Histories being retold and retold but of what value?

Histories being retold and retold but of what value?

Femi OGUNLANA

We are in recent times bombarded with histories being retold in different versions. Lagbaja legbon, Tamedo laburo, Lakasegbe loni, ohun ko, all in a bid to earn some vain glory and out of envy and spite. It is meaningless. It is just heating up the polity. It adds no value. It is amusing, what we dissipate energies on in this part of the world. The Yoruba royal houses who are most guilty of this pastime seem to have forgotten that they all have a new master – the government.

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There is widespread poverty in the land, insecurity pervades everywhere, infrastructural deficits, alarming unemployment rate, and so on but the royal houses are still chained to the past. When they should be in the vanguard of finding solutions to the problems assaiIling their people, complementing government, egging on government, their preoccupation is sitting before cameras spouting uncoordinated histories as if that will make any difference. They all lost it when the British defeated their armies by their superior weapons and military strategies. They led us to becoming colonies, subordinates. And when the British left sequel to independence they didn’t hand over power to them, but to the men who drove them out – the warriors of independence struggle, the politicians. Those are the new owners of the lands and of the crowns.

The world has moved on from those relics, fighting superiority based on the accomplishments of some past generations. Superiority now revolves around breakthroughs in technology, science, infrastructural developments, economic buoyancy, ease of doing things and whatnot. There are races that have better and greater historical antecedents than ours but they don’t mention them again. What matters is what their generation accomplishes, the conquests they are making in medicines, agriculture, AI and so on. The advances made in such feats are what confer relevance today and not histories being retold over and over again. It is bunkum. It is ridiculous. Presidents, monarchies out there are exchanging visits, holding bilateral talks, forging alliances, to stay competitive and ahead, here it is histories and stories, many that are even concocted.

We beseech them to stop fouling the space with their unproductive recounts of histories, they should rather make their own accomplishments and stamp them in this present generation, thereby creating new histories. What we want to hear from them are things like “In the first half of the Year 2025, these and that are what l have succeeded in bringing to my domain, that l have accomplished.” Recounting same old histories (with new distortions every time) has become tiresome, it is a burdensome distraction. It is shameful. It is disgusting if only what you talk on and address is the accomplishments of your ancestors, of your forefathers and have nothing of yours to boast of.

The Ajaawa Declaration is instructive here. Achieve successes in tandem with contemporary times and make noises about them. But l have discovered that most of us don’t read contemporary news, of happenings beyond our shores, we only look at headlines when death of an important personality occurs and things like that. If we take time to read conscientiously we will find out that the world values what is accomplished in the present time. People in the developed world don’t refer to the deeds of their progenitors and make them the basis of their arguments or discourses today. They instead strive to surpass them. It is unfortunate in this enclave of ours we still glory in the past, frittering away resources, time and energy on old times. Isreal and Gaza are locked in war today, neither side emphasizes its claim over ownership of land based on past histories of the land they are warring over, but right of existence.

Here too we have right of existence on the basis of a flourishing economy not on the basis of history. We yearn for development not disenchantment. Enough is enough.