Yorubaland: A Civilization At Its Terminal End?

Yoruba: Tí ará ilé ẹni bá ń jẹ́ kòkòrò búburú, tí a kò bá kìlọ̀ fún un, arúgbọ́ rẹ̀ ò ní jẹ́ ká sùn lórú.

English: If our neighbor is eating a poisonous insect and we refuse to warn him, his cries of anguish will keep us awake at night.

This proverb, like all proverbs, was not coined for decoration. Ancestors forged them in the furnace of collective responsibility. This particular proverb reminds us that there are moments when silence becomes complicity and when blunt speech becomes a civic duty.

My polemical-essay writing mentor, the fiery Frederick Douglass, taught us that on some occasions: "It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."

Yorubaland has reached one of those moments. What is unfolding today is not merely a security crisis. Anyone with eyes and brains would see it as a civilizational emergency. The time for polite sweet talks is over.

Yoruba towns and villages are under siege. Farmers are chased from ancestral lands by AK-47-cradling Fulani marauders disguised as herdsmen. Highways in Yorubaland have become hunting grounds for kidnappers. Children disappear into forests controlled by armed marauders. Parents sell property, borrow money, and descend into despair to ransom loved ones from criminals who now operate with a confidence usually reserved for governments. Local hustlers joined them to make easy bucks, just like they did when the colonialists came.

A Few weeks ago, a sister of a recently-retired Minister was kidnapped in broad daylight in Ibadan, of all places. They have been released. Bless.

Yet the man who was marketed to the Yoruba people as Awa lo kan appears strangely detached from the agony of the very people who helped propel him into power.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not present himself merely as another Nigerian politician. He was sold to the Nigerian electorate (whatever that means in Nigeria’s magomago elections) as the Yoruba project. The chosen son of Yorubaland. He loudly proclaimed himself as The Indispensable Man. Emi lo kan. It is my turn.

The slogan echoed from Lagos to Ilesa, from Ibadan to Abeokuta.

Nigerians were told that the Yoruba political destiny itself was tied to the success of a single individual.

Today, many are asking a simple question.

Where is that individual today as Yorubaland faces an existential threat like it has not witnessed in centuries?

What Nigerians witness today is a presidency that seems permanently insulated from public sentiment. An administration that responds to national tragedies with the emotional range of a malfunctioning answering machine. A government whose default setting appears to be callous aloofness and gross insensitivity.

Emi lo kan President Tinubu rarely addresses the nation except through carefully choreographed statements by hired, rented mouths. He has more special assistants than the entire bureaucracy of many African countries.

Public outrage rises and falls like ocean tides while the occupant of Aso Rock remains wrapped in a cocoon of indifference. Citizens scream, Tinubu couldn’t care less.

His government has routinized the art of releasing canned press releases by senseless imbecilic assistants for whom the application of elementary logic is an encumbrance.

Nowhere is Tinubu’s detachment from reality and his people more dangerous than in the Southwest, his home turf.

Yorubaland is bleeding profusely.

Yet one would hardly know it from the conduct of its most powerful political son.

A president who can find time for political calculations, a rigmarole party nomination that would shame any decent soul, foreign junkets, and endless elite consultations should certainly find time to speak directly to terrified parents whose children have been abducted by criminals.

A president who seeks applause for economic reforms should also account for the collapse of public security.

Not so Tinubu.

Instead, we are treated to a spectacle of distance. A government so remote from ordinary suffering that one begins to wonder whether empathy itself has been outsourced, like almost everything else in the country.

Rather than Tinubu addressing Nigerians directly, it was his wife who took it upon herself to speak to citizens.

Apart from holding the nebulous office of First Lady, a position unknown to the Nigerian Constitution, Mrs. Tinubu didn't tell us in what capacity she is talking to Nigerians.

Sadly, Nigerian media practitioners have turned themselves into glorified stenographers. Instead of pushing back, they give a tribune to a woman who should rather be advising her husband to remedy his empathy deficiency and develop some emotional intelligence.

Nigerian presidents do not have the right to outsource the presidency to their spouses.

Unfortunately, outsourcing appears to be a recurring theme of Tinubu’s administration. Nigeria’s foreign policy increasingly resembles a franchise operation managed on behalf of external interests, especially France.

Whether in West Africa or the wider continent, Nigeria’s positions often appear suspiciously aligned with Western strategic priorities, particularly those of France.

Under previous generations of leadership, Nigeria aspired to be an independent African power. Today, Abuja too often behaves like a regional subcontractor for interests headquartered thousands of miles away.

Witness how Tinubu destroyed ECOWAS on behalf of his French curators.

The result of this diplomatic ineptitude is humiliation abroad and insecurity at home.

Meanwhile, questions that have followed Tinubu throughout his political career remain unanswered. The biography remains a fog. The educational history remains a source of controversy. The financial history continues to attract scrutiny. Allegations and accusations accumulated over decades have never been conclusively laid to rest because transparency has never been fully embraced.

In any serious democracy, a leader with such a clouded public history as Tinubu would recognize the necessity of extraordinary accountability.

Instead, Nigerians are often expected to accept ambiguity as a virtue. BAT has perfected the art.

Yet even these concerns pale in comparison to the catastrophe unfolding across Yorubaland.

For generations, the Yoruba took pride in being among the most organized, politically conscious, and sophisticated peoples in Africa.

Today, armed invaders roam forests and highways with frightening ease. Communities live in fear. Farmers abandon their lands. Entire districts experience a level of insecurity previously unimaginable.

What makes the situation especially painful is that the victims are not facing this ordeal under the presidency of a hostile outsider.

They are facing it under a president celebrated as the embodiment of Yoruba political aspirations. That irony is devastating.

The people who chanted Awa lo kan now watch helplessly as kidnappers dictate the rhythms of daily life.

The people who were promised renewed hope now calculate ransom payments.

The people who expected protection now receive silence.

And silence, in moments such as these, becomes an indictment.

As we have pointed out several times in this blog, history teaches that civilizations rarely collapse because enemies are strong. They collapse because their leaders become disconnected from reality to the extent of mistaking propaganda for performance. They confuse public relations with governance. They surround themselves with praise singers and place jesters until the screams of their own people become inaudible.

Yorubaland must not permit itself to descend into such a condition. A people renowned for intellectual courage cannot become prisoners of political loyalty.

Yorubas must realize that the first duty of citizenship is not obedience to politicians, but fierce loyalty to truth.

The truth is that no amount of partisan devotion can conceal the failures before our eyes.

Kidnapped Yoruba children remain in captivity.

Yoruba communities are besieged and vulnerable. Yoruba people are terrified.

And the presidency (presided over by a Yoruba man) remains disturbingly detached.

The old Yoruba understood something modern politicians often forget. That is: Power is not an ornament; it is a huge responsibility.

A ruler who cannot hear the cries of his people has already begun to lose them. A leader who remains unmoved while his homeland trembles is not displaying strength. He is displaying indifference. In politics, optics is everything.

The cries coming from the forests of Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun, and other parts of Yorubaland are growing louder by the day.

The question is whether those in power can still hear them.

Or whether, surrounded by courtiers, foreign advisers, political contractors, and professional flatterers, they have become deaf to the sound of their own civilization in distress.

The poisonous insect is being eaten. The cries have already begun.

Soon enough, nobody will be able to sleep.

The Yorubas also say: Ọba tó jẹ́, tí ìlú t’ọ́, orúkọ rẹ̀ kò ní parẹ́; ẹni tó dé jẹ́ tí ìlú fọ́n ká, orúkọ ẹ̀ náà kò ní parẹ́. / A king who reigns and brings prosperity to his town will never be forgotten; likewise, one who comes and destroys a town will also never be forgotten.

The real tragedy, which current Yorubaland leaders appear unable to grasp, is that. Civilizations do not die when enemies appear at the gates; they perish when their elites lose the capacity for shame.

The historian Paul Kennedy observed that great powers often collapse when they become incapable of matching their commitments with their resources and when their ruling classes drift into complacency while danger gathers on the horizon. In his words, “the relative strength of the leading nations in world affairs never remains constant.” No civilization possesses a divine guarantee against decline.

Today, while Yoruba children vanish into kidnappers’ dens, while farmers abandon ancestral lands, while entire communities live under the shadow of kidnapping, the Yoruba elite seem determined to dance on the edge of the volcano. The champagne still flows. The Owambe drums still thunder. The lace agbada still glitters under expensive chandeliers. The cameras still flash at Ojude Oba as if a civilization under siege is merely a minor inconvenience.

A people once celebrated for vigilance now appear intoxicated by spectacle. The descendants of those who built Oyo, Ijebu, Ife, Egba, and Ekiti now compete over aso-ebi colors while criminals redraw the map of Yorubaland with bullets and ransom notes.

History is merciless toward societies that fail to protect themselves. Rome feasted before the barbarians arrived. It’s Emperor Nero fiddled while the city burned. Byzantium argued over ceremonies while its walls crumbled.

Civilizations at their terminal stage become obsessed with entertainment and appearances because they lack the courage to confront reality.

The kidnappers and the invaders understand this. The only people who seem not to understand it are those dancing at the party.

When a civilization can no longer protect its children, no festival can save it. The drums may continue to beat, but they may well be the drums of a funeral procession.

We were warned.

©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀ (1st Dan)

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)

My Mission: Ignorantia et stultitia delendae sunt / Ignorance and stupidity must be destroyed.

My Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com

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