By Lanre Adewole
True, the Yoruba believe that those burdened by hunger pangs are unmoved by other issues around them. We can call them the tifun loran (belly only) clan. Do we then say that was the reading of the Oyo school mass kidnapping by the Bola Tinubu presidency, which offered grieving parents with toddlers in captivity rice and undisclosed (either paltry or wad) sums of money, exactly two weeks after the dastardly act?
The presidential delegation to the raided community was supposed to deliver comfort and assurance to the traumatised residents with their loved ones in kidnappers’ den, but ended up denigrating their humanity by reading them in, as tifun loran (For Food Only, FFF), as we used to call those who were always cooking, especially beans, in Ife.
President Bola Tinubu swore by the constitution at his inauguration to ensure the security of his country as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but when his backyard was raided and children that should be in the comfort of their mothers’ bosoms were taken away into the bush, it took him 15 days to respond and his real first act of empathy, was sending the grieving, rice. How shameful!
When a situation confounds beyond comprehension, the Yoruba will say “oro pesi je (no words/speechless) or “oro so sini lenu o bu iyo si” (perplexing contradiction), considering that President Tinubu is supposed to be the master strategist, a thinker and an intelligent operator if not completely intellectually-rooted.
I remember the height of his political orbit’s clash with the Nigerian Tribune years back when he was seen as being deliberately obtrusive around Awo’s legacies, to advance his own politics and the in-house columnists had to mount a dignified defence for the memory of the immortal Sage. His bards sang, using the avalanche of media platforms available to them, but the Tribune defence wasn’t only impregnable, occasional offensive also hit with precision. At a point, the big masquerade peeped under the masked costume to quip “Tribune acts before thinks”. Then the armistice and disarmament.
Should we also say Villa acted before thinking in sending rice and cash (palliative diplomacy or what) to grieving parents who have three year olds in killers’ captivity? Is that route of comforting taken because the people involved are mostly poor, everyday Nigerians, who must have been battling with the hunger, lack and once-in-a-lifetime cost of living crisis ignited by the reforms of the president? Why was the “palliative” not brought before their children and loved ones were kidnapped? That means the administration has always known the depth of the existential crisis triggered by the so-called reforms and just assumed that those tough enough would survive and those unfortunate not to, would go in as the data needed to weigh the downside of the imperialist-crafted reforms, wholly embraced by the president who had always positioned himself as a pro-people welfarist while in opposition.
Truly, no art to deconstruct the heart of man.
A few weeks back I heard the president has long stopped sitting with the think-tank that used to be the nucleus of his political and governance drawing board for decades long before his successful shot at the presidency. I’m sure he has his reasons, but you are likely acquiring new friends and advisers if you are discarding the old ones.
The question is “who are the president’s new advisers”?. I ask because recent missteps are becoming so fundamental one can’t but wonder if the infamous demons of the presidential villa, for which two presidential spokespersons briefly exchanged “friendly” fire years back, aren’t back at work and even busier than before, with the new schedule focusing solely on forcing unpardonable, school-boy presidential errors.
Jesus says demons always return with seven more powerful colleagues when forced out and vacuum left behind. It would seem the returnees found their former fortress swept clean and empty.! The part of Matthew 12l that frightens is the end of the inhabited fellow or space being worse than the beginning.
These days I receive regular taunt from my non-Yoruba friends. One regularly hollers, once I say hello on the phone, “Asiwaju, parapo” in his accent-accentuated voice. I understand the jibe; my race had long postured as the one with governance mojo and the current Nigerian leader was supposed to represent the finest of the most gifted of the race, in human and resource management. Of the two individuals who have represented the Oduduwa race at the presidential zenith since the return of civil rule, Asiwaju was supposed to be the better half of the duo and the argument was always quick to be made, until now, that Olusegun Obasanjo wasn’t the choice of the race and couldn’t have represented its real essence. The conclusion would seem correct; he was pulled out of gulag by the Northern political machine, cleaned up by the same Northern elite and packaged to the presidency by the same clique in his first term. The Yoruba completely rejected him, though the omo eni o sedi bebere (identity politics) sentiment, came in, in his re-election dynamics and the race decided to own him, especially when the North which made his first term possible, began baying for blood and “our ” power (à la Attahiru Bafarawa).
Tinubu, however, was Yoruba-Made (à la Yoruba lokan/emilokan). Even the cosmopolitan Lagos, which now has the indigenes as minority, lost to Peter Obi of Labour Party in 2023, didn’t sit well with many Yoruba elite. Till date, many of them, especially those who see the Igbo community in the state, as doing what the children of Israel did while in “captivity” in Egypt; deliberate expansionism, are not only very bitter but poised for landmark revenge. One told me recently that “everything” will go into the revenge plan, to hand a very humiliating defeat to Obi, now the presidential candidate of NDC not only in Lagos but the entire South West in the January 2027 presidential contest.
Well, for good measure, the Yoruba elders also expect Asiwaju to be routed in the entire South East, despite the governors of the entire zone either in APC or backing the president.
One of them asked me “why should you demand from me what you can’t give me”? to explain his visceral opposition to Obi doing electorally well in Lagos when Tinubu won’t receive up to 5% in any of the South Eastern states. I told him the rest of Nigeria hasn’t been fair to Ndigbo, by locking a whole race out of the presidential villa since 1999 and if they see a path through Obi, you can’t blame them for mobilizing and being desperate. None of us, convinced the other.
But even for most of the pro-Tinubu Yoruba elite which stretches to Kogi and Kwara, the president has been dismal in the last three years and for those who think the verdict too harsh, they are holding hope he would hold it down in his second term. I interact a lot with many of the Yoruba elite these days to see how their minds are working; they are mostly for the president and hopeful he would at least scrape a narrow win at first ballot to secure reelection. Somehow, many of them believe he would still restructure the country and firmly believe he’s courageous enough to do so. The tax reform win for the president buoyed the confidence of those hopeful a new Nigeria would emerge from under his armpit in his second term.
I personally don’t think Asiwaju is more courageous than Obasanjo, even Yemi Osinbajo. But providence has placed him on the pedestal of history, to either do it or be damned.
Just like South East alone and splintered Igbo voters nationwide cannot elect Obi, Yoruba voters alone won’t reelect the president. That fact is notorious.
Even Atiku Abubakar of ADC, despite being the lone presidential candidate from the North, won’t torpedo Tinubu with only Northern votes, though he’s poised to reap a windfall from his own. The line-up of frontrunners is pointing to a 2023 rematch and identity politics/religion will play huge roles, though the collective hunger would also be a hot button in the coming campaign.
Whether the Yoruba race likes it or not, 2027 is a referendum on the performance of its “begotten” son and it would be self-deceit, singing “hosanna” to the one who is coming. It would be delusional hoping the president can be reelected on the strength of his performance so far. Yes, I have been told he got his “Emperor “ nickname as Lagos governor because he abhorred being advised. The first of his several impeached-deputies, Mrs Kofo Bucknor-Akerele alluded to this in an interview conducted by then-Nigerian Tribune Deputy Political Editor, Alhaji Bola Badmus, and published on September 21, 2024.
More details here...
