Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello were very forthright people who called the spade by its very name.They were realists and that was why they concentrated on their people and developing their regions. They knew from the very beginning that we were different and could only manage our differences in a clearly defined Federation. Azikiwe also knew this, but he was motivated more by the desperation to over run and dominate the spaces of other people. It is what we battle with today
By Adedamola Adetayo
I saw a video of the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, apparently very recent, as he referenced the 2023 General Elections.
Prof. was talking about the fall-out of the “excessive” Ethno-religious dimensions the elections took and he went ahead to more or less suggest we are all the same and admonished us from tribalism.
I laughed.
Men like Prof. Yemi Osinbajo are classic examples of the vanity of Western education.
He will stand on podiums, deliver extemporaneous speeches in sweet English language that is supposed to send a false impression of an exceedingly capable hand who is sincere and knowledgeable about the real issues.
This man is a Pastor of Pentecostal church for that matter which clearly provides heaven for true believers.
This same man once had his voter polling unit in VGC in the Lekki axis of Lagos. Unfortunately, that axis is over populated by the hateful Igbo Zionists who, though very pentecostal christians, didn’t consider anything – Professorship, Pastorship or Gentleman disposition before they disgraced him thoroughly at the 2015 election.
This same man moved his polling unit from VGC,which is Lekki, Lagos to Ikenne which is in Ijebu Ogun State and again list his polling unit. There was only one motivation for that movement. He knew he was safer with his Ijebu kinsmen. Why didn’t he stay put in VGC so the IGBOS can show him more love in 2019 and 2023?
This same man is Ijebu by ancestry and I know for a certainty that the Osinbajo family which he belongs to must have an ORÍKÌ which is different from that of the Ògúndàlú family of same Ikenne.
I know he must have an Oriki like every other families in Yoruba land!
Does he think our forefathers or ancestors were stupid when they built the phenomenon of Oriki?
Does he think that our ancestors just woke up, scratched their noses and snapped their fingers to conjure the ORÍKÌ for their respective families????
No, our Elders were wise!
Our ancestors knew that for every true born , aside the blood inheritance, every child by virtue of association with his parents and the social environment they both live is expected to take after his Father.
It is logical.
It is the reason our Elders say: The offsprings of the Tiger will always resemble and act like the Tiger.
The snakes will always give birth to long things.
Why then is Prof. pontificating and trying to tell people that the Kanuri man, who spent all his life in Maiduguri can become like the Ibibio man who has never left Eket all his life?
How is it ever going to be possible for the Igbo man,straight from Agulu to be as the Fulani man who is stationed in Funtua or like the Ijesa man who has every inch of Osomalo mentality all about him?
How can you expect a people.who grew up from distinctly different and contrasting Social, Cultural, Economic, Religious, Historical etc backgrounds to ever align with one another, especially in a country like Nigeria which was fraudulently contrived and without clear MoU of agreed structures?
How can Prof. Osinbajo tell me that I cant know and tell a typical Ijebu man apart from Ibadan, Ekiti, Ijesa or Awori man just by their conduct?
How can you tell me that the typical Igbo, Egba, Ijebu, or Fulani or Ebira man doesn’t have very distinctive behavioural patterns which are very pronounced in everything he does?
When i say a typical Igbo man is like this, a typical Annang is that or a typical Hausa man can do this, you tell me I am profiling him.
Why not?
Didn’t our Elders say ‘it is impossible for a man to have various trees in his compound yet unable to say which fruits each of their bear?’
Why the deception and hypocrisy?
Isn’t this the very bane of our country? You can’t speak truth to yourselves but always pretending and deceiving one another with sweet and “correct” talks which aims to make you look the “detribalized man”
How foolish?
Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello were very forthright people who called the spade by its very name.
They were realists and that was why they concentrated on their people and developing their regions. They knew from the very beginning that we were different and could only manage our differences in a clearly defined Federation.
Azikiwe also knew this, but he was motivated more by the desperation to over run and dominate the spaces of other people.
It is what we battle with today!
“First and foremost you need to understand that the Yorubas, like every other ethnic groups in Nigeria, have their own very unique ways of social life.
We are an easy-going, contended and largely a merry-go-happy kind of people.
We have always lived that way and there was very little reason for anyone to complain.
The igbos have theirs too.
The igbos are by nature very aggressive, republican and an ambitiously and excessively money-conscious people who necessarily have a need to migrate all over the place and spaces of others to find fulfilment for their unique way of life.
The problem you see in Lagos and most parts of Yoruba land is that the IGBOS seek, without invitation, to super-impose their own peculiar ways of life on ours.
We were then dragged into a competition that we never requested for and which we neither desire nor are equipped to play with them.
The Igbos specifically employed the tactics and ideology of Zionism to cripple the socio-economic patterns of the Yoruba people.
The result is what brings about the kind of unnecessary question now arising[ that why are Yorubas more or less not using the business templates of the igbos?
You are invariably asking us to change our default settings to align with that of the igbos.
Doing that will entail an erosion of our own culture, traditions, spirituality, values and everything that identifies us as Yorubas.
You are playing with an erosion of our heritage.
You are asking us to rubbish our identity.
This is what it is about.
Please think about it.
