RE: Cultural Wars and National Identity: The Tragic Valedictory of Bolaji Aluko the Failed Oduduwan Expansionist

By

Ewaen Edoghimioya

ewaenfedo@yahoo.co.uk

 

A reading of  Prof.  Bolaji Aluko’s  essay titled “Cultural Wars and National Identity:the Saga of Yoruba and the Bini-Edo” gives the wrong impression of a detribalized Nigerian  Nigerian patriot and democrat. It also gives the impression of one  who is only just making his initial and objective contribution to  the raging controversy over Benin and Ife Kingship connections especially as it relates to the ancestry and humanity of Oduduwa. It is very necessary to expose Prof Aluko’s preceding positions which he did not present to this forum and his antecedents on this issue in order see where he is coming from. Prof Aluko’s opening sentence gives the impression that this issue started only with Omo n’Oba n’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo, Oba Erediauwa’s book launched on 29th April 2004. By starting with this book and date, is nothing but sheer deception. Prof Aluko’s foray into this controversy as he admitted on NaijaPolitics website dates back  to 1999 when he pushed his Oduduwa supremacist and expansionist agenda in the Edo Nation website and he was worsted and forced to flee. He got some of his Yoruba boys to push the same agenda in the NAIJA POLITICS website where they advocated the establishment of an ODUDUWA REPUBLIC which will include the Edo people sometime in early April 2004.They were opposed by some Edo people who rejected their Oduduwa kinship ideology and inclusion in their supremacist Oduduwa republic. This latter development forced  Prof Aluko into the fray on the side of Oduduwa  republic agenda proponents .He employed every tactics in his arsenal including  manipulation of history, subterfuge and divide and rule tactics. It was in response to his divide and rule tactics that I replied him for the first time on 19th April with the title “ALUKO CANT BAMBOOZLE AND DIVIDE EDO PEOPLE on NaijaPolitics website and he replied “Nuff said. I am out of this Edo/Yoruba   thread. You guys can declare victory and go home”. But Aluko  never left as he continued the debate and exposing his ethnicised views  by the day and mentoring his boys to insult and call Edo people prostitutes and slaves. The   Omo n’Oba’s  book launch just flowed into the ongoing debate and further enraged Aluko and  rankled the Yoruba establishment .

Aluko’s essay, as I rejoined when  he first posted it on  NaijaPolitics website, I saw it as  his valedictory and an attempt to intimidate the Edo people with the name and title of Prof Ade-Ajayi whose bias and ethnicised historiography has long been exposed on this matter. Aluko’s pretense to Nigerian nationalism not withstanding, his essay drips with Yoruba ethnocentrism and read like one whose ethnic pride and arrogance has been seriously wounded. Otherwise, he would not have not have written that for the Edo people and their monarch to publish their own history “smacked of cultural hegemony and imperial arrogance….not to talk of a hint of monarchical superiority”. He went on arrogantly to threaten and decree that Oduduwa “-remains a mystery , which the Bini, cannot, should not, and dare not solve for the Yoruba”. I  wonder who  appointed him  history’s policeman and  the custodian of ODUDUWA heritage. Oduduwa is a multicultural and historical figure  and  not the sole monopoly of the Yoruba that  can be appropriated for them alone  by Aluko. The Edo people have as much right to Oduduwa as the yorubas and can  and must tell his story as they know it.  To do otherwise is nothing short of a fascist imposition.

The article pretends that it is trying to avert interethnic feud which it accuse the Edo of fuelling. But the real import of  Aluko’s essay has been and still is to promote Yoruba supremacy , while at the same time fuelling divisiveness of the Edo people amongst whom he tries to spread hatred of the people he insults with the name “BINI”. Many a times has he been told to that there is nothing like BINI and it is an insult to the people to be called by that name, but he remains deaf to the correction. How else can one describe such behaviour if not a superiority complex of talking down on one’s inferiors. His latest posturing is  refusal to recognize the Edo as  one people and  use the term Edo. Rather he has replaced it with “Edoid”. He had earlier orchestrated this campaign against the  Edo people  by unearthing and posting on the NaijaPolitics website write ups on conflicting views  held amongst and between the Edo people. This divisive campaign he has also included in his essay with the aspects on the Afemai, Ivbiosakon and the Urhobo. An objective scholar and nationalist patriot bent on promoting unity amongst Nigerian people will not degenerate to this level of promoting divisiveness and campaign of hate amongst a  Nigerian cultural and linguistic group or section of the population. The only objective is to spite the Edo people, especially those he insult with the name Bini for daring to reject subordination to an Oduduwa supremacist and  expansionist agenda.

If one may ask Aluko- what makes the Yoruba a people different from other Nigerian groups? Have  the Yoruba  not been similarly described as yorubaoid by some  scholars as well? If  you are not aware and you think you are fooling the public, sorry you are only out to expose your ignorance of such matters especially linguistics and history, of which you know next to nothing. Most Nigerian people were in the past described past described by linguist and anthropologist with such terms as “….speaking peoples” or with “…oid”  as they were not definite on the classification of groups on basis of language and ethnicity. The Igala (Kogi) and olukumi and Itsekiri(Delta) for instance are described yorubaoid because of their linguistic similarities, while Daryl Fordes anthropological study of 1951 was titled “The Yoruba speaking people of southwestern Nigeria”.

Pan ethnic consciousness amongst most Nigerian groups including the so called  yoruba’s was only forged in the crucible of colonial rule. They had no common name for themselves until the European  and freed slave African missionaries in the 19th century called them Yoruba -a corruption of YARIBA a name  the Fulani Jihadist scholar and Sutan Mohammed Bello used to describe the Oyo sub ethnic groups. It was the same missionaries who also imposed and popularized the Oyo language among the so called Yoruba. Otherwise, the various subgroups spent all their lives fighting , conquering,  subordinating and freeing themselves from their own internal imperialisms. But for the British who stopped their wars  and freed many of them from Ibadan imperialism and ajele system, there was nothing like Yoruba as it is known today. It was Isaac Delano, Obafemi Awolowo and co who fearing Igbo ascendancy ( with the elevation of late Rt. Hon. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe as successor to Herbert Macaulay) instituted the myth of Oduduwa and strong arm political stratagem to force Yoruba speaking Oba’s to accept Oduduwa as their progenitor and thereby forging it into a political ideology. Otherwise, was Ile-Ife which is today hoisted as holy city not sacked and the Ooni sent twice into exile in ondo by the Modakeke during the 19th century.  Oyo  attacked Apomu a so called Ife town in its slave raiding enterprise sparking off the inter sub ethnic wars in the area now known as Yoruba land. So what is all this noise of the  Yoruba about, if Ife and its Oduduwa shrines could be so violated by so some called yoruba?  Even Aluko’s Ekiti people do not understand the Egun language of Badagry. So where is the linguisitic oneness Aluko cannot find in other people? Given this situation amongst the so called Yoruba, what makes Edo peoples case different  as to be stigmatized by Aluko if not his Yoruba  ethnic arrogance and a hidden Oduduwa supremacist and expansionist agenda which has blinded him to objectivity and his resort to double standard in his dealings with fellow Nigerians. It is such tendency of the Aluko’s of this world that  poses and creates  the greatest threat to Nigerian national unity.

The Yoruba Elders have already commissioned their Emeritus Historian to get a committee going to rejoined to the Omo n’Oba’s book and Edo history of Oduduwa. But Aluko wont be satisfied with that, save to raise national political temperature that the content of the book and Edo history is capable of threatening national peace. Maybe he wants a state of emergency to be declared over Edo state for “daring” to humanize and profane Oduduwa. Anyway, since Aluko has decided to dance to the market place in his birthday dress, I am following him with my drums to provide him the accompanying music.            

Ewaen Edoghimioya is a Historian and of the Institute for Benin Studies, Benin city