The Streets Are Empty

Is the president back in the country from China? If he is back, how many vehicles did he see while riding his limo from the airport to the Villa? If he saw the roads empty, it was because of him and the ‘boldness’ he celebrated in Asia last week. Smile has left the streets.

May be, I should use one of the most destructive wars in Yoruba history, the Ijaye War, as the allegorical platform to deliver my message to the president.

The Ijaye War (April 10, 1860-March 17, 1862) was one of the fiercest Yoruba internecine wars fought in human history. The war and the huge losses from both camps and their allies show that when there is hunger in the land, the people take desperate actions. History records that during the war, which the Ibadan forces won, one of the Ibadan warlords, Balogun Ogunmola, caused a census of his slave-soldiers to be carried out so that he would know how many men he lost on the battlefield. He was ingenious in doing that. The old warrior got basket weavers to make a giant basket, and he put the cap of every slave-warrior of his that was killed in the basket. When the last gunshot was fired on March 17, 1862, Ogunmola had 1,800 caps in his basket, all of slave-soldiers “exclusive of freeborn soldiers; and that was for one single chief; what then of the whole of Ibadan army and those of the provinces; what of the Ijayes, the Egbas, the Oyos and the Oke Ogun people, and Ijebus engaged in this!” (See: The History of the Yorubas, the Rev. Samuel Johnson,402-432).

The late Yoruba historian, Johnson, narrated this ugly incident in the quoted book above under two sub-headings: “Circumstances that led to Ijaye War”, and “When Greek Meets Greek”. Aare Ona Kakanfo Kurunmi, who led the Ijaye Army started the battle on a good note. Alaafin Atiba, had towards the twilight of his reign, proclaimed a new succession that changed the tradition of the Crown Prince being buried along with his father. Alaafin Atiba got all Ibadan warlords to support the new plan and stand by the Crown Prince, Adelu, to succeed him. Upon the demise of Atiba, his son, Adelu, was made king. But the Generalissimo of Yorubaland, Aare Kurunmi of Ijaye, felt that it was not proper to change the ancient landmark. Adelu, he reasoned, must die alongside his father according to the dictates of the custom. There was a stalemate. One thing led to the other and Alaafin Adelu had no choice than to declare war on his own Aare. To wage the war, Ibadan warlords were mandated to fight the Alaafin battle.

The lead warrior in Ibadan then, Basorun Oluyole, felt that the matter could be resolved without a fight. Besides, Oluyole told the Ibadan warriors, Ijaye people were relations of Ibadan, and Aare Kurunmi was old and feeble, having very little time to spend. But the Alaafin had ordered a battle, which must be a battle. Kurunmi on his own did not help matters. While it was agreed that his insistence on Adelu’s death after his father, Alaafin Atiba, was right under the custom, he forgot to realise that every good leader must always recognise the tide of times and how the people he leads swim. Aare Ona Kakanfo was Aare only because he had other warlords who were loyal and ready to obey him. Any Aare becomes vulnerable when his war commanders have different opinions on matters of common interest. Rather than reason along the tide of time, Kurunmi chose to impose a blockade on Oyo. He also did not allow the movement of foodstuffs and other goods to Ibadan. He imposed heavy taxes on traders along those axes. There was inflation at the beginning, and then acute famine later. Life became unbearable for the people.

There was hunger in the land because of the artificial famine imposed by Kurunmi. Ibadan mobilised against him. Balogun Ogunmola led that expedition. It was devastating! All those who were hungry joined the army. Kurunmi did not only lose the battle, his first son, Arawole, and four other siblings, died in the battle. Ibadan’s Balogun Ibikunle was said to have shed tears on account of Arawole’s death. Kurunmi was the one who suppressed the Fulani incursion to Yorubaland. He was not expected to suffer such a calamity at that ripe age. But he suffered the fate because he felt he was fighting a noble cause. He did not choose his time well. Many historians also believed that Aare Kurunmi was not as altruistic as he was projected. The Ijaye war, they reasoned, brought out his true character. Rev. Johnson recorded that character portraiture of Kurumi, as “When Greek Meets Greek (pg. 409), an adaptation of the 17th century play, “Death of Alexander the Great”, otherwise known as “The rival Queens”, where the clause, “When Greek meets Greek, then comes tug of war”, was first used.

When leaders fail to be realistic and practical, the people they lead suffer untold hardship. Nigerians have now gotten to that level that nobody can bamboozle them with tales of the superlative performances of their President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, while he was the governor of Lagos State, at the start of this political dispensation in 1999. All the media hype and third-party whitewashing of President Tinubu as the man with the magic wand are gone. The people have now realised that the fable of “Tinubu built Lagos” is nothing but a ruse; a nauseating lead up the garden path! Tinubu, we have all come to realise, and almost too late, does not even know how to hold an ordinary hand trowel; he cannot set the bricks and mortar in the right shape. He built nothing, and he has no capacity to build anything! His’ is a case of “When Greek meets Greek.” He has engaged in character impersonation, and confounding trickery for too long. The follies of his real personage as an ego-driven individual with uncommon pretensions to superior agenda and love of the common good have all fallen like badly arranged cards. The reality of the failure of his identikit as the man who has what it takes to get the nation out of the woods is too damning for us. It is a case of what affects the eyes, equally affects the nose (òrò tó bá ojú ti bá imú). Nobody is spared of the president’s ineptitude – lovers, haters and those on the fence! We are all victims of the man’s latent incapacities. Pity!

This is not the time for blame game. It is also not the time for anyone to say: “did we not warn you?!” Yes, it is true that not a few of us indeed warned about the calamity a Tinubu presidency would be. We were labelled with all sorts of names. Today, only a very few are still holding on to the ‘superior’ judgement of Tinubu above other contenders for the presidency in 2023. Those are the very few who are pathologically impolitic because they don’t want to accept that they made an error in their political choice. Some genuinely believed President Tinubu could reshape Nigeria’s troubled history and shift the narrative. Those ones have my sympathy. There is nothing wrong in investing one’s trust in another individual. Those genuine supporters of Tinubu with the belief that the man has all that it takes to make a difference, are like the proverbial chameleon. Our elders say nobody blames the chameleon for the failure of its child to dance very well. The blame goes to the child (Alágemo ti bí omo tán, ààmòójó kù s’ówó omo Alágemo).

The problem with the Tinubu presidency now is the same problem Aare Kurunmi had a few centuries ago. President Tinubu is behaving like Kurunmi, who failed to flow with the tides of time. Like Kurunmi, Tinubu is also imposing artificial famine on Nigerians. Life is now almost unbearable under the watch of the one they told us is the wisest man after the Biblical Solomon. It is shocking, and completely paralysing, that the president has not realised that his reckless pronouncement of “Subsidy is gone”, made on May 29, 2023, at his inauguration, is the reason Nigerians are suffering now. It is appalling that the president has failed to realise that Nigerians are dying, the way Aare Kurunmi sang in his war cry, before the Ijaye War broke out thus: “A frog is kicked and lies on its back/We shall all die by myriads” (A ta òpòló n’ípàá, ó sùn kakàá/ gbogbo wa ni yíòò kú beere – pg. 405)! If the president knew this, he would not be boasting of taking “bold steps” to set Nigeria on the right path- same bold measures he has refused to take in curbing the profligacy of his administration. Kurunmi was also taking a bold step when he insisted that Adelu must die alongside Alaafin Atiba. That was what the custom prescribed. But he failed to juxtapose what the custom demanded with what the situation then warranted. Kurunmi paid dearly for that failure of judgement.

Must President Tinubu suffer the same fate? Yeah, every Nigerian knows that there has never been anything like a fuel subsidy. Nigerians know that, unlike the government of other sane climes, no government in Nigeria has ever paid any subsidy for the populace to enjoy. The question is: can Tinubu, in good conscience, swear that he stopped fuel subsidy for a day since he made that impulsive pronouncement in May 2023? How much was a litre of petrol before the “subsidy is gone” misadventure, and how much is it now? If the president actually stopped the subsidy, can he please tell us how much he has saved from that? And what has he done with the savings from the stoppage of subsidy? The high cost of fuel today is because Tinubu created artificial scarcity of the product with his May 29, 2023, pronouncement. The vultures around him are now feeding fat on the pain of the people. History is certainly not going to be kind to those profiteers in and outside the government!

Who is close to the President and can take the message to the one who sits in Aso Rock, that the streets are not smiling? What type of music does President Tinubu listen to? What do those around him tell him about the anguish and abject want in the land? Why is the music of hypocrisy louder than the daily pathetic wail of the people? When will President Tinubu hear that Nigerians are now comparing his administration with that of his immediate predecessor, the very lethargic General Muhammadu Buhari, and are saying: Buhari time nor beta pass this Emilokan? When will the music of anguish on the streets become audible to the president? When will Tinubu hear the people’s song of sorrow, to wit: Láyé Ònálù, li a ró òkan lé òkan/Láyé Kúrunmí li a ró ‘gba ró ‘gba/ L’áyé Adélù ni ìpèlé di ìtélè ìdí (During Onalu’s reign, we changed our dresses frequently/During Kurunmi’s, we used the finest of clothes in their hundreds? It is the time of Adelu that the smaller outer cloth becomes our best dress)? When will our president make life bearable for the people? Just WHEN?