Senator Abraham Adesanya
TWO lead headlines in the Nigerian Tribune stood out this week. One said, “Yorubas Demand Regional Army…, Reject Slavery,” and the other bellowed, “Minorities Abroad Threaten to Secede If… ” They were published on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, the first based on what the press called an “historical” conference convened on Monday in Ibadan by the pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, where it reappraised the status of the Yoruba people in Nigeria. The other was on another meeting held at the Harvard University in the USA by some “Southern Nigerian minority groups” who threatened to secede if their demands are not met by this month. To secede from where to where was not said, though. However, one can infer that the U.S. group was on the same frequency with the Afenifere which deliberated on such crucial matters as the “erosion” of federalism, termination of military rule, need for sovereign national conference “to restructure Nigeria,” formation of political parties, and participation of the Yoruba in the political process.
One’s immediate reaction was to wonder whether the British were wrong in merging the Northern Protectorate and the Southern Protectorate in 1914 to create the nation known as Nigeria. It’s a question that kept popping up through the decades as the country survived one political crisis after another, all of which seriously threatened national cohesion. Today’s crisis is therefore yet another gruff echo of the earlier ones, and it is as horrible. No doubt, the issues raised in Ibadan are ones that should interest all Nigerians irrespective of tribe, creed or geographical location. The unofficial weakening of federalism by a unitary system which the Afenifere considered a Northern game-plan favouring the North is as disturbing to ordinary Northerners as it is to the self-recognised representatives of the South, i.e. the Yorubas. For, in the long run, as argued in this column last week, only favoured Northerners have benefited from the accumulation of top political power by the North.
As of military rule, it is wrong to assume that only the Yorubas — or indeed the South — want to see democracy entrenched in the country. On the political process, it would be foolhardy, nay suicidal, for any tribal group to decide on not participating in an effort to bring back democratic rule. Hence the understanding that the Ibadan meeting was at least realistic in resolving that all Yoruba should “participate fully in the ensuing political process that will lead to the termination of military rule.” Other postures of the Yoruba politicians are not, however, as sensible. And these appear to be the high points of the sectional conference. These include the Yorubas’ demand for the regionalisation of the Nigerian army; the adjustment of the North-Central Zone so that the Yoruba people in Kogi and Kwara states could join their breathren in the West, ostensibly to form a greater Odudualand; and that the Yoruba people all over Nigeria “have the right of self-determination. ” One other curious resolution is that “henceforth the principal voice of the Yoruba nation shall be Senator Abraham Adesanya.”
It has always been easy to understand what ails the Yorubas in the closing years of the 1990s. It is the same migraine that assailed the divided tribe since the amalgamation in 1914, the malady whose cure could not be provided by ethnic champions such as Chief Awolowo and which, from the Ibadan resolutions, does not appear to be healable by Senator Adesanya and like-minded political extremists. The Yorubas need to be united, yes, as the division in their ranks has not benefited neither them nor the nation. Also they, like the rest of us, want democracy in the country.
However, it was easy to hear from Ibadan the unfriendly drumbeats of secession produced by the Yoruba leaders. The call for regional armies, the restructuring of borders and the insistence on self-determination are the distinctive features of this irksome stand-point. These beats are familiar enough. They have been throbbing for decades, though they grew louder since the annulment of the 1993 presidential election which a Yoruba man was poised to win. It was unfortunate that the subsequent campaign for the re-institutionalisation of democracy was ethnicised by the same Yoruba leaders that met in Ibadan. Everybody knows that the Yorubas as a group feel injured psychologically due to their seeming poor fortunes politically. But as argued here last week, they should have felt comforted in the greater dominance they exert in other areas that are potentially more influential than politics. The problem is that political power at the very top — seen as the big prize in Third World societies — is what they have not tasted to their fill. Hence their unending cry for ‘justice’.
However, even though more pragmatic analysts would support a shift for power to the South, it is annoying that war-mongers such as Senator Adesanya sound as if the rest of the country cannot live without a self-marginalising South-west. Still, pragmatism could make room for other considerations — such as supporting, by the ever scheming North, a Southern minority for the next presidency. For, the wrong assumption being made is that the South as an entity means the Yoruba-dominated Southwest. By ethnicising the struggle for democracy, making empty threats and blackmailing the rest of the country, the loud-mouthed Afenifere faction seems to suggest that they have something to hide which may only be known when a Yoruba becomes president. At a time other tribes are reaching out to others to form broad-based political alliances, the Yorubas stand the risk of further alienating themselves from national leadership and restricting themselves to perpetual opposition even while incapable of seceding. It is up to the North — and the military — to respond appropriately to this.
Hopefully, there’re other Yoruba politicians who are going beyond dichotomous thinking and seeing the greater opportunities that exist in sensible cohabitation. Obviously, the Afenifere is aware of this, hence the cryptic resolution to don the garb of ethnic leadership on Adesanya, the old-order stalwart pretending to be the Awo of the late 1990s.
In the meanwhile, the truth is that those nursing the dream of dismembering this country are only nursing a fantasy which other Nigerians would not allow to succeed. The British might have been wrong with the amalgamation, but Nigeria remains. The freedom of every ethnic jingoist to hit someone’s nose stops where the nose of another Nigerian begins. Because political extremism is proving to be more injurious to the nation than any other form of fundamentalism, the nation can ill-afford to take such threats lightly. Those forming parties — and those supervising them — should take note.
* Published in my column, Melting Pot, in the New Nigerian Weekly today
