By Moses Oludele Idowu
Let me begin by way of clarification: I am not a card- carrying member of any party and have no loyalty to anyone. My loyalty is to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Of late I have been inundated with several calls, posts and solicitations imploring me to support the re-election of Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the All Progressive Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate in Lagos State. The way these calls and posts and bombardments through various formats and platforms are staged it is like Lagos is under imminent attack from foreign takeover and external invasion.
It is these irritatingly vacuous and asinine propositions by opportunists and third-rate Social Media activists and mediocre intellectuals that I want to demolish in this intervention. The manipulation of information, the deployment of ethnic sentiments and religious sympathies; the dubious and maniacal insinuations and re-arranging the facts to suit intended sinister purpose by people who neither love the Yorùbá people nor care about religion is what irritates me and, which I want to expose here. I have been closely associated with Lagos since 1995 and until recently I have lived there. So, I am aware of the entire history of the Fourth Republic as per Lagos State and all the administrations that have ruled Lagos since 1999.
This is why I am a bit disturbed at the campaigns of calumny flying around about the supposed takeover of Lagos by a certain tribe. If you have ruled a place consistently for 24 years under the same party and you are still afraid of takeover, then it is a proof that you failed in your assignment, or you did not do all that was required of you. It is not for you to run from pillar to post or demonise another tribe, but to calmly see your own failure. If you train a child for 24 years, and now that child wants to rebel and change his parentage, it is actually not his fault but the parent’s. That is the truth they are not telling you which I will tell you here.
Few days ago, the ubiquitous and noisy Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Lagos State Chapter, through its executive unanimously adopted Babajide Sanwo-Olu as the governorship candidate and asked people to re-elect him for a second term. With due respect, and in all humility, I stand to tell you that what you did was wrong. It is not your place to adopt a candidate or seek for the re-election of a candidate of any party. As clergymen, you are supposed to be neutral and maintained neutrality. And if you must be partisan, then it has to be private not using the corporate organ of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria.
The Labour Party’s (LP) candidate, Arch. Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, is a Christian too, so on what basis are you showing partiality between two candidates? I am also aware of several Yorùbá Groups and Yorùbá Nation activists who have been busy writing, posting, soliciting for the need to prevent Lagos State from been captured by outsiders. Thus, they want us to vote the APC candidate and reject the Labour Party candidate, whom they claim is an agent of the vehicle of complete Igbonisation of Lagos State!
Several arguments, some of them utterly fallacious, jejune, and illogical, have been adduced to support this infantile reasoning including the Awo – Zik spat of 1950’s. Let me say this blunt truth that our people are not careful to notice: If Lagos State falls on Saturday 18 March 2023 to the Labour Party or any “foreign” candidate, the number one person to hold responsible is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It is not anyone’s fault, but Tinubu himself and the way he has governed Lagos State, both directly and indirectly from 1999 till now.
People are afraid of consequences, but they forget that it is their choices and causes that produce consequences. It is what you sow that you reap. It is now time to reap for all the sowing of the last 24 years. There should be nothing to fear if you have done well. The rewards of your hands are now about to be given to you. It is now time to carry your own cross! Thus, all these barrage of information manipulation and ethnic profiling are not necessary.
Let me now debunk certain claims in the public domain: It is being said that current struggle for power in Lagos State is akin to the Awo- Zik struggle for the defunct Western Region in 1950’s. It is not!
What is going on in Lagos State regarding this election is not like the famous Awo- Zik case. It is not even similar. In the 1950s, Zik was the usurper, an interloper trying to rule in a region that was not his own. Also, the political vehicle he was using, NCNC, was founded by Yoruba elites, but after becoming the leader of the political group, he introduced tribalism and turned it to an Igbo party. For instance, when he was contesting, he should have allowed another person as the leader of the party, instead he chose an Igbo man like himself.
Also, Awo and the Action Group’s programs were far better and superior to Zik’s and those of the NCNC even now in retrospect. That was in the 1950’s. It is not the same today. We have seen how APC has ruled Lagos State and how a Mafia has emerged as leaders, the lack of accountability, the corruption, rent- seeking patronage system, the level of poverty (Lagos is the most-indebted state in Nigeria, even though it is also the state with the highest Internally Generated Revenue, IGR), the alienation of the youths, neglect of the old and the native Lagosians, etc.
It is an insult when you compare Awolowo with these people. It is an abuse of language when you compare Awo’s struggle for power with these people’s struggle for power, which is basically for their own benefits and selfish interests. The noise about the Yorùbá interest is chiefly diversionary; the Asiwaju Bọla Ahmed Tinubu’s gang care nothing about the Yorùbá Race! I will come to that soon.
I sympathize with genuine Yoruba-born who feel sincerely bothered and worried that Lagos State is about to become a No-Man’s Land, which is what the Labour Party’s victory would signpost. However, the seeming loss of Lagos State did not begin today; it began long ago. It began when someone, because of his ambition and greed, began to sell, through his agents, every choice estate to developers, non- indigenes, and even non-Yoruba sub-nationals. He did not consider then that the effect will come back someday to haunt him. The Yorùbá people have been losing Lagos State for a long time. I could see it, but many of my tribesmen did not see it. Now, I am afraid, it is too late. The consequences of Tinubu’s foolish and selfish actions are now here.
I will speak exhaustively another time of how Yorùbá Race began to lose Lagos State but let me just mention few cases that our duo will remember.
Excluding Lagos State from Yoruba Struggles
If you observe for a long time, Lagos State usually stands apart from other Yorùbá states. It rarely identifies with other Yorùbá states in their struggles or share the collective aspirations and desires of the Yorùbá Nation. They see other Yorùbá sub-nationals as grabbers and usurpers who want to eat Lagos’ wealth. Observe that during the Constitutional Conference, Lagos stood apart from other Yoruba states in their position. “Gedegbe l’Eko wa” was their slogan meaning, Lagos stands apart!
When the South-West Region was besieged front and left by Fulani invaders and herdsman-terrorists and the South-West Governors met for a common position, was Lagos State part of it? Only the Deputy Governor represented Lagos State at the meeting. And when the Amotekun Security Network was set up, Lagos State was not part of it. Tinubu has always loved to govern Lagos State as a fiefdom and not share it with anyone! Good. So, fight the battle too alone. Why are you now appealing to Yorùbá sentiments? So, go face the battle alone!
“Lagos stands apart?” Good, so stand apart and fight your electoral battle without appealing to Yorùbá Race to help you.
The General Adebayo’s Letter
Before his death, the late General Adeyinka Adebayo wrote a passionate letter to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Since I read that letter, I have kept a copy of it. It was a beauty of a statement by someone who has seen it all, a patriot, and a passionate Yoruba man conscious that all politics is first local. What Adebayo warned about has already befallen the Yoruba Race now in the South-West. How many industries existing today in the South-West are owned by Yoruba businesspersons? How many existing in Lagos are owned by Lagosians, and Yoruba sub-nationals? The paper industry used to be exclusively owned by Yoruba businesspersons. Go to Mushin today and see who now controls it.
The banking system used to be the turf of the Yoruba Race. Today, another tribe has displaced you lock, stock and barrel. How has your policy, Asiwaju Bọla Ahmed Tinubu, impacted this or brought it about? What have you done about addressing the genuine concerns expressed by that illustrious army general in the last few years? Why is it only electoral victory that you are concerned about and returning to office? Of what use is a Yorùbá control of Lagos State, when it is the Yorùbá Administration that has impoverished its own people? Whether you are aware of this or not, your policies have driven many Yorùbá people to find succour elsewhere outside Lagos State.
And do not forget that for every Yorùbá man that leaves Lagos State, two Igbo sub-nationals or Northerners come to take their place. That is why you now have the dangerous demographics that you have today. That is one of the factors that resulted in the Waterloo of Saturday February 25, 2023, and the worse is yet to come, except you do the right thing and take the right steps. It is still not too late if you know what to do, but it is not by deploying ethnic sentiments; it has gone beyond that. Pray you will find the wisdom to know what to do before Saturday 11 March 2023 (now March 18).
Policies Alienating Yorùbá People
Another factor in the crisis that has befallen the APC is the policies, deliberate policies that tend to drive indigenous Lagosians away for reasons best known to them. I will give few examples:
Under Bola Ahmed Tinubu, virtually every Igbo Governor had a plot in Lagos State, but Tinubu denied a fellow Yoruba Governors this opportunity. Lam Adeshina was the Governor of Oyo State and he helped Tinubu covered his tracks at a time when he claimed to have attended Ibadan Government College, which is untrue. It was this governor who ensured that the records were not found. Yet, how did Tinubu pay him back? He applied several times for a plot of land in Lagos State without Tinubu granting the request even when he gave Igbo Governors the privilege. Anytime Lam Adeshina came to a meeting in Lagos State, he must return before night to go and sleep in Ibadan. This is the same Tinubu who is now claiming to love Yorubas than Oduduwa.
Whenever he is threatened, he always resorts to ethnic card like when the APC cabal was trying to deny him the ticket. But how much does he really love Yorubas? There was riot in Ibadan and markets were destroyed and Yoruba sub-nationals killed. Did you hear his voice? Did he donate anything? But he has donated for rebuilding Katsina Market, Kano Market, except for rebuilding of burnt markets in Yoruba land. This is the man who is now appealing to Yoruba sub-nationals not to allow Igbo people to takeover Lagos. Who cares?
The policies of APC took properties of the natives and gave them to the highest bidders. Yorùbá people were evacuated in Badia under the name of re-development and who got the prime land thereafter? Yoruba people were evicted from Tejuosho Market and a New Ultra-Modern Market was built, which the poor Yoruba former shop owners could not afford. Did your government give them the loan or empowerment to be able to take them? Today, Igbo businessmen and women largely have also taken over Tejuosho Market. These are the Yorùbá people you want to vote for you on Saturday 18 March 2023? The same Yorùbá people you have impoverished through your greed-driven philosophy and neo- liberal economic policies?
What about the Ilaje people? You destroyed their shanties without building a replacement for them. What about the owners of Makoko and other indigenous lands that your government, backed with touts and police evicted by force of arms to God- knows where? These are the votes that you would be missing on Saturday March 18, 2023. Your government drives away street traders and arrest them for street trading, while the touts who extort money from motorists are left unmolested and unaddressed because they are “cooperative mobs.” Those are the Yoruba people who may vote against you on Saturday March 18, 2023.
How about the Housing Estates? Who owns the choice plots of land in Lagos Island today? In Banana Island, Osborne Ikoyi, Eko Atlantic City, etc? You have sold everything that can be sold in terms of landed estate so future Lagosians will wake up to pay the debts that you have generously incurred for them.
What happened on Saturday February 25, 2023, was not just an Igbo affair or even youth revolt. It was a Yorùbá revolt too. Many Yoruba sub-nationals are aggrieved the way APC, and especially Bola Tinubu, has managed Lagos State in the past few years. That was the tsunami you saw on Saturday February 25, 2023.
You can still prevent the hurricane that is coming if you do the right thing even as late as it is, not by appealing to ethnic sentiments. It does not mean anything because you really don’t love Yorùbá people, and the people now know it. It is left for you to do the right thing before it is late. Saturday March 18, 2023, will soon be here. Please stop appealing to Yoruba or ethnic sentiments. Use your records of achievement in the last 24 years if they are good enough. Be prepared to carry your cross. It is now pay back time!
…You can follow him Apostle Idowu on Facebook: Moses Oludele Idowu; Twitter: @MosesOludele and WhatsApp: 08034697670
