YORUBA PEOPLE: Best Cultured Race In The World, Says Reno Omokri

I woke up today saluting the courage of Reno Omokiri, the Niger Delta dude who never holds back to speak the truth. He shares the same attribute with me as a well-meaning Nigerian who wanted the best for the nation but whose vision for the nation remains an unrealizable dream. In 2010, prior to the 2011 general election, I was already a staunch lover and promoter of Goodluck Jonathan, who I believed was God-sent to reshape Nigeria. I was fore-seeing a better nation under the reign of the Etueke man. Following his humiliation by the North cabal, who initially refused him power in the aftermath of Umaru Yar’adua’s hospitalization in Saudi Arabia and his eventual death, I embarked on a ferocious promotion of Goodluck Jonathan, creating the website, goodluckebelejonathanfornigeria.com and created a column for him in my old online newspaper, emnnews.com(from Eclipse Media Network). Each day, I was re-posting and expanding every post of Jonathan on Facebook. During the period, Goodluck Jonathan was the most influential member using Facebook and was so described by international Media who saw his weight on the social media as a top Nigerian politician.

The column, GEJSPEAKS on emnnews was appreciated by many who saw the positive side of what I was doing for Jonathan then. Till this day, Goodluck Jonathan neither knows me nor even knew the efforts I was making to promote him and his personality as a potentila good leader for the country. I was right and today, the whole World is witnessing the doom befalling Nigeria and made possible by what I will call World’s most notorious conspiracy as Fulanis through their foreign backers wanted power at all cost to stay in the North.

I am a true Yoruba blooded man and did not have my ancestral link to the Niger Delta when I was spending time and money promoting Goodluck Jonathan. I only saw the goodness and fine mind of Goodluck Jonathan and figured him as a potential game-changer for Nigeria. I was right, but he was denied the opportunity of that game-changing. I loves Nigeria and wanted a better life for all, looking beyond race and tribe. Now, my perception has changed.

Back to the topic of today as I want to discuss Reno Omokri, a one-time Goodluck Jonathan aide and image promoter. Below is Reno’s piece on Yoruba people, celebrating the race in a glowing stance and saying it as it is. He minced no words to put across his impressions of the Yoruba people. Take it or leave it, it is the truth many Yoruba people haters would dispute but the truth remains that the same culture, which has put us as number one in the World is the same culture that has destroyed all fabrics of Yoruba people’s existence today; endurance, patience, tolerance, kindness, generosity, loyalty, patriotism, faithful and honesty, all embedded in our genetic souces.

Reno’s glowing celebration of Yoruba culture puts him as a fine and fair-minded person and completely detribalized just as I was, because what I see is every human being is ability and fairness to others. This is the way it should be as we should all look beyond the flesh. Thanks, Reno, We are two of a kind and if anyone is saying today that I am agitating for my Yoruba Nation which I continue to champion as one of the pioneers, tell them no one can love Nigeria more than myself. I pushed Jonathan’s image beyond many, spending d=so much time and money. This is our real attribute as we a Yoruba man wants is fairplay and equity in all their ramifications.

Just as I celebrated Jonathan and promoting him for the presidency and defending his integrity throughout his reign and when he was in power, I was only exhibiting the Yoruba attributes in me, a race so denied, deprived, humiliated, castigated, diminished, subjugated and also exterminated. We would rise and our sincerity and honesty as a peole would fight our fight and grant us YORUBA Nation. Asiwaju Niwa!

READ RENO’S piece on the Yoruba people below.

People often assume the Yoruba are so successful as an ethnic nationality due to their thirst for education, and how it has penetrated down even amongst their remotest rural communities. But study them. Their culture of respect opens doors for them that even education cannot open. Diplomacy gives them supremacy.

And their culture is often mistaken for what it is not by others who do not understand them as a people. What some people ignorantly call cowardice, or sycophancy, is stooping to conquer. It is both a military and diplomatic strategy.

This is what Scripture meant in 2 Corinthians 10:4 “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty”. Wisdom, courtesy, diplomacy, and praise are all weapons. A weapon is anything you can use to achieve your strategic objective. It does not always have to be a physically offensive weapon.

But are the Yorubas even cowards, as some people accuse them to be? Well, let us let the facts speak for themselves.

In the history of Nigeria, only two men have returned to Nigeria to face almost certain death even when they had the option of a very comfortable political asylum abroad. Both of them are Yoruba. In 1985, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida toppled the Buhari regime while Major General Tunde Idiagbon (mixed Yoruba/Fulani) was at Mecca yet Idiagbon returned.

In 1995, Olusegun Obasanjo (pure Owu Yoruba) was accused of planning a coup by the blood thirsty tyrant, Abacha (if you do not like that truthful description of Abacha or if you believe that ‘Abacha did not loot’, you can go and join him where he is) while he was away in Copenhagen.

He was informed by the then US Ambassador, Walter Carrington, that Abacha meant to arrest, try and execute him, and was offered political asylum in the United States.

He returned to face almost certain death.

What more example of bravery can there be than these two shining ones.

Furthermore, there is the apocryphal example of Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi who chose to die with the then Head of State, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, rather than abandon his guest, which he was at liberty to do.

In addition to the above, in my opinion, they are the least likely to maintain and retain their cultural values, when it clashes with other cultures.

I love how they retain their full culture when they travel abroad. It is a rarity amongst Africans. When you visit London, you may be confused if you think Yoruba is the only African language in existence.

A Yoruba man can enter a quiet bus and receive a phone call and speak in Yoruba, and won’t feel embarrassed. And I am not referring to a Johnny Just Come. I am referring to second generation Yorubas who were born and brought up in England,

I have been traveling the world from childhood, yet I have not encountered people doing that with much wider spoken African languages, such as Swahili and Hausa.

They may speak it privately in their homes abroad. but not publicly, and even if they do, it is not to the extent of the Yoruba.

It has gotten to the extent that the Metropolitan Police now recruit Yoruba speaking Constables, and Harrods now employ Yoruba speaking cashiers. Oh please do not just take my words at face value. Fact check me.

Go to Houston on a Sunday, you will see Yoruba people everywhere in their native wears, adire, plus abeti aja and eleti aja.

Here in California, other Africans now draw crowd to their parties by saying ‘the Nigerians will be there.’

This will annoy other tribes, including mine, however, when foreigners talk about how cool Nigerians are, they are usually referring to Yorubas.

Take it or leave it, but the Yoruba are the most progressive Black people on the face of planet Earth.

They produced the first Black African Nobel laureate for an academic category (Wole Soyinka), and the first Black African military ruler to have voluntarily handed over to a civilian President (Olusegun Obasanjo), and the first Nigerian to win a Grammy Award (Sade Adu) as well as the first person born and bred in Africa to have won a Pulitzer Prize (Dele Olojede).

The reason why Yorubas are the biggest music stars of Nigerian origin is because they are unabashedly Yoruba. They do not try to sing or act like Westerners. They are very in-your-face with their Yoruba-ness. And when people like themselves to such a high degree, others tend to join them in liking them.

There are an estimated 15 Black billionaires on Planet Earth. Three of them are Yoruba. More than any ethnic nationality in Africa.

US President, Joe Biden, named a Yoruba man, Adewale Adeyemo, as deputy Treasury Secretary. This is the highest position to which a Black African has been appointed (not elected) in US history. Another Yoruba man, Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye, became the first person on Earth to successfully perform a surgery by taking out an unborn fetus from its mother’s womb and putting it back after the surgery.

77% of all Black doctors in America, and a very large percentage of these are Yoruba.

I commend the Edekiri people (the real name of the Yoruba). You guys are oni te si iwaju.