A House Divided Against Itself

The apparent discordant positions held by leaders of  the Yoruba nationality on the impending National Conference, is worrisome. These same leaders had agitated for a sovereign national conference in the wake of the annulment of the 12 June 1993 election  won by Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. Rather than coalescing into a mutually agreeable and formidable bloc to demand from the Nigerian nation-state a redress of past injustices with a view to projecting the common cause of Yoruba people, dissensions, willful rebellion, perfidy, self-preservation, ego-tripping, etc, have become their undoing.

The tendency to always set the house on fire from among members of the family, since the Western House crisis in the 1950s, has become characteristic of the race and troublingly come to define who they are in Nigeria’s politics. To undermine a candidate of Yoruba stock in an election, his kinsman becomes a willing tool in the hands of the enemy. To undermine the mainly Yoruba dominated Action Group, AG, and get its leaders, led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, behind bars, the Northern People Congress-led government of the country’s first republic politics only required an estranged member of the family to do the hatchet job.

To use legalistic acrobatics against the presidential ambtion of the same inimitable Awolowo, on the platform of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, in the second republic, the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, merely looked beyond its shoulders for another Yoruba candidate. To scuttle the popular 1993 election, demonise and dismiss the Social Democratic Party, presidential flagbearer, Abiola, as not the messiah Nigeria needed, General Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo (retd) came handy.

The controversial general, whose compensatory ascendancy to the presidency following the death in military detention of Abiola in 1998, was later to instigate the political castration of the southwest through the most reviled electoral heist in Nigeria’s history. Not one, but five of the defunct Alliance for Democracy, AD, states fell into the hands of militarist adventurers of mainstream politics.

The allegation of financial inducement of some Afenifere leaders by former Chief Security Officer to late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, dreaded Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, while standing trial for the murder of Abiola’s wife, Kudirat, might not be totally false.

Now Yoruba political elite are spewing their bile over the national dialogue proposed by President Goodluck Jonathan. It was not a mistake that the President chose a seasoned politician, leader of the socio-cultural group, Afenifere and erstwhile ardent critic of his government, Senator Femi Okurounmu, to head the Presidential  Advisory Committee, which fashioned out modalities for the conference. Although the  earlier song by Okuroumu has changed from one of a gloomy Jonathan presidency to one of hope and effusive praises, the worry is more about the failure of his faction of the Afenifere to align with other interest and political groups on this matter.

It is a sad commentary that the Afenifere crisis has lingered, leading to the emergence of Afenifere Renewal Group. In the past weeks, both groups had met separately in Ibadan, Oyo State and Ishara, Ogun State, to articulate the Yoruba agenda for the conference. On the other side is the All Progressives Congress governors and their leaders in the southwest.

It is foolhardy and utterly preposterous for any of the Afenifere groups to ignore the political clout of the APC and its leaders in the region, and which essentially makes them significant to whatever position must be championed on behalf of the Yoruba race. Even though one of the APC leaders, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu perceived the conference as a red herring, his position cannot be said to be that of the APC as a party because there is a report that APC states will take part in the conference. That being the case, it is necessary for due consultations among the Yoruba elite with a view to first articulating their positions before attending the conference.

It is high time the leaders of the Afenifere buried their differences, as well as phobia for some APC leaders and realise that the collective interest of the Yoruba race is more paramount than selfish personal interest. The geroncratic Afenifere leadership, led by Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, as well as the ARG must unite to forge a common front that will promote the cultural, economic, educational and political aspirations of the Yoruba people before the convocation of the conference. The ego trip by the elite should stop.