PUBLISHED TODAY, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2020 IN THE NATION NEWSPAPER
Prof. Banji Akintoye
By Olakunle Abimbola
There is something always dire, it would appear, about radicalized elders.
There Was A Country, the swan song of Chinua Achebe, famous author of Things Fall Apart, dripped with Prof. Achebe’s unrelieved bile with Nigeria, on its relations with his native Igbo.
That work, like the sudden stone that hit a placid lake, let go ripples after ripples of neo-Biafra agitations. A ghost, that seemed buried since January 1970, suddenly struck back with uncommon vengeance!
Now, Achebe rests in his grave. But the fire of IPOB, a body his final book probably inspired, is tearing through the roof!
Beware of radicalized old men — dead or alive!
Prof. Banji Akintoye, distinguished professor of History and leader of the Yoruba World Congress (YWC), is another radicalized old man.
Acclaimed author of A History of Yoruba People (2010), a classic on Yoruba history, that rubs shoulders with Samuel Johnson’s long-running classic, The History of the Yorubas (1921) — but sans Johnson’s Oyo-centricity — Akintoye too appears, not unlike Achebe, full of bile at Nigeria, on behalf of his native Yoruba.
Beware of radicalized old men, alive or dead!
Still, Prof. Akintoye’s old age Yoruba activism would appear only frenzied oomph from Gbogungboro, his now rested column in The Nation: a cascade of Yoruba ethnic pride, barely veiled irredentism, and cultural condescension towards other ethnics, sharing the Nigerian space.
From Gbogungboro’s harmless Yoruba romanticism, however, the YWC is plodding to a rather dangerous territory, in its so-called Oodua Republic project: inspiring, among its loud supporters, rabid Yoruba nationalism, rashly banging, on Nigeria’s door, for putative secession! But alas! Secession, peaceful or bloody, is no tea party.
Which is the thing: YWC followers, gung-ho disciples of one of Nigeria’s most accomplished historians, appear fired by little sense of history!
The other day, a radicalized fellow released a propaganda video, bragging that should “Baba Ekiti” be arrested — for a planned Oodua Republic rally billed for October 1 — he would “fast-track” the rage coming upon the land, raze the Nigeria House in London, and merrily go to gaol for patriotic arson! Such a sweet, sweet braggart!
By the way, how is that different from Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s famous bluff, in the frenzied run-up to Biafra, in early 1967 — no power in Black Africa can defeat Biafra?So long for scalding crisis-time bluster!
Still, if Ojukwu was incensed by the northern anti-Igbo pogroms, what equivalent outrage might gore his 2020 Yoruba social media equivalent — maybe the ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen”, on whose notorious necks every crime is hanged?
Besides, which Yoruba formal gathering goaded Mr. Yoruba Braggart to such insane threats?
Which Yoruba plebiscite mandated his impassioned Yoruba secession — beyond Yoruba diaspora romantics: that picturesque fancy, that conjures magical post-Nigeria ethnic El dorado, when the task at hand is thinking hard through the Nigerian miasma, and making something out of the conundrum?
That takes the discourse to the anatomy of the WYC “secession”.
WYC itself was birthed in what the Yoruba would dismiss as “egbirin ote” — a web of intrigues. Prof. Akintoye “won” an “election”, as “Yoruba leader” against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, most prominent Yoruba political figure, in Nigeria’s often fractious progressive front.
Why Tinubu “ran”, in an “election” he neither graced nor asked for, was not so veiled: somebody, somewhere was ogling his extensive reach; and clamour and controversy, over “Yoruba leader”, would make good “me too”, feel good, propaganda!
Eternal intrigue is part of the Yoruba political DNA!
Even then, the good professor’s triumph soon ran into a storm. ”Yoruba leader”, while unlikely to provoke much angst in the Tinubu camp — since Tinubu already boasts extensive national political reach — it would appear a frontal challenge to Afenifere, which needed that honorific to continue rubbing shoulders with other co-ethnics, on the national front. Thus, Prof. Akintoye needed a definitive qualifier, to shoo off the Afenifere challenge.
Enter, the Yoruba World Congress, with its near-captive Yoruba Diaspora and their quaint attitude towards Homeland Yoruba, in the context of a fractious Nigeria, wrestling hard with nationhood. So, you can excuse the London-Bridge-is-falling-down screech of our Yoruba social media London activist, with his offer of fanciful martyrdom!
Still, beyond the YWC politics of diaspora optics, that Nigeria has challenges does not automatically guarantee a post-Nigeria Yoruba El-Dorado. Pre-Nigeria history pours ice-cold water on such romantic fancy.
On September 23, the Grand Council of Yoruba Youths (GCYY) marked the 134th anniversary of the Kiriji War (1877-1893) — 16 years of pan-Yoruba chaos, to fend off Ibadan free-wheeling plunder, on the dying embers of the Oyo Empire.
Beyond latter-day romanticization, the Oyo Empire is grimmest historical proof of Yoruba-on-Yoruba terror. Aside from the Ijebu that somewhat secured themselves from this Yoruba kith-on-kin imperialism, no part of Yorubaland escaped its horror. Towns and settlements like Modakeke, Igbajo, Gbongan, Ode-Omu, etc, are still living evidence of that era’s grave refugee crisis.
So, as Yoruba ultra-nationalists flay October 1 as ugly reminder of Lord Frederick Lugard’s illegitimate creation of Nigeria, they should also ponder the harsh historical censure of September 23, which celebrates Kiriji.
Kiriji balked at Yoruba-on-Yoruba imperialism. Courtesy of a 16-year civil war, Kiriji halted Yoruba-on-Yoruba terror. But all it achieved was a hideous stalemate. Only the British big guns could enforce peace, in the Yoruba country.
But the Brits themselves — imperial rogues, with humongous and insatiable appetite for other people’s wealth — offered no charity! Yoruba pacification had a huge price! Enter Nigeria, everyone’s bogey, even at 60!
At 60, Nigeria as a well-integrated nation, is nowhere near where it should be. So, everything to tinker with it — including radical political restructuring — should be encouraged, while making sincere efforts to reassure those scared by it all.
But making Nigeria’s nationhood blues some creepy bogey to launch disintegration is execrable, for it’s a loser’s mindset — remember that quip: winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win?
If Abraham Lincoln had quit with the pressing challenges of the America of his day, the United States, as we know it today, would have been aborted. Yes, Nigeria has challenges. But disintegration is no answer.
