Godson Offoaro
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YORUBA RONU (YORUBA THINK)
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Since the eye does not see itself except by reflections….I, your eyes will modestly disclose to you, your hidden worthiness…

- -William Shakespeare
oruba Ronu is the title of a play by a renowned Yoruba playwright and dramatist of first class dimensions, named Hubert Ogunde. I remember seeing with my teenage eyes posters and billboards that advertised/promoted the play, for all to see on the streets of Lagos in the mid-seventies. I remember that members of the caste and Hubert Ogunde had running battles with the law enforcement agents of General Yakubu Gowon. According to reviews Yakubu Gowon's police detested the play for its alleged seditious, sectional, inciting contents, laden with parochial sentiments and base appeal.




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According to reviews upon reviews that trailed the ban, the play was simply a satire directed at the Yoruba nation of then and I think of today and tomorrow, urging its (Yoruba) people to sit down and think seriously about its collective place within the Nigerian political frame work. It was a Yoruba age characterized by unmitigated violence, senseless political brigandage, killings, wanton destruction of properties (mostly Yoruba properties), betrayals, sabotage and self inflicted political injuries that lasted more than a generation, leaving for Nigeria, a civil war in its wake. The resort to such methods as operation wetie, the appeal on primordial tribal instincts which the Agbekoyas of the era handled the way the OPCs of our time emulated, I guess caused Ogunde the playwright some pains. Because of that, he chose to voice his pains the way he thought cogent, thus, the Play, YORUBA RONU, meaning, Yoruba, Think!

Hubert Ogunde, where is your play? Your Yoruba are at it again. From Oyo, the ground swelling/melting point of Nigeria's crises to the editorial board rooms of Mgbati Press, the signs of doomsday preaching are everywhere for any one who have eyes to see, to see! They are stoking the fires of bad-belle politics in the land. Being the eve of a major transition time, they are at it again. They are busy, once more overheating the political system, instead of think. Hubert Ogunde, your Yoruba are conveniently forgetting that there can never be better time/age for them in Nigeria politics than now. They may end up giving to all of us what we least had asked for - a civil war, a break up, a military coup or a hastened up hand over to an unknown.

Brothers and sisters, it is time once more to put on your collective thinking cap. (After all, your area has given and continues to give, Nigeria, Africa and mankind some of the best thinkers of our time!) Name them and you will find in that prestigious list, un-ending names of giants in every field of human endeavor - persons of Yoruba parentage or ancestry who have made humanity proud. Being renowned diplomats, why can't you then deploy your abundant, collective political cum economic wisdom for the collective benefit and progress of the Nigerian nation and by implication the progress of the Yoruba? Why?

Unfortunately, it is from this coterie of Yoruba intellects that you find those who consciously or otherwise stoke the fires of Nigeria's stunted growth and perennial political confusion. Gani Fawehinmi, Wole Soyinka (think of having both men as members of Nigeria's senate instead of being forever in the trenches), Femi Falana has joined them. Beko Ransome-Kuti is one of them. Bola Tinubu, Olu Falae, Reuben Abatti, the Yoruba Press, Comrade Erubami, Tofa Balogun, Olusola Saraki and his son, Awoniyi, etc, etc. These are Yoruba men and institutions of honor and substance who think they know Nigeria, the Yoruba nation and mankind better than all of us - the unthinking parts of Nigeria's other segments put together.

In case, I have lost you. What I am talking about has to do with the political situation in Nigeria, today, tomorrow and day after. It has to do with what happens to Nigeria post 2007. It has to do with one of the eminent sons of Yoruba land, named Mathew Aremu, the son of Obasanjo and his rumored third term bid. I say this, because most of the vehement oppositions to this rumored project are coming from you - his kinsmen, the - Yoruba.

Before I continue, I must pause here to give kudos to the assemblage of Yoruba governors and elected officials who last weekend in Abeokuta, at least became bold enough to say, they want OBJ for a third term. Me too. I have said this before. I want OBJ for a third term. Obasanjo is one darn good thing that has happened to Nigeria, recently, politically. Historians will record it for him.

I want OBJ for a third term because the political and economic circumstance which Nigeria has found itself, right now, calls for a little bit of Democracy and a little bit of dictatorship. If you like, call it Benevolent Dictatorship. Here, I do not want to be tempted to see through the lenses of Chief Femi Fani Kayode when he alluded to the fact recently, that there could not be an individual right now in Nigeria that could effectively replace OBJ. Far from it. While Fani-Kayode may not be absolutely right or have the time to break it down, (I mean what he means), I am inclined to support an OBJ third term for some, if not all of the following reasons:

First, what OBJ is running is a transition from military to civilian rule. The soldiers, though sidelines for now are busy watching. Second, the military except when OBJ and his men, Murtala and Yaradua ruled, has been a colossal failure. Third, if OBJ were to hand over to another military pretender(s) to democratic tendencies, as it now looks like, without a third term, this same military interest(s), will definitely reverse the gains made by OBJ and Democracy since 1999.

But, first, you must pause and ask yourself, who these military interests in Nigeria today are. They are none, other than that epitomized by Hausa Fulani interest (s). The same people who have expressed anxiety over how long power have eluded them. The same people who are anxiously waiting to get "their power" back as if they have anything to show for 35 five years of uncontested appropriated political powers.

Unfortunately, at present, there are no known southern Nigerian military Generals in the mould of OBJ who could wear agbada very well to mask military/garrison mentality. There are none. If there were any, we would have been comfortable to say "OBJ give this power to a retired southern Nigerian General" - a General who will understand the military thinking and climate, whether in or out of barracks as OBJ and other northern Nigerian Generals have. Do not even think of electing a northern civilian right now to the presidency. He will be overthrown. Or he will throw political power back to the Hausa/Fulani northern Nigerian military class. If this happens, Nigeria will be sorry for it. If the fear of a resort to pre-1999 Nigeria does not give you a goose flesh, it gives me. Fourth, can't we see the signs and the hand writings everywhere on the wall? That most of those clamoring to replace OBJ right now from northern Nigeria are products of this failed systems that epitomized Nigeria's inglorious past? Do you now see where I'm coming from? Yoruba, bikonu, Ronu and Leave OBJ alone.

Don't get me wrong. I can understand if the voices to stop the rumored OBJ's move for a third term come loudest from the South Westerners of Nigeria. But our south western brothers should appreciate the fact that the Obasanjo that handed defeat to the stubborn sons of Biafra is the same who in 2003, handed the Yoruba its greatest political defeat in history - rigged or not. I want the Yoruba to see Obasanjo, their son as a man of Providence who has not finished his worlds and God's directed mission. I do understand if the Yoruba still have some residue of grudges against this all conquering Generalissimo who spares none - be he Igbo, Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba or Ibibio.

This OBJ. Why can't Yoruba intelligentsia understand him? While his subduing of Biafra, gave Nigeria, a much desired, unity, he needed to conquer the Yoruba, politically to give Nigeria a much needed stability and coherence. As for the Hausa/Fulani of northern Nigeria, this is the only man born of woman that has given them their match - politically speaking. If he has proved time without number that he is the one that could handle them, I pray, let's give OBJ a chance to do it for us and for Nigeria.

Put the other way, honestly, I do not understand what the Yoruba beef with Obasanjo now is. Here was a man roundedly rejected by his own people. Here was a man who was roundedly booed to shame and near surrender by his own people. But a man who instead of repay his people with a dirty slap, has rewarded them handsomely. Ondo is an oil producing state. Ogun state and the Lagos axis have become the bastion of Nigeria's economic/industrial engine and growth. I hear, a petrochemical plant and an oil refinery are in the offing for the zone. Travel to any part of Yorubaland and see the immaculate wonders of the OBJ administration in motion. Good motorable roads, constant power supply, cottage industries surrounded by education and research centers. Still this people, his people don't seem to appreciate.

I do not understand why the same people who have benefited more than any other political segment of Nigeria post 1999 should be at the forefront in stopping Obasanjo from bequeathing Nigeria (as he has done for the Yoruba) a stable democracy via a well-deserved third term. I do not understand.

Generally speaking, Obasanjo has done well. The Nigerian University system which derailed and almost failed before 1999 is taking a new leash on life. Have we failed to see that Nigeria's external debt has almost been wiped out by the prudent policies of the OBJ administration? Have we not noticed the wonders wrought positively on the Nigerian economy by OBJ's telecommunications policies. Have we not seen that the Nigerian middle class who was near obliteration before 1999 is wriggling out from a period of prolonged coma? Why can't we seem to see that a dislocation of this orchestrated progress in motion may have the chances of setting Nigeria back - in every sense of it?

Yoruba of Nigeria should not let sad history repeat itself. Because I am seeing the hand writing of history rehearsing itself all over Nigeria, even as we write. I say this because I remember the third quarter of 1983 vividly; soon after the elections of that year. I remember all the contentious disputes that arose from the elections won by Shagari and his National Party of Nigeria - the NPN. I remember how against every political prediction, one Olunloyo won in Ibadan and an Omoboriowo, in Akure. I remember the political "operation earthquakes" of that year. And again, I remember the collective Yoruba angst that followed.

I remember one evening sitting lonely in the boys' quarters of my benefactor and listening to the BBC Africa Service broadcasting from London and hearing the inimitable voice of Professor Soyinka (a Yoruba son) calling on the Nigerian military to seize power ASAP. I remember. I remember, hearing the voice of professor Soyinka (same Soyinka of Today who has asked OBJ to resign now) inviting the military to seize power because of what he (accurately) thought then was a rape on democracy - Shagari and the NPN having brazenly, rigged themselves into power, for an undeserved second term. But for Soyinka's call and the military response, who knows what baby-steps democratic progress Nigeria would have achieved had the Shagari administration not been overthrown?

But being a democrat and a playwright and a scholar and a social critic, Soyinka was then as he is still today, at the forefront of Nigeria's pressure group movements. The army listened to him, I guess and responded with a coup which the Yoruba Press, led by Dele Giwa's NewsWatch hailed as God sent. In fact, Ray Ekpu of the same NewsWatch, hailed the army take over of that year with an articled titled: "God is a Nigerian." If the military listened to him then and struck, they could still listen to him today and to our collective detriment disband the present system., and the process reverse whatever political-cum economic gains we have made since 1999.

After that coup and twenty three years later, Nigeria is still being described as a nascent democracy, Victor Malu is still making a veiled appeal to the military to seize power. Soyinka is still asking Obasanjo to resign. The Yoruba presses seem not to get it and the Yoruba intelligentsia is playing into the hands of a well laid out trap. Can't they see that one more term of an OBJ administration will by far, be better than a military intervention or the enthronement of mediocrity that will pave the way for the military to strike and reverse all the gains made by this administration? Why can't they see it, eh? But why can't they see that the operational headquarters of the Nigerian Ports Authority could better be located at Marina Street in Lagos, near the sea rather than on IBB Way in semi-arid Abuja?

Yoruba, Yoruba. biko kwanu, Ronu!

*I wonder how this fool feels three years later.*