•The foremost Yoruba socio-cultural organisation courts self-destruction for straying from own path
The news came like a shattering bomb: Pa Reuben Fasoranti, the Afenifere Leader, announcing his resignation for alleged undermining of his authority.
That, in itself, was novelty. Never in the chequered and rich political history of Afenifere, socio-cultural soul of the Yoruba and proud holder of its political franchise, had its leader resigned. Its leadership is like royalty: and among the Yoruba, while a king still lives, another one dares not mount the throne.
The late Senator Abraham Adesanya succeeded Pa Adekunle Ajasin, former Ondo governor, who with distinction, led Afenifere during the tempestuous battle to revalidate the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential mandate that the late MKO Abiola won. Even when Senator Adesanya himself became infirm, the organisation, following his own hallowed convention, still could not appoint a replacement, but only a regent, so to speak.
That regency, not by any means unanimous, threw up Pa Fasoranti; since another faction thrust forward Pa Ayo Fasanmi. That was when the rot set in; and even the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), an offshoot, has said it pulled out of the main body because even a peace parley, at Ibadan, Oyo State, could not settle the differences.
But if the novelty of Pa Fasoranti’s resignation is bad enough by Afenifere’s convention, the ill-advised argument by one of the organisation’s top members that the old man resigned because of old age, since neither Pa Ajasin nor Pa Adesanya ever lived up to 89, was an epitome of ringing bad faith. Might gerontocrats, withinAfenifere, be mocking old age, just because of fleeting disputes? That really is a big disappointment; for it jars against Yoruba culture, which Afenifere crows is its forte.
However, all these manifestations of rot are clear symptoms that over the years, the once formidable and highly revered Afenifere had mercilessly chiselled at its own essence, so much so that not a few can now see through the rather hollow inside.
Since its glorious birth in 1951, as the local Yoruba moniker for the Awolowo Action Group, Afenifere through thick and thin, had earned the trust of its people. So, when the June 12 crisis came, it was a natural vehicle; for all its existence, it had benchmarked itself as an unfazed champion of justice, fairness and equity, even outside the Yoruba territory, in a federal Nigeria.
The political Yoruba had been more fractious than unanimous. But the Awolowo progressive mainstream had, over the years, earned the faith of the majority. That could be well because it discharged itself so well that the people trusted it. But it was more because Afenifere made the people’s pulse its leash, so much so that it was led by it.
But by the 2015 general election, Afenifere had permitted itself the fatal hubris it could impose its will on the people; and enter into alliances on a non-existent mandate it gifted itself.
That explained its rather reckless support for the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, despite ample signs that that administration would face electoral doom. It not only forged such toady alliances that reeked of thick impropriety, it was arrogant and loud about it. It therefore earned the scorn of not a few neutral people, that nevertheless wanted to throw off the Jonathan yoke. This putative but dramatic unravelling is a logical consequence.
The ARG has virtually thrown Afenifere to the dogs, and claimed it still harboured that pristine Awo-driven ideology that, over the years, madeAfenifere the Yoruba political lord of the manor. It could well be.
But the Afenifere stumble, if not outright fall, should teach every pressure group it needs an ultra-sharp antenna to promptly pick the people’s bidding. Much more: it must have the humility to be at absolute service to these yearnings. IfAfenifere goes down, failure to latterly observe that rule would be its gravest hubris.
From the collective to the personal, however: what would the Afenifere elders tell Awo they made of the heritage handed over to them, the day they meet their maker? Perhaps that haunting thought may yet force some common sense and save the doddering old club!
