The Yoruba culture of Omoluabi is founded on a single pillar: respect. Self-respect. And when a person has failed to respect himself, regardless of age, and or office, the Yoruba person, is absolved of the obligation to respect, a self disrespecting person…
I have in recent days been the recipient of several unsolicited counsel from a number of friends, mostly those of the Buharish persuasion, particularly those who have not had the pains of knowing me at close quarters inflicted on them. I should stop abusing the dotard they urged, and the usual coup de grace would be their appeal to my Yoruba roots. The Omoluabi should not abuse an elderly person, they would admonish. Utter nonsense and falsehood.
What is the meaning of agbaya? Or is English? Why do you think that our culture provides for the banishment of wicked kings? Why do you think we have pejoratives such as, Adagba-madanu? You know nothing of the Yoruba culture, mostly because you know nothing about its spirituality. Organized Christianity and Islam, having between them rendered us soulless and shorn of our consciousness of the living God that we see all around us. Vacuous religiosities emptied of the knowledge of the almighty God and His righteousness.
The Yoruba culture of Omoluabi is founded on a single pillar: respect. Self-respect. And when a person has failed to respect himself, regardless of age, and or office, the Yoruba person, is absolved of the obligation to respect, a self disrespecting person. The Yoruba culture had evolved its own sophisticated systems of governance, complete with checks and balances, long before America was found, and even the monarch was not an absolute monarchy, however powerful the king might be. The right to authority over a non slave, was only ever predicated on the respect shown to that person. Even the Oba is careful not to be seen to be willfully trampling on the rights of his subjects.
How respectful of the rights of Mandate, or Sowore, has Buhari been? Please do not come preaching fraudulent Yoruba culture to me. I am evidently better grounded in my culture: it doesn’t preach acquiescence and or complicity in the oppression of another, and it absolves the younger person of any complicity in the disrespect of a self disrespecting geriatric dotard.
When you critically examine the charges against Sowore and Mandate, the DSS’s willful disobedience of the court order to release the captives on bail, their subsequent arraignment at the leisure of the state, and the terms and conditions of their eventual bail as granted by the court, the only logical conclusion that must be drawn, is that the government is deliberate in its evil. The intention is to terrorize all that would dare to disagree with Buhari. The only charge that has any credibility on the list, is the one connected with the abuse of Bubu.
He went to Dubai! That is no longer a fact in issue. He was planning an armed insurrection! That is known to have no substance. I am aware of about a dozen Mandates that were rescued from the clutches of Buhari through the efforts of Adesina Ademola Ogunlana, who spent days in Abeokuta to free the captives held at Elewe-Iran. The very intelligent men and women of our security apparatuses are very aware of the complete harmlessness of Sowore and his cohorts, and the brutal deployment of machine guns in the hunt for mosquitoes, is merely designed to send a message to those who would dare.
I dare. As long as we pretend to be a democracy, I refuse to give up my right to be stupid within reason. It is well within my democratic and human rights, to opine that I believe that the democratically elected president of my country is stupid. The right has no limitations regardless of the name or character of the occupant of the office. I might even be the stupid one.
For as long as anyone remains in captivity, and to my knowledge on a charge as silly as the one related to abusing a democratically elected government official, I shall retain the right to abuse such a person. Be that the president or a councilor.
I dey my house, come and arrest me. 😏
DF
First published 12 October, 2019.
