The Indians were evicted by Idi Amin in the 70s and they were granted asylum in most Western countries, but what did they do?
They formed ecosystems. Ecosystems are legal and can be formed as consortiums to take loans from banks and access other beneficial services such as grants etc in Western countries.
Families would come together, pooled resources together and buy businesses where parents and kids would work to build what looked like pyramid with branches.
A family would opt out of the joint venture to purchase another with the support of others and this has greatly made them wealthy and powerful.
Today, the woman who calls the shot on immigration in the UK was a daughter of an evictee family from the East Africa and there are many other success stories of such that abound in Western countries up to Australia amongst the Indians.
In the Yoruba communities of the Western countries, nothing of such exists, not even the basic grouping you often find even amongst the Igbo communities.
Igbo associations are mostly cultural, burial collections and end of year gatherings. This is not bad, they do these to introduce their kids to Igbo culture.
Their kids experience their culture first hands through all these. But these are utterly absent in Yoruba communities.
An ugly trend is actually rearing its head in our communities from Dublin to London and up to New York; this is the abuse of the social media by a clique of uncouth Yoruba women and some men as well by projecting trashes as culture.
A son to one popular Yoruba blogger has allegedly being quoted as saying that his mum was fond of sleeping randomly with men and planning evil against individuals.
This is really sad when you look around and listen to trashes being ditched out by these so called Yoruba bloggers here and there.
Can’t we think of ways we could have Yoruba Credit Unions? This could be a step to a future Oodua International Banking Corporation, where remittances are done to favour our community, where the future homebuyer could walk in and secure a loan to do so.
I must confess that we are not doing enough in our communities to expose our children to the positive sides of our culture, we have given too much relevance to negative carriers amongst us. Nothing can be sadder than this.
Yoruba outside Nigeria tend to isolate themselves from each other and has caused reverberating effects on our people. You often hear people of Yoruba descent die in isolation at their homes and many too, unjustly treated by the legal system.
We are often rebuked by others as the enemies of ourselves, just as being played out in our political system in Nigeria and elsewhere .
We attack and ignore each other too often and fail to see between lines by appreciating those who are making efforts at elevating the race. This bothers me a lot as I often ask if we are so dark hearted.
Maybe, we may need to call for a conference to discuss this and chart a way forward for ourselves and generations to come.
Yoruba Leaders’ Forum was essentially formed to fill the vacuum but unfortunately we are still tottering.
Bamofin Olufemi Ogunjimi writes from London, UK.
