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Chief Adekunle Ajasin, a diehard Awoist was the Governor.
Then temptation got the better part of Chief Akin Omoboriowo and he wanted to upstage Ajasin.
Meanwhile Omoboriowo was from Ijero in Ekiti while Ajasin was Ondo man from Ọ̀wọ̀ and even at that time the Ekiti/Ondo dichotomy had already reared its ugly head just as Egba and Ijebu had their own in Ogun and Osun/Oyo were having theirs in old Oyo State.
Religion wasn’t the problem between the two because they were both Christians.
Ego and Ambition were the main problems.
By 1983 Omoboriowo had switched to the NPN of conservative North to contest against Ajasin for that year’s Guber in Ondo. He had men like Ojukwu as close friends, the Ojukwu and his kinsmen who were mortal enemies of Awolowo.
One thing led to the other and Omoboriowo was initially declared the winner.
It was obviously rigged in his favour.
I was not 13 years old yet but even in Lagos as a child I was following the news.
Those were the days when the majority of Yoruba people were well-fed, lived by high standards of morality and principles and they took no nonsense.
It was in the days when Yoruba people lived according to the high standards of our culture of respect, discipline and orderliness.
It was in the days when neighbourhood alliance and extended family solidarity were tight.
By the time the Ekiti and Ondo people rose together, it was days of fire never forgotten in the history of Nigeria. The riot was so intense and comparable possibly only to We-tie of Ibadan. I remember it was so hot that Omoboriowo himself ran away.
It was so bad that I don’t think anyone ever heard about that man for the remaining 40 years he lived thereafter. He was hardly ever mentioned.
He went totally into Political oblivion, forgotten.
I don’t believe any of his children will ever be able to come out to contest anything even in their home town of Ijero Ekiti.
Those were the days of communal solidarity in Yoruba land.
It has been destroyed by Pentecostalism, Wahhabism and Zionism. The attack on Yoruba land was multi-pronged but we were not following when these thing sneaked into our lives in the middle 1980s.
I was talking to a childhood friend yesterday when she called to say birthday greetings. She was in tearing hurry preparing for church.
That was around 8.30 am or so. I asked her
“Have you seen your neighbours today? Have you had cause to go into your neighbours’ this morning?”
Of course, the answers were straight “NO!”
And it was same for me in my place of residence.
But it wasn’t so in the early 1980s.
In those days in Festac town and Amuwo-Odofin, neighbours, at least the mothers and children would have had plenty causes and reasons to have entered one another’s flats many times before 9am!!!
It was even a lot better in the villages.
We were a better people then.
That’s why we got better leaders !
#Igbimoomoyoruba
#ThinkYorubaFirst
© Adedamola Adetayo
18 November 2025.
SB E-news.
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