A cross-section of elder of the Yoruba community during the conference
An All-Yoruba Congress has been scheduled to be held in Kumasi between 9th and 11th March 2017, organisers have announced during a press conference held at the Accra International Press Centre yesterday.
The media programme simultaneously kicked off activities prior to the main event next year.
In his address to the media, Alhaji Musa Baba, President of the Yoruba Community in Ghana said the programme was mooted by elders of the large population of the ethnic group across the country.
The elders want to, through such a congress, showcase the rich Yoruba culture and to prevent the youth from losing touch with their ancestry according to Alhaji Musa Baba who is one of the close to a million Ghanaian Yorubas born in the country.
“The congress will also afford Yorubas in Ghana the opportunity to travel to one big town where, especially the youth, will mix together and engage in all forms of contests, singing, dancing, dressing, cooking and what have you. It will also afford Ghanaians the opportunity to appreciate the true Yoruba culture. This will surely promote unity between the Yorubas and Ghanaians that will lead to national unity and cohesion,” he said.
He announced that organizers have sought and received the blessings of the traditional authorities of the Yorubas in the persons of the Alafin of Oyo and the Ooni of Ife who are the two most powerful Yoruba rulers.
Many Yorubas from Nigeria and the Diaspora will troop to Kumasi for the programme; an opportunity to showcase the country to those coming here for the first time.
As to why the programme is being held in Ghana and Kumasi in particular, he said the country has the largest concentration of Yorubas and their descendants outside Nigeria, the population put at conservatively a million. Kumasi, considered central location in the country will afford Yorubas from the Northern regions and South to converge upon a central location with little or no inconvenience, he said to a question.
The chairman of the conference Alhaji Sidiku Buari who is a descendant of Yoruba migrants but a Ghanaian by birth recalled how he and others of Nigerian extraction have contributed immensely towards the development of the country.
“I am an athlete of repute having competed in international competitions in the early 70s for Ghana. In one such instance, I ran an event in which a single point was needed to define the difference between the winner and the loser. I made that difference to make Ghana beat Nigeria” he said.
Alhaji Gafaru, a retired soldier and a Ghanaian of Yoruba extraction showed his decorations from his long service in the Ghana Armed Forces.
It is also expected that the about two hundred years of the history of Yorubas in this country would be adequately highlighted through such a congress and subsequent ones.
Present at the conference were Alhaji Razak El Alawa, a veteran Ghanaian journalist also of Yoruba extraction and a former Press Secretary to the late President Hilla Limann, Sidiku Buari, former President of MUSIGA, Chiefs of Yorubas in Kasoa, Ashaiman, Konongo and a representative of Chief Brimah family in Accra.
By A.R. Gomda