The Yorubas are becoming an insecure, frightened and second rate nation by Kola Odetola

No woman likes a clingy, insecure man. But that is what we , yorubas , are becoming, a frightened, insecure and second rate nation. So fearful that we cant even accept one of our own because his mother is ibo despite the fact that the Yoruba race is Patrilineal. There was a time when the word swagger was synonymous with the yoruba, Reflecting self assurance and confidence of the race. We exuded  self belief. The Ibos secretly admired us. They adopted our clothes and music. They flocked to our churches…. The big Pentecost  non-Orthodox  Churches , which were mostly founded by Yoruba Pastors… Redeem ,Living Faith, Mountain of Fire & Miracles , Aladura, Apostolic Church , Cherubim and Seraphim, Four Square Gospel Church , etc, all founded and headed by Yorubas!

We accommodated strangers because we were so sure of ourselves, of our standing in the world, our stature, our swagger that we knew our guests  were not a threat. Now all that has drained away. We are now like the insecure man who marries a pretty woman and is secretly consumed by self doubt,  fearing he is not good enough for her. He therefore tracks her every movement, obsessively going  through her phone, hates her male colleagues because he is petrified she will leave him for soneone better. Is this how low we have fallen that we now fear those we once used to regard as culturally inferior to us? We once said the ibos could not dance, could not dress, lacked poise and polish, were not as read as us. Now, we work ourselves into a frenzy about them taking  over a Yoruba  city ( Lagos) hundreds of miles from the nearest  hamlet in the south east. One of the greatest ever yoruba leaders Adekunle Fajuyi  ,allegedly , once gave his life rather than live with the dishonour of handing over his Ibo guest ( Ironsi) to those who wanted to murder him.

We now compete with each other to denounce our ibo guests whose only crime is trading and living in our midst, ideologically handing them bound and foot to the caliphate who hate and distrust us as much as they hate and distrust them. We look for wild statements of a few ibos to justify our fear of all of them  and in doing so  , demonstrating  not our courage, but our fear, our insecurity, our deep rooted inferiority compkex towards  a tribe who have outmatched us and outpaced us in almost all spheres of life … business acumen , education, tenacity , can do attitude , and many more. A tribe who rose from the ruins of a war in which they lost 10% of their population but refused to break or, to be broken  and made to beg  or ,to  wallow in self pity, to  feel sorry for themselves, did not fear those who beseiged their land, but went forth and conquered  their land through commerce those who had conquered their land with bombs. They bought our property  in Yoruba land while we frittered the proceeds on women and easy living.

Then , having wasted our inheritance , blame those with greater foresight and discipline of taking over land  which we freely sold to them. They take care of their relatives, training them in the family trade while we turn ours to house helps and drivers. They pool their resources together while ours is used to tear our families apart. They build businesses, while we chase every lowly special adviser job , looking for government  jobs and contracts. They have learnt to thrive when marginalised  , that is, even  when deliberately excluded from government largesse , they still have a lower level of poverty than we and their killers of the 1960s. It shows in sports. In the 1980’s the national football team was split down the middle between ibos and yorubas , with hardly any Northerner in the team , with the yorubas dominating the more glamorous and creative roles in the national  football team. For every Okala, there was an Odegbami, every Chukwu a  Muda Lawal, every Stanley Okonkwo a Fekix Owolabi. But since the 90s and 2000s, the roll of honour in our national game has been claimed by rhe ibos. Who have the yorubas produced to match the profile and performances of Jay Jay Okocha, Emmanuel Amuneke, Kanu Nwankwo, Mikel Obi, Vincent Onyeama.

When ability, fortitude, resilience, drive and determination is needed we see the ibos. But when patronage, easy living and dissolute lifestyles are on show  enter the yorubas and other groups in Nigeria. We cant even plan coups properly. The most incompetent coup ever planned in Nigerian  military history was the one plotted by yoruba officers in beer parlours over pepper soup and big stout against Abacha leading to its most senior officer grovelling (late General Oladipo Diya) before the dictator pleading for his miserable  life. The coup before that planned by ibo and delta officers – the Gideon Orkar ( a Tiv Officer) putsch in 1990 saw the prime movers defiant to the bitter end, facing death with honour. How did we end up here? Twenty five(25 ) years of flirting with power at the centre, of living off and chasing unearned income, of prostrating before the caliphate has turned us to feudal retainers. Men who have lost their manhood. We are cowed into silence when state sponsored gangs rampage across our lands raping our women, burning our farms, slaughtering our youth. The few who find the courage to fight back we disown, we call them ruffians( Sunday Igboho) . When our Youths protest against injustice as they did during the EndSARS ,  we attribute it fittingly to an ibo plot. 

At the same time , we failed to see the qualities needed to organise  and execute a protest  so well executed it captured the international air waves and imagination of the world for days  and required courage, initiative and drive. Qualities we are now so enfeebled, so morally vacous  and lacking , we happily agree  courage and sagacity belong to the ibos and not us.A fish rots from the head. Our legacy was built by giants like Fajuyi, Awolowo and to a lesser extent Abiola. Men who gave their freedom and their lives rather than surrender their principles. But what have we now? Bola Tinubu who, with his dubious background would never have been employed by any of us , if he had come to us for employment with such  a history and background and who keeps quiet when millions of ibos are put at risk in his city by vicious tribal bigotry and  ethnic baiting because of his lust for power. Bola Tinubu who buried his head when his own people were being gunned down in churches in their own land  at Owo by gun men under the protection of his fulani bosses. In the halycon days of the founder of the modern Yoruba race , the closest Bola Ahmed Tinubu would have got to power would have been organising security at UPN party conferences. 

Today he is the acknowledged leader of the  Yoruba race. How low have we fallen that we are proud and openly accept Bola Tinubu , with his background, as our leader. Would Tinubu have laced AWO’s shoes? We have these last few weeks of eternal shame  revealed our weakness, our insecurity, the spiritual barrenness that now lies like a void at the centre of our world. We fear a yoruba man because he has an ibo mother? Are Yoruba now matrilineal? Thats how supine, how fearful  we have become. We forget the Yoruba killed in their hundreds last year by state protected fulani gunmen because we are desperate to be awarded office by those who defile  our women and pillage our land. Principle counts for nothing. We are up for sale and not for very much. This is how far we have fallen. We have won an election but lost our soul, we are in office but not in power. 

We are now Pound Land (that is, Cheap) land, okrika wake version of the fulani elite who inspite of their monopoly of power at the centre  feared the commercial acumen and success of the Ibo for 5 decades , so much they turned on them whenever they felt threatened by their own inadequacies as we have done the last few weeks. We are now a pale imitation of the Fulani, a frightened, insecure, tremulous and second rate nation clinging like leeches to power we seek at any cost because we have nothing else to offer. The Ibos have not held power for 60 years and thrived. We have just won it for the 3rd time in the same period and still like the fulani  fear them. This is how low a once great people have fallen.

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