Kunle Ojeleye

Kunle Ojeleye

Obey Commander sang “Operation Feed the Nation”.
King Sunny Ade crooned about “Isu di wiwon”.

How many years back were these songs?
Between then and now, how much of an increase in farming engagement has occurred in the Southwest of Nigeria?

As I travel across Yorubaland on every trip, all I see are vast expanses of rich arable land, abandoned by the Yoruba and left to become forests habitable for kidnappers and criminal elements.

Many of our youths are busy hanging around road junctions and riding okadas.
Those not riding Okadas wake up so late in the morning to loaf around doing nothing. A considerable number are touting and doing ‘Baba Rere, Baba Ke’ around town, looking for the odd N100 here and there with which they go and buy all forms of alcoholic drinks and drugs.

Under the nose of our youths, the Hausa would come, irrigate land, plant pepper and sell them in sacks for thousands of Naira to our people within a few months.
They are making money from the same rich, arable lands that were begging us as a people to till and plant on them.

In the days of my parents, many of their peers, despite being teachers, were fully engaged in farming to reduce their food expenses and ensure their salary could be devoted to other necessities of life.

As a young undergraduate, my uncle, with whom I lived in Ife, a Professor of Pharmacology at 38 years of age, would take us every Saturday to the farm to plant corn and yam on the campus of Great Ife. Those who attended my father’s autobiography would remember his anecdotal speech in this regard in March 2017.

In many developed nations, beyond the issue of government support, those in agriculture are some of the affluent members of the society.

How many here on Facebook, living in Nigeria and not in a place like Lagos, where land may not be readily available, are into subsistence farming?
How many here do not see farming as ‘beneath’ their status?

As an ‘abroadian’, two years ago, I planted suckers of plantain in Nigeria that are giving me a bountiful harvest. Last year, with my cousins, I cultivated 400 heaps and planted yam. As I write, apart from my personal farming focus in Nigeria, I am working on several agricultural ventures with others.

As such, when I hear cries of ‘Ebi Npa Wa’,
I ask myself if we did not cultivate hunger by becoming indolent, and abandoning farming/agriculture as a people.

You want to be seen as ‘Mr Clean’ whose hands must not be soiled.
You prefer the image of ‘Mr Groomed’ that women should fawn over, and must not be seen as involved in something as ‘degrading’ as farming.
And you are shouting ‘ebi npa wa’ up and down?

Ebi o ti pa ọ.
Just tarry a little bit more, se o gbọ.

N. B.
Please do not come here telling me I am gaslighting folks.

As a people, we and our leaders in Yorubaland, as a matter of urgency, must tackle where we failed ourselves and future generations by making ourselves slaves to those who now feed us in the southwest.

Ebi o ti de o.
Just wait until those feeding us begin to fully use the food we eat as a strategy of their warfare, domination and control.

I fully acknowledge the herdsmen issue and the insecurity Pastor Kayode Oyejobi has raised. I avoided talking about it because I sidestep unnecessary arguments these days on political issues.
My view is that
(1) The problem we created ourselves many years before, has only been compounded by Buhari’s killer herdsmen.
(2) Yoruba leaders are doing nothing about the killer herdsmen and deliberate sabotage of farming in the southwest because “oun ti wọn njẹ, ko jẹ ki wọn o gbọn”.
(3) When we in Yorubaland are fed up with these killer herdsmen, we know exactly what to do to rein them in and send a message to their paymasters that we would not be refugees in our homestead.

*