Offa: History beckons The ancient town of Offa, Kwara state, by my expectation, is not a place that will be unknown to many Nigerians. If you don’t have a friend or relation that attends or attended the Federal Polytechnic situated in the town, you are very likely to have heard about a school called Adesoye College in Offa(a college so prestigious that IBB’s children and some of Farouk Abdulmuttallab’s siblings attended). If you did human Geography in school or have read elsewhere about the golden years of railway system in Nigeria, it is not unlikely that you would have come across Offa as one of the most important railway stop points in the North-South railway route at the time. If you know basic Yoruba history, then you must have heard about Moremi Ajasoro, the beautiful and courageous Ife Princess who, as we heard and read in history, came from Ile-Ife to rescue Offa warriors from the hands of the invaders in one of the battles of old. But Offa is in the spotlight again. Not for any of the above, not even for the under reported, unheralded yet historic event that happened in the town in December last year. The event: The Alaafin of Oyo and Ooni of Ife, both unarguably the most influential traditional rulers in Yoruba race, met at the coronation ceremony of the new Olofa of Offa, and in what has never been seen in the last two decades, both arch-rival Super-traditional rulers hugged each other and ended the longstanding hostility between them. Many followers of the politics of traditional institutions in yorubaland will swear that that cannot happen, but right at the palace of the king of my dear town, it happened. That is still by the way, anyway. Now the biggest, well reported event in the town in the last few days is the dislodgement by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) of the ruling People’s Democratic Party(PDP) in the recent re-run of the Local Government Chairmanship election. Given the frenzy about politics at the moment, we can pardon the media for giving the political event better reportage than the equally, if not more, significant traditionally historic event that happened at Olofa’s palace. The reclaim of Offa from the claws of PDP is historic in many respects. To people that know much about the political history of the town, this event was a fait accompli. A quick rehash of history will lend credence to this. Offa, though classified as North, has never seen itself as one. History has it that Offa has always gone where the West(now South West) goes. Sharing culture and tradition with other Yoruba speaking towns in the South-West, Offa has refused to diffuse into the politics of the North. They rather prefer to remain opposition in the North’s political firmament. In pre-independence politics through the First Republic, Offa was a staunch base of Awo’s Action Group. In fact, Chief Josiah Sunday Olawoyin, the town’s most successful politician and a dyed-in-the-wool Awoist, was the leader of opposition in Sardauna’s NPC-dominated northern parliament at the time. In the second republic, Offa people, again, preferred to go with their counterparts in the West, pitching tent with Awo’s Unity Party of Nigeria(UPN). The party’s candidate in the then Kwara state’s gubernatorial election was in fact a home boy, Chief J.S Olawoyin again. Needless to say the party lost to NPN, making Offa in the minority party again in both Federal and state levels. When the return to civil rule in 1999 saw Awo’s men resurrect under the banner of Alliance for Democracy(AD), your guess on what party ruled Offa is as good as mine. Like had happened in the past, AD won in Offa but that was not sufficient to produce the governor as Saraki’s APP’s candidate, late Rear Admiral Mohammed Alabi Lawal, became the state’s chief executive, with Offa finding itself in the minority party yet again. But when AD, still banking on the Awo sentiment, went on slumber, and PDP’s abracadabra caught them off-guard in 2003, my beloved Offa was not spared. That was how, like other South-Western states with the exception of Lagos, Offa, for the first time, found itself in a mainstream party – the PDP. While the regional and opposition politics of Offa lasted, some people argued that the elusive development of the town was due to its rigid opposition stature. We always follow South-West(or the West, as was formerly known), whose development initiatives like free education cannot benefit us not being under their territory, officially. At the same time, being in the opposition party, we hardly find favour from the government of our region/state. That was the dilemma. Proving the time-tested knowledge that Offa goes where their other Yoruba brothers go politically, the ACN whirlwind blowing across South-West has touched Offa, with the January 13, 2011 local government election that rattled the PDP and, when the dust settled, handed the ancient town to ACN. This, unfortunately, did not come without a price, as the exercise was marred with arson. What I read in papers that the fathers of ACN’s aspirant and PDP’s aspirant’s godfather had their houses razed down was particularly disturbing, and is uncharacteristic of Offa, a town not known for political violence. Now that Offa is back to the fold of people that call themselves progressives, rightly or wrongly, anything short of a sterling performance from the new man is a complete let down. Even with my belief that the only trustworthy PDP politician is a dead one, I have been cautious in joining the messianic frenzy about their ACN counterparts too, given the political reality in this country. ACN, to be fair to them, however, did it in Lagos and Edo, while Ekiti and Osun appear to be threading the path of outstanding governance too. We cannot afford anything less in Offa. Let this be sounded to the ears of the new man and party at the helms of affairs. The sweeping of the PDP should not just be literal, it must be practical; there must be difference, else the same broom will be used to sweep them away. Offa deserves a better deal. We are watching. PLEASE SHARE THE POST
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:33:37 +0000
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