Herdsmen of the city

It is heartwarming that the Lagos State House of Assembly, LAHA, hosted Prof. Akinwumi Isola the other day to discuss the desirability of Yoruba being used in the state’s schools as the language of instruction. Isola is a passionate scholar whose corpus of work includes poems, plays, novels and historiography. He writes mostly in Yoruba. He believes like the late Prof. Babs Fafunwa, a great citizen of Lagos and former Minister of Education, that African languages should be used as the language of instructions in all elementary and secondary schools in Nigeria. It is good that the Lagos Assembly, under the leadership of Mudashiru Ajayi Obasa, a young man of courage and sagacity, is leading the way for the state and the city to find their cultural bearing.

Lagos city shares similar history with two other major Yoruba cities, Ilorin and Ibadan, which were created or became transformed in the wake of the almost 100 years Yoruba Civil Wars of the 19th Century. Ilorin was the trigger of the Yoruba Wars. Ilorin was an outpost of the old Oyo Empire where the last Oyo ruler, Afonja, the Are Ona-Kakanfo, commander of the elite Calvary forces, was resident. Afonja, with the aid of Malam Alimi, a Fulani Islamic cleric, later revolted against his suzerain, the Alaafin. Soon, the followers of Alimi, tired of Afonja’s high-handedness, staged a bloody coup and had Afonja assassinated and put his regime to a sorry end.

All attempts by the Alaafin to regain Ilorin met with disaster until Oyo itself was destroyed and the people forced to evacuate under the leadership of Prince Atiba, an outstanding soldier-statesman, who led his people to build the present modern city of Oyo. Ilorin people had created an attractive ideology that was difficult to resist. All members of the Muslim laity, known as the Jamaa, were free men and they were all equal (at least in theory). Under this ideology, no Muslim could enslave another Muslim or put him in any form of bondage. These attracted young men, especially indenture slaves, to escape from their masters and take refuge in Ilorin. The conditions for acceptance were simple: accept the new faith, join the Ilorin army and grow a beard.

Therefore, by the end of the Yoruba Wars in 1886, every Yoruba town has one person or the other in Ilorin. Though most of them settled in Ilorin permanently, many of them or their descendants also took advantage of the peace brought about by the British colonial regime to preach Islam in many parts of the Yoruba country. Therefore, Islam spread more rapidly among the Yoruba during peace time than when the Islamists of Ilorin were waging wars to expand their faith and defend their outpost.

Ibadan was to have a similar history. Ibadan was one of the numerous settlements in the Egba forest which suffered greatly after the collapse of Oyo Empire. A band of soldiers led by Lagelu, a general from Ile-Ife, was the first to impose his rule on the settlement, forcing the Egba owners to move south deeper into the forest. Lagelu’s successors were soldiers, mostly veterans of the Ilorin offensives. The new rulers, which included such men as Oluyole and Osunkunle, soon created an ideology that was similar to that of Ilorin. Ibadan became a bye-word for meritocracy where anyone from any part of Yoruba land could make a career.

Ibadan, like Ilorin, believed in merit. Each of the two towns developed a unique Yoruba dialect that is a variation of Oyo dialect but with its own distinction. Both towns are robust in their understanding of their unique position in the Yoruba milieu and there is no doubt they have continued to play good roles in Nigerian politics, economics and social development till this day.

We can say the same about Lagos. With the collapse of old Oyo, Eko, as Lagos was known, acquired new prominence as the most important port in the Yoruba country sharing distinction with Badagry and Port-Novo (Ajase). Its deep harbour attracted British seafarers who soon pitched their tent there and imposed their rule by force of arms. By the end of the Yoruba Wars in 1886, Lagos had acquired special importance for it was also in the city that many of the missionary groups had their headquarters. The returnees from the Slave Trade had also formed a substantial section of the Lagos society. Thus the Ekitiparapo Society of Lagos, led by Haastrup (from Ilesha) and Doherty (from Ijero-Ekiti), was based in Lagos. Haastrup was later to become Kabiyesi Ajimoko, the Owa-Obokun of Ijeshaland.

Since the amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914, Eko has been transformed from the island and the few islets like Ikoyi that the British originally settled in. Like Ibadan and Ilorin, Lagos continues to attract hordes of immigrants seeking good fortunes and hoping to find gold on its dusty streets. It also served as the capital of Nigeria from 1914 until when the capital was moved to Abuja by General Ibrahim Babangida in 1991.

Such was the greatness of Lagos that everyone could call it home. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was elected from Lagos in 1951 to represent the Colony Province in the Western House of Assembly in Ibadan. When some people were confusing Lagos expansive multi-culturalism with something else in 1973, Brigadier Mobolaji Johnson, the first military governor of Lagos State declared: “Lagos is not a No-Man’s Land!”

In being a multi-cultural city, Lagos is only following the trend in the world, it is following the examples of Ibadan and Ilorin. In London, Rome, Paris, Frankfurt, New York, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and many other cities, multi-culturalism is the key word. It enriches a city and brings a blend that promotes education, culture, understanding and economic progress. But can we imagine the Germans going to London to set up a colony where no English person is permitted to own a house or a shop? Can we think of the French setting up a colony in Rome where the Italians can only visit as buyers of goods and as menial workers?

Multi-culturalism is good but that should not mean that the city should surrender its soul. The LAHA has done the right thing to bring the state back to the path of rectitude by examine the role of the Yoruba language in the future of Lagos. Talking about language alone is not enough. The LAHA should re-examine the city’s multicultural roots and demographic archipelago and interpreted this in view of what is happenings in other parts of Nigeria.

If other peoples are coming to Lagos to create colonies, is this the new trend in Nigeria? Or is it a development that may create serious problems for the future of Lagos?

I have looked at the national landscape and I don’t see anywhere else where colonial settlements would be allowed. Any Yoruba who is willing to settle in Maiduguri, Yola, Port-Harcourt, Onitsha or Jos, would have to be ready to abide by the cultural ethos of each place. To insist that a Yoruba colony would be established in Yola for example, would be carrying the oneness of Nigeria too far. If the Yoruba in Yola should insist on this, then they would be the herdsmen of the city, ready to challenge trouble into a dance.

As Isola had said, putting Yoruba in its pride of place in Lagos and the entire Yoruba land would be a good step in the right direction in reclaiming the future. As Fafunwa also recommended, Yoruba should be used as the language of instructions for all subjects in both private and public primary and secondary schools in Lagos State and the rest of Yoruba land. No Yoruba man would send his children to a secondary school in London and expect him or her to be taught in Yoruba. It is true that English is the official language of Nigeria, but it is not the basic language of Lagos.

Re-asserting the primacy of Yoruba in Lagos would not be an attempt to deny its multi-cultural status. It would only mean that in a multi-cultural world, there must be a cultural and heritage foundation. This is the only way to safeguard the future of Lagos and make it a city with deep cultural roots. We have seen the impact of indigenous languages not only in the big economies, but also in the small Scandinavian countries of Europe. An example is Sweden where the Volvo automobile company is one of the dominant economic players. There, the Swedish language is the language of instructions up to university level. The same is applicable in South Korea where the Korean language is used for educational instructions up to university level.

If the current trends continue, the essence of Lagos would be lost. 4000 years ago, Jerusalem belonged to the Jebusites. Today, the entire Jebusite ethnic group is lost and their language gone. Lagos should learn from Ibadan and Ilorin. Take from others but make them your own. Or else in 50 years time, which part of Lagos would the descendants of the current denizens of Lagos call their own? If the current trend continues, then it would not be a surprise if pidgin or any other strange tongue apart from Yoruba becomes the official language at Iga Iduganran, the palace of the Oba of Lagos. How to recites the poems of Ifa in Pidgin or any other language would be a tall other.

Lagos must rise up, like Ilorin and Ibadan, and absolve the multicultural influences that are coming into the city. It should not allow the turning of the city into the colonies of those who have come to take advantage of its wide embrace and traditional Yoruba culture of welcoming others. Allowing others to form colonies in Lagos where the Yoruba language is forbidden and where even Lagosians are not allowed or permitted to own shops or buildings should not be the future of Lagos. Indeed, that is a shameful aberration. These new herdsmen needs to be curbed or else, they would turn privileges into rights. The iroko sapling is delicate now, but in the nearest future, it may demand sacrifices to appease it.