Obasa, Aláàfin Sàngó And The Capture of Lagos – By Festus Adedayo
On Wednesday, February 25, 2025, a very toxic but innocuous advertorial was published in the Punch newspaper. It was authored by a group which called itself De Renaissance Patriots Foundation. Entitled Systematic Marginalization of Lagos State Indigenes, and signed by Major General Tajudeen Olanrewaju (rtd.) and Yomi Tokosi, the advertorial explains the legislative gangsterism currently going on in Lagos State, ex-Speaker Mudashiru Obasa’s impudent audacity and President Bola Tinubu’s nauseating silence on the civilian coup ongoing in the State of Aquatic Splendour.
The only fitting narrative that can explain the Obasa phenomenon and the Lagos godfather’s paternalism for Obasa and his ilk is the Osu caste system in Igboland. Among other obnoxious systems like the killing of twin babies, killing of children who grew first upper incisors, human sacrifices, among others, Osu caste is evergreen in its evil, and rooted in Igbo tradition and religion. Rev. George Thomas Basden’s book Among the Ibos of Southern Nigeria, (1921), a detailed account of the clergy’s experiences while living in Igbo land as a Christian missionary in the early 20th century, examines the people’s customs, beliefs, social structure and religious practices.
On page 109 of the book, Basden defined Osu as “a slave, but one distinct from an ordinary slave (ohu/oru) who in fact is the property of the god and when devoted to a god, he has no prospect of regaining freedom and he restricts his movements to the procuts of the shrine to which he was attached”. Centuries after the end of slavery and in spite of modernity, Osu caste’s poignant smell is rank in Igboland as Osu are still discriminated against, cannot marry a freeborn, their aspirations curtailed. They are thus forced to form an inter-group bond and alliance to press for their rights. A former minister under Olusegun Obasanjo, who is an Osu, is the rallying point of this caste against discrimination by “freeborn” Igbo. As I will argue presently, the Lagos parliament crisis, among other indicators, is fueled by the ancient indigene/settler dichotomy in Lagos. In this case, the Lagos godfather symbolizes the Obasanjo minister, hell-bent on protecting his fellow Lagos migrant-settlers.
General Olanrenwaju’s group which published the advertorial made several allegations against the godfather. They are encapsulated in the phrase, “persistent discrimination against the indigenous people of Lagos State.” Perhaps, the most insulting to the group was the temerity of the godfather’s choice of two non-indigenes of the state, Bisi Akande and Segun Osoba, ex-governors of Osun and Ogun States, to mediate in the crisis of the Lagos House of Assembly. Apart from the group’s total denunciation of this alien intervention, it specifically took Akande to the cleaners. Akande, it said, who “is struggling for political breath” in his home state, being unable to resolve the ongoing conflagration therein, feels entitled to poke-nose into Lagos matter “because his children, Akande Funmilayo (Chairman Apapa/Iganmu LCDA) and Yinka Akande are seriously benefiting from (sic) as Local Council Chairman and Director of Lekki Free Trade Zone respectively.”
As groups or individuals, Lagos indigenes have always stood up against the ruling establishment. A 1908 proposed water rate for Lagosians is an example. On July 20 of that year, Governor Walter Egerton proposed to charge Lagosians for them to access portable water. This was after his government constructed a #130,000 pipe borne water scheme, the precursor of the Iju waterworks built in 1916. Two indigenes of Lagos, John Randle and Orisadipe Obasa, medical doctors, under the banner of the People’s Union, arranged a rally of Lagosians at Enu Owa on November 26, 1908 where they took Egerton on. Randle and Obasa were themselves not autochthonous Lagosians. Randle, born in 1855 in Regent, Sierra Leone, originally from Oyo town, was son of Thomas, who settled in Aroloya part of Lagos, while Obasa, whose father descended from the Elekole of Ikole-Ekiti, was brought to Lagos in 1878. It must be borne in mind that Orisadipe Obasa has no ancestral connect with Mudashiru who is currently recreating an MC Oluomo motor-park hijack prototype in the Lagos parliament.
Indigene/settlers conflict in Lagos dates back to the 15th century. The Awori headsmen earliest settlers on Lagos Island, descendants of legendary Ogunfunminire, who hailed from Ile-Ife, had faced a Bini attempt to uproot them which was successful. A fierce battle that took place at Iddo had Olofin, who administered the area, being routed. Since then, the development of Lagos has attracted the influx of migrant-settlers Yoruba and other ethnicities laying claim to Lagos. The influence of migrant-settlers was so overwhelming that when in 1950, Dr I. Olorun-Nimbe emerged Mayor of the Lagos Council, only him and four others were Lagos indigenes while the rest 19 were migrant-settlers. The 1951 Constitution which placed Lagos under Ibadan, in a Western Region administration, further worsened Lagos’ fate until the 1954 Constitution restored its place. In 1967, Lagos got a state of its own and federal capital status. So, when in the 1950s, the heartland of Lagos indigenes’ residence, the Isale Eko, was demolished, groups were formed to continually fight the interest of indigenous Lagosians. They included the Isale Eko Association (1955) and Egbe Eko Parapo (Lagos Citizens’ Rights Protection Council – LCRPC) 1962. The latter emerged from a merger of the Lagos Aborigines Society and the Egbe Omo Ibile Eko (Association of the Sons of Lagos State) which was led by Chief T. A. Doherty. Today, the most prominent of those associations is the Association of Lagos State Indigenes (ALSI) hitherto led by Justice Ishola Oluwa, a retired High Court Judge.
The role of identity in Nigeria’s migrant-settlers crisis shows its importance in Nigerian social life. It also shows that identity has negative potentials that can be deployed as a tool for mobilizing violence. In the year 2000, Lagos deployed identity for violence when Hausa and Yoruba indigene-settlers engaged one other in a fratricidal war in Ketu. That fight, which claimed lives, indicates the adversarial use that autocththony can be put to. Scholars have said that several of Nigeria’s worst conflicts occurred because original inhabitants, or indigenes, are pitted against migrant-settlers. The Obasa Lagos budding conflict, though appears political, may unravel the powers behind it.
In Yorubaland, the migrant-settlers dynamics is rich in literature. It is indeed an ancient phenomenon. Signified by the native markers of àjèjì or àjòjì (migrants) and onílé, (autocththony) the common phrase that defines that transaction is, no migrant-settler should duel with an indigene over ownership of land (àjòjì kìí b’ónílé du’lé). This is the meat of General Olanrewaju and his De Renaissance Patriots Foundation’s beef with Tinubu and why many autochthonous Lagosians, regardless of Tinubu’s behemoth political power in Nigeria, his talismanic influence and boundless wealth, are against his continued domination of Lagos. It also explains why a Tinubu, who today is carrying a monstrous elephant of Nigerian power and wealth on his head could be this needlessly bothered by the tiny cricket of being sidelined in the sack of Obasa as Lagos House of Assembly Speaker. The moment Tinubu loses this makeshift, badly-constructed Lagos identity in the battle with autochthonous Lagosians, he has lost all.
The above was recalled with the aim of stating that, though the àjèjì and onílée stranger politics in Lagos has always been on the front burner, it has been more pronounced in recent time. This specifically drew more Lagosians’ ire with the godfather, an àjèjì, becoming the Lord of Lagos and defender of the rights of fellow migrant settlers. In the above referenced advertorial, the De Renaissance Patriots Foundation claimed that since 1999, only one Lagos Omo-Onílé (son of the land) has been governor, ostensibly Raji Fashola. What this means is that Tinubu, Akinwumi Ambode and Babajide Sanwo-Olu, in the words of the advertorial, are àjòjì. The group also listed names of many àjòjì who it said have, unfairly, hoisted the banner of Lagos at the detriment of Lagosians.
Some extreme ones among the Lagos indigenes’ rights advocates have literally equalized their battle to an ancient Yoruba wise saying that no stranger can back a child like its mother (kò s’éni t’ó le mòó pòn bí olómo). Some others, in pursuit of this narrative, have claimed that the àjòjì at the helm of political affairs in and of Lagos, don’t appreciate Lagos enough,just like the domestic goat undervalues the prowess of a hunter and his gun; or one who inherits a huge agbada gown does not appreciate its value (ewúrẹ́ ilé kó mọ iyì odẹ, aj’ogún ẹwù kó mọ iyì agbádá nlá). It is on these twin premises that they derive their two conclusions. One is that, Lagos could have developed more than it does if the migrant-settlers had been autochtonous Lagosians.
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