AARE ONA KAKANFO OFYORUBALAND
At an editorial meeting sometimes in 2000, THISDAY Chairman/Editor-in-Chief, Mr Nduka Obaigbena, said he had information that the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) had concluded plans to burn down our Apapa, Lagos premises because our newspaper was deemed ‘anti-Yoruba’. Then he added, “Yet nobody will believe that the two people writing all the anti-OPC columns in this place are actually Waziri (Adio, the current Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI) and Segun who happen to be Yoruba.” That was at a period, early in the life of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, when OPC was posing a serious national security threat by their open recourse to violence.
However, within a few years, my path had crossed that of Dr Frederick Fasheun and Chief Ganiyu Adams, the two men leading separate factions of the organisation, such that when, in 2005, I was invited by the former to be the reviewer at the launch of his biography, I had to call the latter to inform him ahead so I would not get caught in the crossfire of what was, at the time, a violent antagonism between the duo. Yet despite my disagreement with the OPC politics that sees ethnic relations in a diverse society like Nigeria’s as a zero-sum game, I have over the years developed with Adams a friendship that is based essentially on mutual respect.
What particularly fascinates me about Adams is that for a man who started out with little education (he left secondary school in form three to go into carpentry), the profundity of his thoughts and his capacity to analyse complex socio-political issues are quite extraordinary; regardless of whether or not you agree with him. Even before he went back to school to earn a first degree, Adams had immersed himself in the history of Yoruba culture and people, and could engage you intellectually on any aspect. And from my encounters with him in recent years, it was also always obvious that he is both an ambitious man and a good student of power; which then explains why he has risen rather rapidly within so short a period despite where he is coming from.
However, to better appreciate his trajectory, I implore readers to find a 2005 journal article by Oxford University Professor, Wale Adebanwi, entitled “The Carpenter’s Revolt: Youth, Violence and the Reinvention of Culture in Nigeria”. Published by the Cambridge University Press, Adebanwi concludes partly in the paper that, “What is particularly interesting in the context of the OPC, however, is not only the way in which the concept of culture is entwined with an interplay between tradition and modernity, but the way in which political entrepreneurs such as OPC leaders employ this in the trajectory of their political/ cultural projects.”
Even though I promised Adams that I would be in Oyo last Saturday for his installation, I could not make the occasion. But he knows I wish him well. And all factors considered, I believe Adams is a perfect fit for the title of Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland. Oye a m’ori o!
Olusegun Adeniyi, Abuja