Sunday Awoniyi, the Arewa tragic phenomenon

By

Femi Awoniyi

Speyer, Germany

IT is very difficult to rationalise the press utterances credited to Sunday Awoniyi in the aftermath of the latest bout of Hausa genocidal violence in Idi Araba, Lagos. Chief Awoniyi, a Yoruba from Kogi State, is a retired federal permanent secretary who has made a reputation for his outspokenness in the Fulani contraption called the Arewa Consultative Forum.

Awoniyi is falsely being put forth as the leader of "Northern Yorubas" by the dubious Fulani establishment. But Awoniyi is no leader of Yorubas - even people from his hometown find it difficult to understand him let alone support his strange behaviour.

The history of political violence in modern Nigerian history marks out the Hausas as being the usual perpetrators, and they are instigated by the Fulani establishment. Yorubas are a people whose culture of ethnic and religious tolerance is well known. It should not be forgotten that during the uprising against the Akintola government in Western Nigeria in the First Republic, Hausas in the region were at no time attacked, despite the complicity of the Northern Peoples Congress in the crisis in the region.

And due to widespread inter-marriage and Islam, Hausas in the South are closer to Yorubas than any other Southern Nigerian people. All these facts should at least be known to Sunday Awoniyi, as he is a Yoruba himself.

Why then did Awoniyi release such a statement? I would wager that he never drafted the statement himself. Given the rhetorical tone of the comments and its resemblance to what we have become accustomed to hearing from Fulani politicians and journalists in the last three years, the statement was obviously written and presented to him only for his signature.

Let us challenge Awoniyi on the statement and assume that he had read it carefully before appending his signature to it. When Awoniyi threatened retaliation against Yorubas in the North, did he mean that South West Yorubas massacred their people from Kogi and Kwara states during the Idi Araba unrest or that Northern Yorubas would attack Yorubas from the South West ? Or is he suggesting that Hausas in the North would attack Yorubas from the South West only, sparing Yorubas from Kogi and Kwara?? And experience has taught us that when Hausa murderous mobs attack in the North they do not distinguish between Yorubas. Even in supposed religious-inspired killings in Hausaland, Yoruba Christians as well as Muslims are recorded to have always fallen victim in equal numbers.

There is simply no way to make sense of the statement.

A man who purportedly represents Northern Yorubas in Arewa, and who acts as if there were a distinct Northern Yoruba identity, would have been expected to help in the confirmation of Joseph Ajiboye in the Senate. Mr. Ajiboye was the president’s nominee for the post of Auditor-General of the federation and his nomination was frustrated by Awoniyi’s supposed fellow Arewas in January.

Ajiboye, whose state of origin is Kogi, was rejected on the grounds that the Central Bank governor, Joseph Sanusi, and Accountant-General, Kayode Naiyeju, are Yorubas from the South West. Hence Ajiboye’s confirmation to the office of Auditor-General would be a breach of section 14 (3) of the 1999 Constitution on Federal character. What has the origin of these other civil servants from the South West got to do with Ajiboye who is supposed to belong to the North Central zone, if one were to think through the apparent logic of Awoniyi’s thinking?

It should be noted that it was the AD Yoruba Senators from the South West who supported Ajiboye against the opposition of PDP and APP legislators led by Professor Iya Abubakar, the Fulani leader of the Northern Senate Caucus!

In addition, when Yoruba academic and administrative staff of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) from Kogi and Kwara states sought redress last year, alleging that they were removed for their ethnicity or religion during Abacha’s reign, it was Arewa Fulanis who stood in their way.

A panel, led by the Presidential Adviser on Education, Chief S. K. Babalola, was set up by Federal Education Minister Babalola Borishade to look into the grievances of the complainants. It was, however, doomed when the ACF, at the instigation of Fulani lecturers in the institution led by Siddique Mohammed and Bala Usman, mobilised against the committee. Obasanjo announced his capitulation on the issue during the convocation ceremony of University of Ilorin in January.

Sunday Awoniyi did not lift a finger on behalf of his supposedly aggrieved kin. And the old man has not been known to protest against the killing of Yorubas in the North during the last two years. Offa, for example, has lost more than 200 people at the hands of murderous Hausa mobs in Kaduna, Kano and Jos in this period. If Awoniyi were to be in Arewa to protect the interests of Northern Yorubas, he should have at least protested but he has never done anything of the kind.

The Yoruba man consciously submits himself as a willing tool in the hands of the Fulani establishment to the detriment of the people with whom he shares the Yoruba ethnicity.

Awoniyi knowingly acts out a script written by his Fulani benefactors. It is an open secret that his businesses and that of his children enjoy the generous patronage of Kaduna and Kano governments, for example.

Does Awoniyi speaks for his people? Definitely not. In fact, people are shocked by his political behaviour because it is unrelated to the feelings of Yorubas in Kogi and Kwara who are not known to think differently from their kin in the South West. A recent report in the Guardian showed the reception his controversial views received during a recent meeting of the leaders of the Okun Development Association, the umbrella socio-cultural organisation of the Okuns, the Yoruba-speaking people of Kogi State.

"He (Sunday Awoniyi), however, stunned the gathering when he asked Okun to identify with Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), of which he is a founding member." (Yoruba in Kogi, time for reckoning by Ralph Omololu Agbana, The Guardian, February 8, 2002).

And this was a meeting that was attended by prominent people like Chief Kolawole Jamodu, Federal Industry Minister, Major-General David Jemibewon (rtd.), former Minister of Police Affairs and one time Military Governor of old Oyo State, Chief Olayinka Simoyan, Nigeria's former Ambassador to Austria and the Republic of Benin, and Alhaji Ahmadu Sheidu, retired Police AIG, Chief Olusola Akanmode, Deputy Chief of Staff in the Presidency (Vice-President's Office), Mr. Tunde Olusule, Special Assistant to the President (media), Dr. Adeniyi Imam, Secretary to Kogi State Government, Elder Michael Adeleye, Kogi’s Commissioner for Commerce and Tourism, and others. Chief Silas Daniyan, former National Planning Minister, is said to have boycotted the meeting because of the presence of Awoniyi.

What does this all indicate? It confounds. It shows the extent to which human beings can go to destroy their people for personal gains. However Sunday Awoniyi is not unique. He has peers in history. After all, Arthur Nzeribe did lucrative business by supplying arms for the destruction of his Igbo people during the civil war. And during Germany’s Third Reich, some Jews helped the Nazis to identify their fellow Jews for deportation to concentration camps, thus enabling them to take over the properties of the victims.

Let us hope Sunday Awoniyi, who is like the proverbial man who sells his soul for a pot of silver, will retrace his steps before it is too late, for history and posterity will judge him harshly!