Our Elders have told us that the spell on the Snakes in their kingdom is their lifestyle. Snakes live solitary lifestyle, never socializing. They live, move around and hunt alone. If all snakes were to live, move and hunt together NO MAN will think to go near them.
- In the past, in the time when we lived according to the CULTURE AND CUSTOMS of our ancestors, Yoruba sons of daughters in far away United Kingdom went totally out of their ways to gather themselves and formed the Egbe Ọmọ Oduduwa.
It was a body set up for the monitoring and safeguarding of the safety, welfare, social development, interests and general well-being of the Yoruba people in the United Kingdom.
They were mostly students, men and women mostly in their 30s
They were guided by ONE LANGUAGE, ONE LOVE and ONE CULTURE, the spirit of Omolúàbí.
All Yoruba persons who landed in the UK knew of it immediately and seek the Association immediately, sometimes before they even registered with the Nigerian Embassy in that country.
In those days, it was common for children of Yoruba couples born in the UK to speak and understand their mother tongue very well.
It was because they had a COMMUNITY just as Asians have till today in that same country.
That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Solidarity in foreign lands.
- Sometime in 1986 when I went on summer holidays with my Dad when he lived in the sprawling NEPA Housing Colony in Jebba, he took me along with him to the meeting of Ẹgbẹ́ Ọmọ Alárè.
It was an association set up by IJEBU sons and daughters who were living in JEBBA town. Majority of them were NEPA staffs, some were from the nearby Sugar company and others from the Jebba town itself.
They socialized frequently and solidiarized.
It was for welfare, social development, promotion of our culture and general well-being.
They all knew themselves in that town.
They shifted their meetings from one members house to another and it was fun.
Most of them come with their children to those meetings and we hung around and were listening to ancient wisdom coming from their mouths.
I was just about 15years old at the time but it struck me and kept it.
That was in the 1980s. My dad left that place in 1987 when he was transferred to NEPA Headquarters in Lagos and the Ẹgbẹ́ Ọmọ Alárè organized this fantastic send-off for him.
I have never forgotten.
Solidarity in foreign lands.
- In that same 1980s it was very common for our parents to take us around the homes of relatives. There was something more or less an alternating holiday where we shifted and zones our holidays around family houses. We knew ourselves, the cousins of my generation.
In the year 1985, THREE COUSINS of mine who were then 7years, 10years and 11years of age , ALL CHILDREN OF ONE MAN, HIS THREE SONS, MY UNCLE’S CHILDREN, at a go, went with me and my mum on holidays from Lagos to Jebba to be with my dad for about four weeks!!!!
Infact I was the one, then 15years old, who went to pick the three boys from Festac Town to Amuwo-odofin IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION!!!!
We went on that treacherous journey from Lagos through Ibadan, Oyo, Ogbomosho, Ilorin to Jebba.
I don’t think there are men who will ever do such a thing today.
NOBODY!!!!!!
Ọlorun, something horrible to us in Yoruba land!!!
- It was about that same 1980s Adeboye, Kumuyi, Oyedepo & co entered into and happened to our lives in Yoruba land.
And they started their funny doctrines from the American style abracadabra PENTECOSTALISM.
They began to tell our people about “generational curses” and “prosperity”. They inundated us with overblown stories of witches and wizards. And they were telling our people about the “uneven yoke” so that born- again christians should stand apart from those who were destined for hell fire.
And before we knew it our people were totally sucked out from community and communal responsibilities. They ruined our communal and kinship solidarity and made us to focus our full concentration 24/7 on church activities.
The Pastorpreneurs started getting richer and became celebrities overnight.
They got their fame at the expense of our CULTURE AND CUSTOMS in Yoruba land.
They encouraged this new culture of individualism in our Yoruba people.
As the Pastorpreneurs were doing their own, the Àáfàpreneurs intensified WAHHABISM and they were doing the same things to Yoruba people.
They conspired together to take advantage of our NAIVETY AND SIMPLICITY and they ruined our social order.
Friends, Neighbours, Families and kinsmen started to draw out and live apart.
This is what has been happening since the 1990s with increasing intensity.
- The results?
Do you know that TODAY, a Yoruba man can live in Lagos, Ijebu-Ode or anywhere in Yoruba land and be forming me-and-my-family stand alone lifestyle?
Their social lives start and end in their NUCLEAR family, the rest is lived in. CHURCHES where they go deceive themselves in hypocritical brotherhood and sisterhood.
All fake!
This situation is worse when that Yoruba man is a little privileged and above his friends, neighbours, family and kinsmen in financial or social class.
He makes serious efforts to dodge everybody.
The Yoruba man in Yoruba land, on account of RELIGIOUS and CLASS inclinations, is far more likely to give ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES TO NON-YORUBA PEOPLE when he has such,
Do you know that a Yoruba man can live in Enugu, Kano, Maiduguri or Uyo etc on other Yoruba people around that place may not know of his existence in that town?
They may not even know that he is Yoruba man.
He is not aware of any Yoruba union, doesn’t wish to be aware ans when made aware of it he will try his best to avoid it or treat the idea with scorn and contempt.
If you meet a Yoruba man in Portharcourt or Uyo and he knows you are Yoruba, in all likelihood he wants to avoid you. He will be forming Woke, Detribalized and speaking English.
- Believe me, YORUBA PEOPLE are the ONLY ones caught by this evil bug of the mid 1980s. It is not so for all the other tribes and ethic groups in Nigeria.
Bẹlieve me, IF you ever see any person in Ijebu-Ode , Abeokuta, Oyo, Ile-Ife, Maiduguri, Sokoto or anywhere. IF that person is IBO, HAUSA, FULANI, IGEDE of Benue, OGOJA of Cross River, IBIBIO of Akwa Ibom, ESAN of Edo etc, THAT PERSON’S PRESENCE in THAT location you see him is WELL KNOWN, NOTED AND MONITORED.
IF you see any IBO man selling under a bridge in Ogbomoso, the IBO NETWORK KNOWS HE IS THERE.
All the HAUSA Alms beggars you see roaming about in Ibadan, they didn’t just get there. They are WELL DOCUMENTED AND MONITORED by the high commands controlling them.
The Hausa, Fulani, IBOs and the rest of them are quite capable of swiftly disseminating information across to every single one of their kinsmen living across the WHOLE WORLD without using Radio announcement.
It is not by accident that ALL HAUSA FULANI COLONIES in SW are built within less than 5km radius of Military installations. ALL the Hausa and Fulani population of a town can suddenly vanish over night and you will be scratching your beards.
If you as much as engage in shouting match with one IBO or Hausa man here in Sàpón market in Abeokuta, within seconds at least TEN (10) of their kinsmen will gather around you quickly and NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY OR WHAT HAS HAPPENED THEY WILL SURELY TAKE SIDES WITH THEIR KINSMEN.
These are the situations my Yoruba people are handling with kid gloves, playing detribalized and liberal.
WeHaveMissedRoad
ThinkYorubaFirst
© Adedamola Adetayo
05 September 2024
