Is There a Yoruba Leader?
There are a number of occurrences in recent memory that begs this question. Among others are the abduction and kidnap of Chief Olu Falae; and the vacuum created by the deaths of the Ooni of Ife, Okunade Sijuade, Olubushe II and Matriarch HID Awolowo. The uniqueness of Sijuade resides in two of the three sources of power and authority (as enunciated by Max Webber) namely charismatic and traditional-the authority of the eternal yesterday. If ever there was a Prince charming, Sijuade was one. Were he that disposed, he would have been a very successful politician, he was a people’s person. He was Atobatele (king in waiting) whose conspicuous preparedness to fill the throne contrasts somewhat with the unknown quantity trademark of contemporary aspirants.
The ancient stool of Ife is sacred to the Yoruba tradition and remains a pan Yoruba symbolic authority. It is the well from which springs the monarchical culture and legitimacy in Yoruba land. To the extent of the contrasting lack of gravitas and charisma in the pool of his would be successors, the exit of Sijuade has created a vacuum in Yoruba leadership that will not be sooner filled. As the chief confidant and politically active spouse of the late foremost Yoruba political leader, (late Chief Obafemi Awolowo) the recently deceased Chief (Mrs) Dideolu Awolowo enjoyed the deference and respect of protagonists across partisan boundaries. Blessed with a long life (she lived to the age of 100 years) she grew to become a matriarch and stabilising force in Yoruba identity politics.
The emergence of Chief Falae unto political prominence has had a contradictory effect on the evolution of Yoruba leadership politics. Prior to 1999, his emergence gave a wholesome positive boost to the leadership platform and served to bridge the gap with the younger generation. He ascended to the zenith of Yoruba irredentist politics following his adoption as crown prince of the dominant Afenifere wing of the Yoruba political establishment. In the womb of this elevation was, however, sown the seed of the implosion and attenuation of Afenifere and rendered more problematic the notion of a consensual Yoruba political leader.
The adoption of Falae (as the preferred Yoruba presidential candidate in the 1999 presidential election) over the more traditionally entitled Chief Bola Ige divided the Afenifere-which division detracted from its legitimacy and assumption of proprietary rights over Yoruba politics. Since the 1999 division, it has become increasingly tenuous to employ the Afenifere platform to stake a claim, implicit or explicit, to Yoruba leadership. Perhaps the most damaging consequence of this intramural crisis was the detachment and assertion of autonomy from the patriarchy of Afenifere by the six governors elected on its sponsored Alliance for Democracy (AD) platform. The consequence of the loss of this indispensable utility (for group cohesion and viability) was reinforced by the near wholesale displacement of the governors by the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the general election of 2003.
It is also the case that the relevance of the Yoruba irredentist leadership platform is contingent on specific perception of threat to Yoruba corporate identity and interest; and is generally governed by the causation concept of cause/effect relationship. The degree of ethnic solidarity response is determined by the intensity of the perception of this threat. The valid appropriation of the injury of the annulment of the victory of fellow ethnic national, Moshood Abiola, in the June 1993 presidential elections, is the explanation for the huge public profile of the Afenifere in the years spanning 1993 to 2000. Conversely, the relative durability and stability of the fourth republic (rooted in the compensatory concession of the Nigerian presidency to the South-west) has commensurately dampened the appreciation of Yoruba nationality protagonists.
The sentiment of threat perception was lately provoked by the kidnap and ordeal of Falae in the hands of Fulani criminal abductors. Since the appropriation of Ilorin and the invasion of the Oyo Empire by Fulani jihadists in the mid-19th century, the relationship between the Yoruba and the latter has historically been governed by paranoia. This sensitivity has not been helped by the ‘Northern’ hegemony predicated power politics that has generally characterised post-independence Nigerian politics.
The controversy over Yoruba leadership remains perennial and lies barely beneath the surface-there to resurface and bubble up now and again. There has been the argument that the notion of Yoruba leader, by itself, is ahistorical and not applicable to the Yoruba nationality.
Argues President Olusegun Obasanjo ‘No one Individual is Yoruba Leader…Just as there was no single oba having sovereignty over the whole of Yorubaland, there was no individual as leader of the Yorubas in Yorubaland. As it was then, it remains till now… He noted that even among the Yoruba obas there is equality, but mutual respect… it was the colonialists that made the obas to see one another face-to-face. The colonialists, he said, went further to rank Yoruba traditional rulers. ‘Baales’ (chiefs) were appointed by obas within their domains. The former president said the supporters of the first Premier of the Western Region, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, “fixed” the title of Yoruba leader on the late sage during the Civil War… He recalled that during the war, different ethnic groups met separately to consider positions and issues for the future of Nigeria… In the course (of the meeting), Chief Awolowo presided. His supporters then fixed the title of Yoruba leader upon him.
Former Ogun State Governor Olusegun Osoba disagrees, “I disagree with the former president, on whatever claims he made that Awolowo was hand-picked by some of his supporters. In fact, the day he was elected as Yoruba leader was two weeks after Awolowo was released from prison by the military…I was present at the forum where late Chief Awolowo was unanimously elected the Yoruba leader. And the election involved all stakeholders, including political, cultural and intellectuals in Yoruba land. Some who did not belong to Awolowo’s political camp also endorsed him. So, each time the interest of Yoruba is threatened, we all gather under the leadership of an individual to solve the problem.”
The assertions of Obasanjo are larger than the dated single issue raised by Osoba. They go beyond the issue of whether or not Awolowo was duly elected Yoruba leader. The latter was, nonetheless, correct in the respect that the situation under reference-the representation of the Yoruba ethno regional position on a fundamental political crisis of Nigeria, requires a designated leadership howsoever appointed or elected. It has to be accepted that the circumstances leading to the civil war and the standpoint of the federating units demanded an identifiable Yoruba political leadership with whom transactions can be conducted on behalf of the people. It was in this capacity that Awolowo led a Yoruba delegation to discuss with the Eastern region leaders of thought in Enugu before the outbreak of the civil war. It was also in a similar capacity that he was enlisted by the western regional government to broker a rapprochement with the Agbekoyas in 1968. It was in this recognition that he was appointed federal commissioner of finance and vice-chairman of the federal executive in the war cabinet of General Yakubu Gowon.
The historical references made by Obasanjo transcends the legitimacy of the recognition (of Awolowo as Yoruba leader) to question the idea of Yoruba leader in the first place; and the logic of his proposition found common purpose with Professor Peter Ekeh in the observation that “By 1820 an Ekiti man would have been astounded if he were called a ‘Yoruba man’ whom he understood, if he was so knowledgeable, as a man from Oyo. In any case, an Ekiti would probably need an interpreter in order to communicate effectively with a Yoruba man in 1820. Eluwa, the secretary of the Ibo State Union, confessed that by the early 1950s he participated in persuading many ‘Ibos’ to accept that they were indeed Ibos. Hausa is a composition of several tribal organisations that found their common relevance in modern Nigeria. Thomas Hodgkin was right when he reminded Biobaku: “Everyone recognises that the notion of ‘being a Nigerian’ is a new kind of conception. But it would seem that the notion of ‘being a Yoruba’ is not very much older.”
The argument here is that there is no historical Yoruba nationality consciousness prior to the intervention of colonialism and that since such consciousness was a condition precedent to the notion of Yoruba leader there could not be any. But then there was the Oyo Empire which exercised sovereignty over nearly all the territory that was thereafter designated Yorubaland and which traditional rulers and peoples were commonly bonded in culture, language and consanguinity from Oduduwa. By dint of this backdrop, would the emperor, the Alaafin, not thereby qualify as the pan Yoruba leader of that era?
According to the free encyclopaedia, “The Oyo Empire was a Yoruba Empire of what is today western Nigeria, north central Nigeria and Western Republic of Benin. Established in the 15th century, the Oyo Empire grew to become one of the largest West African states. It rose through the outstanding organisational skills of the Yoruba, wealth gained from trade and its powerful cavalry. The Oyo Empire was the most politically important state in the region from the mid-17th to the late 18th century, holding sway not only over most of the other kingdoms in Yorubaland, but also over nearby African states, notably the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey in the modern Republic of Benin to the west.
The successor to the Oyo Empire was the colonialism created administrative concept and structure over Yorubaland that answers to the label “the protectorate of South Western Nigeria”. It is within the specific system of this structure that a Yoruba leader of that era would have been identified if the need arose. There is certainly no clear line of succession to the Yoruba leader title as each era determines how this role is fulfilled. And whether dormant or active there will always be a leader of this nature whose ascendance will be legitimised by the prevalent circumstances.