By Yinka Odumakin
THESE folks lack any institutional memory to even understand the subtlety of those they are engaged in power game with. They are in a game whose rules of engagement they don’t have the faintest idea of.

They didn’t know that the power of cash becomes immaterial when the key to the treasury is handed to those you thought you were funding. Some folks are so poor despite having tons of cash.

In 1962, Obafemi Awolowo in the course of the legislative sitting passed a note to the then Prime Minister of Nigeria, Tafawa Balewa. The content was “when can we see?”

The response was instant “why not now?” Pronto the Opposition Leader and the Prime Minister moved to his office and Awo stroked the frame of his glasses and looked straight into Balewa’s eyes, asking: “Mr PM, what is it I’m hearing about plans to impose emergency rule in Western Nigeria today?” Balewa laughed haughtily and said, “Come off it Chief Awolowo, how would you countenance such a wicked rumour? Do you not know how long a process it takes to do such a thing?”

COW TO THE RESCUE: People making good use of carts in Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State.

Architect of power misfortune

Meeting ended and both men returned to the chambers. By the evening of that discussion, a state of emergency was declared in Western Nigeria.

General Olusegun Obasanjo in a moment of delirious delusion took his pen and scribbled some comic script to the effect that Chief Obafemi Awolowo was the architect of his own power misfortune in Nigeria. The inferior scholarship in him read power and office as the same thing. He boasted that he was walking barefooted when Awo was already a famous adventurer in power but that the office of the President of Nigeria which he could not attain was his on a platter.

He went further to ridicule the sage that even when he gave him clues as to how to placate Arewa to concede power to him, Awo remained his rigid and principled self as the Pro-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University to which he deliberately appointed him to learn Arewa ways.

That reminds me of another power muppet of Yorubaland, Chief Sunday Adewusi the notorious Inspector General of police under Alhaji Shehu Shagari. He was among the delegates to Obasanjo’s Political Reforms Conference of 2005.The Yoruba agenda committee had sought audience with the delegates and the Governors of the region before the conference’s commencement. We were all assembled in the office of Oyo state Governor, Alhaji Rashidi Ladoja when Adewusi asked “e joo awa melo lo gbo awusa ninu awa to nlo soke lohun to ri o ma mun nkan rorun fun wa o? He was asking  how many of the Yoruba delegates could speak Hausa as that would make things easier for them as if they were people of the colony going for some constitutional conference in London.

I took time to count the number of traditional marks on his cheeks as I wondered if any gathering of Arewa would be asking how many of them could speak Yoruba even when the fellow calling the conference was called a Yorubaman.

Obasanjo indeed became Nigerian Head of State which Awo did not achieve but all they made him do was to convert many of the great things Awo did in Western Nigeria into Federal holdings in a unitary fiat. He sacked Admiral Akin Aduwo as Military Governor of the region when he dallied over Obasanjo’s instruction to turn the great “Ife fortress” (apology to another Arewa spokesman,Prof. Jubril Aminu) to the Federal. If Shekau were to find himself in Ife today,he would yell with pride “Boko Haram” given what that centre of learning has become.

Either as Military Head of state or President, I ask Obasanjo to point at one pride of such he was able to give to Yorubaland outside his personal mansion and hotels in Abeokuta.

In between his military rule and civilian dictatorship, Arewa found a place for him in prison and till date he is said to bear their marks of torture on his back.

Before him was Ladoke Akintola who took that route against Awo’s well thought-out federal engagement in a multi-ethnic state. He was brutally assassinated before he could take stock.

Abiola: ‘I know  my people’

Bashorun M.K.O Abiola also emerged from that school. He did everything imaginable for the Arewa. He built many mosques, gave out cash in tons, took titles uncountable. He even established National Concord to desecrate the Yoruba essence in service to Arewa (National Concord reincarnate owned by the new kid on the block has been repeating history).

Abiola was a good boy until he wanted to share power with Arewa. In 1983 he was told “power was not for sale”. Before Awo died, MK0 was reconciled with him and the sage told the business mogul in the course of their meeting”those who put me through all the travails are your best friends,I pray they don’t take your life”. Instead of saying “Amen”,  Abiola responded  “I know my people”. By 1993, he won a presidential election but his “people” kept him in prison until they liquidated him and returned his body bag to Lagos.

Arewa’s DNA  and power sharing

While Abiola was in gaol, Oladipo Diya took the Akintola road as the new traveller as Abacha’s No 2. His assignment was to consign the Yoruba leadership to the dustbin. He raised the Imeri Group to displace Afenifere and nicknamed NADECO “Agbako”. It took only three years for Arewa’s hammer to fall on him.

It was to “Agbako” he turned in the moment to salvage his life the way Obasanjo found lengthy sheets to write epistles to Afenifere leader, Chief Michael Ajasin when Arewa’s “bulala” became unbearable. Luckily for Diya, Abacha dozed off eternally the night before his execution but he is said to still bear the scars of torture on his head till date.

I have gone through this narrative only to show one thing: it is foolhardy for anyone to think Awo was wrong in concluding that Arewa’s DNA does not share power and that Nigeria would only do well if the constituent units live their civilisations and we run a centre that allows them their autonomies within corporate Nigeria.

A new team is now on the Akintola route and soon we shall be able to say if they are able to turn the tide of history or we shall once again play Bob Marley’s:

“Now you get what you want Do you want moreeeeeeeeeee…”

concluded.

This piece published elsewhere in early May 2015 has been reproduced by popular demand.

FEEDBACK

Re: Arewa’s  songs of conquest

AFTER reading your incisive article with the above headline in Vanguard of 20th October 2015 in conjunction with Femi Aribisala’s “Weep Not For Tinubu”, I assumed both of  you sat down to write on the same subject until I found out that yours was written over five months ago.

I must credit you with prophetic insight to be able to see clearly the end of a trip in opportunism from take -off point.

Those who fail to learn from history are bound to relive it now and then with disastrous consequences. It is a shame that the Yoruba political space has been taken over by a counter culture that does not act based on rigorous intellectual interrogation of issues but reliance on the strength of cash.

Now that it appears the head of that band of counter- culture politics has used his own money to purchase retirement from politics, it is my hope that a new bunch of leaders who are well informed and committed to the core values of the Yoruba will rise and rebuild the fallen walls. Keep writing!

Ola Bamigboye.

Lagos.

Dear Yinka,

I can only thank God that people like you are still available and can be heard. Please don’t you think it’s time to work on the project to unite the entire south by educating various tribal constituents with political  and economic information necessary for leadership sacrifice and political unity.

Thanks

Tony Iroegbu

Comrade Odumakin,   Your write up in Vanguard with the above title was candid indeed, true talk. All who are politically aware saw it coming and it has arrived. Too late to cry. Will those involved learn any lesson?

Thanks for entertaining me since you started writing for Vanguard, joining my friends Messs. Aribisala, Owei Lakemfa and Ochereome Nnanna.

Boniface Obum