Yoruba Council of Elders: ‘Latter-Day’ Freedom Fighters?

The ululation deafens the ear. The lullaby is oversung. The consolation is overpriced. Say it was Obasanjo who separated or made Afenifere separate into two groups with completely different opinions.

The polarized Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE) began to do the shoddy bid of Obasanjo to counter the ebullient efforts of Afenifere which was calling the power-intoxicated Obasanjo to order. YCE, instead of helping Afenifere, was mute when the apex Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, embarked on the business of asking Obasanjo to release Lagos council funds he held for over four years. While Afenifere was asking many questions that affected the Yoruba, YCE was playing a house-boy role. It was eating the debris from Aso-Rock given it by Obasanjo to destabilize Afenifere, which it did.

Today, it seems that YCE has woken from slumber or is it from sleep because; Obasanjo has used it and dumped it? Today, YCE is crying hoarse and canvassing for a Sovereign National Conference, because it feels that the Umar Yar’ Adua-led government has sidelined the Yorubas in the government’s cabinet formation.

Obasanjo was hated by Yorubas, according to them, that in his eight years in Aso Rock what he could do was to go to the South-East, North and raised all of them to governmental positions while in the Yoruba land, he kept people of character and suppressed them. “The only one he took from us, who had character, Chief Bola Ige, he gave back to us a dead person”.

As that could sound pitied, observers could remind YCE that Obasanjo was petroleum minister for eight years, (Funso) Kupolokun heads NNPC, Rasheed Gbadamosi fixes the pump price at the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) while General Oluleye’s son serves as Secretary of PPPRA, Kayode Naiyeju is the Nation’s Accountant-General, Adebayo Sarumi is the new Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Olusegun Adeniyi is S.A (communication) to President Umar Yar’Adua and so many other Yorubas occupying important key positions in the present administration.

The raising of eyebrow by YCE to accuse Yar’Adua to have what it described as subtle move to revive Hausa/Fulani hegemony in Nigeria was of the view that Chief of Staff to Head of Service, National Security Adviser (NSA), Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and the Executive Secretary of the Federal Capital Development Authority are so far northerners.

The cry of blue murder and foul by certain segment of the large ethnic groups in Nigeria sounds biased. And it is this dichotomy issue that has kept Nigeria in the opaque stage; while many comfigurated nations of the world are progressing, Nigerians are fighting for dichotomy. It is a shame! That was why Nigeria could not have a free and fair election in the just concluded elections in the country. The leadership here is bureaucratic!

It behoves Nigerians to work in one accord to uplift Nigeria to attain utopia. Whereby this could not work or could not be attained, it does not go well feigning ‘one Nigeria’ whereas the surname, Nigeria, is hard for Nigerians to bear. Rather the issue of ethnicity becomes paramount. Should there be a National Conference so that people will decide the fate of the Nigeria state because YCE is biased?