Democratic Republic of Yoruba (DRY) – isn’t that the very epitome of a dry joke?
Which was why before you could say “Gbogungboro!”, Prof. Banji Akintoye, eminent professor of history, grand doctrinaire of Oodua Republic and theorist-in-chief of Yoruba Nation, had disowned the Ibadan tragic romantics of April 13, with the same fervour as he had serenaded Sunday Igboho’s earlier rascality on the same cause.
And Igboho himself! Wasn’t he too, on the double, doing a fervent relay of refutations! — first, a disavowal, posthaste? Then, his lawyer’s forceful formal denial?
Where, in God’s name, is that pre-Benin Republic gung-ho guy, with imperious dash to protect Yoruba “nesan” and defend Yoruba “territory”?
And Gani Adams! He too bawled and hollered, as he scurried from the Ibadan sorry comics. True, at the height of Igboho’s impetuous dash, the Aare Ona Kakanfo mascot of a dead empire cautioned Igboho not to subvert the “struggle”.
Yet, Adams too was among the South West non-state actors punching above their weight, at the feverish froth of anti-Fulani hysteria.
Then, Muhammadu Buhari was President; and President Bola Tinubu was himself tarred as some “Afonja”, read: Yoruba traitor-in-chief.
Still, his “crime” was no more than yoking a legitimate political alliance that birthed a North West-South West entente, which delivered federal power to his hitherto opposition fragments in 2015.
These folks lost out; but powered back with fearsome anti-Fulani bogey, hidden behind heady ethnic jingoism, powered by preening Yoruba ultra-nationalism.
“Gbogungboro”, you will recall, was Professor Akintoye’s now rested column in The Nation. It did for the Yoruba what Camara Laye’s Radiance of the King and the French Negritude Movement did for the Black race: over-praised the past of both almost to a stupor.

Gbogungboro soon burnt itself out. But its intellectual ferment would later find a new and vicious home in Yoruba arrogance and gangling hubris during PMB’s Presidency.
In that high noon of ceaseless plots, the ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen” committed every crime in the Yoruba country. That formidable band had retired every Yoruba criminal from home turf!
That hysteria of froth and bile joyfully re-made a nation-wide security meltdown into a high Fulani plot to subjugate Yorubaland, simply because a Fulani man was president.
Why, from Olusegun Obasanjo, arch-nationalist and former President of the Federal Republic, came own theory of “Fulanization” — the same “Fulanization” that, in 1999, had romped him into the Presidency, with the Yoruba screeching blue murder!
That was the explosive ogre that brought Sunday Igboho storming into the picture as “saviour” of the Yoruba interior from the imperial Fulani — Igboho, hitherto known as a partisan fixer and enforcer.
But Professor Akintoye’s Yoruba Nation theorizing white-washed all of that — and pronto, a swashbuckling Yoruba redeemer had galloped into town!
Yes, the good professor was right: the April 13 comedy was indeed “insanity in Ibadan”. But the root of that insanity was the Yoruba Nation whim, sans any Yoruba mandate, beyond the tragic presumption of excitable activists, projecting own caprices.
It’s rather rich, therefore, for these principal actors to pass the buck and scurry away from the monster they created — more so when Prof. Akintoye, Igboho and one Ola Ademola just fired a letter to President Tinubu, demanding “Yoruba exit” from Nigeria. That letter — no surprise — crawled with wild Fulani distemper.
Between the “peaceful” bragging of the Akintoye/Igboho letter of April 17 and the DRY damp squib of April 13, it isn’t clear which was more reckless.
On whose authority are Akintoye/Igboho demanding a negotiation team, within two months, to cook a deal on Yoruba exit from Nigeria? What arrant presumption! But it’s good the Federal Government has met that letter with the icy snub it deserves.
Indeed, the entire gambit could be traced to an Ibadan parley of 22 August 2019, that “elected” Akintoye as “Asiwaju Yoruba”, itself a classic in the Yoruba nest of intrigues.
Despite wild Fulani-baiting, PMB just won re-election. Tinubu had been “eternal” Asiwaju of Lagos. Nothing suggested an “Asiwaju Yoruba” fitted into his strategic plan.
Yet, Tinubu (who wasn’t even there or represented at that assembly) got “nominated”; and was promptly “defeated” by Akintoye as the Asiwaju Yoruba! Talk of a “me-too” syndrome! It was the classic Yoruba “egbinrin ote”!
The ensuing uproar did little to douse the zeal of the Yoruba Nation lobby, with Baba Akintoye’s ceaseless theorizing; and Igboho’s hare-brained street forays — until the Igboho battering ram ran itself into a ditch (while those egging him on fled); and cooled his heels in a Benin Republic jail, despite the empty braggadocio from the Akintoye lobby.
The Ibadan DRY revolution of April 13 — as comic as it was tragic — was the zenith of that insanity.
It’s funny though: the shrill grandstanders and rabid hell raisers, on Oodua Republic and allied fancies, deserted the sorry ragtag that tried to “capture” the Oyo State Secretariat, and the historic Parliament Building of the old Western Region!
At last, the bemused majority just denounced that costly gambit, with the Ooni of Ife — the No. 1 moral force of Yoruba traditional feudalism — disowning the DRY sponsors, with their rag-tag army, as mere impostors that represent no Yoruba cause.
About time!
Yet, the Yoruba ought to have, long ago, nipped in the bud this lunatic relay of costly presumptions and comic delusions, given the Igbo experience next door.
The Akintoye lobby waxed poetic on a “Yoruba Nation” with a mandate from no one. When the chips were down, they blamed a “lunatic fringe”, led by Dupe Onitiri. Some defence!
Yet, Prof. Akintoye’s Yoruba radicalism at old age hardly differs from Prof. Chinua Achebe’s exit drama. That iconic writer left his people that bilious book, There Was A Country, with its skewed history of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).
That woke up the buried ghosts of Biafra. Now, the good professor sleeps in peace. But his Ndigbo live in pieces — no thanks to the IPOB anarchy loosed upon the East.
Nigeria must re-federalize to give everyone a fair deal. But that must not be through vacuous ethnic pride, and vicious ethnic-baiting — like IPOB’s, the Yoruba Nation lobby’s choice strategy.
For the elite that crave ethnic tension and combat to stay relevant, this “lowly” traders’ guild, from Mandate Market in Ilorin, Kwara State, is rather telling: “United Association of All Tribes Perishable Traders of Pepper, Tomatoes and Onions”! These folks buy and sell, totally blind to the ethnic shade of the next shop or stall.
Even the market hoi polloi know that hunger – not tribe – is their enemy. Let the manipulating elite realize this truth and know peace!