The Yoruba : A relegated race

By Joseph Edgar… This morning, on my way to work, Jimi Disu comes on air. Now, Uncle Jimi is someone I really find engaging. I do not agree with him most of the times and believe that his positions are sometimes quite archaic and off tune. But this time around, I found myself nodding as he spoke.

The issue was the relegation of the Yoruba race in this dispensation. A report according to him had come in stating very clearly that the Yoruba race had been relegated and were having the short end of the stick in this administration despite all they had given in propping up the administration.

If there was anything more preposterous in this life , I have not seen. If this was not an attempt in serious writing, I would have really laughed or said something that would be quite inappropriate. The Yoruba people, if anything, are the greatest beneficiaries of what for sometime has been looking like a contraption called Nigeria.

Let me even forget about the past and situate my discussion on this dispensation. How can a race having representation in the Vice Presidency, Ministries of Finance, Works, Housing and Power, Communications, FIIRS to mention a few cry out like this. To boot they have the most influential Party Leader who can stand the Presidency face to face from their fold.

Furthermore, they even control the economy. I hate to sound petty but take a cursory look at our so called Blue Chip companies and see who the CEOs are. For crying out loud, the Chief Transport Officer of one of the IOCs in Eket is a Yoruba Man. A transport officer role that do not need any kind of specialized skill is a Yoruba man and based in a community whose land produces the oil with a teeming population of jobless and highly skilled youth. Yet someone has the bile to make this kind of statement.

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If this is not plain shallowness I do not know what else is. If these people can cry out like this, what do they want the minorities from the south south especially the Ibibio people to say.

The Yorubas have had it well in this nation from independence. They have controlled fully the economy and civil service thereby making them the powers behind the throne. No Presidency will succeed without the technocrats who are the ones who execute and in some cases initiate policy. The Yorubas are the blessed tribes, they are the one s God singled out for the very best.

Right from inception, when our leaders across the Niger as represented by the great Zik were pushing for nationalism, a general and equal development in all areas, the leadership of the Yoruba race was busy sowing the foundations of sectional development with the massive education of the people, the building of a massive but restrictive economic enterprise fueled by the cocoa plant and the political sensitization of their people. That is why today you will see three generations of Cambridge-educated lawyers from one family and in the east we are just seeing the first generation of graduates from most homes and in some places you do not even get any.

The massive free education programme in the west as championed by the great Awolowo has seen a massive leap in opportunities for latter day Yoruba people and they have leveraged on this to seize and control socio economic and political powers. If you understand how power works you will discover that usually the political head if not careful is just a figure head, while the technocrat is actually the one who understands power and how to use it.

This is making me sound like a tribal apologist but that statement only just pushed me to attempt to put the records straight. We should all push for even development, and a further better managed economic spread to sure that all peoples in power or not have access to the so called fabled dividends of democracy.

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