Surprisingly, it provokes deep
curiosity that the present day political leadership of the same Yoruba nation
is gleefully negating and undermining the same group interest or entitlement of
their people in desperate pursuit of political witch-hunting. In fact, it
defies rationality that the hitherto described sophisticated and united Yoruba
politicians could today disagree and bicker to the extent of sacrificing, for
some selfish and frivolous reasons, their larger group interest to the
advantage of other contending regional interest in the country which the
emergence of Honourable Aminu Tambuwal as the speaker of House of
Representatives confirms.
“Tinubu used his political muscle to
convince gullible Yoruba legislators to vote against a
Yoruba woman, Mulikat Akande, in a post that was specifically designed by the
PDP as a benefit for Yoruba. He then got the same mumu Yoruba politicians to
vote instead for Aminu Tambuwal; a scion of the Sokoto Caliphate with
Hausa/Fulani agenda. This is something that could never have happened the other
way around. It is inconceivable that a Hausa/Fulani legislator would be
persuaded to give something that has been zoned to Hausa/Fulani to a Yoruba
man. To put it bluntly, the Huasa/Fulanis are not stupid” – Femi Aribisala.
Hmmm!
Who then are stupid? Anyway, the above bitter truth remark extracted from Mr.
(Pastor) Femi Aribisala’s Tuesday column in the Vanguard Newspaper, published
on November 4,2014, under the rubric: Aminu Tambuwal is a traitor, clearly
speaks volumes about the unbecoming political shenanigans and grandstanding of
certain Yoruba elements – aptly described in English as quislings – who
unfortunately constitute the larger percentage of Yoruba folks ceaselessly
moaning and groaning about how the Yoruba nation has not been “fairly” carried
along by the PDP-led government of President Goodluck Jonatnan in terms of
representation in the allocation of positions or offices in the executive and
legislative organs of government.
Yet,
these same elements who tend to forget or pretend to forget that they were the
architects of the same so-called “marginalization” of the Yoruba nation
vis-à-vis the composition of the top hierarchy of the legislative arm of
government. Though aside from this clearly self-inflicted marginalization of
the Yoruba in the national legislative scheme of things, it will be quite
unfortunate and totally misleading for any rational mind to assert that
President Jonathan’s government has not been excessively fair to the Yoruba
people by any standard of assessment. Anyway this is an issue for another day.
But
as was hitherto and widely reported, one of the reasons the then leadership of
the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), led by Chief Ahmed Bola Tinubu, and the
then ACN legislators moved against Mrs. Mulikat Akande who apparently was the
Peoples Democratic Party’s choice for the position of the speaker of House of
Representatives at the time, was not unconnected with the notion that she was
viewed, rightly or wrongly, to be the anointed candidate of the former
president Olusegun Obasanjo – whose seemingly provocative political
posturing at the time never helped matters at all.
In
the circumstance therefore, it seemed convenient for people to key in to the
prevailing impression that Chief Ahmed Bola Tinubu and his ilk had reason to
view the possible emergence of Honourable (Mrs.) Mulikat Akande as the Speaker
of the House of Assembly as an unmistakable continuation of what seems to be an
unwanted reign of Obasanjo and his associated phenomena in the south-west
politics. To this end, one is thus tempted to think that there could be little
wrong on the part of Chief Tinubu and his men to have politically acted
expediently with the sole aim of clipping Chief Obasanjo’s developing wings in
the south-west politics at the time – a development the eventual emergence of
Aminu Tambuwal settled forthwith.
However
good and self-fulfilling as the eventual emergence of Aminu Tambuwal may have
turned out to be for Tinubu and his cohorts after all, it certainly arouses
some degree of incredulity in the minds of observers of Yoruba politics who
still find it extremely hard to fathom how the collective interest of a people
– meant to be championed and protected by their political leaders – could be so
selfishly and foolishly sacrificed by a tiny minority of their political class,
all in an attempt to ridicule the little of what appeared to be Chief Olusegun
Obasanjo’s perceived or imagined clout in the south-west politics.
As
it were, it may be easy for anybody to say that there is no big deal or any
major loss of benefits in the “harm” the then leadership of ACN and its Federal
legislators conspired to cause the Yoruba people of the south-west by trifling
with the clearly recognized “right” and privilege of the region to produce the
Speaker of House of Representatives as designed by the Peoples Democratic
Party. Even to put this thinking aside, there is no gainsaying that the present
political leadership in south-west Yoruba has failed the Yoruba nation in the
manner it has been handling the intricacies and consequences of Yoruba internal
politics. Of course taking a cue from the past political events dating back to
the days of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s reign and stint in politics, there could
hardly be remembered a time the political leadership of the south-west under
his watch abdicated or compromised whatever was meant for or due to the Yoruba
people as their own share of national entitlement, and neither was he ever
disposed to trade off the regional interest of his people for whatever reason,
let alone doing so for personal aggrandizement.
This
in part helps to account for why despite Chief MKO Abiola’s seemingly hostile
political inclination towards Chief Obafemi Awolowo before and during the
second republic politicking, the latter did not still act beyond the reasonable
against the former and which in turn explains why Chief Abiola did receive
unalloyed support and solidarity from the vast majority of Yoruba in the wake
of the struggle for the de-annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election -
annulled by General Ibrahim Babagnida’s military regime.
Besides,
as we may recall, Chief Awolowo’s affection for protecting the Yoruba group
interest, as was earlier witnessed in the 1950s through the very first
defection saga in the annals of Nigeria, led him to influence and cause a mass
movement of Yoruba members of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NCNC into the Action Group.
And no matter how anybody still views this landmark historical development, the
fact is that no real political leader worth his salt within his enclave would
have done otherwise.
Arguably,
it stands to question if Dr Azikiwe – who apparently felt bad about this
defection - would have stood to watch Chief Awolowo’s Action Group make such an
unprecedented in-road into the politics of the then Eastern region, without
plotting and executing a similar counter political offensive. Therefore,
if what we regard today as ethnic politics is deemed to have started from Chief
Awo’s political disposition arising from issues pertaining to the defection
saga of the 1950s, it may well be because of nothing short of his life-time
strong belief in the pursuit of Yoruba cause and/or the need to always defend
and safeguard their corporate interest within the comity of the Nigerian
nations, at any given opportunity.
Surprisingly,
it provokes deep curiosity that the present day political leadership of the
same Yoruba nation is gleefully negating and undermining the same group
interest or entitlement of their people in desperate pursuit of political
witch-hunting. In fact, it defies rationality that the hitherto described
sophisticated and united Yoruba politicians could today disagree and bicker to
the extent of sacrificing, for some selfish and frivolous reasons, their larger
group interest to the advantage of other contending regional interest in the
country which the emergence of Honourable Aminu Tambuwal as the speaker of
House of Representatives confirms.
And
looking back at the facts of history, it is most unlikely - if he were to be
alive today - that Chief Obafemi Awolowo would have espoused or endorsed this
course of action with respect to Yoruba’s preference for Honourable Aminu
Tambuwal as the speaker of House of Representatives to their own Honourable
Mulikat Akande. Little wonder that the ordinary South-West Yoruba folks and
electorate seem to have begun to register their disenchantment with the manner
their group interest is being toyed with by the actions and inactions of the
South-west leadership of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), now the
All Progressive Congress, alongside with its Federal legislators in the House
of Representatives. Critically weighed, one could hardly rule out this factor
as one of the unspoken reasons why the APC may have lost the last gubernatorial
election in Ekiti state to the PDP – notwithstanding the propaganda about the
alleged role of the so-called “stomach infrastructure” in determining the
outcome of the contest.
But
be it as it may, it is high time the south-west Yoruba political class united
and stood up to regain what belongs to their people and due to the entire
Yoruba nation. Much as it is the original and, perhaps, subsisting decision of
the Peoples Democratic Party - arising from its internal affairs - to zone the
position of the speaker of House of Representatives to the South-West Yoruba,
it need not be belaboured here that the entire south-west Yoruba political
class should always strive to consider the corporate interest of the Yoruba
nation above and beyond their individual, partisan or in-group interest.
Needless to say at this juncture that a time shall definitely come when Chief
Tinubu and those “mumu Yoruba politicians” (courtesy of Femi Aribisala) as well
as the South-West in general would be denigrated or ridiculed by the
Hausa/Fulanis, whose stereotyped born to rule mentality and the belief that
they know and play politics more than all other peoples of Nigeria are being
currently massaged and reinforced by a section of the Yoruba political class.
Therefore
left to the dictates of expediency, it is imperative for Chief Ahmed Bola
Tinubu and the entire APC leadership and followership in the South-West to rise
up and do the needful by using this providential opportunity offered by
Honourable Aminu Tambuwal’s defection to make amends and allow for the
emergence of a Speaker of House of Representatives with South-West Yoruba
descent. This remains one way Chief Ahmed Bola Tinubu and his APC kinsmen could
readily redeem themselves for apparently shortchanging the people of the
South-West geo-political zone. A stitch in time saves nine.
The writer is Onyiorah Chiduluemije Paschal writes from
Abuja.
No comments:
Post a Comment