This is not the best of times for Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-political organisation.
Since the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, visited the Akure home of an erstwhile leader of the group, Pa Rueben Fasoranti, early this week, a new controversy has erupted.
The foregoing is to say that Afenifere is not new to crisis. In the past two decades of this Fourth Republic, we have seen a disarray in the Afenifere fold on one or two occasions. On those occasions, as now, personal interests, which are shrouded in veils of the common good, precipitated the crisis.
But there is a sense in which this new confrontation is revealing. One of those is the uncovering of the decision-making process within the group. When Afenifere’s current leader, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, appeared on Channels TV Politics Today on Monday, he said he did not need to consult with Fasoranti before declaring Afenifere’s adoption of the candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi. To him, what is important is equity and inclusion, which demands that Nigeria’s next President should be of the Igbo extraction.
When they asked if Obi was the only Igbo candidate around, he replied: “I was going to consider anybody from the South-East; and from the South-East, we chose Obi. Even when Pa Clark said we should invite some other people from other regions, I said no. I’m not a hypocrite. They are not qualified. It is on the same basis that I disqualified Atiku…”
Does this suggest that the organisation, which is the most persistent in the call for ‘true federalism’ is even democratic? Are decisions taken by a collective or just at the whim of a select leader or group of leaders?
Fasoranti himself showed this lack of respect for consensus and due process in a recent interview that went viral. The report quoted him as saying: “I am still the leader of Afenifere. Afenifere has not endorsed Obi. We are endorsing Jagaban (Tinubu) for the presidency.”
But wasn’t this the 95-year-old man, the same, who relinquished leadership to Adebanjo in March 2021? Fasoranti attributed his decision to old age. He had said: “At this juncture, I am proud to announce Chief Ayo Adebanjo, a politician of the Awolowo school of thought, as acting leader of Afenifere…” So, what has changed in the past 20 months? Has the old man become younger? Does the Afenifere run a monarchical hierarchy that gives eternal royalty to people? What are the exact principles that guide the operations of Afenifere?
In his interview on Monday, Adebanjo made another stunning revelation. He said: “… Afenifere is not a cultural organisation, I continue to repeat that emphatically… Afenifere is the Yoruba interpretation of the Action Group led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who is the champion of federalism in Nigeria…” Now, that shakes my personal understanding of this group, which the media has described as ‘social-cultural’ for years on end.
It gets more confusing when you revisit Fasoranti’s comments at the same event where he vacated his leadership role in March last year. Hear him: “As the group needs more than ever before to have an improved organisation with a more effective approach to combat the monstrous invasion of our culture and pride as a people, only a more alike and active leadership can achieve this….”
Here, Adebanjo says with all emphasis that Afenifere has nothing to do with culture, but his predecessor thinks that preserving the Yoruba culture is part of the group’s responsibilities. So, when the two frontline leaders of the group cannot agree on the remit of their organisation, shouldn’t we have reasons to worry?
Are these two old men defining their mission to satisfy immediate needs, or is there some confusion as to the essence of this body? All these expose the underbelly of the current Afenifere and recommend a recalibration of what they stand for.
If we adopt Adebanjo’s posture that Afenifere is a resuscitation of the Action Group, we must ask whether it is currently an accurate representation of what that political party represents.
Before the group arrived at its adoption of Obi, was there any referendum amongst ordinary Yoruba people? The Action Group thrived on consensus building and respect for the will of the people. Even now that Afenifere is not a political party, does it galvanise popular opinion before arriving at decisions? Or do some leaders assume they may take decisions on behalf of the multitude? Can this be said to show a democratic body in the mould of the Action Group that Pa Adebanjo spoke about?
If the Afenifere’s interest is basically political, another question to ask this respected body is about how much it is doing to sustain its legacy?
Pa Adebanjo can speak about the Action Group today because at the point when the party became a factor, it was deliberate about including young people. What is the current group of Awolowo loyalists doing about entrenching the philosophy of their political family? Does it have a vibrant mentoring relationship with succeeding political generations in Yorubaland? Where are the people who will continue to bear the torch and fight for true federalism in case we fail at it in 2023, or is it just about the now?
However, most important is the fact that the future and well-being of a society do not depend on just politics, federalism, restructuring, or whatever you want to call it.
The only reason Afenifere can claim to have a catchment area today is because it relates to a group of people with an identical way of life. The culture, tradition, and ways of life of these people are the only way you can differentiate them from the Hausas, Igbos, Ijaws, and hundreds of other ethnic groups across Nigeria. To therefore suggest that preserving Yoruba culture is out of Afenifere’s scope is tantamount to cutting the nose to spite the face.
It becomes more confounding when you realise that even the Action Group and the preceding Egbe Omo Oduduwa before it, concerned themselves with preserving and advancing the Yoruba culture.
At different points, the Action Group, which led to the Western region in the First Republic, presented a pan-Yoruba agenda, which sought to achieve generic advancement in every way.
For example, the party wanted to improve the Yoruba language and was reportedly working on a Yoruba curriculum for school subjects, including the sciences. How can a succeeding group claim singular interest in politics? This is even when the South-West zone has fallen back on its legendary advantage in the education sector!
But the Afenifere’s interest is even more about elections than politics. If it were politics, the current frenzy would be unnecessary. The group would have invested in the sensitisation of the Yoruba nation to the principles that should govern their politics over the years. So Afenifere is more about elections, over which it has, without a surprise, been ineffective.
What you have is a group of elders whose tradition admonishes against putting all their eggs in one basket, trying to railroad everyone into one political thinking. So, what happens when that mission fails? Where does that leave the Yoruba in the polity where winners take all?
If it doesn’t want to turn itself into a relic of history, Afenifere needs to reinvent itself. It needs to think about and promote the most important Yoruba values, which are love, respect, and living in a community. Those values will prepare the people for making the right choices during elections far more than the current attempts to force them down their throats.
Credit: Niran Adedokun