Yoruba And Politics
By
At the peak of the 1999 Presidential Elections, the Yorubas in the main promised General Obasanjo a political lesson at the polls. At that point, the mainstream Yoruba political elite, ensconced within the Alliance for Democracy through the Afenifere group, had successfully negotiated its representative as party flag-bearer for the alliance with the All Peoples Party.
The bulk of those mainstream elite of Yoruba politicians were not necessarily rich, but their people were ready to vote for them whatever the barrier under which they were contesting. The people kept the faith with them because they could trust them, they know them to be the ones who stood by them while others became supplicants at the altar of Lucre in Aso Rock Villa, with the Chief Priest of Mammon Gen. Abacha presiding.
Without apologies, it is worthy of mention that Yorubas as a nationality and as a political group in Nigeria has shown a sense of common interest worthy of emulation and commendation. It was a 17th century British Administrator Lord Palmerston who said that in politics, there are no permanent friends but only permanent interest, this sagacious statement has found universal currency in the politics of the Yorubas of the Southwest of Nigeria.
In comparism, the other nationalities have dallied from naivety to outright political disorientation. In the North for example, with all the selfless devotion of the likes of Aminu Kano, it has being enormously difficult to mobilize the people beyond his immediate environment. Worse still, at his death, the political proclivity of his elite followers have "chameleonized" from petit bourgeois socialism to outright capitalist aplomb, no thanks to the regimentation of political thought between the forces of military subservience and ethno-religious contradictions. The people have had to divide their loyalty between the appeasement required when crumbs are thrown at them to assuage the pangs of poverty and the quasi-bigotry demanded by religious leaders to maintain a semblance of cohesion.
Between the poles of these contradictions, the Northern political Nationalities (East and West) of Nigeria have been at the mercy of puppeteers. It is little wonder therefore that Mariam Abacha would be hailed and heralded into a stadium during a launching in Kano by thousands of half-clad, hungry people, when their destitution is the direct result of her husbands looting of the Nigerian treasury, the facts of which have been clearly established by the repatriation of such funds from abroad. The people know their tormentors, yet the hunger in their stomachs and zealotry in their minds have beclouded political reason. Witness the difference in the Southwest when Alh. Alao Arisekola dared to flaunt his blood besmeared wealth at the University of Ibadan, he had to be smuggled out of the university under disguise having escaped death by the "skin of his teeth", yet he was never a government official nor an elected representative, just a 'boy-boy" of the Abacha kitchen.
At the end of that presidential election of May 1999, General Obasanjo lost the election at the polling booth at which he voted in his town, as well as in all the South Western states, not because he had fed the Yorubas with stones instead of bread previously, but because Chief Olu Falae is more competent to re-engineer the battered Nigeria social-economic miasma, as well as representing an interest that the Yorubas could trust, an interest they know would keep the faith with them, if they reposed their sovereignty on him.
So they gave Falae their votes; from the villages to the towns, they are so sophisticatedly mobilized, such that once they hear you out and your opponent has exhausted his argument, they will give you their votes knowing that your interest coincides with theirs, as they gave to Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe when he was fighting for their freedom from British control, to Awolowo, when he brought the light of life to the Yorubas in the form of free education and ensured that generations of Yorubas will know without doubt that the cost of ignorance is abundantly clear in their neighbours who were not fortunate enough to enjoy free education.
The Yorubas will not politically suffer fools gladly, you cannot force an "Nzeribe-type" down their throats as can be done in the East of Nigerian South , where a few bags of Naira can induce an anterograde and retrograde amnesia. If you doubt it ask the Omoboriowo family of Ondo State, they have a gruesome testimony to that fact, at individual or group level, a bad dog in Yoruba politics, it is the very reason that Sir Michael Otedola became governor of Lagos State instead of his Social Democratic Party opponent.
In comparism to the southeast, witness the ascendancy of Chief Jim Nwobodo to the hallowed halls of the Senate, do the people of the East truly know their collective interest, if Nwobodo could so easily transform, weeks after sabotaging the efforts of the East to ensure that Dr. Alex Ekwueme got the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party.
The South-south has shown the worst political proclivities. At some point, the interest results in intra-regional ethnic cleansing, then again they will align with the highest bidders to the point where they have found themselves begging for a share of what is inherently theirs, they have never truly defined a coherent interest, despite the high educational consciousness of this region, the political disorientation of this zone defies contemporary political thought, for in this zone, economic interest is more comprehended from the point of view of material things, instead of fundamental organization of the means of production so that it can not only sustain itself but replenish the non-renewable resources such as crude oil. The absence of organized interest in this zone makes it a perpetual prey for the puppeteers of Nigerian politics.
The North Central zone or what may be called the Middle Belt is a political marasmic child who has been denied political nourishment by the consequences of its political ambivalence, the lack of proper definition of its interest has made the people of the Middle Belt the amoebae of the Nigerian political firmament, swelling and thriving in the care of friends when there is good political weather and desiccating in bad political weather. If J. S. Tarka were to come alive today he would weep at the turn of events in his region, the Middle Belt is a mosaic of political crossbreeding whereas by virtue of size, human geography and exposure, the Middle Belt zone should be the Queen of the Nigerian political chess game- from Kaduna through Niger, Nasarawa, Taraba, Plateau, Kogi to Benue - The lack of commitment to a defined interest has made it impossible to gain the benefits of collective interest, the most the Middle Belt can boast of in the political chess board of Nigeria are individual gains, a handful of super-rich men and women, beneficiaries of political misrule, sticking out like sore thumbs in vast wasteland of poverty, want, deprivation, disease and ignorance.
The people for want of leadership suffer the political disorientation, which the Yorubas of the Southwest would consider a yoke too heavy for even a camel to bear. A yoke which the sophisticated politics of the Yorubas recognizes very well as the promoter of strife, a lack of enlightened collective interest, in which individuals seek political influences for their personal benefit to the detriment of the collective.
Thus, the Yorubas have made sure that politics is a serious business of selection of those who will best promote their collective interest, that is why the likes of Lateef Jakande, Ebenezer Babatope, Adeniji Adele, Lamidi Adedibu, Yomi Edu, Dapo Sarumi and Olu Onagoruwa will remain in political limbo, while their fellow travellers such as Arthur Nzeribe and Evan Ewerem can find their way to the senate in spite of their presence at Abacha's Million Man March.
It is the same collective enlightened self interest and sophistication of the Yorubas that has informed their cautious rapprochement with General Obasanjo since he won the presidential race despite their voting for Olu Falae; patting him on the back when he is doing well for collective interest, and dropping him like a hot potato when he strays, as was the case with the misguided hike in fuel prices.
It is this same sophistication that has found swift effectiveness in Osun State as the people sought to dissemble the fatuous inclinations of the governor and gave their elected Legislators the swipe of renegades when they failed to use the political birch on the errant child. This sophistication has served the Yorubas of Nigeria well in politics and they know it, that is why when their elites call for the convening of a National Conference, they have weighed the interest and know that the benefits will be in their long term interest and as they see the Ramses and Kubla Khans of Nigeria hardening their hearts against an obvious reality. The Yorubas will stand with those who have always stood by their interest, knowing that when the plagues of this folly visits the land, those will be the people they can rely on to lead them to the promised land.
Mike Igini, Chairman, South-South Rainbow Coalition
November 2001