Who is a Lagosian? part 2

These questions are important as they would allow us to understand the thinking of the Lagosian in Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode (he did say he was half-Lagosian) and why it seems a lot of right-thinking people have kept quiet even in the face of those embarrassing articles by Mr. Fani-Kayode. Indeed, even in his ranting and ravings, Mr. Fani-Kayode ‘wobbled and fumbled’ over some salient issues: the issue of indegineship of a state or town.
Who is a Lagosian?
Only a mischievous person would say that Lagos was not originally a Yoruba town. True, it was ruled as part of the Benin Kingdom in pre-colonial time, but so was most of present day Ondo and Ogun States. Lagos is therefore not any less historically a Yoruba territory than these other Yoruba States. Let’s not forget too, that the Benin Kingdom is an integral part of the Oduduwa dynasty and that Yoruba was the language spoken in the court of the Oba of Benin right from the first Oba until quite recently. From the very first settlement up until now, there has never been a non-Yoruba Oba of any town or village in Lagos except in Badagry and its environs. Unlike these other Yoruba States under Benin Kingdom, however, Lagos was, for a long time, a Federal capital – a microcosm of sort for the entire federation. It is worthy of note however that the Federal capital was only restricted to the Islands – Lagos, Ikoyi and Victoria Islands – and Surulere. The rest of present-day Lagos State was actually part of the Western Region.
People from all across the federation have streamed into Lagos since the beginning of the last century and have expanded the frontiers of the city so much so that at present, there seem to be no difference between the old Federal capital and the rest of the State that was Western region territory. Lagos is indeed now a mega-city with continuous influx of people from every corner of the country. They have also found a hospitable indigenous population who have not only thrived side by side with them but have also become enriched by this influx of people of all sorts. What this means is that the identity of a Lagosian has changed significantly since the last century or so and it is different now from what it was then. Creating a unique Lagos identity has therefore become a serious issue among the people who now live in Lagos. I will make an attempt to postulate here what I feel is the new Lagos identity and who in my opnion should be able to call himself a Lagosian.
Among the Yorubas, there is a wide difference between an ‘Ara’ and an ‘Omo’ of a certain town. An indegene of a town, should be an ‘Omo’ and not an ‘Ara’. An ‘ara’ is someone who just happens to live in a place for business or for work. An ‘ara’ is still very much affiliated to another place, either by birth or by association. He still attends towns-meetings of his kinsmen; he lives amongst his people in his new abode, associates exclusively with these kinsmen unless absolutely imperative and holds on tightly to the culture, identity and lifestyle of his forebears. He neither speaks the language of his new environment nor does he understand the world-view, values and social systems of the people that live there: he is in fact an outsider as far as the indigenous people are concerned. An ‘omo’, on the other hand, is completely at ease with his immediate environment. He not only knows the people around him, he understands the nuances of their temperament, beliefs and language. An ‘omo’ has no other place to call his own other than this place he has chosen. Push him, shove him and run him out of town, but an ‘omo’ will not bulge. He truly has nowhere else to go!
So, if you ask me, a true Lagosian has to, by necessity, be an ‘omo Eko’ and not an ‘ara Eko’. You cannot claim to be a Lagosian if you do not see yourself as a South-westerner. You cannot be an ‘Omo Eko’if you do not understand the indigenous Yoruba people but still refer to them derisively as ‘Ofe mmanu’. You cannot be a Lagosian if you if you feel more at home with your tribesmen only in your enclaves in Mazamaza or Ajegunle but highly uncomfortable amongst the local people in the villages of Epe. You are not a Lagosian if, at the very slightest sign of crisis in the Southwest, you feel you have to run back to the East, South-south or North: as a Lagosian, you would have no other home other than this one we have all built together. You would know the heroes and villains of this place; you would know that Awolowo was by no means perfect but was certainly not the villain that Achebe painted in his book; for without Awolowo, there would be no Lateef Jakande, the Lagos governor that is still celebrated as the best ever in Nigerian history. A Lagosian would speak English with little or no trace of a Northern or Eastern accent: the market woman at Oyingbo market would not look at him as an ‘omo-atohun-rin-wa’. He would, in fact, be one of us, a true ‘son of the soil’.