Why Should Yoruba Produce President In 2023!

Tinubu

 All things being equal, by 2023 when the country would hold next round of general elections, the Yoruba would have had eight years of producing a president for Nigeria through former PresidentOlusegun Obasanjo and eight years of producing vice president of Nigeria through Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. And that would be eight years after the North produced the President through President Muhammadu Buhari. 

By that year (2023) power is expected to shift to Southern Nigeria (all things being equal). And it may surprise you to note that Yoruba want to grab the presidency, again, in Southern Nigeria where the South East people have never held the Presidency position since 1999. And Yoruba have always opposed domination by other groups, especially the North. A few examples suffice. 

One thing I have noticed about the Yoruba people of Nigeria is that, they hate being dominated by other ethnic groups in the Nigerian federation. That is a healthy aspiration in a multiethnic society like Nigeria. They joined other nationalities to fight against colonial domination and had been very vocal against perceived Hausa-Fulani or better put: Northern domination. Some of their leaders in recent times have shown that they are averse to unfair treatment by any section of the country in the sharing of power or other national resources. One of the most respected leaders of the Yoruba ethnic

nationality is the late Chief Bola Ige. He was a former governor of old Oyo State. When he was alive he was an embodiment of what is good for Yoruba in Nigeria. His platform was his weekly column in the Sunday Tribune. It was a platform he used very well to project Yoruba interest. It was the platform he used in stating unequivocally Yoruba’s distaste for perceived northern domination. Sometime he went too far to the extent of describing the Fulani as the ‘Tutsis’ of Nigeria’over their influence in the polity.

 That was largely what cost him the AD presidential ticket which he lost to Chief Olu Falae who was more moderate and measured on issues of northern dominance. In several of Uncle Bola Ige’s interventions in his column, which was a big dish for readers in South West and elsewhere in Nigeria, he was against Fulani domination. He was so offended by their dominance that he even likens the Fulani to the Tutsis of Rwanda and sometimes of Burundi also. As the “Tutsis of Nigeria,” he provocatively proclaimed that the Fulani of Nigeria are likely to end up sharing the same bloody fate with the Tutsis of Rwanda! Chief Bola Ige insistently identified the Fulani as evil oppressors and parasites. 

Writing in his regular column on page 2 of Sunday Tribune of 16 February, 1997, on the composition of the membership of the Vision 2010 Committee Chief Bola Ige again repeated his characterisation of the Fulani as the “Tutsis of Nigeria” and blamed all the ills of the country on them. Chief Bola Ige wrote: “Since 1960, has our bane not been that the ‘Tutsis’ of Nigeria (who are minority of minorities - in population, in education, in management skills, in the economy) have held Nigeria at the jugular, scheming political manoeuvres that make them hold on to power at all costs and in all circumstances? The result, of course, is that all ‘non Tutsis’ of Nigeria are not ready to trust their future to such minority who have never exhibited true Nigeria nationalism…The young people do not trust the authorities, and the way they see Nigeria is vastly different from how the ‘Tutsis’ of Nigeria want Nigeria to be.” 

Yet in another piece captioned “Whose National Question” which appeared on page 2 of Sunday Tribune of 7 September, 1998, where he discussed the Scottish referendum on autonomy, Chief Bola Ige raised his opposition against the Fulani domination: “When the brothers and children of those who wanted confederation of Nigeria in 1953, now pose as the arch-gospellers of Nigeria’s ‘indivisible’ unity…They do so because they think they are the Tutsis of Nigeria, and imagine that all Nigerians must be ruled by them till Kingdom come. All sensible and rational people all over the world acknowledge that there are certain axioms about how people should live. If a country is multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-religious, its

constitution MUST be federal…At the risk of being misunderstood, it seems to me that the reason the Tutsis of Nigeria cannot understand these simple axioms is that first, they are an immigrants uprooted group scattered all over Nigeria without any defined geographical boundaries; secondly their culture has been lost to a “religious” culture so-called which unfortunately does not enable them to appreciate the culture of other people, not even the Habe–Hausa culture, thirdly they are insignificant in numbers they have to attach themselves to others and appear as part and parcel of those they parasite on; and finally, they have had the fortune of military rule in Nigeria for almost thirty years and have succeeded in manipulating the military for their own purposes.” That is how much Yoruba hated domination by another ethnic nationality. 

Let me use a recent example to show Yoruba averseness to domination and lack of equity. In July 2020, Yoruba socio-cultural organization, Afenifere recently said it has instituted a legal action against the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) over lopsided appointment and marginalisation of the people in the region in top managerial positions of the agency. NPA had confirmed that it has 22 General Managers, 15 of which are of northern origin while only seven are from the southern part of the country. The confirmation by NPA was sequel to an exclusive report by a media organisation that the authority had been in violation of the constitutional provisions of the Federal Character Principle over the disproportionate appointment of General Managers in favour of the northern part of the country. NPA General Manager, Corporate and Strategic Communications, Engr. Jatto Adams, in a statement, said the authority has seven General Managers from the North-East; five from the North-West and three from North-Central making a total of 15 from the north as against only seven from the south made up of one from the South-South, two from the South-West and four from the South-East. But speaking with the news organization that broke the story, the National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, Yinka

Odumakin, who did not give details of the suit filed against NPA, warned that Nigeria risks disintegration if the lopsided appointment in the agency is left unchecked. He said, “This is so annoying and it appears some people are just pushing this country towards a deliberate disintegration because there is no other justification or explanation for what they are doing. “The northerners believe they have conquered the country and they can now treat the rest of us as slaves. We won’t allow that. As a matter of fact, as we speak, we are in court over the matter. “There is no reason on this earth why northerners should dominate NPA. Can a southerner do that kind of thing in the north? They will neverallow it. So are they insinuating that people here are fools or what? It is completely nauseating and annoying what is happening at the NPA.” Now given the fact that the Yoruba have accessed the Presidency for 16 years since 1999 by the time of the general elections in 2023, a people that don’t want to be dominated should not be trying to dominate Southern Nigeria. South West leaders from the national leader of APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the minister of minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, who recently called on the APC stakeholders to respect the agreement to zone the presidency to the South in 2023, should begin to drum support for the president to come from the South East, instead of scheming to be President. 

South East may be a PDP dominated zone since 1999 but the dominance of PDP is no longer guaranteed. Besides, there are many eligible APC statesmen from the South East that could be president. These include minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu; former Senate President Ken Nnamani; former governor of Abia State, Chief Orji Uzor Kalu; minister of Labour and former governor of Anambra State, Senator Chris Ngige; Ebonyi State governor, Engr. Dave Umahi. The argument that South East does not support APC enough holds no water, because in 1999 the Yoruba did not support PDP, yet PDP choose Obasanjo as its candidate who eventually won the presidential election!