Those Yorubas Again III

Those Yorubas Again III

Faiz Muhammad

Anyone that had read any of my previous write ups on the Yoruba race will know that we are not the best of friends not that I have not tried. Unfortunately the Yoruba people are not one to take criticism sitting down (or standing up either).

The bottom line of my earlier write ups (for those who have not read them) is that the Yoruba are a people who cannot be trusted and have so much self belief in their own superiority that they show scorn to others. These are based on the fact that they believe that western education makes them more modern than everyone one else especially the average northern.

I was of course flooded with hate mail from all the Yorubas in the country and in the diaspora (they are a migrant people after all). But not one of the hate mails shot down any of the observations that I made and of course I did not expect that for the truth is sacred-isn=t it?

So why have I come out of the closet once again to tackle my foes? Well simply because the events of the past few weeks on the political scene have further confirmed all that I thought is wrong with the Yoruba.

Let=s take a trip back in time, 1993 precisely. Everyone knows that the June 12^th 1993 elections pitched Chief Moshood Abiola, a southern Muslim Yoruba against Dalhatu Tofa a northern Muslim Hausa man. What happened? Well the north voted overwhelmingly for Chief Abiola without the help of the west and the country was set to crown him as the President of Nigeria until IBB dribbled him out of it.

Well the Yoruba now seeing that their son (whom they did not vote for) was set to be cheated out of his= mandate= began crying foul and thus began the June 12^th movement. Need I say more. Probably. Well this movement went on for five years in and outside Nigeria (mostly) and with the death of Abacha there seemed to be some hope that the mandate will be realised. Unfortunately Abiola died under house arrest and what happened afterwards were new cries for a correction of the ills of the past and words like marginalization began cropping up.

The rest of the country due to the feeling of injustice done Chief Abiola (not the Yoruba race) looked for and found a suitable candidate in General Obasanjo. Here we had a retired Military ruler who had worked closely with the north. But does a tiger lose it=s stripes? No! What we have seen since then is the a Yoruba arrogance that showed how naive we were to expect that we would see anything different.

President Obasanjo is obviously a typical Yoruba man, arrogant, boisterous and a know all. He believed he was the messiah of this country. How did he arrive at this deduction. Well he came out of jail when we thought he was going to die there to bring us to the promised land. Of course he had to be a messiah (at least he thought so).

Well we all know that the Prophets ended with Prophet Mohammed (SAW) and the time for the messiah to return is probably still far away and any way his task would not necessarily to save Nigeria but the world.

Anyway every Nigerian hoped that the early rantings from the man were just attempts at jest gone wrong, but slowly but surely what we came to realise is that the man really believes he is the messiah. He unlike the original messiah surrounded himself with not 12 disciples but over 40 Ministers and another 50 or so Special assistants. These disciples are there to sing his praises no more no less. Issues of giving advise do not arise. Who dare advise a messiah? And of course the march to Otta and his subsequent wait for divine intervention on whether he should run again were further proof that the man is god sent.

I have had arguments with those that believe the man is senile, I on the other hand do not believe that, I think he is just a typical Yoruba man. And his people have shown us the true colour of their skin. What percentage of the Yoruba race voted for this man? A very small number. His presidency was based on the foundation of votes from the North and the South East. But now the people with the loudest voices condemning the impeachment proceedings are those that did not vote for him and in some cases some from a different party. A sectional party that has always insisted that he stole the presidency in the first place. So why the change of heart? Well the Yoruba are afraid that if they relinquish power now they may never have another opportunity to taste it. Why? Well they have failed and shown those- like myself- their inadequacies.

All their ravings and rantings indicate the fear and they have threatened war-yes war- if he is removed. Aren=t these the same champions of democracy? Didn=t they see what happened in America when the impeached their president? Are these not the normal growth process of democracy. What can be called teething problems. Why all the funny meetings between the President and the Afenifere? What are the ploting against the rest of us? We should allow things follow the natural course of action and if the man has no case to answer then there should be no problem.

His latest bo-bo was when he said that the attempt to begin impeachment proceedings against him were actually a joke gone too far {by those some boys in the House of Reps}. Did he say we had a group of jokers in the House of Reps? Well then Nigerians probably knew that our leaders in the executive were not going to make life any better and would thus require some comics to at least make life more bearable.

Or has life gotten any better since 1999? We have opened up our shore to the importation of all kinds of goods from abroad draining our already scarce resources. Our president continuously escapes out of the shore of this country to solicit for foreign investment while banning five alive and the likes from the dinner table at Aso Villa. This of course after he has thrown a spanner in the very democracy that he swore to uphold it=s tenets.

But those are all things that really do not matter. What matter is that the average Nigerian is suffering and unfortunately we are stuck with a President that is as uncaring as the hangman as he pulls the noose over the convict. For the noose is slowly being pulled over our heads. The only difference here is that we do have some power to save ourselves, we can, even if the impeachment fails and he wins his party=s nomination, not vote him back. We have that power and luckily for most of us, we were not part of those that marched to Otta to convince him to run again.

Our march should be to the voting polls.