By Akin Osuntokun
In the late evening of July 19, 2021, the news of the interdiction of Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho in Cotonou, Benin Republic en route the Federal Republic of Germany, broke out in the media. I was doubly disappointed, a disposition that was pervasively shared among the Yoruba. You see, one man’s poison is another man’s cup of tea and the secessionist criminal of one is the freedom fighter of the other. I am not in the habit of making undue concessions to political correctness at the expense of the naked truth. It is rather late in the day for a left handed sixty years old to start learning how to become right handed. My initial disappointment had to do with his carelessness and recklessness in not adequately anticipating and sensing the response of the Nigerian state security services to his emergence.
If Nigeria has deteriorated to such a degree that this is my perception of Igboho, blame President Muhammadu Buhari for making identification with Igboho a growth industry in the South-west; for taking Nigeria captive to an agenda that is tolerable or beneficial to some and completely degrading to others. If we are getting increasingly powerless to positively influence his presidency, we are, at least, entitled to the right to repudiate the Nigeria he now personifies. You can challenge my position with the argument that we will be rid of him sooner than later with the promise of a new beginning.
The problem with this mindset is that the kind of damage the President has wreaked on Nigeria will be difficult if not impossible to reverse- that is even if the country does not cave-in in the near term, before the expiration of his tenure. The damage is so deep and vastly polarising that any meaningful attempt to reset Nigeria will provoke the backlash allegation of reverse discrimination against the constituency he pampered and promoted under his ruinous stewardship. He has polluted and poisoned the Nigerian well with the destructive power politics of the winner-takes-all and the genie, so to say, is already popped out of the bottle. Where before, the custodians of Northern hegemony thread Nigeria with stealth and pulled their punches (in the execution of the hegemony), Buhari has ripped off the mask, charge furiously ahead with the execution and dared all of us to take it or leave it. He has substantiated the fears (that people on the receiving end had harboured all along) of a repressive northern regionalist thrust and emergent apartheid caste system. He has earned the left handed salute to his capacity to boldly clarify the choices Nigerians are called upon to make.
The other day, one of his major Yoruba enablers returned from Abuja and reported that ‘a ti wo gàù’ (jocularly attributed as ‘entering a one chance bus’ with no plausible exit strategy). As he unapologetically trudge on with his political agenda, Buhari has latterly sought refuge in the dubious and distorted legalism of ‘I have not violated the constitution’. If this is true, that the Nigerian constitution, by omission or commission, condones the perpetration of his unique excesses, then there is no better justification for throwing such a subversive and destructive constitution to the dustbin. Who would have believed that a presidential dispensation can become so insufferable as to compel the compliant Southern Governors’ Forum (SGF), to the defiance of becoming the champions of regionalism! It is the reason why Bishop Matthew Kukah concluded that if a putative President of Southern Nigeria origin had conducted himself the way Buhari has done, he would have long become toast of military take over. Necessity being the mother of invention, it is the same state of affairs that has produced the Igbohos of contemporary Nigeria.
It is the reason I feel disappointed that Igboho didn’t do enough to evade the forces arraigned against his freedom of action. How, for God’s sake, can a man of his profile still believes he can continue to live a settled normal family life? Live and sleep in his well known family residence after crossing the rubicon at Igangan? Letting his guards down in this manner certainly bespeaks of the apt characterisation that “he doesn’t have the wisdom of the learned nor the tush of the exposed yet he has achieved so much in his liberation struggles”. In the subsequent event of his arrest at Cotonou, I could not but be reminded of the unenforced earlier error of revealing he had a second home in Germany and how he generally spews out information for the benefit of anyone interested in his entrapment. It was against this background and within this context that the inauguration not the formation of the Ooni Caucus took place.
On the 28th of May 2021, foremost Yoruba monarch, Oonirisa, Arole Oodua, Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi, had sent out letters of appointment into the membership of a Pan Yoruba caucus he has initiated. It reads: “In order for me to better secure the honour, safety, integrity and well being of the Yoruba heritage especially in this challenging and perilous times, I have decided to exercise the power conferred on me as the Arole Oodua, to constitute a caucus of eminent Yoruba sons and daughters, to support and advise me in the discharge of the royal mandate. In recognition of your social and political esteem regionally, nationally and internationally, it is my honour and privilege to invite you to the membership of this distinguished caucus.
The caucus will serve as a body of primary advisers and companion to me in moving forward the institutionalisation of the ancient Oodua stool. We shall hold quarterly meetings at the Palace court in Ife and as occasion demands. In view of the prevailing security issues in the country, it will be the responsibility of the palace to ensure the safety and security of members in their ingress and egress to and from Ife. It will be the obligation of members to join kabiyesi in hosting major palace social and cultural events at Ife and accompany him in attendance at similar events to which the kabiyesi is invited. Members shall individually and collectively hold the obligation to protect and project the goodwill, prestige and power of the foremost Yoruba monarchy”.
The inauguration of the caucus was scheduled for July 20th and was thus fated to fall victim to the arrest of Igboho the previous evening; and the propensity of the media to speculate and draw correlations between unrelated events. It would have been clairvoyant of the Ooni to know before hand that Igboho would be arrested on July 19th and thereby convene a meeting (of individuals travelling from different parts of the country) on the event for the following day. This clarification is by no means a distancing from the responsibility a Pan Yoruba caucus bears for intervening in any event that is of active concern to the Yoruba people. Perhaps the coincidence was a way of providence acclaimig the formation and cutting out for us our task.
It was a responsibility imposed on us by unforseen circumstances from which we cannot walk away. In the furore that followed, it however became impossible to organically separate the inauguration of the caucus from the Igboho development. To boot, the extraction and circulation of the so-called full membership list of the caucus went viral on the social media and became a celebrity cuase celebre attracting applause, cynicism, blackmail and the occasional venom. In the penchant for ignoring the ball to kick the leg, there arose the criticism of lopsidedness in favour of PDP. Of course, partisanship did not feature at all in the composition of the membership and I have argued, for that matter, that the partisan divide in Nigeria is not PDP vs APC as it is Buhari writ large versus the rest of us.
The challenge confronting the Yoruba and the other sub national communities comprising Nigeria today transcends the superficial divide between the two major parties. Compelled, nonetheless, to do an appraisal of the frequency distribution of the partisan divide of the membership, we arrived at a perfectly balanced composition with a tally of seven members apiece for the two parties and non-partisan affiliated 14 members. And then the Alaafin courtesy visit controversy ensued. We figured that a Yoruba-monarchy-centred-initiative should prioritise goodwill visits with the other leading monarchs hence the quick order courtesy call on the Alaafin.
But since there is no good way of reporting the drama of the visit from the two conflicting accounts of what transpired the sooner the whole episode is forgotten the better for us all. Regardless, we seize this opportunity to reiterate our respect and unqualified goodwill for the Alaafin. These are trying times for the Yoruba and all other communities who have found themselves at the short stick end of the Buhari dispensation. It does not require a soothsayer to predict that, in the current trajectory, things are going to get rougher and tougher for Nigerians. Monumental efforts and energy are going to be deployed to divide and dismember our ranks and render us prey to a renewed bid for internal colonialism. It is a period that will test our individual and collective resolve to stare down the political menace with which Nigerians are, once again, confronted.
Originally published at Thisday