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| Adelakun |
If by now, faux historian
and professional agitator, Femi Fani-Kayode, has not responded to the rejoinders
of Professors Banji Akintoye and Farooq Kperogi on his Yoruba identity
flippancy, we can conclude he has nothing further to say and move on to drawing
some lessons from the brouhaha of “Yoruba” and its etymology. In some ways,
Fani-Kayode’s attention-seeking ways represent the flawed ethics of the present
milieu. We live in a post-truth world; the traditional structures that
regulated popular inanities have broken down and given way to the reign of
alternative facts.
There are two
lessons that I took away from the Yoruba/Yariba episode. First is the role that
the media played in helping Fani-Kayode brew his pot of mischief. There was no
other apparent motive about his claim that the Fulani bequeathed the Yoruba
their name other than troublemaking, and it fits into a larger pattern of his
anti-Fulani sentiments. He did not cite any source for his discovery, and the
way the more astute scholars dislodged his argument shows that there was no
rigour invested in his ideas before he hit the streets. He just wanted to
arouse the ethnic chauvinists permanently resident on social media as he is
wont to do. Judging by how tribal irredentists crawled out of the woodwork to
feast on his historical dabble, he pretty much succeeded.
