Stop Voting for Outsiders: The Oshodi Lesson Yorubas Must Learn Today

EDITORIAL: The Oshodi Betrayal: How Yoruba Voters Became Casualties of Their Own Liberalism

By Our Editorial Board

There is a painful lesson unfolding in Oshodi, Lagos. It is a lesson about votes, values, and the bitter cost of political naivety.
A non-Yoruba lawmaker, swept into the House of Representatives on the crest of the 2023 Obidient wave, has released a list of individuals he is sponsoring abroad. The list is a slap to every Yoruba voter who queued up on election day to punch for his name.
Go ahead. Study the list. Count the Yoruba names. You will not find many. You might not find any.
This is the man Yorubas trusted to defend their interests. This is the man who occupies a seat meant to amplify the voice of Oshodi. And what does he do with the people’s mandate? He uses it to empower everyone except the people who gave it to him.
Let us call this what it is. Betrayal.
But here is the harder truth. Yorubas did this to themselves.
For years, a dangerous ideology has taken root in Yoruba political thinking. It is the ideology of radical liberalism, the belief that ethnicity is irrelevant, that blood and history count for nothing, and that any leader, regardless of origin, deserves blind loyalty as long as they wear the right party cap or chant the right slogans.
The Obidient movement was the culmination of this self-defeating philosophy. Yorubas were told that asking where a candidate comes from was tribalism. They were told that protecting their own interests was backward. They were told to embrace “competence” over kinship.
And they listened.
So today, a non-Yoruba man sits in a Yoruba constituency. He spends Yoruba resources. He writes cheques with Yoruba money. And when it is time to reward loyalty, his list reads like a directory of his homeland, not Oshodi.
Now compare this to the political reality in other parts of Nigeria.
Walk into any local government in Igbo land. Find one Yoruba chairman. Find one non-Igbo holding any significant political position across all five eastern states. You will not. The political structures there are sealed tight. Outsiders are not handed power. Outsiders are not funded to represent local interests. The sons and daughters of the soil eat first.
Is that tribalism? Perhaps. But it is also survival.
Yorubas have been shamed out of survival instincts. They have been lectured, scolded, and guilt-tripped into abandoning their own. Meanwhile, the very people who preach inclusion practice the strictest exclusion at home.
This is not a coincidence. It is a strategy.
Liberalism is not a universal value they believe in. It is a weapon they deploy to weaken Yoruba political consciousness. And it is working.
The Oshodi lawmaker is not the problem. He is merely the symptom. The disease is the Yoruba willingness to hand over power, resources, and representation to those who do not share their destiny.
If this continues, what stops other constituencies from becoming foreign outposts? What stops Yoruba land from becoming a testing ground for every political adventurer with a smooth tongue?
Enough is enough.
We call on the people of Oshodi to demand answers from their lawmaker. Who is on that list? Why are Yoruba indigenes absent? Where is the accountability?
We call on Yoruba voters across the South-West to learn from this shameful episode. Your vote is your power. It is not a charity to be given away. It is not a prize for the most persuasive sloganeer.
Ask the hard questions before you vote. Where does your candidate come from? Whose interests will they protect? When the chips are down, who eats first?
There is nothing tribal about protecting your own. There is nothing backward about prioritizing your people. Every ethnic group in Nigeria does it. Only Yorubas have been convinced that doing so is a crime.
The Oshodi list is a mirror. Look into it. And decide whether you will continue to be political slaves in your own land.