Adeyinka Grandson wrote" Already, the Yoruba Nation has lost, and is losing, a lot. Apart from our considerable share in the confusion, poverty, and insecurity of Nigeria, we are today confronted by certain problems that have arisen uniquely for us in the Nigerian situation. For instance, because we place a great emphasis on educating our children, the rampant unemployment in Nigeria hits our educated youths in a more devastating way than it hits the youths of any other part of Nigeria. Equally importantly, because we have succeeded in making our Yoruba homeland in the Nigerian Southwest the safest and most hospitable region of Nigeria, the most free of religious and ethnic hostilities, and the most suitable and profitable for business, increasing numbers of people are flooding from other seriously deprived parts of Nigeria to take refuge in the Yoruba homeland. From our perspective as a people, the coming of these refugees and immigrants is welcome. Our receiving and welcoming them is harmonious with our culture, traditions and history. The problem (and a mighty problem) is that these refugees as they come these days, cannot see a clear and respectable Yoruba leadership, different from, and standing beyond, the leaderships of political parties. Consequently, some of these refugees often feel (and sometimes even say) that they are coming, as of right, into a ‘no-man’s land’, and that they are free to behave as they choose in our homeland. For instance, the sale, purchase and transfer of real-estate property go on in total chaos. We see refugees creating markets wherever they like in the streets of our towns. We see refugees sometimes creating markets from which traders of other ethnic groups, including even Yoruba traders, are barred. And we see refugees pushing traders that do not belong to their own particular ethnicity out of some of our old markets. We even see some attempting forcibly to create trading monopolies for themselves in certain commodities and in certain communities. We need to repeat that we welcome other peoples who are coming to our homeland and doing business there. We are historically the leading urban civilization in Black Africa, and that has for centuries disposed us to welcome foreigners to our land, to include those deserving among them into important positions in our communities, to offer the protection of our kings’ governments to the vulnerable and needy among them, and to ensure, under our native laws, that every one of them could work and do business as they chose. We the Yoruba nation are determined to preserve our cultural character, and to continue to lead as a land of openness, hospitality, harmony and prosperity. Therefore,we need to ensure that the influx of people into our homeland is orderly, and that no negative structures or traditions will be nurtured now by any immigrant group that can threaten the quality of harmonious life, or lead to conflicts and disorder, in our homeland. Obviously, we are today witnessing only the infancy of a development whereby our traditional openness and accommodation of strangers is turning our Yorubaland into the most desirable place in tropical Africa for the most ambitious and most achieving people, not only from Nigeria, but also from West Africa, from other regions of Africa, and from farther corners of the earth. We need to ensure very seriously that this development is orderly and harmonious from this beginning, in the interest of all concerned - in the interest of our own people, and in the interest of all who are now coming to our homeland to make new homes. It is extremely dangerous for us to allow the present incoming people to feel that they are coming into a no-man’s land, and that they are free to establish their own exclusive tribal enclaves which they want to defend against all others. It is dangerous to let cattle herders from other parts of Nigeria enter and seize territory as they wish in the northern grasslands of our homeland – sometimes doing so by attempting to kill off the indigenous Yoruba farming populations in such places. It is dangerous that our state governments should appear to have no land acquisition policy, as well as no policy of preserving some choice lands for ourselves and our offspring. A nation that allows itself to be thus freely trampled under by others risks losing its sense of self-respect and pride – and a lot more. It also risks seeing its homeland gradually degenerate into a land of lawlessness, disorder, and tribal conflicts. We, the Yoruba Nation, bear a big burden in this matter, a burden that no other nation in Nigeria is yet bearing today. And we need to stand up and make a shining success of it. Such a success may become a lesson that nations of tropical Africa will benefit from. -Prof. Banji Akintoye, April 26, 2013
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 22:32:11 +0000
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