When the Central Bank of Nigeria relocated some departments to Lagos, there was an uproar on social media. Tinubu wants to move everything to Yorubaland.
But now that the Nigerian Navy is moving its training base headquarters from Lagos to Onne, in Rivers State, there is silence online. Nobody is saying that the Chief of Naval Staff, who is from Enugu, is moving that critical infrastructure closer to his region. And that is the right thing to do. Onne is a better location for the navy.
Recall that some individuals tried to pull off a Yoruba nation agitation in Ibadan a few weeks ago, look at how their own Yoruba kith and kin clinically dealt with them. And not even by the Federal Government, but by the Oyo State Government, which is in opposition to the Federal Government. Elsewhere, secessionists are protected, and even celebrated by the local population, and the State Governments look the other way.
Let us learn to imbibe the tolerance of the Yoruba, and Nigeria will go well.
The Omoluabi culture of tolerance stems from their culture, not from their DNA, so it is something all of us can also learn.
It is built on two platforms. Iwa, which means moral character (Omoluabi actually is short for Omo-ti-Olu Iwa-bi, meaning children that the Lord of moral character gave birth to).
The second platform is Ebi, meaning family. Omoluabi Yoruba are taught to uphold fraternal relations above money and power.
That is why, for example, Colonel Fajuyi rejected the offer to surrender Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi to rebellious Northern officers, and replace him as Military Head of State. He voluntarily chose to follow Ironsi to his death. That is a combination of the Iwa and Ebi ethos.
Do you know the most Islamic state in Southern Nigeria? It is Osun State.
Yet, the indigenes of that state voted for a man who is both officially a Christian and a Muslim as their Governor. Yes. Please fact-check me. Senator Ademola Adeleke regularly attends church and not so regularly attends mosques. At best, he is a Chrislamist.
So, Osun has a Chrislam Governor, who just happens to be half-Igbo (Senator Adeleke’s mother was Igbo and he was born in Enugu), a Christian Deputy Governor, and a Christian Speaker. Please note that Osun recently changed Speakers, and I do not know the religion of the new Speaker, Prince Adewale Egbedun. But his predecessor, Timothy Owoeye, is a Christian.
Nowhere do we see that culture on display better than at Globacom. This is a company wholly owned by an Ijebu man, Dr. Mike Adenuga. Yet, even when there were prominent Yoruba artists who were the biggest singers in Nigeria at that time, Globacom deliberately chose to promote One Nigeria.
D-Banj was then the hottest artiste in Nigeria. But Globacom took a relatively unknown as at then group, P-Square, and made them the face of their brand. And they sent them to etiquette school. Glo had P-Square on billboards all over Lagos and Nigeria.
Dr. Adenuga bought P-Square their first Mercedes G-Wagon. Then he bought them Range Rovers.
As Glo ambassadors, P-Square were featured on CNN, which blew them up worldwide. They thereafter bought houses in America.
But then there happened to be a quarrel between one of them and Seun Kuti, and in the heat of the moment, Peter Okoya called his own father “a nobody”. Not Seun’s father. Fela was never a nobody. No. Peter Okoye referred to his own father as a nobody.
Such a thing can NEVER happen in Yoruba land. Never a thousand times.
There is nothing wrong with Air Peace using an Isi-Agu costume as the uniform for their flight attendants. I defended them publicly. Please research it. My defence of Air Peace went viral.
But let me say here that if Air Peace had been owned by Dr. Adenuga, they would have taken a different approach.
Happy 71st birthday to one of Nigeria’s most outstanding entrepreneurs ever, bar none. Dr. Mike Adenuga Junior.
From Reno Omokri
