By Bayo Oluwasanmi
We have been down this road many times before. “Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” have given way to permanent suffering, misery, poverty, chaos, crisis, violence, and nasty brutish life.
Purposeful government, responsible leadership, and constitutional accountability have been rejected by the Buhari imperial presidency that which democracy was explicitly designed to prevent. As 2023 sneaks upon us, it is not too early for Yorubas to think ahead, look ahead, and plan ahead. The trend with the incompetent leader in charge of the central government is taking Yorubas back to servitude and bondage.
The political history of Yorubas in modern Nigeria is a sad one. The Yorubas have become more like the proverbial horse. After it has been led out of a burning building by rescuers, by strange obstinacy and foolishness, the horse breaks loose from its rescuers and dash back into the building again and perish in the flame. By such stubborn tendency, traitors among us have made Yorubas indentured servants of the barbaric northern nomads running the federal government.
Yorubas have come to embrace perversion, misuse and abuse of power of evil men and traitors. Like human mouse Yorubas have been afflicted with a sense of their own inferiority. They have become too blind to see, too timid to speak out, and too self-satisfied to desire better than the slave diet they are being fed by their cruel slave drivers. Unfortunately, there seems to be no Awo, Gani, Tai Solarin, Fela, Awojobi, Abraham Adesanya, Bisi Onabanjo, Bola Ige, Beko, Aturu, et al.
Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire. Worst of all, we have come to accept the life of a beast. We have come to accept this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. Our young men – brilliant, talented and gifted university graduates – have become armed robbers. So also our young beautiful, smart, and creative college educated women have turned noon day prostitutes. Our elderly and our children are neglected and forgotten. The future holds no promise for the young ones.
As we march anxiously toward 2023, Yorubas must wake up from their slumber. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench Yorubas loose from the grip of the evil times and evil men. But it can be done.
We must chart a new course. We dare not rest content with a neat political doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is, we must not imitate the Sauls among us who will spare the best of the sheep and the oxen for their own benefit.
As we stand confused at the cross roads of 2023, Yorubas need men of breaking hearts who can lead us. Men who are prophets, not scribes. Scribes tell us what they have read. But prophets tell us what they have seen. The distinction between the two are real and profound and as wide as the sea. For too long, we have been deceived and damaged by the scribes. But at this uncertain times we need prophets.
We must not surrender to the traitors and evil ones among us. We must remove the ancient curse. The tough old traitors will not lie down and die in obedience to our command. They must be torn out like plant from the soil from our political future. They must be extracted in agony like a tooth from the jaw. Our miseries are caused by the radical dislocation of these traitors. They must be completely expelled from our midst.
As we take a long hard look at 2023, who is the next Yoruba traitor the northerners will use and dump again?
