₦airaland Forum

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By adminadmin on August 12, 2014



People’s Power, backed by the effective, fervent prayer of the righteous in Yorubaland and a committed, focused leadership united around a purpose centered on retaining our independent political existence, nailed the coffin for the Jonathanians’ attempt at subjugating Yorubaland. It also exposes the political bankruptcy and fascist tendencies of his Yoruba foot soldiers who will not bat an eyelid to tailgate external forces to turn our land into a theatre of war so they can be imposed on the people. This situation is even worse than what Victor Banjo experienced, given the fact that he was under duress as at the time he was tasked with leading a so-called expeditionary force into Yorubaland. These latter-day Quislings willingly offered themselves as accomplices of the invader and they justify it by affirming their readiness to accept “southern” slave masters over and above that of the “north” as if it is a badge of honor to accept any form of slavery or oppression.
And then they turn around to praise Goodluck Jonathan for militarizing the electoral process as a sine qua non for a free and fair election when even the colonial authorities were loathe to do same in their conduct of elections such that this time around, these fascists do not ponder as to why elections are a “do or die “ affair, if not for the fact that the central authorities always try to “conquer” opposition territory, right from the days of the First Republic, up until today; utilizing, in the process, Yoruba Ministers and officials specially appointed for such purposes. In a nutshell, therefore, the main cause of electoral malfeasance is the attitude and propensity of the Central government to seize control of opposition areas. But for the vigilance and resolution of the people to withstand this negation of democratic practice, these fascists would have gotten away with it. It was a similar resolution that made it possible for the opposition to secure its victory in Edo State and not, as these fascists would say, the mere presence of the military.
Our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters in Ekiti were taken by surprise, for the type of electoral heist witnessed in that State was completely different from any we have ever witnessed. The same template was to be used in Osun but for the vigilance of the people who trusted in their God and their political leadership.
Previously, the people of Ekiti had never been found wanting in their resistance to electoral malfeasance, hence cannot now be said to be lacking in that department. Even when the Jonathan foot soldiers try to dress the Ekiti heist as the “will of the people” and accuse the APC of not talking about photochromic ballot papers in Osun because the party won, these Yoruba fascists fail to show us where the people of Ekiti broke out in spontaneous demonstration of support for the supposed winner of Ekiti election, who is also supposed to be a “grassroots” man. So, where were the “grassroots” when their man was proclaimed “winner”? Unlike Osun where the people trooped out en mass to celebrate their own victory. Thus, the only constant between Ekiti and Osun is the militarization of the electoral process; where the actual methodology of the rigging process are variables which caught Ekiti unawares but was successfully resisted in the State of Osun.
The boldness of the resistance to militarization, the constant, ensured the failure of the variable, even as a successful resistance to the constant requires an understanding of the variable, which in this instance, is the Governorship election and the voting methodologies which the APC successfully pursued; for a conscious people is an empowered people.
For Yorubaland, therefore, our eyes must be on the ball of the variable which the constant is meant to advance. That we will not be afraid of protecting our votes is a political and moral choice in Yorubaland. The recognition of this fact will enable us to confront other forms of variables, including the use of religion; for those fascists who employed this trick in Osun behaved as if a Yoruba Christian governor of Osun would have ruled over only the Christians in that state; whereas a successful implementation of religious division would have set the Muslims and Christians against each other whereby the land itself would be the victim as it will then be possible for anyone with any negative intention on Yorubaland to ride roughshod, and effortlessly at that, over the entire landscape.
Thus, beyond matters of electoral politics and whatever strategies would be employed by any political platform, including choice of candidates, the maintenance of the age-long Yoruba religious tolerance must not be sacrificed and any political platform that introduces a counter position must be banned in Yorubaland.
Now that we know the effect of resistance to the militarization process, the time is now for polishing it up in readiness for the next skirmish in the battle for the land. This next skirmish is supposed to be the general elections in 2015, which is our next variable.
Having known the constant and even some of the variables, we also need to prepare for some of the expected and probably unknown variables but whose footprints are all over the place. It had previously been written that Goodluck Jonathan is preparing the way for the same “North” he is supposed to be fighting, while all of his fascist foot soldiers in Yorubaland are pouring venom on APC as the party of the “North”. Now that Jonathan’s Conference has prepared a Draft Constitution for Nigeria, who is really serving the interests of the “north” would soon be made public.
As a variable, the recommendations of the Conference and its draft Constitution on Regionalization, Resource Control, Derivation-all indices of True Federalism, are out of the window. Besides, placing the organization of elections under the control of the Central government is a sure fire way of advancing the age-long ambition of the center to seize control of all opposition centers; especially now that militarization of the electoral process is being promoted as the only panacea to electoral malpractice.
More importantly for Yorubaland, we should not be surprised if an additional “IFE State” is included just so that the PDP will have its foot hold in Yorubaland—the outcome of Osun election being an indicator whereby a function of the militarization of the electoral process in the state was in generating a low voter turnout, via intimidation thus creating a situation where the number of accredited voters would be less than half of registered voters, whereas the opposite was the case in the IFE stronghold of the PDP.
The conclusion from this would be that such low accreditation was already pre-programed so that their stronghold’s results would make all the difference. But in spite of this, even in the supposed stronghold, the APC made a strong showing simply because the party’s supporters refused to be intimidated. The desperation to achieve victory by any means necessary could only show that such desperation would be extended to the national space just so the PDP has its foothold firmly in Yorubaland, more-so when the Ekiti election still hangs in the balance.
The combination of the Draft Constitution and the electoral malfeasance via militarization compels the call on Yoruba people worldwide to reject the results of the Conference and also its Draft Constitution, whatever its content may be, since it will be based on the Conference recommendations. This is the current variable, after where any elections conducted based on it would also be militarized in order to give it a semblance of authenticity.
Beyond this, however, is the possibility of trying to ram through this Constitution before 2015 elections, where Goodluck Jonathan would not be eligible to run, for whatever reasons that would be proffered. And if he is thus “Constitutionally barred”, the floodgates of “northern” PDP would be open and Goodluck Jonathan would have fulfilled his mandate and his Yoruba fascist supporters would be left holding the can.
The militarization of elections is one strategy the PDP is using to prepare the grounds for its “northern” platform to get back to power. But that is if we allow it to succeed and Osun has shown the way of resistance.
Leye Ige

By adminadmin on August 9, 2014


Coming on the heels of the August 8 anniversary of attainment of Self-government for Western Region in 1957, today’s election will be a reaffirmation of the quest for such self-government, more so when the land is now invaded by all sorts of armed agents of the state in an attempt to intimidate us into acquiescence and turn Yorubaland into a plaything of Jonathan’s ambition. This armed invasion of the Yoruba Homeland creates the need for us to make a choice between good and evil. Of course, we have made our choice for good; and by relying on armed agents, the opposition already made its choice for evil. Thus, the battle line is drawn.
What those who want to use Christianity to defend the perfidy of the central government and loudly claim an Islamization agenda by the APC usually forget is the history of Yorubaland where the earlier conspiracy against the Yoruba Nation was led by Christians in the persons of S.L.Akintola and Remi Fani-Kayode and among the stoutest defenders were Muslims such as Lateef Jakande and Dauda Adegbenro, and this is besides the fact that the Yoruba Nation has a harmonious religious existence, totally different from other Nations and the attempt to introduce religious division by Goodluck Jonathan and his Yoruba accomplices are actually aimed at undermining this harmony, a result of thousands of years of Yoruba existentialism.
When therefore, the entire powers of the Nigerian Central government is deployed to capture our land, as that government is fond of saying, they have declared war on the land. And we say “who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, you shall become a plain”. And so shall it be for the Jonathanians in Yorubaland.
The Homeland will not be turned into a plaything of Southern reactionary forces underwritten by the Jonathan-led Central Government in order to revert our land into the period of the locusts with the active connivance of Yoruba cretins and reactionaries calling themselves the “opposition”. The Homeland had passed through this stage before. When, in 1965, we were confronted with the grandfathers of today’s fascism, we resisted. Same thing was attempted in 1983, 2003 and 2007 and 2009. We resisted.
“ooduapathfinder” recognizes that these resistances were confined within the limits of any of the then extant electoral systems, hence, while resisting, no political alternatives were put in place as a replacement. The purveyors of the current perfidy are thus content to assume similar limitation on the surely expected resistance.
But “ooduapathfinder” [/b]says not anymore. The Homeland is not going to be turned into a state of permanent warfare by their shenanigans and so, they must be stopped and stopped permanently so their ashes shall never rise again. That even in victory, we shall not be magnanimous, even if the victorious APC wants to be, there will be those of us who will not, for the cancer of fascism in the Homeland will not be allowed to metastasize.
The entire Yoruba Nation has settled for a democratic, electoral methodology of accessing political power but it is certain that the Central Government is not so well-disposed, hence the declaration of war on the land. The first skirmish was carried out in Ekiti, where it carried out its electoral heist which is now being challenged in court. The on-going militarization of the State of Osun is the second skirmish, but it will be a skirmish that will end in their defeat. Thus, when [b]“ooduapathfinder” asks: Is there not a cause? The answer lies in the necessity to hand over a permanent defeat for these fascists in Yorubaland, starting from today in the State of Osun which will end in Goodluck Jonathan departing Abuja and return to his home.
Even as we are proceeding on an electoral platform, elections being our choice weapon, the Global Yoruba Nation must realize that this is not simply about electoral politics but a matter of National Liberation, where all hands must unite to beat back and deal a fatal blow to these fascists among us. This is no longer a mere demonstration of choice: there is no sitting on the fence and certainly this is no time for non-partisanship.
In this day of liberation of the homeland, silence has no meaning. In this period of historical significance, silence has no meaning. This is the time to not only speak up but to walk the talk. This is the time for liberation, to bury, once and for all of the festering reaction that tends to grow worse by the day and which has now grown into full blown fascism. That was why Goodluck Jonathan and his “Masked Shirts” would be gladly telling anyone who wants to listen that there will be a “heavy military presence” on the day of the election.
The Yoruba Global Nation is also telling the minders of these local fascists, those in the PDP hierarchy at the State and Central levels, including those in the Government, that Fascism will not stand in our Yoruba Homeland, no matter their efforts, both physical and spiritual; for they shall not come into our land, by the same fascist route they have chosen to come; by the same fascist way they shall go. They are judged and condemned; fascism has never prospered anywhere in the world and it shall not prosper in the Yoruba Homeland and they will fall and fail in their attempts to foist fascism on the land. Their pointed arrows shall not fly, their spikes and land-mines shall lie fallow, its potential energy shall remain buried and shall not function, their intended captives are set free, for the fascists are judged and condemned. The end of Mussolini, where their bodies will be fed to scavenging dogs, awaits the fascists.
Democracy cannot prosper, not only in a lopsided and fraudulent federation that Nigeria is, but a combined and even development of the Homeland is negated by the mere presence of these fascists in our midst. They shall not escape condemnation and judgment.

www.ooduapathfinder.com

I was greatly saddened to read the material written by Mr. Eyieyien urging “The Remnants” to vote out the current Governor of Osun State Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and vote in Chief Iyiola Omisore. I am also still somewhat puzzled as to how what appeared to be an opposition to a bond issue and other sundry allegations degenerated to the running down of the APC as an Islamic party, a propaganda tool notoriously deployed by the PDP through its various organs.

Are we as Christians now being urged to support the PDP or what exactly is the message? Reason, is one of the most important contributions of the Gospel to development. From it emerge the practical concepts of fairness and justice for all, especially our enemies. Which is why lynching, even of an intellectual kind is unacceptable

I am not an unbiased intervenor, I had the good fortune of serving in an AD/ACN government in Lagos State. The ACN is a major partner in the APC. I will come back to the PDP APC issue presently.

Also, I have known Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, Governor of the State of Osun, since 1999. We served on the policy committees of the then newly elected AD governor of Lagos State. He served in the infrastructure sub-committee and I, in the Justice sub-committee. I also served with him for 8 years in the government of Lagos State. He as Commissioner for Works and I as Attorney General. I developed a close personal relationship with him. His early ideological belief was shaped by Marxist-Socialist thinking, which probably influences his left- of- centre world view in governance. His first son Kabir went to university in Cuba on a scholarship. In 2005 when he graduated, only Rauf and I attended his graduation . He is a devout Muslim but liberal in his approach to other faiths. This is not unusual amongst the Yorubas largely because most families have both Muslim and Christian members and have always interacted without rancour. Of his six siblings only one other is a Muslim. All the others are Christians. His sister who is of the RCCG, is widowed ( her husband died a Christian) her two sons have lived with Rauf for years, he insists that they must practice their father’s faith faithfully. They both attend the RCCG.

He and I shared and still share a burden to provide honest, transparent, people-centered governance. He is a scrupulously honest person, as Commissioner for Works in Lagos State he left office without a home and no financial comforts. I know, because aside from my personal and official interaction with him, I coordinated his legal team for the reclamation of his mandate for over three years. I know first hand, his difficulties with sustaining his family, and a small staff for that period. Not surprisingly no one can accuse him in Osun State of corruption. He is just not wired that way.

Indeed, in keeping with that commitment to serve the people with complete fidelity, his major projects have been solely directed at alleviating the suffering and deprivation of his people. The hiring of, now 40,000 unemployed graduates , the provision of free balanced meals for all primary school children, provision of free uniforms, the provision of tablet computers for senior secondary school students containing all their textbooks, past jamb questions etc., monthly stipends to the elderly – all of these in a State that is the third poorest in Federal allocations and currently gets N2.6 billion monthly, a 40 percent reduction from 2013, courtesy of the Federal government. Mr. Eyieyien perhaps was not aware that even the 10 billion sukuk bond was purely for the building of 24 model state-of the art schools, most of which are now completed. The Wole Soyinka led Osun education summit recommended the replacement of the completely broken school infrastructure in Osun State with schools capable of accommodating 1000 students with modern labs, classrooms, power and sports facilities. The idea was to use economies of scale to benefit the largest number of students.

When Mr. Eyieyien describes him as “Sheikh” it is clearly to give the impression that he is an Islamic fundamentalist. The facts on the man completely belie this. First, as Commissioner for Works in Lagos State, he built the chapel at the State House Marina. Pastor Adeboye at the opening commended him and remarked that he would be a pastor soon! Within a year of coming into government, he commissioned in Ilesa the Open Heavens Christian Evangelical Arena , a purpose-built facility for evangelism which according to him was to celebrate the icons of the Christian faith who are from Osun namely- the Late Apostle Babalola , the Late Apostle Obadare, Pastor E.A. Adeboye, Pastor W.F Kumuyi and Pastor Mathew Ashimolowo . Today, his government supports the establishment of five Christian universities in Osun, including The Redeemers University at Ede, the Joseph Babalola University, Dominion University , and Bowen University.

How about the composition of government in Osun State? You will notice that his critics are never able to say that Christians are marginalised in government, why ? Because only Muslims can make that allegation! In the Cabinet of Osun State there are 10 more Christians than Muslims. In addition, the largest Ministries are headed by Christians- Ministries of Finance, Justice, Education, Health, Environment , Agriculture, Physical Planning and Youth and Sports . The Legislature (House of Assembly), which came into office after he won back his mandate in court in November 2010, has a majority of Christian members – 18 Christians and 8 Muslims. Everyone knows that at that level if the Governor does not support your nomination by the party your ambitions are dead in the water.

The State Judiciary is headed by a Christian who he appointed although he had preferred and proposed a judge from Lagos Justice Olubunmi Oyewole also a non-Muslim. Of over 30 new Permanent Secretaries appointed by him 22 are Christians. If the majority of your cabinet, ( including your Attorney-General), your Legislature, Judiciary and top echelon of your civil service are Christians how can we in truth say that such a person has an Islamisation agenda? Surely the least a “Sheikh” with an Islamisation agenda should do to achieve his objective is to populate the structure that can achieve that objective with Muslims! It is also entirely false that he patronizes or uses “TAAWUN” guards for his security. It is common knowledge that he hardly even uses any security at all, except for a couple of SSS men, his monthly LIFE WALKS , where he walks alongside his people for kilometres without any significant security cordon was commended recently by a former Governor in the South East. It is incredible what prejudice can do to us. Everyone in Osun knows that the State was nicknamed “State of the Living Spring” in reference to the Osun River after which the State is named. Renaming the State “the Omoluabi State ” – meaning “the State of children born of God” or “the State of men and women of virtue” certainly gives greater glory to God.

To suggest that benefiting from a Sukuk bond to better the lives of his people of all faiths, is enough to justify the grave allegation of an Islamisation agenda, is with all due respect , calling a dog a bad name simply to hang it. I agree that it may have served the politics of religion better not to take the bond, but it is a fairer judgment of his motives, knowing him, that this was borne out of his desire to serve his people well. The 24 mega schools with state-of -the art facilities is a quantum leap in education for the majority of children of the poor who before now schooled in what the Soyinka committee saw as scandalous. The alternative was not to build the schools.

When a man who is doing right by the poor and deprived people he governs, is being condemned by those of us who are called to serve the poor, the sick, , the naked, and the hungry then it is fair to ask what the values in governance we really intend to promote are? In any event the alternative is Chief Iyiola Omisore whose antecedents we ought, to put it delicately, be cautious to associate with.

A problem with uncritically accepting as useful advice this viciously anti-APC propaganda, is that it throws the baby out with the bath water. So we are now expected to reject the landmark achievements in Lagos, in Ogun ( the huge infrastructural developments), Oyo ( which for the first time most admit is making real progress) , Edo, and Ekiti ( where almost everyone agrees the governor did a good job but Fayose understood stomach infrastructure better!) Or now Kano or Rivers ( where a REAL rail service is about to begin; Lagos is also about to complete a rail service amongst other exemplary achievements )!

It is also false that the APC’s new executive reserved its top positions for Muslims! The Chairman of the party Chief John Odigie-Oyegun is a Christian, the Deputy National Chairman (South) Engr. Segun Oni is a Christian, so are the National Organizing Secretary Senator Osita Izunaso, Deputy National Secretary Hon. Orji Ugofa and Chief Pius Akinyelure , the Vice Chairman of the South West. For what it is worth, there are 22 Muslims and 21 Christians in the APC National Executive Committee.

Regarding the rather thinly veiled ‘support the PDP/ JONATHAN’ message, it is incredible that we are invited to ignore the cynical manner that our President Goodluck Jonathan uses Christianity and the church to further his political ambitions. Why are we being urged to support a PDP/Jonathan bid again? The platform has largely on account of its tragic failure to perform, decided to exploit Nigeria’s religious fault lines in the most cynical manner to win support, in the process he continues to divide Nigeria in by the far most extreme manner in our history.

I have worked with many brethren since 2002 on issues around Islamization in Nigeria, in particular with Revd. Ladi Thompson of the Macedonian Initiative and the Omoluabi network. It is clear that Al Qaeda, ISIS , and more recently Boko Haram and their splinters are committed to an Islamization agenda. Their symphathisers certainly cut across all boundaries. The Late General Azazi, then NSA, pointedly accused the PDP of being behind the escalation of Boko Haram, I have that statement on DVD. The President, also openly lamented the infiltration of his cabinet by the Boko Haram.

Recently a Nigerian pastor in a widely circulated CD, speaking on the Jihadist agenda accused General Babangida of funding the Islamization agenda from his days as President. Today President Jonathan’s most influential Northern supporter is General Babangida. His narrative unfortunately gives no credit to Gen Buhari, and his deputy Gen Idiagbon (also a muslim) who refused to join the OIC despite pressures. Or that Gen Buhari remains the one head of State who was able to defeat an extremist insurgency, the Maitatsine.

How can we fail to see that the incredible corruption, incompetence, poverty of 2/3 of our people after almost seven years of the present government is unsupportable? How is it that Diezani’s use of 10billion Naira to run her private jet ( the same amount of money for the building of 24 mega schools in Osun!) and the complete silence of the President on this travesty does not lead to calling for him to be voted out in 2015?

So the allegation of the missing or unaccounted for 20.8 billion USD with 110 million desperately poor, should be dismissed as pure propaganda? So it doesn’t make a difference to us that under the PDP Nigeria has fallen behind in every human development indicator? 55,000 women dying yearly of maternal related ailments, only recently Stanford’s Professor Larry Diamond compared the yearly deaths of over 300,000 children yearly in Nigeria to the killing of 800, 000 mainly Tutsis in Rwanda. The latter was described as genocide, what is the description to give to mass deaths of infants caused by grand corruption?

We discredit our treasured platforms such as this when we mask our political preferences with a religious veil. The vast majority of our people need to be delivered from terrible want and deprivation, what is required now are capable, honest men and women of all faiths, who know that this country may not long survive the daily punishment of its own people.

Prof. Yemi Osinbajo SAN

www.ooduapathfinder.com




Today, August 8, being the anniversary of Western Region’s 1957 Self-Government is an appropriate time for a critique of Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko, who gave a Lecture titled “Progressivism and Social Development” at the Yoruba Tennis Club in Lagos at which he admonished the “political class” not to “abuse progressivism” and then went on to describe the concept by saying it is “all about the people” since it is an “instrument to tackle inequality in the society”. He went on to say that “some of Nigeria’s first generation of leaders possessed the progressive trait and that the progressive ideology ought to be intrinsic to every Yoruba”. Furthermore, according to him, “The late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was a true progressive leader because of his democratization of access to education, agricultural transformation and welfarists’ policy, which have continued to serve as living legacy of his government in the western region”, from where he went on to reel out his government’s choices in development as a form of “progressivism”.

What Segun Mimiko did not point out was that since man came into social recognition of his existence, “progressivism” became an imperative; thus all social divisions were and are aimed at exhibiting such “progressivism” in the name of that social recognition which is now known as the “people”. All socio-economic paradigms are always aimed at the “people” without which such paradigms will not exist. What we now know as the “market” is a recognition of that social fact which is why the “market economy” aims at leveraging what each social category has in order to maximize the greatest benefit. Thus, the working classes leverage their labor power, the owning classes leverage their access to capital, both human capital as in its ability to hire for its own purposes as well as financial or property capital. Even while such is an unequal relationship, the owners have to ensure the continuity of their economic paradigm hence provision of reliefs for the “have nots” which directly translates into social welfare and which was a major determinant in the emergence of the modern Nation State, where institutions are created to moderate the contending forces of social co-existence, otherwise known as “welfarism”.
The attempt at social management enabled the development of such welfare schemes, like the Great Society in the US in the aftermath of the Great depression and the Governmental interventions during times of serious economic crises; or in more recent times, “trickle down economics”; IMF conditionalities or Freidman’s conceptualizations, or a Chief Olu Falae’s SAP as being in favor of especially cocoa farmers; all of which were supposed to be beneficial to the “people”. Welfarism thus becomes a political agency in order to try to institutionalize such interventions, which also depends on the ability of such a society to control its economic, political and social decisions in an interrelated world.
It is thus a-historical for Segun Mimiko to want to ascribe an intrincity of welfarism for an entire Yoruba Nation or any Nation for that matter; for historically, the above had always played out in the development of the Yoruba Nation and its form of State. The economic aspects of the fall of Oyo Empire is an example of how these played out.
Segun Mimiko brought in Chief Awolowo’s name in order to justify his a-historicity; for Awo’s “living legacy”, is directly tied to the question of decolonization, for limiting “progressivism” to access to modernizing socio-economic categories is doing damage to the concept itself, for all of the modernization, a largely technocratic process, has to function within the political paradigm of the Nation State, which Awo proposed and worked for, as a Federal Nation State.
Otherwise, Adolf Hitler’s regime would be considered progressive, taking into consideration all of the modernization and some trailblazing economic, scientific and technological breakthroughs that took place under his watch. Indeed, pursuit of such modernization was one of the prime movers for the development of Nazism as not only a political philosophy but also as a form of State organization in which an attempt was made at addressing the “unequal” relationship between Germany and the rest of Europe.
Hence, modernization is quite possible without social and political emancipation; for the pre-Atlantic Slave Trade societies relied on slave labor for its modernization processes in its own time, otherwise the societies would remain stagnant; while modernization of American and English economies rested on Atlantic Slave Trade labor without a corresponding emancipation of the providers of such labor. And even the white English working class were only marginally better off than the slave laborers, yet they were all participants in the “market” without which all of the labor would be lost and while technological advancement put paid to much of slave labor and the question of the beneficiaries of such modernization(the middle classes) becomes the issue and whence comes into play the different tendencies in the political organization of the State. The middle classes are not a separate entity, but must derive from either the upper or lower classes, hence, “progressivism” aims at providing a space for this to manifest.
For Awo, the basic premise was on the social, economic and cultural emancipation of the colonized hence his journey from the NYM through Egbe Omo Oduduwa and then the Action Group. All through these times, there were organizations clamoring for economic improvement as well as modernization within the ambit of the then colonial system. Awo could as well have joined them in that clamor. But he did not. Which means, there is something to say for political emancipation before any form of modernization or “progressivism” can actually be said to be progressive.
So, in what manner or form has Segun Mimiko pursued this necessary emancipation? In what manner are his flaunted policies aiding the development of a middle class; and what is the productive capacity of the Ondo classes, both in terms of providing capital and labor? Indeed, can a single state, under Nigeria’s circumstances, develop a middle class on its own?
What is being celebrated as “progressivism” by Segun Mimiko is nothing more that “democratization” of consumerism in all spheres for it is impossible for a single state to create and develop working and middle classes under the current system which Segun Mimiko is promoting via his support for Jonathan. And when DAWN(Development Agenda for Western Nigeria) which was aimed at combined and even development of Yorubaland, was conceived, he was among those who pooh-poohed the idea, reducing it to an attempt at political hijack by the majority ACN states.
Segun Mimiko is in Afenifere. The word Afenifere itself, was coined as the Yoruba definition of AG’s philosophy of “freedom for all, life more abundant” which says it all about welfarism. Hence, the name reflected its political praxis.
The Afenifere of Segun Mimiko, however, is very different, even as its membership and leadership claim allegiance to the AG/Afenifere praxis. Why? This Afenifere is an organization, in and by itself. It is a name given to an organization formed in 1994 to pursue anti-military struggles without its philosophy, except only in name, for it denies the political context of the philosophy.
Just as an organization like RENAMO or Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA would have nomenclatures defining them as being for independence or liberation did not make them so, this Afenifere also feigns affinity with a philosophy but only as an organizational expression. The difference between the philosophy and the organization as a name proceeds from not only the existence of the organization for itself, but also from how its praxis correspond to the reality it assumes.
The Egbe Omo Oduduwa was the socio-cultural organization that created a platform for the emergence of the AG even as some of its members would refuse to be part of it, preferring to retain the “socio-cultural” identity whereas the Awo tendency saw the necessity for a political party that will particularize all of the demands of the Egbe. Thus, the AG was founded as very distinct from the Egbe even as it maintained close relations with some of the Egbe’s leading lights, especially Ooni Adesoji Aderemi and Alake Ademola.
The Egbe did not compete with the AG as to who exercises political authority, even as both were engaged in the decolonization process in their own ways. Again, the reality of the time showed the necessity for the dominance of the political party which eventually led to the demise of the Egbe.
Segun Mimiko’s Afenifere was the exact opposite as it sought to substitute itself for the political authority even when its leading lights had ample opportunity to translate into a relevant political force. In 1998/99, when Mimiko’s Afenifere famously agreed to participate in Abubakar’s transition program without conditions, it ended up trying to fight a political battle via a “socio-cultural” mechanism, even when it was obvious, at the time, that, save only the politically hapless Dayo Adeyeye, a perennial loser of elections in his Ekiti axis only to seek rehabilitation in the center, especially under a Goodluck Jonathan whose contempt for the Yoruba Nation is glaring; almost everyone who contested the 1998/99 elections under the platform of the AD won and all the Mimiko’s Afenifere leading lights could have so won had they contested, a victory which would have transformed the political landscape vis-à-vis the battle with Nigeria. They did not, rather, they spent the time arguing over whether Afenifere is AD or not.
Yet, there was a political battle to be won. Such that what fate eventually befell Segun Mimiko’s Afenifere had its foundation in that 1998/1999 strategic confusion that led to other eventualities.
So, then, how is “freedom for all, life more abundant” manifested in Segun Mimiko’s political choices today? How did the organization known as Afenifere pursue the political necessity where such abundance would be concretized? For Awo to even contemplate an alliance with a Zik’s NCNC, in spite of the latter’s historical hostility was only a recognition of some shared values in terms of political and therefore, economic emancipation from colonialism and based on equality; unlike today’s Afenifere which is scattered into different political parties(LP, PDP,SDP,UPN) thus becoming enslaved to a central controlling authority which is basis for all the political somersaults from Segun Mimiko both as a 16-is-greater-than-19 Governor and as an Afenifere in terms of accepting all of the anti-Federalist positions being pushed by Jonathan through his Conference.
It is no longer news how Goodluck Jonathan intends to forcefully impose himself on Yorubaland, even to the point of appointing Yoruba Ministers for critical security ministries only for them to be utilized as invaders of the land even when the terrorists have begun to take and hold territories in Nigeria. All that a minister of state for defense and Police Affairs could do is to marshal soldiers to come to Osun to terrorize the people. These are Segun Mimiko’s “progressive” or ‘welfarist” agents!!!

So, when Awo’s name is invoked, in order to hide behind the physical manifestations of modernization, Segun Mimiko negated the political essence; the context of Awo’s political philosophy, especially on his political choices. While an Awo would never contemplate any Yoruba as being “foreign” to any part of Yorubaland, that exactly was one of Mimiko’s electoral campaign mantra. The AG’s free education policy, for example, was not designed outside the socio-cultural and economic context of not only creating the necessary middle class for the effective functioning of the society but was done within a recognized cultural matrix, hence as the free primary education policy was being pursued, its cultural element in the development of the arts(Yoruba literature, drama etc) was not neglected which led to the all-round development of the individual. But what is Segun Mimiko doing with all that he reeled out? At the end of the day, when elections come, he will say there are Yoruba “foreigners” in our midst and just as AG’s reactionary opponents of those days would say, “they don’t want to be strapped to Ibadan”.
While an Awo would never contemplate a 16 as greater than 19, that was exactly what Mimiko did; while an Awo would never collaborate with even the military to checkmate Akintola his AG opponent, a Segun Mimiko makes himself available for Jonathan to use in Yorubaland. Some do know, on good authority, that Awo rejected all attempts to have him sprung from Calabar prison by both local and foreign forces.
Awo fought for and achieved a measure of Regional Autonomy which allowed the consummation of the “freedom for all, life more abundant” paradigm’s modernization process which is now being negated by Segun Mimiko right at this time with his promotion of the Jonathan agenda reflected in his acquiescence to Jonathan and reducing the Western Region into a clutter of hapless states. When Segun Mimiko then “warns against abusing progressivism”, he should look in the mirror.

Leye Ige.

www.ooduapathfinder.com
By adminadmin

President Goodluck Jonathan was in the US telling anyone who would listen that the era of rigging is gone forever in Nigeria. Aside from his playing God with his absolute certainty, where even a Hitler was not so emphatic about “forever”-his Reich was supposed to last for only a thousand years and we know how long it took for its collapse. Goodluck Jonathan’s statement shows the contempt he has for Nigerians on whose behalf he attempted to proclaim his omniscience. Making this statement can only imply he is the only authority to determine if rigging will recur or not. Of course, the only conclusion to be deduced from that proclamation is that he is in absolute control of all rigging mechanisms as he will continue to use his position as President to impose his will on the people.
Here is a president who came to power through a most atrocious rigging mechanism in 2007, which methodology was also utilized in 2011 where in the Eastern States he scored almost 100% of the votes; which, if not for rigging, only communist party elections recorded such results and we do know that such elections were already predetermined by the party hierarchy thus making mockery of the voting process itself. Prior to the 2011 elections, Goodluck Jonathan’s foot soldiers had been telling some self-determination members in Yorubaland that the election is as good as won by Jonathan because they would simply write the results. The words of these foot soldiers were taken seriously because of their confirmed links with Jonathan’s presidency.
Now comes a president who condoned and still condones rigging of the Governors’ Forum election where the losers were supposed to be the majority and are enjoying the president’s confidence and patronage; where the beneficiaries of the rigging now parade themselves as his front men in the various geo-political zones. In his own political party, the PDP, in Anambra State, the member that won the party primary was jettisoned in favor of a candidate from another party; at the time the governor of Bayelsa State, Gooddluck Jonathan’s home state had issues with him, he was unceremoniously and illegally booted out of office and a house of representatives member was drafted and imposed on the state as governor; in Ekiti State, the supposedly elected Governor was imposed on the party, against their own party regulations, as a candidate with a similar occurrence in Osun State where a challenger to the imposition was beaten black and blue by the current aspirant. Furthermore, under his leadership, his party continues to ignore court orders on party-related issues. Here is a president who will freely go to any state to campaign and address rallies and yet will prevent any member of opposition from campaigning and addressing rallies in support of their candidates.
With all of these baggage hanging around his neck, he now goes around proclaiming the permanent end of rigging. Even when he made a passing remark as to what he called “problems” in the election that confirmed his presidency, such was akin to his attempt at separating “stealing” as distinct from “corruption”; for an electoral process can be problematic due to so many factors which may not necessarily imply rigging, yet, rigging is in a class of its own. If therefore, rigging is gone forever, the only conclusion would be that his own days are gone forever since he is a product of what is gone forever. And that would be good, only if it were so.
We have witnessed all sorts of rigging elections in Nigeria, from ballot paper snatching to intimidation of voters to disappearance of result sheets to falsification of results all the way to annulling elections and now in a more sophisticated manner devoid of all the previous attributes where ballot papers are tampered with before they are cast and where voters cards are cloned to reflect non-existing personalities as voters and in other cases, foreigners not resident in the country are recorded as voters where residents names are nowhere to be found even after they have legally registered, not to mention the kidnapping of opposition figures on the eve of an election in order to disrupt the plans of the opposition; yet all of these had not resolved the fundamental problems facing Nigeria.
For the purpose of all of these rigging exercises was to impose a particular political tendency on Nigeria. Indeed, all of the efforts were to create a one-party platform; for a successful rigging by the NCNC/NPC Alliance all the way through to the NNA was for that purpose, of which the neutralization of the AG would have been a sine qua non. Ditto for the NPN’s 1983 “moonslide”.
The military-induced rigging mechanisms were also aimed at arriving at the same conclusion, the failure of which eventually led to the “June 12” crisis and which the emergence of the PDP was meant to resolve. President Goodluck Jonathan then proclaims the permanent end of rigging which is only an euphemism for the arrival of this one-party state.
The problem, as always, is that the one-party state will be still born because the only way a one-party regime can exist and survive in a multi-cultural society is by obliterating other socio-cultural entities by one undisputed entity. Thus, not only will Goodluck Jonathan and his forces have to be in permanent control of the PDP, he will have to subdue any and all other Ethno-Nationalities in the process and he and his forces must then have to be in permanent control of the presidency itself.
The process he’s embarking upon, whereby the PDP will gain dominance as a way towards the one-party state, will give him and his forces the necessary 24 States he will need to bypass or force the hands National Assembly into allowing him to present an Executive Bill for Constitutional Amendment. That is why all the southern states are being conscripted into the scheme, directly via the PDP or indirectly via the alliance with APGA and Labor Party.
While we await the outcome of APC’s judicial challenge to the Ekiti electoral heist, it is necessary to situate the militarization of elections within this one-party state paradigm. Thus, when he proclaims the end of rigging, he was referring to the known aspects enumerated above and placing himself as the only authority, the only power that will determine if there is rigging or not.
Otherwise, a military that sees itself as being the overlord of the land, that has no respect for our humanity, that refer to us, non-military persons as “bloody civilians”, that acts unconstitutionally when any of its members is involved in any criminal activity; where “espirit de corps” trumps any and all manner of civility, cannot be normally expected to prevent rigging and such a military cannot be an unbiased referee in any contest. Such a military can serve only one purpose, to which it is familiar: intimidation. And when such an army meets definitive resistance, passive or otherwise, there is bound to be an internal, systemic conflict, which if not resolved satisfactorily, will end up consuming the initiator himself.
Thus, when a Goodluck Jonathan now premises his permanent victory over rigging on the acquiescence of this type of military, what it means is that such a military is in cahoots with the goal of creating a one-party state. Why not, when his Chief of army staff is his own kinsman and the army general himself is on record as saying he is a war time army chief?
That the Boko Haram insurgency is not the basis for that statement is borne out of the fact that an army that is still fuzzy about fighting Boko Haram cannot be said to be in a state of war, however such a state is defined; an army without any serious welfare scheme for its forces, without adequate fighting gear and whose civilian leadership is under the control of political operatives who are not necessarily conversant with any political-military doctrine but who owe their positions to political patronage cum settling of political scores cannot be said to be in a state of counter-insurgency war. The only war such an army is fighting is the conquest of the “bloody civilians” and as Governor Fayemi of Ekiti State stated, he had to avoid a bloody response from this army hence his call for calm and partial acceptance of the Ekiti election results. Governor Fayemi should know what he was talking about for he will have access to information, which he said he had, as to the orders the soldiers were given.
Goodluck Jonathan appears to be getting away with all of these, in Yorubaland, only because, as the Yoruba would say, there is a crack in the wall. By this, I am not implying a need for “Yoruba unity”. Far from it. Those Yoruba who had created the crack must be defeated. It is a matter of historical necessity. Yes, from Afenifere to Yoruba Unity Forum and all sundry organizations, who have already sold out their homeland on a spurious excuse of “fighting the north”, and are now collaborating on the imposition of a one-party state in Nigeria which, to all intents and purposes, is anti-Federal.
When Goodluck Jonathan met with the then ACN in 2011, the party gave him a proposal and roadmap towards restructuring of Nigeria into a Truly Federal country. It was after this meeting that his animosity towards the ACN, and by extension, Yorubaland, became more pronounced and he had since been trying to subdue the ACN; which was why he hauled Asiwaju Tinubu before the ICPC to be tried for corruption. That effort failed, but he was able to recruit these Afenifere/Yoruba Unity Forum into his perfidious scheme. Thus, at no time was Goodluck Jonathan interested in any form of Federalism for Nigeria and which is why he had to use all means at his disposal to try and neutralize the only force capable of challenging him in his quest at setting up his own political empire.
When these Yoruba groups now pitch their tent with the Jonathanian one-party state, both in partisan terms via their enabling of his PDP in the SW and in his Conference, it is certain that any movement towards autonomy or self-determination would be resisted by them. That was why, in spite of their Calabar Southern Alliance ruse Communique; in spite of their anti-North propaganda, they followed every script written by Jonathan on the Conference, which also provided partisan mileage for him. Yet, they will shamelessly proclaim how they had been advocating “restructuring” or “national Conference” for donkey years as if what they were advocating now corresponds with the result they now happily endorse. And what happens, if, after all is said and done, Jonathan now hands over the PDP to the same North these people are using as their whipping boy?
Leye Ige

www.ooduapathfinder.com


Yinka Odumakin, a delegate to the Jonathan Conference says the conference “is a dream come true” because Jonathan gave the delegates the charge to “discuss every issue… and how Nigeria should be rebuilt”. From all the reports which Yinka Odumakin did not refer to, was that Jonathan asked them not to discuss anything that will endanger the “unity” of Nigeria. How then will any rebuilding be carried out when the current foundation is left intact? Indeed, what is meant by “unity”? For, “unity” is neither singularity nor uniformity. Any “unity” worth its salt must start from its foundation, its raison d’etre. The recognition of that which is to be united. But when this is assumed, it calls into question the purpose of such a unity; especially when we are talking about real persons, real cultures, real social existence. When these are passed over for some nebulous form of “unity”, we are not uniting anything but simply forcing what exists into another form of programmed existence which may be antithetical to the existing order, in all ramifications.
Hence, as the end result of any structure depends on the foundation; we cannot begin to admire the superstructure when the base, the foundation is left intact. Indeed a foundation constructed to carry a two-storey building cannot at the same time be utilized to carry a ten-storey structure. If Yinka Odumakin accepts the foundation as it currently is, he is not rebuilding anything. He is just making some cosmetic changes which may be OK as long as that is the requirement of the moment. But we all know that what Nigeria requires is more than cosmetic.
Yinka Odumakin was effusive on Jonathan asking the National Assembly about a referendum, which certainly shows that Yinka Odumakin has no clue about what is required for a referendum in a multi-cultural society. When the Mid Western Region was to be created, the Referendum that brought it about was not a pan-Nigerian Referendum. It was limited to those from the Region. And now Scotland, which had been part of the UK for over 300 years is embarking on a Referendum among only Scots and even then among only those who are currently resident in Scotland. The Catalonia Region in Spain is also advocating a similar Referendum among the Catalans; even when the issue of Referendum came up in Libya, it was to ascertain their preference for the pre-Ghaddafi monarchy as the foundation for the new Libya. Thus, a pan-Nigerian Referendum is only possible when Nigeria itself has come to be. When Nigeria has become; it cannot be when it is in the process of being; for each of the prospective “Nigerians” must establish their own bona fides before being subjected to another.
Now someone who claims he had been “agitating over the years” is handed a lemon of a referendum and he’s going to town with it? Not even when there is a dispute over population figures, not to mention cultural diversities which may or may not be traded away by those concerned, but then only after they have by themselves determined how this will be done, if necessary.
Of course, he would accept the lemon since his aim has nothing to do with Restructuring of Nigeria, that is, constructing a new foundation but simply rubber stamping an agenda that suits his purpose. If Nigeria is to be rebuilt, its foundation must be reconstructed. Which translates into having a “true” definition of its components, its constituent units.
Thus, while the Okurounmu consultations were going on, Yinka Odumakin’s position was “Zones as Federating Units”, where such zones are defined by all of the ethnic groups within that zone. By implication, there is no ethno-national group in Nigeria, only geo-political residents. And yet, he will go around claiming to be promoting “Yoruba interest” via Afenifere. If the zones are to be federating units, and these zones comprise various ethno-nationalities, promoting a particular ethno-nationality within the zone becomes an abnormality, it creates a culture war environment. Yet, the alternative is to recognize the Ethno-Nationality itself as the Federating Unit, especially when the ethno-Nationalities have their natural boundaries and social, cultural and political experiences which culminated in their becoming Nations by themselves.
This is what Yinka Odumakin is running away from while at the same time positioning himself as an advocate of a particular ethno-Nationality. Furthermore, at a time when the Lagos Assembly Speaker was being tried for corruption by the EFCC, Yinka Odumakin was vociferous in saying that we cannot wait for restructuring before we combat corruption and that the speaker must face the music. But once Jonathan embarked on his war against Yorubaland, corruption no longer matters with Yinka Odumakin. It is now about “rebuilding Nigeria”. So, one will ask, is Jonathan corrupt?
The answer is an absolute YES. Granted, Jonathan once said “stealing is not corruption”. The question is, should corruption be preferred against stealing? So, if Jonathan says he has not stolen any money; he presides over those who steal, he presides over how $20B went missing from Nigeria’s purse; he presides over an army that had billions of dollars budgeted to it over the years yet the same army is said to lack equipment and welfare; he presides over a situation where his kinsman, Government Tompolo was awarded a multi-billion dollar contract to secure Nigeria’s waterways against oil theft, yet it is under his watch that more crude oil was stolen than ever before. Jonathan may say he has not personally stolen any money but certainly a lot of stealing took and is taking place under his watch and he is not doing anything about it.
Now, if “stealing is not corruption”, what then is corruption, if it is not simply abuse of power-for a public official will have to abuse his or her power before he or she can either steal or cover up stealing. So, has Jonathan abused his powers? Certainly Yes.
He unilaterally removed a sitting Justice of the Appeal court; the CBN Governor was removed unconstitutionally; a Minister of State under his administration will leave his ministerial duties to engage in electoral heists; his own party will violate a court order on the reinstatement of its national secretary; the emergence of the era of 16 is greater than 19; the gale of illegal impeachments currently being witnessed in the country; the militarization of elections and the list could go on.
Such that whether “stealing is corruption” or not, Jonathan is as guilty as they come; and this is the same person Yinka Odumakin is now eulogizing as wanting Nigeria to be rebuilt-of course, after jettisoning his earlier position of having to fight corruption before restructuring; at the end of which he neither fights corruption nor restructures.
In his activities as a delegate to Jonathan’s Conference, he says the delegates spent “quality time looking at the policy issues” which he had also claimed to be “software” which any “presidential candidate can commission a team to prepare as a manifesto”. How then can “quality time” be spent on something so inconsequential? Such that when the time came to discuss the “critical issues” no quality time was left and all they had to do was to pass the buck back to the president!!!
This is what he called a “major improvement” on past conferences. We do know that past conferences did not pass the buck to anyone; they arrived at some conclusions right on the conference floor. So, it is ridiculous for Yinka Odumakin to say an inconclusive Conference, where “critical issues” are not finalized, is a major improvement” on the conferences where critical issues were decided. This is the same mindset that says Nigeria’s federalism is simply cutting out a geo-political territory and pasting it as a “federating Unit”.
And of course, he had to introduce the “northern bait” which simply says every failure is the fault of the North. The stories about who did what are neither here nor there. Any conference of diverse interests must have such engagements otherwise it would not be a conference and Yinka Odumakin cannot turn around to blame the northern governors for reversing the “quality” they achieved. Why?
The Yoruba delegates, before they left for the Conference, had an “Ibadan Position” which needs no governor to come to the Conference to push. Even the delegates warned themselves that they should not return void, without achieving the minimum demands. Thus, when Yinka Odumakin listed a series of their achievements, including delisting local government and state police, he forgot to mention that those things were putting the cart before the horse. For, of what use is a State Constitution when it is anchored on what the Center proposes ? Of what use is a State Police when the economy of the State is tied to what accrues to it from the Center? Of what use is the centralization of all electoral processes?
These are the issues already taken care of through the Ibadan Position. The question then is, how did it become a non-issue so much so that the north will now be the fall guy?
The simple fact is Yinka Odumakin was not in pursuit of that position right from day one. He was supportive of Mimiko’s position openly canvassed at Isara1 that (a) states are to be federating units (b) that the present Presidential system is to be retained (c) the revenue allocation/generation system is to be given a minor tweaking. These are the Isara positions, which are contrary to the Ibadan Position; and which now constitute the core of the Conference decisions and the Yinka Odumakins will now turn around and blame the north for it. Besides, the same Mimiko had been canvassing that “we should take whatever we can get from the Conference” while an Edwin Clark would berate the South-South activists for seeking resource control.
Concluding that ”the people of Nigeria have decided at this conference…”, Yinka Odumakin did not tell us who the “people” are. The Yoruba People still stand by their Ibadan Position; they still stand by their Regional Autonomy or Nothing; they still stand by the Yoruba Constitution; they still stand by their demand that the Ethno-Nationalities constitute the Federating Unit—how such a unit describes itself will be left for it to determine. The Yoruba people still stand by their demand that the only acceptable referendum will be those conducted by and within the Ethno-Nationalities themselves.
Whether the Jonathan Conference is scuttled or not is immaterial; for any means toward a goal can be scuttled, that is why there are obstacles and challenges along the way. The issue is for the goal itself not to be scuttled. And that is what the Yinka Odumakins are trying to do by acceding to all these meaningless decisions thereby negating everything the Yoruba had always promoted, right from the Egbe Omo Oduduwa days.The Yinka Odumakins have positioned themselves as the undertakers of Yoruba Autonomy and Self-Determination.
Leye Ige

www.ooduapathfinder.com

By adminadmin on August 1, 2014



This piece is not a full critique of Professor Alaba Ogunsanwo’s paper delivered at Lead City University, Ibadan, Nigeria titled “Defining Nigeria’s nationhood at 100 years” and being serialized in “ooduapathfinder”. He made some erroneous conclusions in the paper which ought to be corrected immediately . The errors were contained in the second part, especially on the issues of the 1951 Western Regional elections where Professor Ogunsanwo wrote thus “The political dominance of the NCNC led by Nnamdi Azikiwe in Lagos and the west was robustly challenged at the polls. While the NCNC apparently came out on top, some deft political maneuvering saw Zik’s NCNC lose the apparent majority in the legislative house and eventually Zik being compelled to temporarily shift his political base from Lagos and the West to the Eastern part of the country, his place of origin even though he was born in Zungeru in northern Nigeria“.
To set the records straight, it will be necessary to revisit the book on the elections, “Awo or Zik: Who won the 1951 Western Regional elections” written by Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu, who was the Organizing Secretary of the Action Group in Lagos and a very dedicated member of the Party throughout its period of persecution. (available on “Amazon.com”). A review of the book by Layi Abegunrin,Professor of International Relations & African Studies,Howard University,Washington, D.C. is reproduced below, having been originally published in “ooduapathfinder” on November 28, 2013.

Furthermore, Professor Ogunsanwo tried to absolve Nnamidi Azikiwe from “ethnicity” and placed the blame on Charles Daddy Onyeama who had earlier stated that “the Ibo domination of Nigeria is a question of time” and goes on to write that the statement was not supported by Nnamidi Azikiwe. Yet, in 1949, upon assumption of the Presidency of the Ibo State Union, Nnamidi Azikiwe clearly stated that “ It would appear that the god of Africa has created the Igbo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of ages“. Before this time, he had encouraged some other Yoruba in the NCNC to create what was then known as “Yoruba Federal Union” in order to spite the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, with its first public meeting held on, wait for it, June 12, 1948. Nnamidi Azikiwe saw nothing wrong with the establishment of the Ibo State Union but everything wrong with the Egbe Omo Oduduwa.

Leye Ige

“Ganiyu Dawodu. Awo or Zik: Who Won the 1951 Western Nigeria Elections”

This is an excellent and bold book. The author provides both detailed evidence and well-honed judgment in entering several controversial areas/issues and providing balanced insights and a platform for proper debate, without hysteria and mythologization.
The aim of this very interesting and controversial book by Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu is to prove and show conclusively that it was Awolowo that won the first Parliamentary election in the Western Nigeria in 1951 and not Azikiwe.
The 1951 Parliamentary elections was contested by two main political parties, the Action Group and the NCNC vied for supremacy in the Western Nigeria, although there were other local parties mostly cultural organizations without affiliation to the AG or the NCNC before the elections. Some of these local organizations were Ibadan People’s Party, and Ibadan Citizens’ Council in Ibadan, Ondo Improvement League in Ondo, Otu Edo in Benin, Nigerian People’s Congress in Lagos. Before the elections, the Public Relations Officer of the Nigerian Government, Mr. Harold Cooper wrote to all political parties contesting the elections to make known names of their candidates for the final elections to the House of Assembly. In addition, Mr. Cooper told newsmen at a press conference that: “This would help his department to identify the party to which elected candidates belong when issuing press releases or broadcasting results of the final election on Monday, September 22. It is understood that letters have been dispatched to the secretariats of the NCNC, The Action Group, The Nigerian People’s Congress and other parties contesting the elections (p. 14).”
“The Action Group submitted its list of candidates while the NCNC did not submit or publish the names of its own candidates. In addition, “the Action Group list was released before the final elections and published in the Daily Service and the Nigerian Tribune on and before the September 24, 1951, the day of the final election in most parts of the West (p. 14).”
Chief A.M.A. Akinloye, , Chief Moyo Aboderin, Chief D.T. Akinbiyi, Chief S.O. Lanlehin, Chief S.A. Akinyemi, and Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu, they all contested on Ibadan People’s Party (IPP), Egbe Omo Ibile, platform and won. They were independent of both the AG and the NCNC. Only Alhaji Adelabu went with the NCNC. According to Chief Aboderin: “Dr. Azikiwe had sent telegrams to all the six elected members of Ibadan People’s Party, urging them to join his party- the NCNC. Dr. Azikiwe’s strategy was however faulty since he relied mostly on Adelabu and Akinloye and thought that by getting the two of them he would be able to switch the other members to his camp. I favored the Action Group and I succeeded in getting all the members with the exception of Adelabu to the Action Group. The popular idea that the IPP cross-carpeted from the NCNC to the Action Group is therefore, erroneous (p. 55).”
At the close of the election on September 24, 1951, the Action Group judging by its list of candidates released before the election had won 38 out of 72 seats contested. Three days later, three candidates who contested as independents and won joined forces with their clleagues to sign the Action Group pacts of loyalty. They were Alhaji D.S. Adegbenro (Egba Division), J.O. Oshuntokun (Ekiti Division), and S.O. Hassan (Epe Division). Chief Adeola Odutola contested and won as an independent in Ijebu-Ode, and after the election declared for the Action Group. Chief Adeola Otutola’s declaration for the Action Group was announced by Chief Bode Thomas in the Daily Times of November 1, 1951 (p. 63). The three Otu Edo members, including S.O. Ighodaro (Benin Province) won on the platform of their local party also declared for the Action Group.
The Western Regional Elections of November 1951 gave the Action Group a majority victory of 44 seats out of 75 seats in the Western Nigeria House of Assembly. Only in Lagos were the five seats won by the NCNC led by Nnamdi Azikiwe. While the 1951 Elections became the seeds of discord, the results in Lagos as recoded in the Daily Times on November 22, 1951 had noted that; “The election result was a very disappointment to the NCNC whose leader Nnamdi Azikiwe has anticipated a majority in the regional and Central/Federal legislature prior to the election, “Azikiwe declared that he would not accept a ministerial post in an inferior legislature of the colonial type (Sklar, p. 116).” The loss crippled the plan of the NCNC Leader to paralyze the machinery of government which will lead to the reformulation of a new constitution. Obviously, the election outcome has given a majority to the Action Group, meaning that the NCNC could not form the Western Regional Government as Nnamdi Azikiwe has hoped. However, the result in Lagos gave the NCNC some hope that its National President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, would become a Leader in the Federal Legislature, because under the Macpherson constitution “a stipulated number of representatives from each Administrative Division was to be elected to the Federal House of Representatives from the Western House of Assembly (Sklar, p. 116).” When the Western Nigeria House of Assembly met for the first time on January 7, 1952, forty-nine members instead of forty-four declared for the Action Group, thus, culminating in a controversy that created a long mistrust between Chief Awolowo and Dr. Azikiwe. Apparently, the Action Group led by Chief Awolowo was able to organize the Western Regional Government with a comfortable margin; AG 49 and NCNC 26. But the House of Assembly was required to elect two of the five NCNC Representatives from Lagos to the House of Representatives. The Action Group majority in the House voted for Dr. Olorun-Nimbe, NCNC (a Yoruba) and Prince Adeleke Adedoyin, who later joined the AG (a Yoruba), neither of whom would step down in favor of their leader, Dr. Azikiwe, NCNC (an Ibo). Henceforth, a majority of the Ibos never trusted Chief Awolowo and the Yoruba as Awolowo was labeled as a ‘tribalist,’ thus, putting more flame on the political discord between Chief Awolowo and Dr. Azikiwe which started in the Nigerian Youth Movement in 1937-1938, over the Lagos City Legislative Council election contested by both Ernest Ikoli and Samuel Akisanya, and won by Ernest Ikoli (Awo was not a tribalist, the details of this will come out in a forthcoming book). Consequently, subsequent activities hardened the Ibos against anything Yoruba and with this episode the “National President of the NCNC was pigeon-holed as the unofficial Leader of opposition in the Western House of Assembly (Sklar, p. 117-118).” Dr. Azikiwe defended his abysmally poor performance at the polls that: “he and his party were under the impression that they had won 43 out of the 80 seats in the Western House of Assembly but 20 of the Legislators whom they regarded as members, supporters or sympathizers aligned themselves with the Action Group (p. 64).”
Action Group won because it was strong, disciplined, cohesive, committed and well organized. The NCNC had the goodwill but lacked organization. The internal squabbles and indiscipline within the NCNC affected its image. For instance the five NCNC Legislators contesting among themselves for the two seats allocated to Lagos in the House of Assembly in Lagos. Action Group concentrated on the West and limited its operations to the Western Region throughout the period of the country-wide elections. The AG’s campaign strategy was more effective. On the other hand the NCNC sought votes only from big towns, while AG covered all grounds, in towns, villages and hamlets. Most important Action Group came out with very impressive and well-reasoned policy papers-Party Manifesto informing the voters of the programs which the party would pursue if elected. It chose to work for the welfare state which would among others, provided free education and free health services for the people of the West. To cap all its motto, was “Freedom for All and Life More Abundant.” The NCNC did not present any party program and no party manifesto. Dr. Azikiwe promised that it would be after the elections that the NCNC would present its manifesto he, Dr. Azikiwe accused Chief Obafemi Awolowo of presenting party programs ahead of the election results.

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By adminadmin

ISSUES IN THE NEWS

Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor came to Abeokuta to make a “suggestion” which is insulting to our intelligence, as Yoruba people. He says only religious leaders and not President Jonathan can end insecurity in the Northern Region of Nigeria which can only mean that the post-colonial Nigerian Nation State has no business with combating terrorism, even though the terrorists make no pretenses about their intention to overthrow and overwhelm the post-colonial Nation State and impose its political preferences on the country. Thus, when the embodiment of that post-colonial Nation State is adjudged as not being responsible for protecting the State, such a State has no reason to exist.
Yet the same president will say “Nigeria must not break” and Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor will chorus him, which can only mean either the President has already capitulated to the terrorist demands or both the President and Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor are playing games with the lives of thousands of people that had not only died premature and preventable deaths but are also encouraging more boldness on the part of the terrorists.
If, therefore, Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor wants the northern political and religious leaders to end the insurgency, he should also promote similar notions for Yorubaland so that our leaders will take care of our defenses in our own land and by extension, the rest of the country’s peoples should also take care of their security, which if carried out as suggested by Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor, they must surely be empowered to do so.
The Governors have no say in how the security system is coordinated, talk much less religious leaders; in fact the Governors are also under the control of the security system in spite of their perceived roles as “chief security officers”. For them to be effective in order to follow Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor’s solution, instead of Jonathan asking for a $1b loan to fight BH, these leaders should be asked to do so; instead of Jonathan having total and complete command of the armed forces, these leaders should be asked to do so; instead of the Jonathan government developing diplomatic initiatives on fighting BH, these leaders should be asked to do so—and the list goes on.
What Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor should actually be advocating, at the minimum, is the Regionalization of the armed forces with the immediate benefit of not only providing employment for thousands of youths who will be recruited by such an army and professionally trained but also with the added security benefit of having the entire Region policed and militarily secured by local residents working within an overall Federal security mechanism. This will achieve the neutralization of the terrorist anchor which depends on their ability to create fear among the populace and render the existing government incapable of defending them; for at that point, the people will be armed and able to defend themselves. This will also place the nature of the post-colonial State into focus, as this will be a sort of its necessary negation by undergoing a rebirth of the post-colonial State, where old forms of doing things will pass away and all things will become new thus formally decolonizing according to our own needs.
In dismissing poverty as a propellant of the insurgency, the importance of the rank and file, who are not necessarily rich or from wealthy homes but constitute the fighting arm of the insurgency are denied; that Osama Bin Laden may be rich but the vast majority of his fighters are not as rich as him or even the Mutallab case that Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor referenced does not negate the role of poverty in attracting recruits into terrorism. Which is even why the beginnings of such organizations always entail provision of welfare schemes to the poorer sections of the society from which the pool of fighters are derived. This was even in the story of Boko Haram’s emergence, where even as it played roles in electoral choices, it was also able to create economic and social welfare schemes for its members. Obviously, wealthy persons, by definition, would not require such schemes for their existence.
Terrorism simply aims to force the State into a position of powerlessness whereby the people will have no confidence in the ability of such a State to protect them. When this inability is compounded by a lackadaisical attitude of the State as we are witnessing in Nigeria, the terrorist gains the upper hand. But such a situation can be avoided only if the Nation State itself is created as per the wishes of its inhabitants.
Thus, when ISIS came out of the rubble of the different rebellions in the Middle East, its main goal is the neutralization of the Sykes-Picot Line that created what we now know as Iraq, Syria and the various countries of the Middle East. On the other hand, when the State of Israel came into being in 1948, it was able to defend itself from terrorist attacks, fight wars of existence and generally take care of itself simply because its State is conditioned by the fundamental, historical necessities of the Jews. In Africa, it is the complete opposite, where the State was created as a negation of the fundamental necessities of the various peoples and the continuous existence of the State rest on such denial—hence the organs of State are not responsible to its citizens and such organs are used to impose any elite formation that is able to control it on the citizens.
The UK that created Nigeria ended up, over a period of time, agreeing, first with the Irish for them to have an independent State of their own in 1922 and now with the Scots, on the methodology of their relationship, giving the Scots a chance to be completely independent of Britain or in the alternative, what they call “devo-max”-that is maximizing devolution of powers which will at least create and maintain Scottish identity, with Wales waiting on the wings. Canada, a former British colony, also experienced a similar occurrence in the case of Quebec, even as the attempt at Quebecois Independence failed. What matters is the civilized approach taken to resolve the problem and these “Europeans” are as human as we are.
But what do we have in Nigeria? The mantra is “Nigeria must not be divided”; Nigeria’s unity is “non-negotiable”—and of course the promoters of such will rely on its army to enforce it. It may be forgiven the major beneficiaries of British colonialism, if they want to cling to it—but how about those from the Niger Delta or South-South, who are daily experiencing the negativity attached to this Nigerian entity and yet want to continue clinging to it by force and using all the paraphernalia of its State to impose its preferences on other sections of Nigeria? Which will make a Pastor Oritsejeafor come and start telling us that “northern leaders” should fight BH? It is the same Niger Delta/South-South leadership that did not allow negotiations between the Peoples/Nations/Lands(as in Scotland-Yorubaland) of Nigeria on the nature of State that suits them, which ought to have ordinarily been what Jonathan’s Conference should be all about and which which would allow for a possible “regional” armed forces that will not only be economically beneficial to the Nations but will also allow them to fight and contain any threat to their existence as a Nation, even within an overarching Federal framework.
Pastor Ayo Oritsejeafor says BH can only be defeated by a superior ideology without specifying what that “superior” ideology is. Certainly, it cannot be in asking northern religious leaders to fight it, for that is not even an ideology, however defined. To comfortably fight an ideology with a “superior” one implies the understanding of the ideology being fought and with what it is being replaced. If, as Pastor Oritsejeafor says, BH is a “religious ideology” it follows that any superior alternative must either be found in another religious ideology or in a completely “material” ideology which has nothing to do with religion. But the “Lord’s Resistance Army” of Kony is not in any way different from BH in practice except in one being “Christian” and the other “Muslim”; which means terrorism is not a function of religious beliefs or religious ideology only. Pastor Oritsejeafor acknowledged the mutual understanding and respect for different religions in the south which also shows that “religious ideology”, alone, is not responsible for Boko Haram’s Islamic insurgency.
Any ideology is based on the existential circumstances of the society from which it sprouts, while terrorism is a possible means towards its achievement. The conflict between and within Nations and religions are political in nature, from time, where each tries to maximize its potentials in the contradictions thrown up within the society, either in a single or multiple societies and in the process devise methods of identifying the forces best suited to carry out the mission. That is the function of “ideology”.
Thus, to fight BH with a “superior” ideology as Pastor Oritsejeafor suggests, cannot be based on using the religious/political leaders whose existence is wrapped around the continuity of the present. If the Northern Emir, for example, derives his influence from the nature of the post-colonial Nigerian State which Boko Haram wants to overthrow, such a relationship cannot be said to be “superior” or else BH will not attempt its overthrow. BH is able to do so because it feels superior to what the post-colonial State has to offer. And if Pastor Oritsejeafor is looking for a “superior” ideology, it must be found in the negation of what BH has found to be inferior and that is certainly not in asking religious leaders to do the fighting.
But it is apparent that Pastor Oritsejeafor is not looking for a “superior” ideology; he is looking for a justification for the continuation of a Jonathan Presidency or else he would not say that Saudi Arabia has trained some Yoruba Muslims as terrorists and sent them back to Yorubaland; the implication being that Yorubaland must continue to rely on the Nigerian Armed Forces, whose commander-in-chief is Goodluck Jonathan, for protection.
By Leye Ige

www.ooduapathfinder.com
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ISSUES IN THE NEWS

As noted in an earlier piece on this page, Afenifere and its political arm is about to complete the mainstreaming process started by the Akintola regime and supported by the NPC/NCNC Alliance. No less than Dr. Femi Okurounmu in his latest interview confirmed this point of view.
Dr. Okurounmu predicated his assertions on what he paraphrases the Bible as saying, to wit, we should give thanks in all things, without its necessary contextualization. When the Bible says in all things we should give thanks, it was within the context of addressing believers to pursue what is good for them and for all people. And in this instance, what the Yoruba had always agreed is good for them and good for all people is what we now refer to as True Federalism which made the Action Group the only party to advocate such and stick with it. Dr. Okurounmu simply fell back on this exhortation to justify his turn around from what the Yoruba had always advocated.
We also know that this demand can only be achieved either by armed interrogation of the Nigerian State or by electoral means. So far, we have embarked on the electoralist methodology while multi-tasking on other tactics.
When therefore, Dr.Okurounmu accuses Bola Ahmed Tinubu of hijacking the Yoruba cause, questions are bound to arise as to what constitutes this hijack . For, to hijack is to appropriate, by force, something in order to push it into an alternate destination. So, how did Tinubu “hijack” the Yoruba cause-such cause being defined as the march towards Autonomy or True Federalism. Historically, without the AG winning the 1951 Regional Elections, the quest for such Federalism by the AG would be still born; in fact within the circumstances of the time, a loss for the AG would have meant the death knell for Federalism as its opponents at the time had no use for it. Thus, a sine qua non for the pursuit, at least from Yorubaland, is the ability to control our political space without outside interference and without being beholden to an outside political agenda while at the same time engaging such external political forces in a constructive manner.
But what do we have now? In 2003, all the AD governors capitulated to Obasanjo’s scheme on his promising them to restructure and in the process, lost their states to the PDP. The only hold out was Tinubu, whose opposition to the Obasanjo onslaught came with his (Tinubu) appreciation of the necessity to not only sit back in Lagos and enter into a modus vivendi with the PDP, but to go ahead and remove the PDP from power all over Yorubaland, in order to restore Yorubaland to its position of internal political coherence and stand us in good stead to continue the quest for True Federalism. Instead of aiding and assisting in the consolidation of this historical move, the Okurounmus started on a mission to destroy that achievement and doing so not as a viable alternative in itself but as an appendage of another interested, external party. For it is simple politics to know that even a Yoruba Nation State will have different political tendencies wherein such tendencies would be driven by their organic relationship with the Yoruba Nation and not as an agent of some external force. So, when Dr. Okurounmu paints Tinubu as a political hijacker, it flies in the face of our history and our quest.

When Tinubu was fighting the PDP, the Okurounmus had ample chance to become the “Organic Yoruba Opposition” and fight Tinubu. They created their political party called the DPA but once they lost the Lagos Governorship election, the DPA disappeared. Tinubu and his political platform trudged on and still retained its potency. But the DPA/Afenifere ended up in an unholy alliance with Jonathan who had shown his preference for neutralization of Yorubaland which even a Chief Olu Falae would have cause to lead a delegation to Jonathan to complain about. It appears the price they paid for Jonathan’s acquiescence was to kow tow to Jonathan’s political agenda. And these are people now pontificating about leadership in Yorubaland.
Dr.Okurounmu himself was an early supporter of Obasanjo, even when he was the Secretary of Afenifere and a Senator under the platform of the AD. He supported Obasanjo against the threat of impeachment. The only conclusion from this is that Dr.Okurounmu is not principled hence he would support an AD nemesis simply because of some ethnic affinity and not on the premise of any political objective. Even if it is assumed that he did it out of political expediency or pragmatism, the question still is, why is he now excoriating a Tinubu for doing similarly in his own political choices? And his support for Obasanjo did not stop Obasanjo from making mincemeat of the AD itself. Of what benefit then, is such support, if not outright opportunism? And he now turns around to misrepresent the Bible.
Dr.Okuorunmu further states that the Jonathan Conference was “successfully concluded” even though he also admitted that the conference could not take a decision on a “very serious issue of resource control” and that they “had to pass the buck back to the government”– yet he called it a “success”. This, of course, is an exhibition of opportunism.
He says it will not be reasonable to conclude that the entire exercise is not a waste of money and time if the most important issue would be returned to sender and his reasons are simply ludicrous. His major reasons include how many committees there were and how a technical committee is different from the national conference because the delegates had vested interest in their resources while the technical committee will not be so saddled.
Dr. Okurounmu did not recognize that the technical committee itself would have to take the vested interests into consideration as it would not work in a vacuum and will not be totally independent of the forces at play at the conference. The composition of the technical committee itself would have to pander to these interests, one way or the other, as its membership will not come from outer space but from within the contentious elements represented by the delegates promoting such vested interests for or against.
But the most annoying of all is when he says that once we accepted what was forced down our throats by the unelected military, we should also accept what an elected government dishes out. The question then is, why have any elections in the first instance? Why participate even in the conference? Why don’t we simply have the elected government tell us what it feels like doing and we should just accept it as done-just as the military used to do via their decrees?
Dr. Okurounmu’s position is a negation of history. For military rule was rejected, both passively and actively, which was why the military went through all sorts of rigmarole before finally settling on “June 12”and when the same military annulled the election, there was much resistance such that the military had no choice but to accede to our request and especially for Yorubaland, the military had to make peace with us by allowing the two presidential candidates to emerge from Yorubaland . But Dr. Okuorounmu had to justify his attempt to ram down the Jonathan regime down our throats by denying this history of anti-military struggles of which he was even a part of. In denying this history, he has denied himself.
Continuing, he said the Regional Autonomy we wanted was achieved in a sort of round about manner because states can remain as “federating units” and they could merge and set up zonal commission while it will be left for the National Assembly to ratify such merger. Right now, and with Dr.Okurounmu’s political association’s acquiescence, the central government of Goodluck Jonathan is attempting to overrun Yorubaland and install his loyalists. In a situation where he did not succeed in one or two states, how could there be a merger of all the Yoruba States to form a union under such circumstances where the states would be in different political parties in contention against each other; especially when the center is deliberately making attempts to install its preferred parties in power? And even if the center succeeds in making itself the only party in power, there would be no incentive for any of the states to merge when they are not only in control of the center but are also in control of the entire political landscape.
Besides, taking Lagos as an example, where, right from the beginnings of the anti-colonial struggle, the Igbo, through the NCNC had been claiming that Lagos is a “no man’s land” which also fueled the “Gbegede L’Eko wa” crowd, in opposition to the Action Group’s demand that Lagos as part of Western Region(Yorubaland) and at this time, such claims has become more vociferous-yet Dr. Okurounmu would want a referendum in the State of Lagos, for example, to determine whether to merge with other Yoruba States or not, under a political regime controlled by Jonathan’s PDP? Indeed, this fact, alone, makes nonsense of the idea of “states as federating Units” where such states are not a reflection of the ethno-cultural make up. In a nutshell, what Dr.Okurounmu is selling is for us to simply forget about Autonomy. For the Autonomy being sought is not for the states or any administrative convenience, but Autonomy of and for the Peoples who can then create any administrative configuration of their choice.
Included in what he called their Conference achievement is the taking away of local government administration from the center and placing them under the states while he, at the same time saying that the “revenue of Nigeria will now be shared between the Federal and State Governments”—yet it is this revenue that has become the albatross of the Conference where a “technical committee” is to intervene and which Dr. Okurounmu says we must accept because we have been accepting military diktats anyway. By even admitting “revenue sharing”, he unwittingly has let the cat out of the bag because a regime of resource control and derivation, by definition, is not about “sharing of revenue”. Such “sharing” is a function of central control of all revenue.

Dr. Okurounmu gave a confused rendering of our immediate past wherein he said some governors were responsible for the cracks in Yoruba leadership and pointedly accused one of the governors(Tinubu) of having an ambition to become leader of Yorubaland. There is nothing absolutely wrong in anyone aspiring to become leader of any organization or political entity, for what determines the assumption of such a role is the alignment of such an ambition (if it is) with the historical moment of the entity. Thus, if a Tinubu aspires to be Yoruba leader, it will not be because he thinks money will enable him to do so but because of whatever role he plays in the emancipation of the land which will rightly accord him such leadership.

Tinubu has proven, once, that he is in alignment with the hopes and aspiration of Yorubaland by ensuring that the PDP was removed for our political landscape. Which is why all sorts of enemies have now risen up like a flood against him and his achievement. These enemies are to be found in the Okurounmus who have now aligned with Jonathan to carry out their nefarious aims and doing it in the exact illegal and unconstitutional manner the enmity against Awo was carried out in the First Republic; yet the Okurounmus will forever lay claim to being “Awoists”.
Beyond all of the above, however, is the issue of Yoruba self-determination, which the positions taken by the Okurounmus has reduced to nothingness. He mentioned SDP/Unity Party etc as some of their platforms. These parties have no electoral value of their own and their leadership is beholden to Jonathan’s PDP which makes them completely useless, politically. For, their only use value to Jonathan is in their collaboration against the SW APC; after which they will be discarded.
It may be OK to say Jonathan’s PDP will go with Jonathan, even if it is after his second term. But then another PDP will arise to replace it and if SDP/Unity Party hope to be this replacement, that will be placing them squarely within the one-party state paradigm and as had been noted before on this page, Afenifere and its political arm would have completed the “mainstreaming” cycle begun in the Akintola regime. It will therefore be acceptable to conclude that this Afenifere, had, at its main core, the resuscitation and actualization of mainstreaming. Yet they will go around professing Regionalism and Autonomy.
Dr. Okuorunmu professes a qualitatively different leadership paradigm from what a Tinubu has to offer, yet he accepts all the shenanigans that took place in both Ondo and Ekiti states where part of the Mimiko and Fayose mantra centered on castigating Yoruba APC as “foreigners” in those states. Yet when Tinubu was Governor of Lagos, Yoruba from anywhere in Yorubaland served in his government. And this is despite the fact that Nigeria is running a centralist government where the States have no need to consciously promote any Ethno-Nationality, since the state’s existence is not dependent on such promotion but on filialty to the center. Aside from the fact that Mimiko himself acknowledged the support he received from Tinubu in his own judicial fight, the same Mimiko now turned the Ondo election into not wanting “Yoruba Foreigners” in their midst; and here is a Dr.Okurounmu, supposedly seeking a qualitatively different leadership from Tinubu, promoting and celebrating the worst form of Yoruba politics, a political aberration in Yorubaland, which was the hallmark of the anti-Awo, anti-AG forces in the First Republic. And this has now become the mantra of all of these anti-APC forces in Yorubaland—which is why they will prefer to neutralize the SW APC so it would have no negotiating power in the National APC and create room for a non-Yoruba Jonathan PDP to dictate for Yorubaland.
Furthermore, aside from the issue of Ekiti ballot papers now in court, the PDP boasted of spending 2Billion naira for the election; the entire state was militarized, the PDP candidate in Ekiti was foisted on the party with Jonathan’s federal might, a situation which led almost all the other contestants to quit the party and the only one who accepted the imposition was rewarded with a ministerial position. All of these would be acceptable to Dr. Okurounmu because he had asked us to accept anything from this “elected” administration because we have been accepting such from the military. There is nothing more opportunistic than that.

By Leye Ige

www.ooduapathfinder.com
By adminadmin


Some of the false problematiques put before the recently concluded Jonathan National Conference (JNU) are reconciling citizenship and indigeneship and creating grazing corridors and reserves across the country for cattle raised by nomadic Fulani cattle farmers. Since the advent of post-military rule, Nigeria has been introducing complications to political discourse through creation of words that ordinarily have no meaning in other democracies and federations. One of such words is settlers in contradistinction to indigenes. Establishing a committee on citizenship and indigeneship at the Jonathan National Conference underscores the confusion in political leaders’ understanding of the concept of federalism in a post-colonial State like Nigeria.

In countries that are invaded by colonialists, such as Nigeria, the phenomenon of post-colonial indigenous populations is rife. Without mincing words, Nigeria is an assemblage of indigenous peoples assembled through amalgamation into a colony that later developed into a state-nation after 1960. It is therefore unimaginative for those ruling the country to be worrying about existence of indigenous populations, as there are no other populations in the country. In invaded or colonized countries with settlers from foreign countries, such as Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, to name a few, indigenous peoples are endowed with another identity separate from regular citizenship, to the extent that such populations have two types of identity: citizenship at the national level and indigeneship at the community level. Such classification allows for special recognition for native or aboriginal populations swamped or swallowed by invading groups through conquest or colonization.

But in Nigeria, indigenous populations in all parts of the country have a new layer of recognition: citizenship of the entire country, to tell them apart from people in other countries. Being Nigerians in the post-colonial state entitles such citizens to various rights and responsibilities that include the right to vote and be voted for, to live in any part of the country, to own passport to enable them travel out of the country, and the duty to pay taxes and be called upon to defend the country when the need arises.

Asking delegates to reflect on the relationship between citizenship and indigeneship smacks of heating the polity avoidably, as citizens themselves do not complain about the distinction between general citizenship and specific indigeneship that exist in every part of the country. Members of all ethnic groups in Nigeria share the following aspirations identified by the UN and the World Bank as characteristics of indigenous peoples: a) Self-identification as indigenous people at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member; b) historical continuity with pre-colonial societies; c) strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources; d) Distinct languages, cultures, and beliefs; e) Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities; f) the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions.

It must be the recognition of the peculiar status of post-colonial Nigeria as a state occupied by indigenous peoples that encouraged the committee on Citizenship and Indigeneship at the Jonathan Conference to state that an indigene is one whose parents or grandparents were born in a community within today’s Nigeria before 1914, the year of the creation of Nigeria through the assemblage of various ethnic groupings in the geographical space called Nigeria today. Similarly, it must be the recognition of the need to nurture a multiethnic federation that enabled the same committee to recommend that the right of every Nigerian to migrate to and live in any part of the country must not be abridged by any constitution. For a Nigerian citizen to enjoy the full rights of citizenship anywhere he or she chooses to live within the country, he or she does not need to aspire to become an indigene of any specific ethnic group, other than his or her own native community. In other words, being able to make an aboriginal claim to any territory within Nigeria is not necessary for citizens to enjoy or express their citizenship fully in any part of Nigeria.

Correspondingly, being a Nigerian citizen should not negate the right at the subnational level for ancestral owners of a territory to throw away their beliefs and traditions and their right to identify with other members of their natal communities. Citizens desiring to belong in toto to any specific ethnic group other than their own should have the right to do so by becoming assimilated into that community. Until such persons become assimilated to the extent that indigenes of the community accept them as members, they remain simply as individual residents in such communities with unfettered rights to live without threat or discrimination in such communities. But it is senseless for any constitution to seek to create another layer of recognition for settlers with rights to establish and sustain a counter-culture including creating parallel traditional political systems within communities in which they are just legal residents.

What those seeking to serve as framers of Nigeria’s constitution in future need to do is to accept the peculiar circumstances of the country as a multiethnic post-colonial state in which no group, regardless of how numerically strong or politically powerful, has the right to migrate to ethnic communities with the intention to dominate or intimidate traditional members of such communities or take over their ancestral lands. There have been too many inter-ethnic tensions in various parts of the country, particularly in Plateau and other states in the northern part of the country that are traceable to conflicts between indigenes and so-called settlers. It is the view of Ooduapathfinder that the move to erase indigenous cultures from the country’s social and political experience and the talk about finding a space and voice for settlers within indigenous communities is not just a distraction from the main challenges of operating a truly democratic multi-ethnic federal system. It also smacks of an attempt by certain ethnic groupings to dominate and drive pre-colonial indigenous communities out of their space. A recurrent vocabulary during the era of colonialism is settler colony, a situation in which groups from other countries forcibly settled into indigenous African communities and started claiming sole or joint ownership of such communities. Apartheid South Africa was one such country and Kenya and Rhodesia before decolonization were others to name a few. There should be no group referred to as settlers in any part of Nigeria. Since Nigerians have the right to move to and live in any part of the country, Nigerians who choose to move out of their natal communities to other communities within the country should be treated as residents of such communities.

This must mean that such Nigerians are guaranteed their rights to live peacefully in such communities, whether they choose to be integrated into the local cultures or not. Where they choose to belong to the local communities of their residence after assimilating into the ethos of such communities, they should not need any constitutional support to do so, beyond their right to live in any part of the country they so desire. The only support such persons should need is the acceptance by the community of such citizens as sharing willingly and without pre-conditions in the culture of their adopted community. No constitutional effort needs to be made to find special position or recognition for settlers or Nigerians who relocate to other communities. No group referring to itself as settlers should be encouraged to create counter cultures to subvert the communities they have chosen to move to from their own natal communities. Federalism is about shared governance and shared sovereignty and the sooner framers of our constitution realize how to create protocols for sharing governance and sovereignty between national and sub-national levels, the better for the entire country.

www.ooduapathfinder.com
By adminadmin on July 25, 2014


The “North” is now the proverbial whipping boy for the strategic missteps embarked upon by a section of Yoruba leadership at both the Jonathan Conference as well as the unfolding political drama in Nigeria. Gani Adams, the National Coordinator of OPC, was reported to have gone this route, blaming the “North” for the failure of the demand for Regionalism and Parliamentary system of government.
Any one following political developments in Nigeria would know that the “North” had never been in favor of Regionalism unless it is under its control as in the First Republic, and in recent times it has been going around the country telling anyone who cares to listen that it will oppose such positions at all times, and this was even before the commencement of Jonathan’s Conference. It is therefore strange that Gani Adams would blame the same “North” for the failure of the proposal.
Gani Adams ought to make an inward reflection and ask why would the Yoruba, for example, state that any delegate that failed to canvass for the position would not be welcome back home and also that it is “Regionalism or Nothing” only for the same delegates to turn around and blame the “North” for their failure? When making these proclamations, the delegates obviously thought that the Conference was a lecture hall where “reason” will take over. But we all know this would not be the case; we all know that the Jonathan Conference is a part of an on-going power struggle for political dominance hence it can not be “reasoned out”. The administration of the Conference itself was stacked against agitation for Regionalism/Parliamentarianism; a 30% veto power bloc was already enshrined in a minority, which even if we reduce the “North” to only the Fulani, would have served their purpose. Even the chairman of the advisory committee that went all over Nigeria taking memos on the Conference, Dr Femi Okurounmu once stated that there is no way the Conference would come out with a recommendation close to “True Federalism”—and he was/is a Yoruba delegate.
Thus, when it was assumed that the Conference was that important and the Yoruba delegates made such demands, it ought also to have been assumed that strategies would be in place to advance such demands; which, if done, would create a scenario for taking the issue beyond the Conference hall—unless they are telling us that even as everyone knew what the “North” would come up with, the delegates went ahead and allowed it to have its way knowing full well that they can always fall back on making a scapegoat out of the “North”—which was exactly what Gani Adams did.
Not finished yet, Gani Adams was also reported to have said that the southern delegates were united and they “performed” well.
“Unity” of delegates, as it were, was not a condition for a successful conference, where such success is defined by the ability of such delegates to achieve their major demand—which the southern/Yoruba delegates clearly failed to do. Furthermore, the issue is not about whether they performed well or not—for again, we have to look into how performance is measured.
Delegates who failed to achieve the major aspect of their demands cannot in any way be said to have “performed well”.
When Professor G.G. Darah, a southern delegate, in his paper on the issue of derivation and resource control, wrote thus: “It was the Gowon-Awolowo diarchy that abolished the derivation principle and funneled all the revenue to the ravenous central government under the guise of depriving the breakaway Biafra Republic of 1967-1970 of funds to prosecute the civil war”, the Yoruba delegates did not take him up on it.
What we now know as the Niger Delta or large parts of the South-South, were part of Biafra which was at war with Nigeria of which Chief Awolowo was the Finance Minister. Hence, a necessary war-time decision is now being used to castigate Chief Awolowo and a Yoruba delegate in the person of Gani Adams would see nothing wrong in that and proudly proclaim that they were “united and performed” well. Besides, it was Aguiyi Ironsi’s Decree 34 that vested everything in the center, a decision which eventually culminated in the Biafra war.
Professor G.G.Darah went on to describe the origins and continuance of resistance of the Niger Delta while glamorizing the roles played by late President Umaru Yar’ Adua and Sanni Abacha on their efforts at seeking justice for the Niger Delta. He failed to also state that political leaders of this region were in alliance with the same “North” he was castigating; that in all elections, pre and post-independence, their political leaders had always favored the “northern” party, to the detriment of even an Action Group that was manifestly championing minority rights right from its inception as a political player in Nigeria’s decolonization. Yet, a Gani Adams would excuse this on the basis of some type of “unity”? Yes, Professor G.G.Darah acknowledged the “unity” of purpose among southern delegates, especially on derivation, but then such “unity” cannot be at the expense of any part of the south; in other words, we, the Yoruba cannot subsume ourselves and our history under some nebulous “unity” that seek to make us bag carriers of the center, and we don’t expect any southern Nation to be so treated either.
This was why Gani Adams would measure “performance” in what was achieved as in State police etc. What he failed to add was the creation of more states, now totaling 54 and whose funding will be based on what we currently have now, with minor changes, especially when the essence of Nigeria itself, resource generation and control, is to be virtually left intact. Hence, what the current 36 states are sharing will now be divided up among 54 states which are now also to be saddled with additional responsibilities of having their own policing mechanisms. In effect, this is a one step forward two steps backward “performance”.
To cap it all, Gani Adams now says we should come out as a people to support a referendum to implant the decisions as a second stage of the struggle.
What this means, in effect, is that all of the demands for “True Federalism” that had been the hallmark of Yoruba political development has now been “outvoted” by the “North” in a Conference of handpicked delegates and with a procedure that was created to favor the same North right from the onset. Besides, how can there be a pan-Nigerian referendum without reliable census figures? And if we are being told that such a referendum will be held after the 2016 Census, that can only mean that these decisions will be left hanging till then and if per chance, those census figures are also disputed, such a referendum will simply become moot. Furthermore, since Regionalism is no more on their agenda, would Gani Adams expect the Yoruba to participate in a referendum that has denied their basic and fundamental demand? Or is he now telling us to forget about it?
Contrary to Gani Adams, the second stage is not the referendum but going back to the basics and creating avenues for the manifestation of our basic demands. Even Professor Ben Nwabueze thought likewise when the Igbo leaders of thought virtually came up with an alternative to what the Conference says it has achieved. Whether Professor Ben Nwabueze’s group is a minority or not, the fact is that they have refused to capitulate to the Jonathan Coalition unlike our own Gani Adams.
All of these merely point to a failure of a certain section of Yoruba leadership that has capitulated to the Jonathan agenda under the guise of fighting the “north” when in reality, they are helping to make Youbaland politically prostrate. The failure is not with or in the “North”, but in the capitulation of that section of Yoruba leadership that has now ensured the consummation of the mainstreaming agenda with its origins in the First Republic.
Mainstreaming aims primarily to denounce Yoruba “opposition” to the Center and drag Yorubaland to the Center, not by its own motive force but as an appendage of whoever is in control of that center. This “opposition”, in the First Republic, was centered on different philosophical and ideological pursuit between the AG and the NPC/NCNC Coalition, where the social welfare policies of the AG was in contradistinction to the “feudal liberalism” of the coalition. The coalition succeeded in creating a division within the AG which led to the October 1965 election crisis in the West. It was the attempt to cozy up to the “feudal liberal” alliance that became characterized as “mainstreaming”.
It will also be recalled that the alliance utilized extra-Constitutional means to achieve its goal; first by the illegal and Unconstitutional imposition of a State of Emergency in the West and the political and economic hounding of the major leaders of the AG.
What we have now, with Jonathan in the saddle, is the consummation of that idea—for these leaders had earlier on teamed up with Jonathan to ensure the dominance of their coalition in Nigeria. And it has gone ahead to do this by attempting to neutralize
the only political opposition the West has to offer—utilizing the same tactics as was done by the “feudal liberal” alliance.
Yet, this new coalition would also blame the APC for trying to “enslave Yorubaland through its merger with the North” when all of what the coalition is doing points exactly in the same direction.
The then ACN submitted a proposal for the Restructuring of Nigeria at its first meeting with Jonathan, upon his assumption of the Presidency in 2011, after which Jonathan began distancing himself from the Party. So, then, if Yoruba APC is accused of selling us out to the “North”, what has these Yoruba-Jonathan Coalition been doing?
In the First republic, all ateempts by the AG to forge an alliance with the NCNC, its own way of getting to the Center, were rebuffed by the NCNC which ended up with the NPC. So, the issue is not about whether we should be in the Center or not. In today’s circumstances, the APC also wanted to be in the Center but Jonathan’s PDP is utilizing the exact methodology of the First Republic in trying to neutralize the Party.
Politically, even if the APC ends up with a Northern Presidential candidate and wins the election, the fact that its home-base is still under its control will give it and Yorubaland a leverage. But when that base is eroded, the Yoruba APC will simply have no voice in the Party itself and by extension, Yorubaland will have no voice in Nigeria. For, if the PDP returns to power in the Center and the same PDP has used its current control of Central power to neutralize the only opposition in Yorubaland, it can only follow that Yorubaland will be at the mercy of the PDP, which will be the fulfilment of the mainstreaming agenda.
The issue then becomes who controls the PDP itself? From all indications, and with what Jonathan’s presidency is doing, it will be apt to conclude that he is preparing the grounds for the “north” to take over the PDP. All the more so when the pan-Nigeria APC is akin to the political formation that saw a working relationship between the AG, the Borno Youth Movement and elements of opposition in the then NPC’s area of dominance. It can thus be said that Jonathan has embarked on a race to neutralize any and all sorts of progressive politics in Nigeria in favor of the reactionary section of which the “north” will be the only beneficiary. The “North” is therefore, not the problem.
By Leye Ige

www.ooduapathfinder.com



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.

www.ooduapathfinder.com
By adminadmin on July 15, 2014


Goodluck Jonathan’s promoters in Yorubaland regaled us with his commitment to restructuring Nigeria and berated any and all of those who raised objections to not only the timing of his conference or its modalities but more importantly, on his motives, among which is not only his attempt at using it to remain in power but essentially as a ramrod to destroy any semblance of Yoruba political capacity. Events from the Conference show that the latter prognosis is correct. These Yoruba promoters of Jonathan have not only been at the receiving end of all sorts of onslaught at the conference, their major charge against the APC, the dominant political tendency in Yorubaland which also opposed the Conference, is that the APC is “selling out” Yorubaland to the Fulani North, and because Jonathan is also engaged in a battle for political survival with this same Fulani, their logic rest on supporting Jonathan, against whatever interest the APC and its Yoruba allies represent.
Every position advanced by the Fulani North at the Conference, save minor adjustments, had sailed through. Every position canvassed by the Yoruba defenders of Jonathan at the Conference, ostensibly in furtherance of Yoruba interests, failed. Even the much-touted State Police is provided as a sop and it was wildly embraced. The point is, such a State police will rely on the State for its funding, and the State depends on allocations from the Center, which allocations are not in any way changed in favor of the States because what was given with the right hand was taken away by the left.
That is, the number of States was increased to 54, such that even if the current State allocations are doubled, it will have no material impact on such allocations which will still remain at between 1% and 3%, which is currently the case. So, the question is, where would the operational expenses for such a State police come from, if not from these allocations which will render the States more prostrate?
This is beside the fact that the Niger Delta itself was reduced to having to beg for only a marginal increase in what is naturally due to them. The same Fulani North that the Jonathan promoters are berating others for is the major beneficiary of Jonathan’s Conference and they are active enablers of the charade.
But this is only one aspect. The other, more pernicious aspect is Jonathan’s absolute condescension and the “in-your-face” insult on the Yoruba Nation.
Retired Colonel Tony Nyiam was a major participant in the April 22, 1990 coup famous for its excision of the Fulani North from the rest of Nigeria before the coup was crushed. He is a delegate to the Conference, representing the Federal Government, after resigning from membership of the advisory committee that was set up to organize the Conference. He stated, while resigning, that whoever would set up this type of Conference must have had a predetermined agenda in mind. After his resignation, he made some futile attempts to get audience with some political leaders in Yorubaland. He has now come out to tell us what this agenda might entail.
In justifying the creation of more states, he stated that they were necessary, especially in the North, so that the northern minorities would be free from majority oppression and in some cases, free from Fulani oppression.
“ooduapathfinder” has no problems with such position, especially considering our own advocacy for the right of all Nations/Peoples of Nigeria for self-determination or Autonomy. What we find unacceptable is the attitude of Jonathan’s Conference to the Yoruba in the same North, as if they are not a minority under the same political forces other minorities are supposed to be freed from.

According to Tony Nyiam, “the Yorubas in Kogi and Kwara states were given the option of conducting a plebiscite on if they want a new state, as some of them were undecided to join their kinsmen in Ekiti State, because of the fear of becoming minorities in the senatorial zones they would find themselves.”
“ooduapathfinder” asks: why then is it only the Yoruba in the North(Kogi and Kwara) that are being asked to conduct a plebiscite if they want a new state? Were the other northern minorities whose states were announced asked to conduct similar exercise before they were “awarded” their states? And are the Ekiti the only Yoruba in Kogi and Kwara States? How about the Igbomina and Offa?
This is a throwback to the 1958 Willink Commission report that also recommended a plebiscite in the same area with the aim of neutralizing the Yoruba demands via the bureaucratic bottleneck that the colonial Governor would throw up. The plebiscite did not take place even though it is on record that the Yoruba had been advocating their merger with their kin in the West ever since the beginnings of the anti-colonial struggles, and in todays’ environment, have never shied away from being active participants in any pan-Yoruba issue. Ordinarily, therefore, having a Yoruba State in that part of Nigeria should not have required a plebiscite, especially when others were not saddled with such a task.
In the pre-independence period, the North had regarded their control of the area as being permanent, such that even the plebiscite being promoted at the time was subject to the ratification of a Constitution which was eventually designed to favor the North. And with what Tony Nyiam is proposing, it is obvious that the Jonathan administration, through his Conference, is merely ratifying that historical aberration.
What the Jonathan administration did, through his Yoruba promoters at the Conference is to ensure the permanence of these Yoruba in the North, as minorities; thus closing the case on the North’s permanent control. It is not a coincidence that the North, in 1958 via Willink and via Jonathan in 2014, pursued and achieved their permanence in northern Yorubaland. Even then, while the 1958 effort was vigorously resisted by the AG, the 2014 effort was virtually given on a platter of gold.
In 1967, Lt Col Ojukwu, as the Commander-in-Chief of Biafra, gave the following conditions, among others, to Lt Col Victor Banjo(Yoruba) who was supposed to be the commander of the expeditionary force sent to “liberate” the Mid West and the West, of course with Biafran troops. He was in jail in Biafra when these conditionalities were given to him:
“(iv) Biafran troops will, after the liberation of the Yorubaland, remain in that territory only for as long as we in Biafra consider it necessary for the Yorubas to consolidate their position and sovereignty against any external threat.
(v) On the liberation of the Yorubaland, you will be appointed as the Military Governor of that territory.
(vi) The liberation of Western Nigeria will be a prelude to the liberation of all Yorubas up to the River Niger and the severance of all connections between the West and the North at Jebba.
(vii) During the period of Biafrans troops’ presence in your territory, all political measures, statements or decrees shall be subject to the approval, in writing by myself or on my authority.
(viii) Should our troops arrive and liberate Lagos, the government of the Republic of Biafra reserves the right to appoint a Military administrator for the territory. Such an Administrator will remain in office until a merger of that territory with Yorubaland is effected by Biafran troops.

The conditionalities are self-revealing as everything depends on the decisions made by the “foreigner”, in this case, Biafra and her troops. Of course, Victor Banjo played along until he was able to freely exercise his discretion and military capability. But the Biafra war is not our contention here.
The Jonathan promoters in Yorubaland are also operating under similar conditionalities; the difference between them and Victor Banjo is that they are under no restrictions that would warrant a temporary acquiescence. They went into it with their eyes wide open, hence they could not call the North’s bluff, even when it was obvious Jonathan had already capitulated.
This flows from a mindset that even promotes the notion of “Yoruba foreigners” in Yorubaland itself. That is their political-electoral mantra where any Yoruba in APC is seen as a “foreigner” because, to them, SW APC is controlled from Lagos, which they now describe as “foreign”.
Their latest megaphone is the newly-imposed Governor of Ekiti State, imposed via an electoral heist who had been strutting all over the place promoting the notion that “Yoruba foreigners” or “outsiders” are not welcome in Ekiti which is an elongation of what his Ondo counterpart had promoted.
This mindset is supposed to challenge Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and his political platform but the reality is that Nigeria is running a centralist government system where States have no need to consciously promote any sociocultural Ethno-Nationality since the state’s existence is not dependent on such promotion but on filialty to the center; unlike in the First Republic, where the Region was largely autonomous.
“ooduapathfinder” then wonders if there is any need for Yoruba Autonomy or Self-determination when some Yoruba are considered “outsiders” or “foreigners” anywhere in Yorubaland.
When this same Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was Governor of Lagos State, Yoruba from all over Yorubaland served in his government and these Yoruba Jonathanistas now prefer to neutralize the SW APC so it becomes powerless within its own pan-Nigerian equation thus creating room for a non-Yoruba Jonathan PDP to dictate to Yorubaland. At this point, whether Jonathan contests in 2015 or not is immaterial; the major issue is the attempt at neutralizing Yorubaland’s political capacity where the neutralizers’ Yoruba enablers are incapable of holding their own political turf without being appendages to such “outside” influence; for as Ojukwu wanted all decisions concerning the West to be ratified in Enugu, so would Jonathan and the North demand all decisions to be ratified by them. Which is why these Yoruba Jonathanistas have no choice in who is proposed as its electoral representative in Yorubaland while at the same time, trading away the Yoruba in the North. Yet, they will grandly proclaim their fidelity to Yoruba Self-Determination.
The hypocrisy of it all is very apparent. The Global Yoruba Nation can only allow this to succeed at its own peril.

"Thank you sir! can you quote any speech of his where he made reference to that tribe?"
ALL of his speeches are not available here. Besides, a "tiger does not need to proclaim its tigritude". He's English because he's one.


Does it mean that "Nigerian" is a tribe since "English" is one.


No. Nigeria is a COUNTRY just as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is. The English is a tribe in the UK; just as are the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish(in Northern Ireland). Nigeria also has many "tribes"--Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw, Ibibio, Fulani, Igala etc etc. The entire population of the English is not much more than the Yoruba for example. Except prior imperial power, there is nothing the English has that the Yoruba do not have--language; culture(in all ramifications);social organization--name it. And this goes for ALL African "tribes" also. Right now, in the UK, those "tribes" are seeking their autonomy, including the English who now want their political capital away from London and taken to Manchester

www.ooduapathfinder.com

By adminadmin on July 11, 2014

Are we “ready”? That is a question that is asked generally within the self-determination movement in Yorubaland. The question becomes more relevant when viewed against the backdrop of Jonathan’s National Conference and the failure of “True Federalism”; a failure that was expected, without a back-up plan, even with such expectation. On September 8, 2013, “ooduapathfinder” published an article on the Nigeria’s version of the “Philadelphia Conference” that formalized the United States, alerting readers of what Jonathan may do with his own Conference, and explored the similarities with what Joseph Kabila was doing in the Congo. (The article is republished in today’s Message section.)
By and large, “ooduapathfinder” is neither disappointed nor surprised in the outcome of Jonathan’s Conference. It merely brings forth the need to address certain issues related to our quest for Autonomy and Self-determination. Thus, the importance of the question: are we “ready”?
The context of the question is usually limited within the scope of “militancy”, either of the Niger Delta variety or now, the North East which, on its own, has now metamorphosed into terrorism in its absolute sense. Thus, “readiness” is defined within the parameters of an external praxis and therefore becomes limited by it.
For us in Africa, the quest for self-determination or autonomy is a reflection of the contradictions within the post-colonial state, hence any form of “readiness” must exploit such contradictions to its own advantage. Limiting such “readiness” to what the “other” is doing is to fail ab initio; for the “other”, in this instance, the Niger Delta “militants”, on the one hand, predicated their quest on their ability to control the center, hence, in spite of demanding autonomy or self-determination; they are also contented in ensuring the continuity in office of their “son”, which has now led to their Conference delegates acceding to solutions contrary to their famed agitations via “militancy”. On the other hand, the Boko Haram terrorists “readied” themselves for the complete Islamization of Nigeria which means both of these “readiness” are predicated on access to power at the center, by whatever means this could be achieved.
But can we say the same for Yorubaland? “ooduapathfinder” does not believe, from all indications, that the Yoruba quest for self-determination or even “True Federalism” is dependent or predicated upon access to or control of the Center which translates into our state of “readiness” not being conditioned by not only the “other” as in Niger Delta or Boko Haram but also in our understanding of the contradictions of the post-colonial state as it relates to our expectation.
Yoruba self-determination has always been undermined by Yoruba Quislings who waste no time in forging alliances with the center, voluntarily or involuntarily; also known as “mainstreaming”, precisely to ensure the political dominance of the land by that center and by implication, truncate any move towards Autonomy. Whereas, in the “other”, their political activities and projections are in sync with what the center proposes, the only exception being when a struggle for dominance becomes imperative between and among them. There is thus some form of unity of purpose between the self-determination/autonomy movement and the political elite since both are in pursuit of accessing power at the center.
The opposite is the case in Yorubaland, where, invariably, the self-determination movement usually finds itself in opposite direction from the political elite of whatever coloration, most especially the “mainstreaming” variety; in spite of which the movement is reduced to being “shock troopers” with no say in developing political strategy.
The battle for autonomy/self-determination is half lost when a strategy is not developed in accordance with its own reality, thus not having an existential praxis of its own but a sort of clone of the “other” since it is defined by it.
Debates are thus limited to a capacity to be as active as this “other” without which the ability of proponents of a redefinition are then accused of not being “ready”. And because of this, those making the accusation accept anything as a solution, even if such things draw the land further away from autonomy.
Thus, when some Yoruba delegates to Jonathan’s National Conference embrace the notion of states being given the chance to create “economic cooperation” zones and celebrate such as the best that could be achieved in present circumstances, such delegates fail to recognize that they had to accept such positions only because they had boxed themselves into a corner, ab initio, by the assumption that they are not “ready” simply because they were/are unable to act as the Niger Delta “militants” thus unable to generate alternative parameters, for they are lost in the paradigm created by the center and its “other” hence unable to create its own parameters whose contest with the center will be the battle ground for solution. And this is besides the fact that the same Niger Delta that is deemed “ready” also found itself jettisoning its advocacy only to accept what is placed before them as a fait accompli. So then, what is the import of such “readiness”?
With this, “readiness” becomes not a function of armed interrogation of the post colonial state, by itself, but in recognizing the political context of that state and exploiting it for either its own collapse or recognition of our right to self-determination with or without violence, without which “readiness” simply becomes an enterprise on its own.
Such context manifests, at this time, when the post colonial state embarks on a journey of adjusting itself to its own contradictions, as in the case of this Jonathan Conference-NASS Constitutional Amendment-2014/2015 General elections, all within Boko Haram’s terrorism matrix.
To do this requires our understanding of the nature of the post colonial state as it pertains to Yorubaland from which relevant strategies and tactics would be developed. What we have had so far are mere reactions to initiatives from the center which we now try to respond to; such response are not even based on our own praxis but on our ability to effectively manipulate whatever system is put in place leading to a struggle for dominance within Yorubaland between actual and perpetual representatives of the center and those who want to distance themselves even while retaining a relationship with the rest of the country.
The post colonial state was imposed by the colonial power based on the internal characteristics of its own historical development, where the State could not but be the embodiment of those characteristics that ensured the emergence and dominance of a ruling class developed out of its own economic dominance of its own society, necessitating the existence of such a State for its own protection and continuous existence.
Its own type of State cannot therefore be simply transferred to the colony or else it would not be a colony. Hence, a new type of State had to be defined for the colony even while inculcating it with aspects of its own paradigm which are carried out more in the breach in the post colonial state. That is why, in the post colonial State, the “rule of law” exist as an aberration. That is why the enforcers of State power in the mother country, the Police, Armed Forces and other security apparatus would respect their citizens, as it were, while the post colonial equivalent would not, even as they were initially trained by the mother country.
The fundamental weakness of the post colonial state therefore rest on this “birth defect”, which is why such a state runs into conflict every time—a situation which is often referred to as “instability”; a recurring decimal in all post colonial states.
When Pax Britannica was imposed on Yorubaland, all of the efforts of our leaders like Samuel Johnson in securing an armistice among the Yoruba which would have ended up in defining a State apparatus, was thrown into the dustbin and replaced with the colonially inspired State.
The Samuel Johnsons wanted a Yoruba Nation State under the leadership of the Alaafin with the military might of Ibadan serving as the security apparatus. Whatever may be said of the Samuel Johnson attempt, the fact was that their “readiness” was conditioned not only by the circumstances of war in Yorubaland but also by their interactions and relationships with colonial forces.
This was the background to Egbe Omo Oduduwa’s attempts at replicating same, this time under direct colonial rule. In spite of this, the organization’s “readiness” was not conditioned by what the “other” is doing or not doing but by what Awo saw as a political necessity for a multi-cultural and multi-national entity, hence the earnest beginnings of the Federalist quest.
This brief excursion into our history is only to show that both instances took their initiatives from what they perceived as the central weakness of colonization—the attempt to create a Nation State for its own purposes on the ashes of our own processes and they proceeded from there, with their own strategies; for what they offered were in direct opposition to what colonialism offered, especially the definition of the emerging Nation State, hence it was a sort of competition between the two extremes.
While Johnson failed, Awo succeeded. Bottom line being that their state of “readiness” was not conditioned by copying the “other” but by being rooted in their own history, not simply as an account of the past but as part of a process of becoming, which, if applied today, would prevent us from seeing our “readiness” through the lenses of the “other” which “ooduapathfinder” believes will also engender confidence in our ability.
Now that we are in the de facto post colonial state, with all sorts of water having passed under the bridge, this self-determination-seeking generation cannot afford to be limited in its understanding of the problem via defining “readiness” as a function of an ability or inability to engage in some form of “militancy”—lest, as we have seen with the Niger Delta, it becomes an end in itself. The form would have been substituted for the essence. And that is a sure recipe for failure.

Can someone kindly enlighten me on James Cameron's Tribe, abeg!!


James Cameron's tribe is ENGLISH; formerly known as Anglo-Saxons; formerly known as Angles.

www.ooduapathfinder.com
By adminadmin on July 8, 2014



The recent bombings in Lagos and Ile Ife, which have been attributed to Boko Haram bring to memory the burning of the German parliament in 1933 which precipitated the enablement of Hitler and his Nazi Party’s dictatorship. In the aftermath of the contention between Hitler’s Nazi party and the opposition, led by the Communist Party, Hitler, on behalf of the National Socialist Party, assumed emergency powers on February 4, 1933, which allowed him, through the police, to ban electoral campaigns and hinder the press. On February 27, 1933, there was a fire in the German Parliament which was blamed on the Communist Party. The Party was accused of trying to overthrow the government through the instrumentality of the fire. The following day, February 28,1933, a permanent suspension of democratic and civil rights was issued. The suspension covered areas such as permanent suspension of civil rights, right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press as well as Constitutional guarantees including all restraints on police investigations, the arrest and detention of political opponents without charge, dissolution of political organizations and overruling state and local laws. Of course, all of these were justified on the false accusation of the Communist Party as being responsible for the fire.
What has this got to do with Nigeria, in general and the Yoruba Nation in particular?
Hitler and his forces created a false premise that the Communists were planning to overthrow the government. And we all know how the Jonathan administration and the PDP had always utilized State Propaganda to accuse the APC of being “Boko Haramites”; of being its political and financial sponsors and trying to Islamize Nigeria. At one point, just as Hitler suppressed opposition publications, so the Jonathan administration tried to suppress even neutral publications by confiscating their editions over a period of several days in the recent past, again, on an allegation of their being carriers for Boko Haram; all of these in an attempt to create the impression that APC is Boko Haram’s political arm. And in the recent election in Ekiti, APC leaders were hounded and detained without charge just so they would be kept off electioneering; the entire state was completely militarized and the movement of APC leaders abridged thus all of the opposition’s Constitutional guarantees were suspended for the benefit of the Jonathan forces.
When the bombings in Lagos and Ile Ife took place, the same Jonathan agencies came up with the idea that these were the handiwork of Boko Haram. This was followed by a supposed security report that indicted what it called a “ major opposition party”-which is none other than the APC- of transporting “thousands of Northerners” into the South for the singular reason of getting them registered in time for the 2015 election. The so-called security report also alleged that a former State resident Electoral commissioner was redeployed because he had actually registered over 6000 Northerners for the Osun election coming up on August 9, 2014. The end result of this “security report” is to show that only Northerners will vote in large enough numbers in order for the PDP to make a dent in the south.
This demonization of the APC and Hitlerization of the Jonathan Presidency is actually a veritable insult on the Yoruba Muslim Community, and by extension, the entire Yoruba Nation. It is a matter of historical record that Islam had been in existence in Yoruba land before the Dan Fodio expansionist Jihad and to refuse the recognize that historical fact is to deny the existence of Yoruba Muslims as rational human beings. Furthermore, Yoruba Muslims were prominent actors and participants in the much revered period of our history, under the political direction of the Awo-led Action Group, where such personalities as Alhajis D.S Adegbenro, Y Shittu, Odutola, S.O. Gbadmosi, G.O Dawodu, S.L Edu, A.T. Ahmed, Busari Adelakun, L.K. Jakande et al stood firm against the persecution and political rape of the land spear-headed by such Christians like S.L Akintola and Remi Fani-Kayode et al.
For Yorubaland, therefore, Muslims have always been found, in a major form, among the promoters and defenders of the land and it is only fascists of the Hitlerite variety, in and out of Yorubaland that will proceed on a journey of ascribing anti-Muslim tendency to Yorubaland.
Doing this is thus not only a-historical, it is also a direct assault of the recognized spiritual cum religious tolerance found in Yorubaland, which tolerance and mutual co-existence, as a matter of course, is not found anywhere else in the world. Needless to say, this is a direct assault on the foundation of our existence, ostensibly on the basis of fighting the “north” under the direction of a “southern Christian” leader in the person of Goodluck Jonathan who has absolutely no respect for our cosmological foundation.
Thus, when Boko Haram is blamed for all the bombings all over Nigeria, and APC is being demonized as its enabler, the battle is not against the APC as a political party, as political parties come and go, but against the Nation, this time, the Yoruba Nation which translates into defeating the APC being a defeat for the Yoruba Nation.
Furthermore, “ooduapathfinder” asks: had Ijaw terrorism ever reared its head in Yorubaland? The answer is an unequivocal YES. Under Abacha, the Ijaw paraded a Map of its territory which included parts of coastal Yorubaland; of course this was done under the cover of Ijaw Nationalism and anti-Caliphate struggle; at another time, Ijaw “militants” blew up the Lagos Atlas Cove jetty in its “war” against the Federal Government, even though, the Yoruba, right from the beginnings of the anti-colonial period till the present day, had always championed the right of the Peoples of Nigeria for self-determination, and the Ijaw in particular; not too long ago, a larger number of Ijaw terrorists were found camped in a building in Lagos, owned by the Bayelsa State Government. The perpetrators of all of these things were not Boko Haram! The Edwin Clark-led “Southern Peoples Conferences” coordinated with the Yoruba Unity Forum, after several meetings on Restructuring came around to promote support for Jonathan’s presidential electoral run as the raison d’etre for these meetings. Strangely, it is the same Ijaw under Jonathan’s presidency the Yoruba Quislings are now promoting in Yorubaland.
It is against this background that the militarization of the Ekiti election took place and now being followed up by a soldiers’ rampage in Lagos.
Historically, soldiers have been known to go on rampage whenever they feel “offended” by civil society, this being defined by general residents/citizens of the country. When this happens, these soldiers don’t discriminate between “official” and non-official properties; they simply damage any and everything in their sight. And their commanders always find ways of covering up these rampages. When these are carried out officially, as in the Odi and Zaki Biam massacres as well as the Paul Okuntimo-led Niger Delta Internal Security and also reported as taking place in the North East, civilians and not government agencies were targeted.
What happened in Lagos, in the past week bucked this trend. A soldier was reportedly killed overnight and his body dumped inside a Lagos State government –owned vehicle; upon which soldiers went on the rampage and began damaging ONLY Lagos State government –owned vehicles around the area. These were carried out without torching any civilian vehicle, which was an abnormally.
In 2012, the current chief of army staff, from Jonathan’s Ijaw Nationality, was the commander of Lagos Garrison . Lagos was the epicenter of the protests against the increase in fuel price and this commander was on the verge of butchering the protesters before the protests were called off. The current Minister of State for Defense is from Lagos State and he was primarily responsible for the militarization of Ekiti election, as part of his official duties. Lagos State is a prime target for these fascists and what happened with this soldiers’ rampage is nothing but a dry run of what to expect from this military, who, readers would know, “ooduapathfinder” had already shown to be preparing a military putsch on behalf of Jonathan; even as such plans are now on hold.
The National Assembly has suspended, albeit temporarily, its attempt at amending the 1999Constitution, ostensibly awaiting the outcome of Jonathan’s National Conference while the Conference itself is now embroiled in a controversy based on an earlier accepted voting method which allowed for a veto by a 30% minority. The “consensus” being arranged by a “Consensus Group” is being led by, among others, Raymond Dokpesi, one of the main pillars of the “Doctrine of Necessity” that ushered in Jonathan’s Presidency–a Doctrine of which we have no clue of what it is all about.
Along with the above is the collapse of Autonomy/Regionalization demanded by South South, South West and South East in particular, at the Conference is further affirmation of how the ground is being prepared for the return of power to the North with Jonathan’s active collaboration. Even the Niger Delta was reduced to begging for a slight increase in what is”allowed” them. It will be recalled that the current state structure was the handiwork of the military institution, of which the North was its dominant section, which apparently is now inching its way back to power, albeit in a civilian garb.
All of these are taking place against the backdrop of the neutralization of the APC as a potential pan-Nigerian opposition party. Thus, the stage is being set for the PDP, under Jonathan’s presidency, to ram through some form of Constitutional amendment after “capturing” the required 24 states, which will be theirs for the taking after neutralizing the APC in Yorubaland. Either way, Yorubaland will become the vassal of the North on the altar of the destruction of our only viable political platform, the APC. Even though “ooduapathfinder” believes that Jonathan will not run as he is merely preparing the grounds for a Northern presidency which he is hypocritically accusing the APC of doing, it would not matter if he runs as the choice before the Yoruba Nation is not either the North or the East, as represented by Jonathan.
With the above, “ooduapathfinder” believes that while a formal ground war is not being waged against the homeland, surreptitious moves are being made to render us prostrate and the Osun election will be the “last man standing”. We had such a standing in 2003; we will have another one now. The question then is: are we condemned into becoming “last man standing” in perpetuity? If not, the Osun election must not only be the last man standing, it must, as a matter of course, propel us into neutralizing the Quislings and their central enablers in perpetuity.

www.ooduapathfinder.com
By adminadmin on July 2, 2014


The recent experience of the people of Hong Kong through the Referendum on their relationship with China is a wake-up call to the Yoruba Nation. Before Hong Kong, the people of Catalonia in Spain had embarked on a similar journey to test the acceptability of the demand for Independence from Spain. And earlier on, the “Yes Declaration” campaign in favor of Independence for Scotland embarked on a signature drive in order to determine who will actually vote for independence. The Referendums and signature drive were aimed at ensuring the certainty of their quest. Furthermore, these experiences impacted on the political fortunes of the main political parties where in Spain it transformed some of the “lesser” known Catalan parties into prominence in both Spanish and European elections while the demand for Independence in Scotland was able to unite all of the parties around that issue. Of course, the Hong Kong referendum was aimed at transforming the political relationship between Hong Kong and China, mostly in terms of representation .
In all of these instances, it can be said that any formal elections in these countries would be considered free and fair.
In spite of their not being formally sanctioned by the governments, they were able to ascertain precisely where the people want to go, even within existing political structures. It would be appropriate to thus see them as “elections within election”—for they were elections that created the platform for their voices in subsequent official elections, even if their ultimate aim go beyond the limitations of the official elections.
This should be an eye-opener for the Yoruba Nation. We have always been shortchanged in all pan-Nigerian national elections since 1959 till date. The only time we had anything reflective of free and fair elections was under the Western Regional Government before independence, when the sitting Action Group government lost the 1954 election, even though the lost seats were recovered in subsequent elections. As at the 1999 General elections, the electoral heist perpetrated by the Central electoral agency was periodically perfected at every other election, the sole aim being the disenfranchisement of the Yoruba Nation while attempting to corral us into the “mainstream” of Nigerian national politics.
This short-changing was not by happenstance but was aimed at destroying not only the Yoruba geo-political and sociological space but more importantly, in destroying whatever is the dominant political tendency at any point in time, first of the AG, then the UPN, then the AD/AC and now the APC. The unifying factor for all of these attempts is the active participation of the Central government, which usually play a direct, formal role in the attempt.
Such efforts would have been excused only if such a central authority had an established developmental model it proposes to impose or introduce, such that the Region would be dragged along, which is not the case.
This Central authority is prebendal, as most, if not all of Africa’s post colonial states; it is also a complete negation of human progress, as a Nation State. It not only turns political logic on its head by arbitrarily carving out “states” and proclaiming them as “Federating Units”, it has turned simple governance into a witch hunting enterprise and in the process violating its own laws with absolute impunity. We are thus faced with a state apparatus that has absolutely no idea of human development because it rejects the basic form human organization that make up the geo-political expression hence cannot fathom how to proceed on the development of a human society through the instrumentality of the inherent attributes of the peoples making up the entity.
Periodic elections become an end in themselves, hence a metaphorical misuse or abuse of the concept of “war” is employed whenever such elections were to take place. And because its military serve parochial purposes, having been established by the colonial power as a force of occupation, it takes possession of the electoral “war”, make it its own and utilizes raw force to enforce whatever outcome is desired by whoever is calling the shots at any particular time.
If it is agreed that elections serve as a barometer of peoples choices, and we do not expect any free and fair election from the Nigerian post-colonial state as presently constituted, it behooves on us to conduct our own election, in order to ascertain exactly where we stand and make it impossible for the central government to simply foist its choice on us.
This will not even be the first time such a challenge to the center will be mounted. When the 2006 Nigerian census was going on, Lagos State, under Asiwaju Tinubu as Governor carried out its own census, an exercise which stood the State Government in good stead to challenge the spurious results and claims of the Centrally organized Census.
A similar scenario is right before us, especially with the electoral heist carried out recently in the State of Ekiti. From all indications, the Yoruba Nation should expect more. This is where the Hong Kong, Catalonia and Scotland’s examples come in.
For the State of Osun’s governorship election, we need to conduct our own “election” before the central government’s “election” so that we, the People, will know where we are and any unwarranted imposition such that their results go contrary to our decided expectations, we have our job cut out for us in defense of that which we have voted for, by ourselves and for ourselves
When Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State proceeded on his administrations’ quest to create new Local Government Development Areas, in accordance with what the 1999 military-imposed Constitution says, the newly “elected” governor raised objections. Such objections are unwarranted and show the fear embedded in the fact the he was not elected but selected just as he was selected in his party’s primaries as the party’s flag bearer.
So, we ask, what is Ayo Fayose afraid of? He has the right to campaign against the creation of such local government areas; his supporters, who voted for him, in all of the local government areas, can be persuaded to vote against these new local development areas, if they are in his support. By saying that this vote is uncalled for, Ayo Fayose is saying he has no trust in the same people that voted for him-or he is saying, as “ooduapathfinder” reiterates, that his election was a scam, in the first instance.
When Ayo Fayose and his party asked that voters cards be shown at their Ekiti rally or when, earlier on the APC did similarly in the Ondo election, these, by themselves, did not necessarily translate into actual votes, for as it happened in Ekiti, the people may be intimidated by armed forces organized by the Center and in Ondo outright theft and substitution of ballot papers. Thus, what “ooduapathfinder” is canvassing is not mere showing of voters cards but actually voting with it at the “election within the election”.
Thus the relevance of the promotion of this prospect, even with time constraints needs to be addressed by the people and for the people, before August 9, 2014, in the State of Osun, where the issue of continuity of the APC government would be laid bare for people to vote for or against. And the opposition will have the chance to canvass and vote against such continuity. And if the opposition chooses not to participate, it will be all well and good as the exercise would have simply certified the certainty of our expectations, by the numbers.
So, why continuity?
Aside from all the known activities and achievements of the current government, it is also known that the said government is squarely within the framework of Yoruba Autonomy; not only in the assumption of the UPN anthem as the State anthem, nor its coat of arms; nor its promotion of Yoruba cultural values, both academically and socio-politically; nor its promotion of regional economic paradigms; the government has also, formally and informally, been able to propose its recommendations for the restructuring of Nigeria which is a paramount issue for the Yoruba Nation. And the proposed restructuring is specific, to wit, Regionalization, not the corrupted version that is being peddled around as “states as Federating Units”—which is clearly a federalist abnormally, especially with the way such states were created in Nigeria.
On the other hand, the opposition, from the PDP( which has never hidden its disdain for restructuring and as far as Yorubaland goes, has always been behind every attempt by the central government to subjugate the land, right from its previous life as NPN to its present incarnation); to Labor Party which does not even know where it belongs except as the lapdog of the PDP to sundry parties like the SDP that prides itself as to its association with Afenifere, where one of its leaders, who also doubles as the leader of the SDP, in the person of Chief Olu Falae, has now succumbed to the illogic of “states as federating units” as against Regionalization, which he had earlier advocated.
So Yes, the lines are clearly drawn, the lines will reflect where we stand and this will prevent any type of electoral heist as was carried out in Ekiti. And as to the issue of an electoral heist as a fait accompli, we would already have a weapon of resistance—which is the import and necessity for the “election within the election” being advocated. As to possibility of violence or thugs invading polling areas, “ooduapathfinder” believes such can be handled efficiently.