I have sometimes dropped a topic in order to address other urgent ones on this page. The visit some Ndigbo elders paid to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), some weeks ago was one of such. As a TV reporter announced a request the visitors publicly made at the State House, a point for interrogation occurred to me that I noted for treatment. Then the president visited Ebonyi State recently; there he publicly responded to the request Ndigbo elders made when they visited. As the president did, and Ndigbo listened, I regretted that I didn’t interrogate the request Ndigbo elders earlier made. I shall return to this point.
I’ll take some time giving the backdrop to my submission here, so I humbly request readers who say I like “painting” myself in each of my columns to bear with me. The reason is that, here too, I shall be ‘painting’ myself. It’s how I usually provide context to the views I express. It also provides explanation to the criticism by some that, in my columns, I favour one part of the country. In the past, a reader actually complained to my editor that I wrote in favour of northerners as against southerners. The reader who’s not fixated about the ‘superiority’ of their own tribe would, however, notice that what I basically do is point out things in one part which other parts of the country can benefit from. Nonetheless, it seems there’re Nigerians who believe only their parts of this country have a monopoly of what’s right and there’s nothing to learn from others, a mentality I find puzzling.
I can’t express views other than what I do where the peoples of this nation are concerned. All our peoples are good. Nothing is wrong with any of our tribes. If anyone uses the misbehaviour of a few to demonise a whole tribe, they need to reconfigure their mindset. For their own tribes aren’t angels. The following informs the reasons I express the views I do: As a child, I sat in classrooms with members of major Nigerian tribes all the way to the universities I attended. So I didn’t grow up with bias against members of any ethnic group in my mind. Today, I have friends across all the major ethnic groups, people that I call and say, “Prepare a place for me I’m coming to your town” and they would gladly do so. When I arrive northern cities friends say, “Tunji, I’m coming to pick you so that you can greet my family.” I have such friends especially among Ndigbo too, people I say hello to from time to time and they rejoice as one would on seeing a long lost friend. Other Ndigbo meet me on this page and call to say they’re just excited to talk with me after so many years. This ‘painting’ is one reason I express the views I do about our peoples.
The other ‘painting’ is that I’ve learnt to observe and read many of the phenomena in this nation not from tribal or sentimental prism, but from the prism that the study of Political Science teaches – objectivity. I mean the objectivity expected of one who studies social phenomena. I continue to state it into tomorrow that I’m proud to have studied Political Science which, to me, is the king of courses. It’s the only course that gives you a complete view of what transpires in the polity and why – that’s if you’ve been well trained. I’m privileged to have come under the influence of some of the best political scientists in our universities. As I write this, it occurs to me for the first time that none of my political science professors ever assessed a social or political phenomenon in Nigeria from tribal or emotional prism. They simply stated relationships between and among political phenomena as objectively as they could, following in the best tradition of some of the great political scientists who taught them when they were students in universities abroad.
In the year I arrived the Political Desk at The Guardian newspaper, Lagos, sitting next to my Political Editor, Mr Akpo Esajere, I was still a Master student at the University of Ibadan. There, I had as my respected professors, Prof. Tunde Adeniran, Prof. Ayoade, Prof. Alex Gboyega, Prof. Adigun Agbaje, and others. Earlier at the University of Lagos, I came under the influence of (at the time) Dr Remi Anifowoshe, Dr Onuoha and Dr Femi Badejo, who would appear on NTA Network News as analyst in those days and insist on being shown the indices for arriving at a particular popular assertion. Badejo wasn’t given to sentiments; he must have the indicators before passing judgment regarding any issue. It was how he was trained. It was how these excellent scholars trained me. It’s therefore impossible for me to be tribe-focused in my observation of social phenomena among Nigerians—northerners or southerners. I state what transpires as what transpires; this is what I contribute to journalism.
But there’s yet another ‘painting’ that I made reference to in the past. I’m surprised at how some from my part of the country take rather narrow position regarding national issues. They fret over what other tribes do, when they should focus on themselves to see how best they can stand so that they aren’t trampled. Competition is normal in any polity. You don’t stand well; other players trample on you. No point insulting and hating others. Just stand well. I think the Yoruba are the last ethnic group that should take a narrow, tribal stance on any issue. Why? We’re empire people, empire builders, and by way of explanation, an empire incorporates many ethnic groups, cultures, languages, religions. The Yoruba weren’t people who dwelt only in clans and villages, afraid to mix with ‘foreigners.’ We had people of other cultures under our political suzerainty in the past.
So, I wonder when a Yoruba person feels threatened whenever a certain Tunji Ajibade has something positive to point out about other tribes. Yoruba history showed that we accommodated other tribes, intermarried freely as conquering races usually did, and the Yoruba were a conquering race. The other day, I was showing someone the south-westernmost parts of Niger Republic (i.e. northern borders of Benin Republic) and Burkina Faso as where Oyo Empire extended. Oyo also covered at its zenith parts of Ghana, Togo, Benin Republic, all the way to Kogi and parts of Niger State. That was the map of Oyo Empire Zainab Badawi of BBC showed in her documentary on the history of Africa. Any Yoruba person should remember this and discard any mushroom mentality, the disposition to feel threatened anytime another ethnic group does something. The Yoruba are too much on ground to be threatened. We’re empire people, used to accommodating members of other tribes and, incidentally, my forebears, the Alaafins of Oyo, presided over that empire.
With the knowledge of our kind of past, a Yoruba person would relax and be ready to learn or even benefit from other tribes. I wasn’t surprised therefore that the very symbol of Yoruba’s great past, my uncle and father, the late Kabiyesi, Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, once expressed the same view I did. He was speaking at the launch of a book on the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo when he said no one should demonise any ethnic group because those other ethnic groups had made meaningful contributions to the development of his domain. That’s how the Yoruba, who had had an empire not just kingdoms, should reason in a multi-ethnic Nigeria. The Yoruba welcome everyone, we let others thrive in our midst; this benefits us, our towns, cities. It was what we did when we had Oyo Empire. That’s who we are, so no Yoruba needs to develop high blood pressure when I unsentimentally point out anything positive about other ethnic groups.
Now, I return to the visit by Ndigbo elders to Buhari. In the course of their visit, the elders asked the president to release Indigenous People of Biafra leader, Nnamdi Kanu. In the course of his visit to Ebonyi State, the president gave his response and it confirmed a concern I nursed at the time Ndigbo elders made their request in the manner they did.
To be concluded
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