Falae’s unfortunate and unacceptable kidnap

I HAVE made several efforts this week to speak with Chief Olu Falae, to extend my sympathy over his unfortunate kidnap as well as to express happiness that he was able to return home safely. Chief Olu Falae is without doubt one of the genuine elder statesmen in our country, and while many charlatans have been so described, there’s no gainsaying the fact that the chief is so deserving of the appellation. I met Chief Olu Falae for the first time in the lead to the 2014 National Conference, when the Okunronmu Committee on a National Conference held an experts’ meeting at the International Conference Center in Abuja.

I had been invited as discussant of a paper presented by the venerable chief and I said things that he obviously didn’t like about his analysis. He angrily expressed his objection but after the presentation he was very accommodating in his response to me when I went to greet him. He pointed out that I looked like Alhaji Aliyu Kola Belgore, who he worked with in his banking days. I replied that we were cousins. Much later, we were both delegates to the 2014 National Conference and on many occasions he expressed admiration for views I expressed at the Conference, saying that with younger people like me, our country had a secure future.
Defender of Yoruba’s interest
Chief Olu Falae is a very passionate defender of the interests of the Yoruba people and he expresses his views without ambiguity. Yet, in my view, he is also a passionate Nigerian patriot and he belongs to that generation of Nigerians who were given tremendous opportunities by our country in those truly remarkable years of independence. In turn, people like Chief  Olu Falae worked with genuine commitment to build the new country. It is part of the contradictions of Nigerian development, that Chief Olu Falae continues to be engaged with Nigeria this time from a much more narrowly ethnic platform at a time when the problems of nation building have become much strongly class-based; and when there is a far more serious youth bulge than at any point in our history. A country with the median age of 17.1 years must be truly difficult to understand from the standpoint of someone in his seventies, because the problems which young people are wrestling with across the country are very similar and cannot be properly appreciated or apprehended from the standpoint of ethnicity. I respect Chief Olu Falae’s sincere commitments, but I am more circumspect about the reductionism associated with the platform of ethnicity as being the primary contradiction that we face in our country.
The unacceptable kidnap of the highly respect Chief Olu Falae, has unfortunately been turned into ammunition by ethnic entrepreneurs, to ratchet up inter-ethnic heat, as the people who kidnapped the chief were said to be nomadic Fulani herdsmen. Even the normally cool-headed Chief Olu Falae, threatened ‘self-help’, if problems with nomadic Fulani were not stemmed by the Nigerian government. He stated that: “it is an insult to OUR RACE (the Yoruba) that a man like me could be abducted by a BUNCH OF HOODLUMS (my emphasis)”. There were more extremist statements by Yinka Odumakin and Femi Fani-Kayode. Fani-Kayode in his obviously crowded imagination saw the herdsmen, described as ‘a bunch of hoodlums’ by Chief Falae as: “…the vanguard and covet armed wing of the Fulani ruling class…” and “…sleeper cells of a much bigger army…(and) if a major conflict were to arise would those sleeper cells be activated and would they commence the wholesale slaughter of the indigenous population in their host states?” Such morbid imaginations of “major conflict” and “wholesale slaughter” can only issue forth from Femi Fani-Kayode!

For the full story, check the Vanguard newspaper.