In 1964, a foremost Yoruba Playwright and actor, Chief Hubert Ogunde wrote a Play titled: “Yoruba Ronu.”English translation: “Yoruba, please think.”
It was prophetic. The great Awo and his successor as Premier, Ladoke Akintola were at loggerheads in the West. People took sides. Kings in Yoruba land tried to broker peace meetings. All attempts fell on deaf ears. People died. The West descended into anarchy and dragged the rest of the country down with it.
I was a little boy growing up in peaceful Benin City. The crisis refused to go away until Martial music put a stop to everything on January 15th 1966. I saw the confusion with my own eyes that day. I was a pupil at Holy Cross Primary School on Mission Road.
I carried my tin box on my head, and along with my two older brothers, we went through the moat at St. Peter’s, Iyaro to get to our home on Sparta Lane, New Benin.
Six months later, the counter coup happened. Aguiyi-Ironsi was killed. By the next year, one day, my father was taking us to school on an August morning when we saw a column of Army trucks loaded with soldiers whom we came to know as Biafran soldiers. My father stopped the car. We all came down and watched the endless convoy of trucks. We wondered. My dad turned around and took us back home. He still went to work that day.
We did not return to school until months later after Midwest was liberated. The war ended in 1970 as 3 million people lay dead, brother against brother.
This story is to serve as background to the unfolding storm in our hitherto peaceful Benin City.
Again, for decades, the rest of the country had been begging the North to educate its people. Those pleas fell on deaf ears. They made their people into fetchers of water and hewers of wood, easy cannon fodder for extremist ideology. Today, the North is destroyed because they refused to educate their people.
Maybe we should also travel to Warri, 1998 to 2000. It all began with a land feud between two families. It then became a war of reprisals between tribes until it became a three way war of old grudges between the Ijaws, the Itsekiris and the Urhobos. Halliburton left town. Chevron packed their bags. Shell was the last to leave. Warri died. It may resurrect in 100 years. You cannot live in Warri as a youth and hope to get a job today.
It is through the prisms of history that we must look at the event of December 28th that began at Uwa Primary School and ended at a Police Station. Here’s an eyewitness account below.
“I was at the football field where Don Pedro was abducted. In spite of all our entreaties, the assailants refused to let him go. We decided to escort him all the way to wherever they were going to take him. When we got to the Holy Aruosa Church, I felt some relief that the presiding church officials and worshippers would rescue him. To my greatest surprise, they were the ones who inflicted the most beating and injury on him. Church worshippers. I wondered at that point what kind of people we had become.”
Having said all that, it may be pertinent to examine the core principles of Freedom of Speech in a culture driven environment or anywhere else for that matter. I am an Esan man only when you really ask me whether I am Esan or Benin. Otherwise, I am an Edo man. The symbol of my Edoness is the Oba of Benin. He is our father. He goes nowhere until God Almighty, Osa nu dazi calls him home. We revere him. We Esan people love the Benin people. They are great big brothers. I declared on a TV program in 2024 in the run-up to the governorship elections that “our big brothers should be fair to Esan and support an Esan man for the governorship. I said at the time that Fair is fair.” Our big brothers listened. An Esan man is governor today even as small as we are in population.
Thank you.
I say this to say, we have evolved well as a people. Freedom of speech has responsibilities. These responsibilities are to be imposed on self by self. To that end, Don Pedro (PhD), himself a top tier media man certainly knew better.
On the other hand, in every society, just as you have moderates, you have extremists. Growing up in Benin City, we knew not to point our fingers at the Palace as children. That was respect and awe. Extremists exist to protect extreme compliance. They do not seek permission from anyone and do not need to be sponsored by anyone. They do what they do because they believe in a Cause.
What we must know to do as we begin a new year is to ask heaven for wisdom in charting the days ahead and resolving the issue of the brutalization of Don Pedro Obaseki in the context of our culture and the economic implications of lack of resolution.
If reprisals begin, Benin City will empty out. We will all lose. Where then does wisdom lie in this matter and other pending matters?
A few months ago, Prince Harry was at the Buckingham Palace for tea with his father. It would be great to see the same kind of gesture in Benin. We have over 1,000 years of history behind us as Benin Kingdom. We are way too advanced to score goals against ourselves. Why lose when we can win? We must learn history’s lessons.
Benin must Think.
Mr. Governor, Happy New Year sir. As the saying goes, “you have your work cut out for you.”
Happy New Year, everyone.
Iselogbe!!!!!!
I rest.
Oba gha to kpere. Iseé
