I have over the last few days watched in horror and utmost consternation, the sordid events playing out in the ancient town of Ile-Ife, the ancestral home of the Yoruba.
The aberration on display at the foremost citadel of learning and culture, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), has left many a decent human being cower in utmost horror and disbelief that in 2022 Nigeria and indeed Western Nigeria in particular, the jostle for the position of the leadership of the University has brought out the crude primordial clannishness in us which we thought had been banished over a century ago.
When the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who ironically this school was named after, put together the ‘Egbe Omo Oduduwa’ in 1945, he sought the higher ground for the Yoruba as a whole, emphasizing that the penchant for primitive clannish attitude which made next door neighbours suspicious of each other has stalled our progress. Then, the Yoruba were like a flock without a Shepherd.
The formation of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa was ostensibly to eradicate the suspicion and hatred among the Yoruba and foster good neighbourliness and brotherhood among a people who spoke the same language, have the same culture and shared contiguous boundaries.
For several decades after the formation of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, the Yoruba started conquering new heights and indeed fulfilling the innate God-given potentials which unbridled rivalry had prevented. Education became the tool with which the Egbe sought to liberate the minds of the Yoruba and they pursued this with an uncommon vigor, culminating in the free education launch in 1955 in Western Nigeria. If indeed there was an equivalent of the Chinese great leap forward, the launch of free education was that eureka moment and in one fell swoop, the Yoruba were suddenly catapulted into modernity and we more than ever before started seeing ourselves as a people and not a little clan.
I have gone into this brief narration in order to contextualize the events of the last few days at that great school situated in our ancestral home; the Ile-oduduwa.
The instigators of this brazen act must have forgotten who we once were as a people before the Egbe Omo oduduwa and who we indeed became in the Nigeria space over the last 80 years. The show of shame that was put up has indeed dragged us back decades in the world of social media which we all live in today. We had suddenly, through that irrational behavior, projected an image of who we no longer are.
The struggle to head a University under normal circumstances ought not to have degenerated to a situation where the ‘Egunguns and Ogbonis’ are invading a world acclaimed citadel of learning to be displaying crass imprudence, indeed dancing naked in the market square. As the Yoruba will say, ‘aso o ba omoye mo, omoye ti rin ihoho wo oja’.
How do the instigators of such action want the outside world to view the Yoruba going forward? If we are known to struggle to accommodate dissenting views or if we are quick to resort to our clans if an action does not ‘favour’ us.
A selection process was started and completed; if any aggrieved party feels short- changed, I am pretty sure there are several ways and manner this can be addressed but not by what we have seen in the last few days.
A University is seen as the apogee of civilization. What has been on show at OAU, is nothing but primitive cave tendencies which has no place in modern day Nigeria. Those who promoted and participated or tacitly gave support not speaking out must bury their heads in shame. Today, what has taken the Yoruba nearly 80 years to put together has been damaged by a group of people who have no sense of history.
Today, they must sit back and reflect on what value they have added to the Yoruba in particular and Nigeria in general with such behaviour.
I want all promoters of these absurdities in Ife and other universities within the Region to know that the day we start choosing administrative heads of Universities based on where the candidates come from would be the beginning of an end to our acclaimed civilization. The absurdity would not be promoted if they indeed understand what a University means and is all about. It is therefore important that these misguided elements are told to sheathe their swords and stop getting involved in what does not concern them. In reality, they are busy-bodies, bordering on meddlesome-interlopers.
If we are to indeed stretch this, OAU is now a Federal institution and the leadership must always be open to anyone who is qualified and so selected by the committee saddled with that responsibility. Never again must this macabre dance be on display in Yoruba land or any other part of Nigeria for that matter.
Our issues as a country will never be resolved if we continually resort to our clans when decisions by authorities do not meet their desire. For us to make progress as a country, we must set a National agenda and ensure we all paddle our canoes in the right direction of achieving that goal.
Paddling our canoes in the same direction does not follow that it must be at the same speed, far from it; that is why we are a federal system which recognizes the peculiarities of the federating units but the agenda must be the same, while the difference will be the timing of fulfilling it.
The display in Ife, has no place in modern Nigeria and it must be roundly condemned by everyone who wishes Nigeria well in general and in particular the Yoruba who must resolve that never again are we going back to the era of nearly 100 years ago.
Seye Oyeleye is the Director-General of Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission. [email protected]
