Afenifere - A Timely Renewal By Remi Oyeyemi

caption: Remi Oyeyemi

“The spine of leadership is moral purity and reliability nurtured by consistent honesty, candour and sacrifice.” 
 - Author in “AFENIFERE LEADERSHIP: THE BEGINING OF THE END.”  June 27, 2002
The Afenifere Renewal Group(ARG) has come at the right time in Yorubaland to fill the needed leadership vacuum. From what it pulled off on March 6, this year at Lagos City Hall, the ARG has posited itself as the ideological compass for the Yoruba Nation and an example that the intellectual and political leadership of other regions of Nigeria should emulate. This is moreso at this trying times when the clamour for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) is reaching a crescendo. The trajectory of the ARG,  showed that it broke off from the old guard Afenifere. The new guard now known as ARG, felt that the old was losing its bearing and has, thankfully, decided to chart a different course..
The old guard Afenifere provided the needed leadership during the dark days of Abacha .The members were courageous and steadfast.   They did a good job. But it is a different story since the second coming of Olusegun Obasanjo. Old guard Afenifere seem to have lost focus. With the loss of focus came the self-derailment in its leadership roles. From the heights of noble objectives of and for democracy for Nigerians and the Yoruba in particular, old guard Afenifere slided to mortgaging the general cause for individual pursuits in the most obnoxious and opprobrious manner. Not only did the members engage in uncharacteristic acts of perfidy against each other and the Yoruba interests, they became petty-minded, quarrelsome, odiously arrogant and incorrigibly dictatorial.
The old guard Afenifere even complained that some people were playing "Awolowo politics" and not their ( Afeniferes' ) kind of politics? So there was a difference between Awolowo and Afenifere politics? Some of us never knew that. Yet these are the ones going all over the place, using Awolowo’s name as the reason the Yoruba should continue to believe in and follow them? Does this mean that they are just "followers" of Awolowo not “believers” in Awolowo? Does this mean that they only cared what Awolowo's name could buy them in the political market and not what it could get for the poor masses of Nigeria and the Yoruba in particular?
The unabashed open support of former Governor of Ogun State,  Mr. Gbenga Daniel by the old guard Afenifere has put a permanent stain on their moral authority. This is the same Daniel who steadfastly fought against everything that could be described as “Awolowo vision” in Ogun State. In his eight years as the Governor of the unfortunate state, he waged war against the people, depriving them of peace, progress and communal harmony. He was repeatedly accused by those who worked with and for him, as assassins’ godfather. Daniel fought relentlessly, every cadre of the society, allegedly maiming numberless innocent citizens, disrespecting elders of different hue and clime, subverting laws and destabilizing orderliness. He allegedly sent his assassins after those he could not bought with lucre and unashamedly looted the state treasury. He introduced a new shameful interpretation of democracy where the minority has the power to upstage the majority in the State House of Assembly. This is a man that the old guard Afenifere is giving unqualified support!

My own "Albert Einstein," the youthful but seminally brilliant Wale Adebanwi once referred to the old guard Afenifere as "those political museum pieces masquerading as leaders." No one could have said it better. Otherwise, how do you explain their "abominable" dialogue with "Babangida's fronts in the bid to form a single party" in the early days of Obasanjo’s second coming? Nothing conveys lack of vision, isolates aridity of etiquette, demonstrates poverty of principle, manifests distressed sense of contemprary history and expresses abject want of self-respect on the part of the old Afeniferes than that singular act. Vouching for the old Afeniferes in today's political landscape is like jumping into the tracks of a train without brakes! It is sure death!
A major function of leadership is to come to equity among all the followers. Yet, he who must come to equity must do so with clean hands. The old guard Afenifere have stained and reeking hands. When a leadership becomes unreliable, untrustworthy and unfaithful not only to its rank and file but also to its values, then the end has come for that leadership. When a leadership has compromised its sacred duty to be fair, honest, open and just, then it should cease to lead. The Yoruba have always valued integrity in and of leadership. The old guard Afenifere seem to lack it!
Obafemi Awolowo commanded our fanatical reverence not because he was duplicitous, unprincipled and morally compromised, but because he was eternally faithful to our yearnings. Awolowo's words were his bonds. With Awolowo you always know where you stand. You may not agree with him, but at least you know that whatever happens, what you heard and what you see is what you get. Twice, (October 1963 and December 1965), Awolowo refused negotiated freedom from incarceration based on principle so that the Yoruba Nation, nay Nigerians, could reach the promised land of “Life more abundant.” But it is extremely difficult to say the same thing about the old guard Afenifere leadership.
This is why the emergence of the ARG is very timely. The ARG sensed the festering moral vileness of the old guard and parted ways with it at the right time.   The word “Renewal” signified the new, which focused on different strategies and tactics for the emergent political challenges in Southwest in particular and Nigeria in general.  The ARG, through its brain trust, the non-partisan Yoruba Academy,  has become the ideological vanguard for the rebirth of progressive politics in the Southwest.  Its strategy was to approach this in wholistic manner using its peoples’ tradition, culture, language and proud History as the basis of its ideological compass to liberate the Yoruba Nation from the clamp of vacuous and reactionary mainstream politics.
The ARG has not stopped at helping the emergence of governments in the Southwest that shared its political persuasion. It went further to prepare an agenda of development encapsulated in regional integration. But ARG’s efforts should go beyond the mobilzation of the Governors of the Southwest for this agenda of development. ARG should put a plan in place to mobilize the grassroot people irrespective of political persuasion - market women, bricklayers, artisans, students’ unions, cultural organisations, workers’ unions, and all professional associations. In providing leadership for our people. ARG should trust the people to be the enduring solid foundation for the progess and development sought for them.  The ARG should be able to sell its idea, explain the rationale behind it,  articulate the vision that underlines it and mirror the hope that is driving it. Most importantly, ARG should avoid the pitfalls that led to the decline and irrelevance of the old guard.
This is what the leadership of other regions in Nigeria ought to copy if they have not been doing so already – setting agenda for their respective regions and by so doing, possibly force Nigeria on the course of self rediscovery. 
 By Remi Oyeyemi