region, the Yoruba have been either herded into the bandwagon of Fulani or Ijaw rule or been saddled with struggling to stay out of any bandwagon. There had been much talk by pundits or in social media to suggest that the recent national conference would provide an opportunity to restructure the country and thus give more space to regional development within a proper federation. It is now clear that this too has not happened at the end of the conference. If anything, the conference has divided the Yoruba, not necessarily into pro-federalist and anti-federalist groups but into fragments struggling to stay relevant politically within the context of the country’s post-conference unitary system.
It does not matter in which direction one looks, the Yoruba appear to now hold the short end of the stick of development in the country. In terms of education, a region that used to be the pace setter and model for other regions now lags behind in educational statistics. For example, Yoruba states lag behind Anambra and Delta in this year’s secondary school leaving examinations. And it has been like this for the past four or more years. It is also no longer a cause for concern to see young Yoruba children who should be in school to be busy vending telephone re-charge cards on road sides during school hours in many Yoruba cities. A region that used to be a model for development policies that promote individual empowerment through education and entrepreneurship now boasts of having the greatest number of professional praise singers for corrupt regimes and sycophants for narcissistic rulers at various levels of government. Only recently, accomplished Yoruba professionals are in the forefront of those scheming frantically to be appointed campaign managers for sectional leaders from the North or the South.
With respect to infrastructure, major trunk roads linking major centers of population in the Yoruba region have been stalled in the process of renovation, expansion, and repair for several years, thus reducing the value of efforts of several state governments to build intra-state roads. Improvement of infrastructure within the Yoruba region has become a recurrent theme in campaign strategies and in the rhetoric of road building and rail line extension. While it is not only the Yoruba region that suffers from neglect with respect to infrastructure and development, the point is that physical mobility within the region today is inferior to what it used to be in the 1960s. Inter-state commerce within the Yoruba region has been diminished by lack of good roads and the absence in most parts the region of rail transportation. Had Nigeria been left as a federal system by military dictators that ruled the country between 1966 and 1998, and had the post-military governments since 1999 made genuine efforts to return the country to the federal system in place in 1966, it would have been possible for the Yoruba to choose how to sustain modernization of the region.
Political development in the region has also experienced substantial decline. A region that used to have in the Action Group a well-organized political party system considered to be the most sophisticated in sub-Sahara Africa and the most tolerant culture of multiparty contest for power has now become a theatre of intimidation by federal or central forces of coercion that has turned voting into a danger-laden exercise for citizens, thus leaving voting at elections, whether in Ekiti or Osun states to only foolhardy individuals. If anything, the Ekiti and Osun flaunting of federal power over state and citizens’ rights to associate freely may very well be a rehearsal of what is to happen in 2015. The Yoruba region which used to be a model for free and fair elections and which created the first official residence for the leader of opposition in the Western regional legislature now have its citizens being held as hostages in their natal communities before and during elections to offices to govern Yoruba states and communities. Unlike the era of secular politics driven largely by ideology in the Yoruba region, political leadership positions now are determined on the basis of religion in many states. Just as one’s religious affiliation—Islamic or Christian—can be an advantage in some states, so can it be a drag for candidates for political office in others. In fact, candidates of political parties are being dictated to by their party leadership at the center to choose their deputies from particular diaspora groups resident in their states. Unlike other regions of the country, the Yoruba region is now a political space that is increasingly acquiring the cognomen of no man’s land.
A region whose head start in terms of the culture of development and tolerance of political and cultural plurality has made its space a point of attraction to people from other Nigerian nationalities has now become a victim of economic marginalization and political dictation from those in charge of levers of central power. Migrants from other regions whose search for double residency benefits-from both their ancestral regions and Yoruba cities to which they have migrated– now feel emboldened to claim to be the landlords while Yoruba indigenes are now viewed as tenants. All these are happening in a unitary political order that gives most powers and functions to a central government and thus makes subnational governments vulnerable to parochial men and women in positions of leadership at the central level.
Without doubt, the state of the Yoruba Nation should be worrisome to Yoruba-Nigerians who want to live in harmony with other Nigerians without having to be suffocated in their own space by migrants who are not contented with the freedom to live and prosper without molestation but are more pre-occupied with domination of the Yoruba. But Yoruba political leaders and intellectual pundits often misdiagnose the problem facing the Yoruba. Tolerance of difference, which is an abiding aspect of Yoruba culture, is not the cause of what seems like lack of political focus on the part of the Yoruba today. Nor is the fact that Yoruba people are active in opposing political parties a cause for alarm.
What can free the Yoruba from their current situation of under-achievement is not calling for an end to Yoruba membership in various parties, regardless of how ideologically unsavory such parties are. To do so is to encourage the Yoruba to commit political and cultural suicide. The Yoruba region was the only region in which ruling and opposition parties vied for elections competitively in the years before 1960. There was no time in pre-1966 Yoruba political history that the leading opposition had anything less than one-third of the legislative seats in the region, in contradistinction to the other two regions that were virtually one-party systems. What is needed is for serious-minded Yoruba people to determine what kind of union they believe is capable of enabling the Yoruba to realize the region’s potential to provide its citizens with the benefits and freedom that modernity bestows.
Should the desire of a sizable portion of the population be to turn Nigeria into a country that practices a federal system without fetters, then such citizens should brace themselves to struggle for such political structure, without allowing any of its members or other Yoruba groups ostensibly working on behalf of the region to depend on finding shortcuts to bring federalism back to the country. A federal system in which the constituent parts are respected cannot emerge through a half-hearted bid that smacks more of collaboration with the levers of the current unitary system as much as it can through openly struggling for re-federalization without any preconditions. There are several examples worldwide from which to borrow strategies for struggling for self-determination. Scotland is the closest to home in this respect. Although Scotland has not achieved a Yes vote to turn it into an independent country, the struggle of Scottish people over the years for devolution has indirectly brought what can be considered regional autonomy to Scotland and even to other nations within the United Kingdom. The tone of the campaign by the British Prime Minister and other leaders of the country’s three major political parties to make sure that a Yes vote brings more powers to the constituent regions of the United Kingdom indicates that the Scots have not labored or struggled in vain.
In this respect, Yoruba federalists and autonomists should not allow themselves to be derailed by their fellow Yoruba politicians in political parties that are against federalism or those parties that pay only lip service to restoration of federalism. Pleading for reconciliation of Yoruba people in diametrically opposed political parties as a way of achieving Yoruba unity is akin to making a religion of primitiveness. Plurality of perspective is as Yoruba as Amala or Iyan, and such value is a sign of social and political sophistication that is uncommon in Africa and that has become a hallmark of the modern world. Yoruba citizens need to ensure that whatever political parties they subscribe to have clear ideological positions that can assist electors to make an informed choice. One-party rule is anathema to Yoruba culture and routing for one-party rule at any level of government is a dishonest way to further deceive and exploit the citizens.
The challenge to save the Yoruba from a badly structured and badly governed Nigeria is not to expect good leaders to suddenly emerge. Undoubtedly, it takes leadership to shape a nation and its society. But it also takes character to shape leadership. If the Yoruba vote for or even countenance persons known to be without character, they should not expect them to become good leaders that can create a good life for citizens. What is needed are clear-cut ideological positions. Chief Awolowo used the espousal of pro-people ideology to turn what was largely a terrain for the politics of power and self-glorification to one that voted during peace time for the Action Group and that stood by the party during its moment of travail towards the end of the country’s first republic. The NCNC with its own clearly articulated ideology also attracted voters, thus furthering the Yoruba value of plurality of perspective as far back as the 1950s. While parties have the responsibility to be honest enough to make their ideological stances clear to electors, so do Yoruba citizens have the responsibility to push their parties to state their governance mission and goals clearly.
Without doubt, the score card today for the Yoruba in political, social, and economic terms is clearly bad. But it is not hopeless as many Cassandras among us would want us to believe. Given the Yoruba philosophy of Alterability, nothing can get irredeemably bad for the Yoruba. This is the time for the humanist impulse of the Yoruba, the ever-present belief in the power of human beings to improve on their condition, to reign supreme. This is the time for Yoruba federalists to put their money where their mouths are. Hundreds of self-determination organizations meeting to issue communiques and disperse thereafter is not likely to bring federalism to the polity. Those who believe that federalism is the best way to make the Nigerian experiment in multiethnic state formation work need the discipline to come together, submerge individual’s lust for attention, and build a solid organization or movement that is devoted to pushing for re-federalization of Nigeria. With regard to political parties that are not ashamed of being known for reactionary or conservative ideology, Yoruba citizens whose worldview fits into such ideology have a right to identify publicly with such parties. But it is citizens in other parties that will draw the line between freedom of association and the propensity of any political party in power at any level to intimidate citizens who belong to other political parties. It is also the responsibility of Yoruba citizens who see federalism as the way out of the politics of underdevelopment in the Yoruba region in particular and in Nigeria in general who must push the political parties of their choice to state in categorical terms their commitment to the ideology of regionalism.
If all existing political parties are too timid to have a public stance on federalism, Yoruba federalists should not need to be reminded that freedom of association includes the freedom to form movements and political parties that promote the vision of federalism. Having to come back to an administrative management of recommendations from the last national conference as the committee recently established by President Jonathan suggests, it is clear that the time for excuses for Yoruba federalists has been exhausted. As one of the delegates from the North advised at the conference, sovereignty is not given to people; it is taken by those who want it. The same goes for shared sovereignty that federalism represents. Expecting that about 90 Yoruba delegates (nominated to represent Yoruba political interests at a national conference that is also denied the provision of submitting its recommendations to a referendum) would give birth to a federal constitution is certainly being naïve. Also for Yoruba federalists to commit time and resources to making the last conference look more successful than it was or to demonstrate that it was the lack of cooperation from a section of the country that stands to gain everything from the status quo that watered down the success of the conference is to waste valuable resources that could be put to better use. To invoke a Yoruba proverb, Iyan di iyan a tun gun, obe naa di obe a tun se (there is need to change the recipe). As bad as things may be for the Yoruba today, there is still enough intellectual, moral, and financial energy in the region to find our way out of the woods.
Ropo Sekoni

We are in a very bad state right now the Yoruba nation has lost focus on the Ideology it stands on. We are being sold and traded as political tools for a man/people that don't have our interest at heart.

We have even allowed the same betrayers to insult our sage Awolowo and his family and yet lie to us that they still follow the same Awolowo Ideology.

We have been traded to religious extremist that claim Christianity and Islam are different ideology by different people on our land. Our judicisry system has been bought by the same man/people that have sold us for 5 billion Naira.

Are the souls of Yorubas that cheap ? I say NO ! We claim to be the most educated and sophisticated but we are not acting as such.

The yoruba nation is in a very bad shape and until we iron this out, I am afraid for our race.

aljharem: We are in a very bad state right now the Yoruba nation has lost focus on the Ideology it stands on. We are being sold and traded as political tools for a man/people that don't have our interest at heart.

We have even allowed the same betrayers to insult our sage Awolowo and his family and yet lie to us that they still follow the same Awolowo Ideology.

We have been traded to religious extremist that claim Christianity and Islam are different ideology by different people on our land. Our judicisry system has been bought by the same man/people that have sold us for 5 billion Naira.

Are the souls of Yorubas that cheap ? I say NO ! We claim to be the most educated and sophisticated but we are not acting as such.

The yoruba nation is in a very bad shape and until we iron this out, I am afraid for our race.

TAN mobiliser

seanet02:
TAN mobiliser

How ?

Will late Gani Fawehinmi have allowed such ? Was it not the same man/group of people that chased Gani with thugs out of the court room

Will Late Obafemi Awolowo have allowed such ? Was it not the same man/group of people that insult his legacy and family name.

I can go on and on. I benefit nothing from either parties but the truth will always be there for us to see.