The Obasanjo command of Obas has once again sparked Indigenous Africans emotionalism as we make loud protestations on superficialities, at the expense of addressing the real issues and miss the opportunity to provide real solutions. This trait has become more evident and worse in this Digital Age whereby everyone has an opinion on the latest trending issues, spending a lot of energy on motion with no movement.
Normally, we should ignore the latest trending news of General Obasanjo stating and enforcing a nearly 100yr old colonial protocol of Obas having to stand up in respect of a Governor arriving at an event, but it would be a dereliction of civic duty on our part to let this issue pass without bringing to fore the real issues for a solution.
It appears to be made worse because Obasanjo didn’t support Tinubu as a Yoruba presidential candidate so many are using it to cast aspersions of his Yorubaness. Instead of attacking the messenger, one should examine the message in place even before the birth of the messenger, which is that our traditional institutions have been placed on the lowest rung of the power ladder of our political system.
In addition to standing up for governors, there are many more ignominies, like any Oba can’t leave his jurisdiction for an out of town visit, without informing the Governor. The noise and abuse against Obasanjo will not stop all Obas having to stand up for the governor tomorrow nor for the next 100yrs unless there is an action plan to challenge this established protocol. If any Oba decides not to stand up for the governor that handed him his staff of office and the governor decides to remove him, there is nothing anybody can do apart from another round of social media tirades.
Some articles have refered to the previous similar altercations between Deji Of Akure Oba Ademulegun Adesida and Awolowo, Bode Thomas and Alaafin of Oyo, but they fail to advocate a means to an end of this issue. Yes, it came with the colonial system but the blame doesn’t fully lie with the colonists but our own Western educated elite that used it to wrestle for power from our traditional institutions. For us to be colonized, the Europeans wrestled power from our traditional institutions, and when we got independence the power should have returned to them. However, our Western educated scholars and politicians wrestled the power through laws that relegated our monarchs to the local government level while they became the neocolonial guard. The foremen of the political plantations known as colonies.
This isssue is very deep since it affects every aspect of our lives, because for the Eurocentric elite to take power from our traditional institutions, they connived with the Europeans to mentally enslave us. This they did by committing epistemicide, the killing of our traditional knowledge systems to derail and balkanize our civilizational worldview into Pan Tribalistic perspectives that have since arrested our political and economic development. To break our collective indigenous civilizational power that could challenge the colonists, they broke the continuum of dialects that spread from Nigeria to South Africa as a civilization into two thousand tribes by choosing a dialect in every subregion and made it the standard tribal language.
This was done with the help of our own Eurocentric scholars, starting with Bishop Ajayi Crowther that wrote a Yoruba Bible in Oyo dialect and institutionalized it as the only acceptable language of colonial institutional communication in Yorubaland, apart from English. This was also to denigrate our traditional information systems by labelling it’s key, Esu the essence of information, as Satan. With the denigration of our information systems that upheld our traditional institutions, our people that were schooled by missionaries and foreign European colleges pushed tribalism in which they could be the foremen to control and be representatives of their tribe within the neocolony, instead of a unifying civilizationalism to challenge foreign civilizational imperialism.
In the pre and post independence movements and legislation, the Southern Eurocentric scholars and academicians, labelled Alakowes in Yoruba, ensured that the kings were relegated to the lowest rung of the neocolonial political system. Monarchs that challenged the neocolonial system were unceremoniously removed like those of Owo etc. In the North, Western educated elites couldn’t denigrate their traditional information system being Islam nor balkanize their Afro-Arabic civilization but they also tried to relegate their traditional rulers. Emirs and even the Sultan of Sokoto have been dethroned in the new neocolonial governance system.
This resulted in a system that placed long term stakeholders under short term stakeholders like professional politicians, which made the system operators look towards their Western Masters backing, adopting their exploitative perspective and neglected their responsibilites to the people and stakeholders. Ironically, knowing that the real power and connection to the people resides in our traditional institutions that shape our identity, politicians kick off their political campaigns in palaces after which they ignore the kings and the people once they get into power.
The effect of the wrestling of power from the long term stakeholders by the neocolonial guard is still visible, as we see that the North that still respects it’s civilization is the most effective political bloc, followed by the Yorubas whose politicians starting from Awolowo drew on Ooni of Ife’s influence. The Igbos led by Azikwe from the US Black Power Movement became modernist and universalists fare the worst. This reminds one of Felas folklore song Alu Jon Jon ki Jon whereby all the youth decided to kill their parents, except Fela that ran to hide his mother. When hunger came, only Fela survived.
Now we have unattached politicians that come from nowhere with unknown sources of wealth to buy elections, then rob the commonwealth and disappear after their tenute ends, with nobody to hold accountable especially when they flee abroad to where they keep their loot with the colonial masters.
We at ASHE Foundation have advocated for the restructuring of our political system from a neocolonial democracy, whose politicians are authenticated by foreign colonial institutions like Chatham house, to what is known as a civilizational democracy in which our traditional institutions chose the INEC makeup and are guarantors of politicians.
This is to enable a culturally representative democracy to force the politicians to be responsible to the people through long term stakeholders. The greatest defect of the current political system is that the Independent National Election Commission is never independent and therefore a democracy in name alone since it is run by neocolonial guards with no local strings attached, apart from those of the foreign colonial masters.
We have vouched that since the Nigeria nation-state recognizes that there are just two civilizations – Original African and Afro-Arabic – which it rightly placed the Ooni of Ife and Sultan of Sokoto as co-chairmen, the makeup of INEC should be done by the two civilizational camps. This will make sure that the politicians are guaranteed by one of the two civilizational camps. We can’t continue the fallacy of Western modernism and universalism which is a guise for Western civilizational tenets to run our African political systems, otherwise there would be a question of allegiance and true representation, which is why all African political systems fail.
So instead of crying over making Obas stand and sit like school children, we must examine the rot that goes down to the root of this neocolonial system. It shouldn’t be all about noise that we are known for. When living in the USA, African Americans used to make fun of Yoruba and Igbos that we shout the loudest when offended but never fight. I hope in this case we won’t only shout at Obasanjo but bite the system that he was only stating it’s established procedures. We should push for restructuring and just don’t be contented with having a Yoruba as president who is also a product and advocate of the neocolonial system. We should push for real cultural revolution and reclamation of power, not just mere cultural tokenism of asking Obas not to stand up for their defacto leaders..
