“As you already know, I am 94 years old. I will be enjoying in my grave soon and you, particularly the youths of this nation, will suffer if you fail to vote for Peter Obi.”– Pa Ayo Adebanjo
Highly influential as it is, the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group has not yet controlled the political levers of Nigeria more than the Yoruba. From independence till date, the Yoruba have proved their capacity to significantly impact national politics, whether in the civil or military era.
The iconic leader the late Obafemi Awolowo laid a solid foundation for the Yoruba of today and they have kept the faith with the dream of the forefather. The subsequent generations have played their opposition role so well that hardly any government plans without factoring the Yoruba into the agenda. Not to do so is to invite reptiles into your regime. A mistake that comes with a heavy price.
Because of their long exposure to opposition politics in Nigeria, the Yoruba have been so conspicuously identified with their striving for justice and equity, which is usually associated with people with dissenting views. You cannot naturally be in opposition and not want to fight for equity and fairness to remain connected to the people. What oils opposition politics is staying always on the side of the holloi Polloi [underdogs, the people, and the injured.] As a result, even when they are in power they still display their opposition elements while pursuing justice and equity.
Oftentimes, like in every other Nigerian ethnic group, Yoruba politicians tend to go against the perceived interest of the group in the pursuit of their aggrandisement. Whenever they fail or run into trouble with their ambition, they often run back to these activists for cover and sentimental backing.
For instance, the late Chief Moshood Abiola, a successful business mogul, was neither an apostle nor a crusader for the Yoruba agenda initially. His romance with the oppressed northern military class was obvious. Even when he went into politics, the Yoruba did not initially back him because they saw him as an oligarch and patron of the military junta.
However, when he won the 1993 presidential ticket and became the better of the two available candidates they switched their support to him. But after his victory at the election and his friends in the military said over their dead bodies for him to actualize the mandate, he returned to his people for the fight. The June 12 fight, to some Yoruba, was not an ethnic fight but a fight for justice and they didn’t mince words.
If a Yoruba in General Olusegun Obasanjo had not benefited from that fight, emerging as President in 1999, perhaps, the June 12 fight would still be raging. That is the resilience of the people when they are chasing justice. There were many non-Yoruba who were outraged by the annulment of the poll and became actors in the June 12 drama like Ndubisi Kanu, Anthony Enahoro, Frank Kokori, and Col Abubakar Umar, among others. It was the Yoruba who provided the base of the struggle. It was their visibility in the fight that made it look ethnic at some point but in reality, it was a selfless cause for justice and fair play.
For that reason, when the late maximum ruler, Gen. Sani Abacha, gave up assuming the leadership of the then-recognized five major political parties to transform from khaki to agbada, the Yoruba were in critical consideration. As a transition was needed to happen in 1999, the then-ruling military chiefs wisely settled for a Yoruba in Gen Obasanjo to douse the tension generated by the 1993 presidential election annulment. It did not matter that Obasanjo, rather than Olu Falae, was not the choice of those who fought the June 12 annulment battle. But being a Yoruba his choice addressed a topical political problem of injustice. That wise choice was instrumental to restoring Nigeria’s democracy and it has endured, warts and all, for almost a quarter-century. Since then the Yoruba have always supported a candidate of their choice irrespective of place of origin, ethnic, or religious considerations.
In 1999, they supported one of their own, Chief Olu Falae, ahead of Obasanjo, but switched to Obasanjo in 2003 when his first term probably met their expectations. In 2007 and 2011, they varied their votes based on emerging interests between PDP candidates and a Yoruba-dominated Action Congress of Nigeria. In 2015, they changed their political course and aligned with Gen Muhammedu Buhari and his Congress for Progressive Change who had tried repeatedly to be elected the president but failed. With the help of other forces from a breakaway PDP, they were able to install Buhari under a political conglomerate called the All Progressives Congress with a Yoruba as the Vice President.
President Buhari’s leadership style, nepotism, and poor governance were bound to bring friction with his utility allies, particularly the Yoruba. This showed vividly in the confusion that trailed the ruling party’s picking of a successor to Buhari.
The emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the APC flag bearer for 2023 did not go down well with a lot of Yoruba who had expected that their best in such circumstances should be put forward. But Tinubu who was not Yoruba-centric at this time had made the ‘E mi lo kan’ declaration and gone ahead to push his way through because he had unmatched resources to further his presidential ambition.
As a result, ahead of the 2023 general elections, Nigeria appears to have found itself in a similar situation as in 1999 and the Yoruba race is appearing divided. The Yoruba nationality champion, Afenifere, under the leadership of renowned nationalist, in line with the avowed Yoruba penchant for justice and equity, Pa Adebanjo, had aligned itself with the other regional/ethnic groups, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Pan Niger Delta Forum, and the Middle Belt Forum to press for power shift to the South and, in particular to the South-East, after eight years of Buhari, a northerner.
This position was made public long before political parties made their choices or even before the E mi lo kan proclamation. So when Pa Adebanjo leading Afenifere endorsed Peter Obi of the Labour Party, he was only bringing to fruition an earlier decision taken for the larger interest of the nation’s political peace and stability.
As it was in 1993 when the Yoruba position to support Abiola was based on his being the best among the available, the LP candidate from the South-East fitted in being the best among the available and coming from the South-East, the deserving geopolitical region.
This patriotic and nationalistic position of the Afenifere leadership has not gone down well with the APC flag bearer and some ethnic demagogues who feel that the Afenifere endorsement of Obi should have come to Tinubu, a Yoruba. This argument negates what the ethnic group, going by the foregoing analysis, has ever stood for. Tinubu’s desperation to break up Afenifere and invariably the Yoruba with his infamous prayer meeting in Akure, Ondo State at the home of Afenifere leader emeritus, Pa Reuben Fasoranti, recently jolted a lot of political minds. That meeting raised the issue of Yoruba interest. Is their interest in justice and equity or feathering Yoruba’s interest at the expense of peace, harmonious living, and stability in the polity?
If Pa Adebanjo and his Afenifere leadership crew, in endorsing Obi of the South-East for peace and stability, and Pa Fasoranti and his prayer group are romancing Tinubu in the spirit of “let’s feather our own,” which one injures and undermines the well-known Yoruba crusade for and stand on the side of justice?
For a country where ethnicity has reached fever pitch in national politics, it may seem extremely odd to abandon your own but to do so would encode all the things the Yoruba, dating back to their forefathers, stood for…justice and fairness in all circumstances.
There can be no better advice than the one from Afenifere’s Pa Adebanjo, “Let Nigerians take up their thinking cap, forget ethnicity, and vote for the right man for the country.”