How come the Yoruba voice no longer has the same effect that it used to have in our national affairs? In 1998, the AD – Alliance for Democracy party was registered despite its not meeting the conditions specified for the registration of a political party? The reason? After Abacha, the Abdulsalami regime panicked about the consequences of a Yoruba boycott of its transition programme.
Years earlier, the results of a national census were cancelled solely because Chief Obafemi Aw…olowo called the exercise that produced the figures a sham. Today, the Yoruba voice – where it exists – is routinely disregarded and ignored.
The reason? I see two: The extant political leadership stopped standing for principles and promoted merchant politicians of opaque ancestry and with no traceable pedigree into power. With the new predators firmly in the saddle, national politics was reduced to coveting other people’s oil money.
We built castles in the air about which beautiful room to occupy in a decrepit building. Secondly, we abandoned the core ideals of the Yoruba Agenda, especially the need for the restructuring of our wobbly federation as an irreducible minimum condition for progress.
All this did not go unnoticed by our rivals, who rightly surmised that the Yoruba now had a price. And so we got smarter but less wise. Which is how come we’re where we are today.
We must return to first principles and stop counting how many Yoruba are where on which protocol list. Our periods of greatness had been those times when we held the moral high ground, when we were not preoccupied with holding federal office but stood for something.
We have to get back that relevance or else all is lost…
Credit: Kayode Samuel | Facebook.