Let’s consult our history in a bid to find a lasting solution to the scourge of insecurity that is currently plaguing Nigeria, with Yorubaland as a case study.
It must be admitted that there is nothing new under heaven. So, these frightening incidences of terrorism, kudnapping, banditry, ethnic cleansing, and land grabbing are not new. They’d all ravaged the Yorubaland of old, at one historic point or the other. And whenever they reared their ugly heads, our forebears had always tackled them with native intelligence and African science.
_TERRORISM_.
In the now defunct Oyo Empire, Basorun Gaa and his family were a gang of terrorists. They were painful thorns on the neck of the imperial monarch, causing the early demise of Alaafins in their succession. But when Alaafin Abiodun Adegoolu mounted the throne in c 1770, Oyabi, the then _Àre-ònà-kakanfò_(the generalisimo of the Oyo imperial infantry), it was, who in 1774, came to the rescue of the Alaafin, by helping to vanquish the tyrannical Bashorun Gaa and his audaciously felonious children. Gaa and his generation were ruined and obliterated completely, and his dreadful courtyard was rendered eternally desolate.
_Banditry_.
In the 12th century Ife kingdom, the woods dwelling Ugbo marauders were bandits. They were always coming from their forest enclaves to raid and pillage the people of Ife Kingdom, in far more ferocious manner than the havoc being wrecked by today’s bandits. But with the intelligence ingenuity of _Moremi Ajasoro,_ the mysterious Ugbo raiders were quashed and routed into total extinction in 1150 AD.
Similarly, in the mid-17th century, Elemosho was an invincible bandit and a kidnapper who derived pleasure in killing innocent residents of the Oyo Empire. The Alaafin, Oba Ajagbo mogunleti, was rattled to his marrows by this incident. He had no immediate solution to the scourge, until in the year 1680, when _Soun Ogunlola_ rose to the occasion from an unusual circumstance to send Elemosho to his waterloo.
_Land grabbing belligerent._
Following the collapse of the Oyo empire and the subsequent fall of the yoruba town of Ilorin to the Fulanis, the war mongering Fulanis were passionate in their determination to expand their territory beyond Ilorin, far into yoruba interlands. They’d taken their offensive to Osogbo and overwhelmed the yoruba troops stationed there. They would have succeeded in their expansionist exploit, if not for the quick intervention of the Ibadan infantry, led by _Balogun Oderinlo._ It was this contingent that rose to strengthen the Osogbo manpower, thus enabling the comprehensive defeat of the Fulani calvary in 1840, thereby marking a remarkable turning point in yoruba historical trajectory.
From the foregoing historical snippets, one can see that Yorubaland is not alien to these internal security breaches. Indeed, from one epoch to the other in the course of history, Yorubaland has always produced men and women of vallor who had always risen to rescue the land from the dasterdly menaces of evil doers. The Yorubaland has produced fierce warriors like Afonja (1790), Lisabi Agbongbo akala (1750), Bashorun Oluyole (1790-1850), Aare Kurumi (1860-1862), Bashorun Ogunmola, Ogedengbe Agbogungboro (1822-1910), Aare Latoosa (1820-1885), Balogun Kuku of Akile Ijebu, Balogun Ogunbona of Igbore Egba, Fabunmi of Okemesi, Aduloju Ado-Ewi, the Edemo of Ekiti, Timi Agbale Olofa ina, Gbonka, Agolo mo lodo of Ikare, just to mention but a few of them.
So, Yorubaland has never been in want of brave warriors who had always helped to secure the land against external aggressors. In fact, there are a number of towns and communities in Yorubaland that have attributes of invincibility as part of their panegyrics. They are honored with this ulogy because they’d never been conquered by any enemy in their entire history !
I make bold to declare here that these our heroic forebears have all been reincarnated today in various parts of Yorubaland. That explains why we now have the emergence of people like Iba Gani Adams, the current _Aare-ona-kakanfo_ of Yorubaland, Sunday Igboho, even Musiliu Olu omo, Elewe omo, and so on. However, the valorous qualities of these brave reincartes of our heroes past can not be fully utilized under the current westminster democracy in which our traditional institutions have been made tenuous, totally eclipsed and rendered fatally prostrate.
The historical inviolability of Yorubaland had resulted from the established and well organised traditional administrative systems in all yoruba cities, towns, and villages. It is a monarchical system of government, with the king and his council of Chiefs at the pinnacle of the administrative structure. Orders and directives flew from this organ down the line to the other components of the organogram. These included the quarter chiefs, the different age grades, societies like hunters, the harbalists, heads of various shrines of the pantheon of the many yoruba deities, gods and goddesses, artisans, and farmers, the women folks, the youths, and the warriors. It was the Oba-in-council that used to order the warriors to act decisively against any external invaders, while the age grades dealt with local felons who, after their arrest, were arraigned before the oba-in-council for trial and sanction.
The seeming intractable insecurity that now overwhelmed this country had resulted largely from the inability of today’s generation to study the foregoing watertight traditional administrative mechanisms, borrow some ideas from it, and come up with a fine synthetic template to be used to effectively combat the security situation. The total abandonment of our result oriented traditional system of crime control in replacement with an imposed foreign system of policing and crisis management, seems to be failling us. It is, therefore, high time we looked into our past, in our effort to get out of this security woods. For our people say….
_tí ọmọdé bá ṣubú, á wo’wájú. Tí àgbà bá ṣubú, a w’ẹhìn wò_
(When a child stumbles and falls, he looks straight to the front. But when an elder falls, he looks to the rear)
It is in consideration of the foregoing that I wish to use this medium to reiterate the usual calls for a fundamental amendment to our constitution to create constitutional roles for the nation’s traditional institutions. Let all monarchs be saddled with the responsibility of securing their respective domains, with budgetary allocations made for that purpose. The monarchs should also be allowed to maintain some measures of local security outfits, which should complement the activities of formal or regular security forces. All these crimes in their various forms, are mostly local. Therefore, it is the local residents, headed by the monarchs and their chiefs, who are at vantage positions to perfectly tackle these criminal challenges. This is what, for want of a better description, I’d called an _idigenized or a domesticated democracy._ If as things are now, this wholistic adoption of westminster democracy has failed to address our security challenges, why don’t we look back and beckon to our rich historical backgrounds for possible assistance?
_Ẹwù àgbàwọ. Bí ò fún ni lọrùn, asìn ṣo ni lápá. Aṣọ ti a bá dá fún’ra ẹni ló ńyẹni_
(A borrowed gown. If it is not too tight on one, it’ll be too loose. But the gown that is made by one for oneself is that which is mostly proper and fitting on one)
The current borrowed democracy of winner-takes-all to the total exclusion of our traditional institutions of high utility value, doesn’t seem to be sufficient in meeting our security needs. Let’s harmonize it with our rich traditional values and adopt the synthetic outcome to our collective benefit. The colonial masters were no fools when they did that with what they called _Indirect Rule._ A word is enough for the wise.
My name remains Dauda Adesina Joki-Lasisi esq.
