A storm in a palm wine drinking horn: Ego-tripping and sabre-rattling in the old Yoruba coliseum

   Ibadan!!!!! The name evokes fear and apprehension given the city's role in Yoruba history in the past two hundred years beginning from the siege of Owu and culminating in the Yoruba civil war which ended almost seventy years after, close to a new century. It was the colonialists intent on extending their dominion to the Yoruba hinterland and the rest of the country who forcibly terminated the hostilities and ordered the combatants to go home and fight no more. In the event, anybody born in the period would have experienced war either directly or by associative experience. The dominant names of the era are quite suggestive: Abogunde, Abogunrin, Abogunwa, Abisogun, Ogunlende, Abiona etc. The collective trauma abides in the psyche of the people. Yet, it is known that the original farming settlement was an Egba commune before it was overrun by retreating warriors and sundry marauders absconding from the dissolution of empire.

 But give it to those with a military background at the top command level in the theatre of war and not mere coup plotters with a reputation for unruly insubordination. They know a resounding rout when they see one. In the storied evolution of Ibadan as a military bastion, generals have been known to have been physically subdued and captured by ordinary troops. As the procession of shame and demystification was being led through the dark and unruly alleys, their well-decorated colleagues would quickly shut their doors against the abomination and impending calamity, leaving the poor fellow to his terrible fate. Arguably the most poignant irony of the Ibadan gathering was the telling absence of the putative and well-advertised chairman of the occasion. Not only was he nowhere to be seen, he did not even bother to send his apologies. A wily and well-tested general both in the theatre of actual wars and the department of “do or die” sectarian politics, the Owu-born warrior would have smelt stale palm wine from a distance. He has been through this route before and in the attempt to wrestle political power from a punitive state and its well-resourced machinery, he must know where the aces are vested. Indiscretion is the father of all military and political disasters.

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   In the early turbulent days of the late J.J Rawlings' return to power, a daring military officer landed his troops on the helicopter pad of the Ghana Broadcasting Station to dislodge and flush out mutinous soldiers who had seized control of the station and were making incendiary broadcasts to the nation. When he was asked how he did it, Captain (later Major) Courage Quashigah , a well-known Rawlings acolyte before they fell out, retorted that he could not give the game away because he might have to do it all over again. In the current political melee, there are many rugged and well-tested patriots watching quietly from the sidelines as some insolent fellows insult and abjure the daylight out of their ethical and moral superiors simply because they believe it is time once again for their partisan and reactionary rightwing fantasies to gain ascendancy over the nation.

 If their brand of mealy-mouthed amala politics is what they think should sweep away and replace the current order whatever its failings, they must think that history is also a short-sighted fool. But the Hegelian dialectic of societal change with its irreversible iron laws is made of sterner stuff.  If the current shenanigans and corruption at the sub-national level is what they think should replace central governance, it simply means they lack the capacity for elementary projection of historical currents. Without such fundamental capacity, it is impossible for a person to be at the vanguard of the visionary transformation of society.

  Given this background of crushing disability, it is rich and disconcerting for those who did not take part in the struggle to rid Nigeria of military despotism, those who were nowhere to be found when men braved the guns of authoritarian contempt for the populace and those who actively sabotaged the project from their vantage position within the military to begin to parade themselves as the new redeemers of the nation and stalwarts of democratic rule. In brazen disregard for what is noble and uplifting about a society, they have even taken to insulting and deriding the iconic avatars of the struggle and those who were ready to lay down their life for the redemption of the society. Say what you may about him, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is an organic product of that struggle and its heroic heirloom in a way and manner none of those present at the Ibadan gathering will ever be. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and democracy. No one is saying that the guardrails of democracy should be removed for anybody on account of past services to the nation, but the earlier we realize that an exhausted tiger even in debility is more valuable to a nation than some vibrant mice the better for everybody.

   As for Governor Seyi Makinde and his famous Ibadan Declaration which has drawn considerable flak and admiring plaudits in equal measure, it is better to avoid emotional claptrap and catcalls in this matter because of the weight and importance of the issue raised and the relevance of the young man in contemporary Yoruba and Nigerian politics. Makinde must not and cannot see himself as another Tinubu, for he is not. From a distance, one had admired and taken immense liking to him for his boldness, his political resolve and eccentric playmaking which make him a strategic asset to his people despite a tendency to political rashness and tactical impetuosity. He ought to have been better handled by the Yoruba powers that be. Perhaps he has not been given enough credit for his contribution to the 2023 Tinubu victory when he nailed his mast to the APC flagship and damned the consequences. It takes immense courage, guts and political conviction to do that.

  However that may be, it is obvious that Makinde, an engineer by training and profession, is a political greenhorn who would have benefited from better political tutelage and more robust intellectual guidance. His Ibadan Declaration referencing the Wetie conflagration as its controlling trope is a classic example of how a gross misreading of history can lead to catastrophic political miscalculation in the coliseum of clashing gladiators that Nigeria is. The Wetie imbroglio was a logical and organic outgrowth of Yoruba outrage and smouldering resentment against feudal domination, ethnic subjugation of an important nationality using electoral coercion, abuse of federalism and the unjust incarceration of their beloved leader and his faithful lieutenants. In the absence of a direct access to their federal tormentors, the full weight of the people fell on their internal collaborators and local tormentors.

   This time around, the conjuncture is totally different and dissimilar. A Yoruba son is in charge and the animus is directed against his ethnicity for what is increasingly perceived as its own hegemonic tendency, its arrogant insularity, its grasping rapacity and its insufferable inflexibility where sensitive national matters are concerned. Unless Engineer Makinde has concluded that it will take another Yoruba civil war to resolve what is a fundamental aspect of a recurring national question, one is at a loss to understand what the resort to scaremongering is all about. Little wonder that the minatory haranguing of the youthful governor fell through with a resounding thud. One can then ask the logical question. Where is Makinde's Praetorian Guard among the crowd?

One searched in vain among the Ibadan confreres for the equivalent of a Bola Ige, the brilliant poet of urban combustion, who famously declared that anybody who allowed himself to be returned “unopposed” might have chosen to be returned to his final resting place, or a Wole Soyinka, the radical intellectual of communication disruption? Where was Ayo Ojewunmi, aka Pen Atalanta, the fiery editor of The Nigerian Tribune, who was sent to jail on the flimsy suspicion that his permanently reddened eyes were caused by a partiality for the ingestion of dangerous substances? Or Wunmi Adegbonmire, aka Omo Ekun,  who as an undergraduate of UI could be found openly hawking copies of the banned Nigerian Tribune on the streets of Ibadan with his right hand gripping a cutlass in case of an emergency? Or Omo Pupa, the merchant of metropolitan mayhem, who commanded the Mushin sector with cheerful indifference to personal danger.

   It is obvious that Makinde is a political generalissimo without troops. There is a time for everything. The Yoruba will not go to war at the behest of callow youth. They will not be goaded to another civil war at the shrine of Nigeria's permanent bloodletting. The caterwauling of restive children does not disturb the amala seller. (Ariwo majesin kii pa alamala). The Nigerian conundrum has gone beyond futile grandstanding and infantile evocation of a bygone and better forgotten era. What Tinubu will be most vulnerable to is a social upheaval pioneered and spearheaded by his own kinsmen if the economic optics remains dismal and if their perennial quest for justice and equity is prompted by worsening inequality in the land. For now, let the young man at Agodi begin to retrace his steps and recalibrate his future so that his obvious gifts will not be lost to his people. Let him be reminded that in the typical cloak and dagger doublespeak of his people, Agodi could stand for both gubernatorial palace and prison house.