On his
inaugural ride in the cultural chariot as the Yoruba generalissimo, he perhaps
will first have to contend with that eerie numbness - the odd feeling
experienced w
hen euphoria mixes with trepidation. Joy at attaining an epic
height; anxiety about meeting very high public expectation that comes with it.
This might
then tempt Gani Adams to imagine himself in a Freudian stream of consciousness.
His most humble beginnings, and his political re-education in the aftermath of
June 12 while Sani Abacha plagued the land. Then he became a fugitive, who was
later manacled and paraded like a scum by Obasanjo on a certain day in 2001.
If daring
spirit against military dictatorship thrust him into the national limelight, in
the beginning, the new Aare Ona Kakanfo
will soon find he needs more of wisdom to navigate his Yoruba homeland now
increasingly ensnared by political treachery. With various factions of the political
elites pursuing different interests, the jostle for the warlord's endorsement
by competing suitors will only get more intense.
The new Aare
is therefore well advised to apply more gumption in picking the company he
keeps to preserve his own personal dignity and save the integrity of the office
he occupies. Only then can he tentatively be said to stand a chance of
demystifying history and staving what is now commonly termed the Aare curse.
Coming when
dark political clouds appear to be gathering over the land with the nation's
ancient fault-lines looking further magnified, curiosity is bound to be aroused
among neighbors as to whether the descendants of Oduduwa are, with the
appointment of a war Filed Marshall, already bracing for a possible eruption of
hostilities in the times ahead. As they say, it is to deter the madman outside
that you breed and station one at home.
Such
apprehension rooted in fear of a possible throwback to the primitivity of
warfare by bow and arrow and fetishism will, however, be too far-fetched in the
21st century in sub-Saharan African. The only war that is certain and which
prospects will always remain is, of course, that of the mind. The locale
includes the cultural realm, the intellectual front as well as the political
sector.
But if
nothing at all, Adams' rise as Aare will invariably subject the Oodua Peoples
Congress (OPC) to a new interrogation as a body, particularly its policing
franchise in the South-West communities. Already, he says he will delegate more
functions to subordinates but remains the supreme leader. How that works out
without casting the body formally as the standing "army" available to
enforce the generalissimo's command should interest the nation's formal
security establishment in the times ahead.
While OPC
will increasingly come under pressure now to clean up its act given the greater
sense of responsibility the new office imposes on Adams, there is no denying
that it has always enjoyed the confidence of a substantial section of the
public. If the voice of the authorities has over the years become muted to
their operational excesses, it is probably borne out of a sense of guilt. The
OPC monster of today is only a product of an official failure to device
creative policing solutions to rapidly changing communities and demographics.
Part of the
enduring elite hypocrisy is that whereas they may deride its undisguised lumpen
identity and openly speak ill of the OPC roughnecks in daylight with the most
magisterial diction, but in the shadow of the night, they rely on same OPC's
vigilante services - backed with the crudest of munitions, charms and amulets -
to secure their tenements against relentless marauders amid police abdication.
Indeed, were
opinion survey to be conducted today across the South-West on who they truly
believe will be more swiftly responsive between the police and OPC on receipt
of distress call at night, the latter may carry the day.
Overall
official attitude has no less been dissembling. For instance, Badoo cultists
had more or less overrun Lagos suburb of Ikorodu in their homicidal campaign
recently with the police looking clueless until OPC weighed in and landed the
decisive blow.
Under the
Jonathan administration, the group similarly bagged the multi-billion contracts
for pipeline-protection in their South-West catchment area on the eve of the
2015 polls in what would unwittingly look more like a state surrender. The
government had lost faith in the efficacy of its own institutions of coercion
that it resorted to recruiting non-state actors to secure its own valuables.
While a
desperate Jonathan acted obviously more with an eye on votes - specifically
OPC's fabled 6 million registered members straddling the South-West and parts
of North-Central, that singular gesture perhaps signaled the formal
accreditation of the OPC as a bankable franchise by the Nigerian state.
Not
surprising, the unorthodox arrangement was summarily annulled after President
Buhari upon the assumption of office. But stories of oil theft soon became rife
again. If the negative SITREP around the Arepo sector ever since is to believe,
it is therefore only fair to admit that OPC at least helped to protect critical
oil assets.
Of course,
it was very convenient for Adams to later rationalize his open flirtation with
Jonathan in the context of the convocation of the 2014 national confab and the
promissory note to implement its resolutions, some of which are quite
consistent with OPC's extant position on the national question. Doing business
with Jonathan on account of the foregoing would then seem to be premised on
Lateef Jakande's self-serving theory that "half bread is better than
none".
But if that
were to be conceded, no sophistry can ever excuse the sheer outlawry, the
undisguised banditry later enacted when gun-wielding members staged a long
procession on Lagos highways for Jonathan on the election eve in 2015.
Taken
together, those then expecting finesse or chivalry of OPC in public engagement
could not be said to be fully aware of its difficult history and vexatious
genealogy. It started as a South-West's solidarity - if not rebel - movement in
the 90s in the aftermath of June 12 against the backcloth of Abacha's murderous
repression. Its early conscripts were mostly urban urchins.
Then, Abiola
was in captivity and wife Kudirat in untimely grave. Wole Soyinka, Bola Tinubu,
and others were in exile. OBJ was in the gaol over alleged coup plot. Bola Ige
hibernated in the gulag as POW (prisoner of war). Abram Adesanya miraculously survived a rain
of assassins' bullets... One Admiral was car-bombed to pieces few meters from
Lagos airport on mere suspicion of facilitating NADECO secret mails.
I was
working at near-by Concord Press then. Till date, I can still hear the echo of
the apocalyptic sound of the bomb exploding. Darkness was fast enveloping on
the land...
The
foregoing climate naturally conditioned the minds of the OPC recruits for the
indoctrination that "Yoruba's liberation" had become a historic
necessity. Since the presiding military oligarchy at the center already
classified the proposition of "a sovereign national conference" a
taboo, it was too obvious something now had to give. For the OPC, the
turning-point, however, came in 1999 following the coronation of Obasanjo as a
civilian president by the retreating generals. Obviously, it was meant to be
Yoruba appeasement over June 12 and MKO's eventual mystery death in custody.
Whereas the
intellectuals like Frederick Faseun within OPC saw the Obasanjo opportunity as
enough compensation and were therefore willing to collaborate and in fact bask
in a triumphalism of sorts, the tendency Adams represents remained dogmatic
about the sanctity of the original doctrine and was fiercely opposed to any
form of accommodation with the new dispensation.
The former
seemed to have mistaken the mere ceremony of Obasanjo presidency for the
substance of the dream of a just nation they always had.
Meanwhile,
realizing there was no more Abacha to fight, the underground army already
groomed and indoctrinated over the years had to diversify into vigilante
service and reassign themselves as an implacable avenger of any Yoruba injury
in the South-West and parts of Kogi and Kwara States.
Following
another eruption of OPC/Hausa violence in Lagos in 2001, OBJ finally found an
opportunity to bring the full weight of state powers against the irritant from
provincial Arigidi-Akoko. He was put away in detention for a long time.
Newspapers' front-page photograph of half-clad Adams in handcuffs was perhaps
all OBJ needed to send an emphatic message to his foot-soldiers still in the
trenches.
It is a
measure of Adams' resilience and focus that he survived OBJ's bulldozing
tactics and would spend the years ahead rebranding himself as a cultural
ambassador of the Yoruba nation, amassing not less than fifty chieftaincy
titles, equipping himself as an influential political player and, at some
point, would appear to have won the long-drawn supremacy battle with now
senescent Faseun.
Today, the
latter is content with being addressed simply as the "Spiritual
Leader" while his younger quarry remains the National Coordinator.
Today, OPC
should rank as the most formidable socio-cultural group in the country.
Indeed,
those who still speak lowly of Adams are perhaps only the ones fixated on the
old memory of the starry-eyed, hungry-looking carpenter who barged into the
national spotlight in the late 90s. The new Adams is suave and remarkably
corporatized. He has vastly improved himself academically by enrolling in the
university for a degree in History and acquired requisite political education
so much it won't be an exaggeration to say some of his largely proletarian
following now depend on him for their own intellectual nourishment.
This must be
the finest moment of the young man from rural Arigidi-Akoko, Ondo State.
0 Comments