Let’s talk about what I actually came to say to us. All of the message is important and we have already mentioned some. It is about what today, the 2nd of February, what it means and what it is. You remember it was on this date that Lord Macaulay, speaking to the British Parliament in 1835, said that the destiny of Africans (of which the Yoruba Race is my specific concern) should be changed.
Macaulay said he had travelled throughout Africa and that he saw riches, wealth, good things, the good life, and never saw one thief or beggar. He said he saw Africans, that they were of great and high moral values, high self-esteem and high spirituality. He could not fully describe the greatness that he saw. He informed the British Parliament that the level of development, wealth and greatness in Africa was so high that stealing their resources or trying to dominate or control them wasn’t going to be possible. Unless the British formulate a highly deceptive plan to reverse and corrupt all that the Africans have, and to completely replace all of it. Upon the basis of this, Macaulay gave the British various proposals as to how they would completely change and reverse and spoil African development and civilization.
This proposal package of Macaulay was a short, but very powerful document.
This brings to mind what I have always said about the power of documents. Macaulay’s proposal document is what we have been seeing over the decades, even till now, and reading it. That’s the significance of Documentation but which some people in their foolishness and lack of wisdom have not recognized the power of the documents that we have in our journey to reclaiming our nationhood but calling it ordinary paper! They don’t understand.
Macaulay’s documented speech gave birth to all the trouble and difficulty on ground today and which has been since 190 years ago. They executed his proposals, all of it.
After Macaulay gave them those ideas, they all made haste to plan to dominate and control Africa. That was how they changed Africa’s destiny.
Consider again the things that Macaulay said he saw in Africa – riches, wealth, prosperity, high moral values. For instance, among us the Yoruba, good character is what we know as divine worship. Macaulay saw various good things in the life of Africans and he told the British Parliament about what he saw.
Let’s imagine the things he saw as he moved around in Africa. Let’s imagine a society in which there’s no person who is a thief and no one who is a beggar. It must be a very wonderful society. Compare this with the fact that even in today’s so-called developed countries where so many of us live across the world, stealing is an evil that still takes place and which some people in those countries of course get arrested for. Those countries have thieves and there would still be those who are beggars there.
Let us therefore imagine what life there was in Africa, to which Macaulay testified that there was no thief and no beggar!
In the first place, such a situation shows that such a society has God Almighty at work among them. That’s the only reason an individual would never think of stealing what belongs to another. It shows there is the fear of God, certainly, in the African society at the time Macaulay testified of. This is very much unlike the world of today especially in today’s Africa and Yorubaland. The level of stealing, today, is demonic.
So let’s imagine that kind of society that Macaulay saw in Africa, that kind of lifestyle. Yet, Macaulay saw that very good society but he said that good thing should be changed to what is evil and bad! This proposal of Macaulay is the worst evil that one can think of. This is evidence that the British and other colonizers did a whole lot of evil to the Black Race! They have done evil to our divine destiny!
But now, God has come in his Mercy, saying that at this very time and moment in history he wants to show Mercy to us. You can therefore see that those who at this time are ganging up against the good that God has done for indigenous Yoruba people (I.Y.P) of Democratic Republic of the Yoruba (D.R.Y), are committing a great sin, a great offence. Consider it again – this man, Macaulay, came to Africa and met Africans living a life of lots of good things and yet said that it should all be changed to evil! – and the colonial masters did exactly what Macaulay said they should do! They didn’t just say they would do it, they actually did it.
It is actually a pity that we could still find some of our fellow-black people, who even call themselves Yoruba, it’s a pity that we can still hear that they are going against what God has done. But you really cannot succeed in going against what God has done – who do you think you are? Nobody. Read history – nobody goes against what God does and goes scot free. It has never happened. Never at any time. God has got the final say. It is his Will that gets done in the end. He owns the heaven and the earth, he’s the one that put everything in place. Was it you enemies that put things in place in creation?
And the way God arranged everything from creation is what still stands – forget about any other thing. So, those of you who think you have ideas that are different from what God has for us, you should know this fact that the exact way in which God set everything from the beginning is the way it is till today – it has not changed. Have you enemies been able to change the coming of each day? Or have you changed the evening or the night? It’s not possible. Have you been able to change his system? Have you been able to change the human development from birth to full adulthood, physically and socially? Have you been able to change that? What God has put in place has remained the same since the beginning! Who has been able to change it? Nobody. We follow the course of life exactly as God has laid it down. With all human wisdom and science, who has been able to change what God put in place?
Nothing has changed since the beginning of time – the course of life has remained as the creator made it to be – we eat, we drink, and so on. Exactly how it has been from the beginning, every day, it has not changed. It is a routine that God has laid down. Who has been able to change it? Therefore, why do people behave proud, why do they think they are higher than they are? From generation to generation, has anybody been able to change what God has laid down? Why, then, is everybody behaving like they own the world? – nothing but lies! We are only in this world to live our lives, to do good and to make effort to do what God wants; because nobody is perfect. We are here to make effort to do good for our race, our indigenous nation, our household and family, and for people that we come into contact with in our life.
You can see how the British and other colonizers changed destiny – by simply following a documented statement of one of them – Macaulay. They came with their plan, which was their own blueprint – a bad blueprint. But, what made it easy for them to achieve their bad plan, to the point of destroying destiny as it were – what made it easy for them to achieve their evil plan, was because as at that time, the so-called ọbas (kings), who actually were the destroyers of society, were involved in slave-trade! They were already involved in slave-trade among themselves before the colonial masters came! They were selling their own people! Selling your own blood! your own fellow-Yoruba! Selling your own glory away!
Take note of this – that the very first thing that made the colonialists to succeed was the evil business of slave-trade that was already in existence and being practiced by the ọbas! When the colonial masters came, they too started buying slaves from the ọbas at that time and from others who also had become slave merchants! It is a story that is too terrible to talk about!
When the colonial masters saw the slave-trade that was already in existence when they came, it was one of the things that made them to conclude that slave-trade which was already in existence before they came to our land, was indeed a great opportunity for them to carry out the plan they had in mind against our people.
Before then, the white people had been coming to our land for normal trade, but seeing slave-trading going on among our own people made them to see that the ọbas did not have the love of their own people at heart and that they had practically sold away their own glory! As a result of this practice of the ọbas, the white people already knew the secret that these ọbas did not have love for their own people! They did not care about the welfare of their people. There was Division of Class in the land – the white people saw this fact. They saw that certain people referred to themselves as ọbas, chiefs, royalty! while the others were the slaves, and peasants. The so-called royalty and ọbas were taking for themselves and sharing among themselves what actually is the wealth and resources of the entire population. And that’s what they still do till today.
The moment the white people saw that secret, that weakness of our society, they studied it and kept it to be used against us. They saw it as the instrument they would use against us. In other words, the Europeans studied what they met on ground in our land and society. They observed and took notice of how the ọbas related one with another, how they behaved among their own people. The white people perfectly understood what was going on in our own society. And they knew what to do to conquer us.
For instance, back then, the whites would ask black people, our own people, to carry the colonial masters in hammock human vehicles – our people would carry the white man who was relaxed on the hammock. They were only doing that because they had seen our own leaders back then, being carried on hammocks by their own people!
Thus, slave-trade is a major cause of all the trouble and domination we have suffered in the hands of the European colonial master! This is all part of what God has now helped us to conquer as I.Y.P of D.R.Y, that such would never again happen to us, but some people are going against it!
So you can see the great evil that the so-called ọbas are and have been doing! They are the ones in charge of slave trade! They are the ones promoting and practicing Division of Class! They operated a system in which only certain people can be great and successful while others cannot.
However, luckily in those days, our Yoruba people who were supposed to be the lowly people, they never relaxed in that low level. They were always struggling to succeed. That was the reason the so-called low class in Yorubaland were still very much highly successful compared to such people in other places. They never waited for the ọba to throw the crumbs from his table to the crowd before they would feed! Never! Instead, they always went about seeking to make their own lives better. That was/is how our Yoruba people are in great numbers living in various places across the world. All in the process of seeking development for themselves.
Thus, you can see how Domination and Control came through the ọbas. The ọbas took other people’s wives by force anytime they wanted to. They took other people’s land by force anytime they wanted to. That is abuse of power. It is not culture. It is abuse of power because in those days the ọbas were the government in their various places. Therefore when the white people saw that such was the kind of system the ọbas were operating, they knew it would be easy for them as colonisers to achieve their own aim. They knew that to replace the system and make themselves to now be the oppressors of our Yoruba people, would not be a difficult thing – the ọbas themselves had made it easy by oppressing their own people by themselves! The white people knew that they would easily conquer us because the ground had already been prepared for that, by reason of how the ọbas treated our people. They knew they would quickly succeed in dominating our people – because that system of Domination and Control was already on ground – operated by the ọbas.
The ọbas wore the best clothes and if any other person through his own effort was able to wear something better, such a person would enter into trouble.
The white people saw all of this Domination and Control and it all boils down to one thing – the ọbas had their own people enslaved! This is because the definition of slavery means that the enslaved person has got no right, no access, no control over their own resources. The husband, for instance, didn’t have control of his wife, as the ọba could take her from him and even kill or jail the man or banish him from the community. The land-owner didn’t have control of his land, because the ọba could at any time take it for himself at his own wish.
All in all, the domination and control which was already on ground, being operated by the ọbas, is what the white man saw and copied, and then used it against indigenous Yoruba people. Take notice of that fact!
I also want you to take notice of something else also. The territory known by people around the world as “Yoruba land, Yoruba kingdom, Yoruba nation, Yoruba country,” which now is known as the Democratic Republic of the Yoruba, has been in existence from the beginning of time! Our existence did not start with the coming of the white man into our land, neither did it start when Macaulay made his proposal to the British Parliament. No. We have been in existence and our land has been in existence from the beginning of time. There are evidences to this fact. There was never a time that foreigners came to our land without meeting us existing there as a nation and in great wealth and riches. This is evident in what Macaulay himself said. At the time that the white man came to our land and saw us living in great constructed buildings, the whites themselves were still living in caves and on tree-tops! They later twisted this history and reversed the facts. The development in Africa was surprising to them – talk of the pyramids, for instance. It’s an African invention and construction. Both the Oyo Empire as well as the Benin Empire had amazing development and civilization.
But the Europeans changed history and falsified it. By their own admission, before they started twisting history, they documented it that the Oyo Empire matched the British Empire even when they Europeans started developing.
The white people also have it documented that the Yoruba (now Democratic Republic of the Yoruba) level of Urbanization matched those of Europe and America.
Please, keep tracking and taking notice of all these facts – evidences that show that we were already a Nation, a Country. This is also evident in the maps that they themselves made back then, depicting us as Yoruba Nation, Yoruba Country, etc. That was before colonization – showing that they met us on ground on our ancestral land as a Country in our own right, a Nation in our own right.
This is to let us know that now that we have reclaimed our Nationhood, it is not that we have just formed our nation, not at all! What has now just happened is that God has helped us to Reclaim our Nationhood! The same nation of ours which has been in existence since the beginning of time. I want us to always remember that fact, and that we are a Sovereign People. From the very beginning of time. We are a Nation and have been a Nation ever before the first white man, ever, stepped on our Land.
Now, look at what they have turned our nation and our land into, in just 190 years! After Macaulay suggested to them how to overcome us, they took their time to properly plan how to execute their evil agenda. They kept coming and coming to investigate what they had been told, and finally they drew their grand plan. And that’s the plan they’ve been using up till now!
Now, this very year, God has decided to finally take us out of slavery.
When the white people took away our power over our own resources, that was the means of putting us under slavery. Until now when God decided to take us out of slavery. It’s because we have been shown Mercy. We have received His Mercy.
The first thing the colonizer did was to take power out of the hands of those who called themselves ọbas. They took them out of their position as “ọba” (that is, as the government), and the whites thereby actually started to dominate and to colonize us. We are already aware of how they used the so-called “elite” to replace the overriding position of the “ọbas.”
But what I actually want us to take particular notice of, is the fact that we are a NATION and have been from the very beginning of time! So, let us take notice of the fact that what we have just done, in reclaiming our Nationhood, now as Democratic Republic of the Yoruba, this is not a creation of a new nation, not at all! It is known as a “new” nation in the world as at now, but our actual existence as a Race and as a Nation, have been so from the beginning of time. Only that now God has helped us to reclaim that Nationhood.
So, those who are saying they don’t want the divine blueprint given to us by God at this time of the Reclaiming of our Nationhood, are actually saying that they want the oppression that those who executed Macaulay’s plan, they want that oppression to continue! This shows you how far back such enemies of the indigenous Yoruba people have been in existence and they still want to continue doing their evil!