LAGOS: Monarchial open challenge to anarchy, the social mishap; distortions in the delicate balance of social accords.

By SirDebimpe Asunni.

The current tide will surely soon subside and, we will all move on while life continues. Our relationship has long endured, but for Yorubas, from all the southwestern states to be publicly assertive of the phrase "Hey! Lagos is our land", is an omnious sign that something is not right. This has never occured in the past. It shows there is a distortion in the socially designed modules of tolerance.

In every socio-ethnic relationship, some mutual dependence and the peaceful co-existence it promotes, are woven around certain non-articulated accords such that in the ensueing social intercourse, benefits mutually derived are sustainable on regular maintainance of these usually unwritten and unarticulated social treaties carefully weighed and measurable on a conceptual balance.

Slightest disturbance of the delicate balance will inevitably culminate in mutual suspicions, mistrusts and disturbance of the social order. In such instances, should the order be again need to be restored, all stake holders will need to re-examine situations and find out where exactly things have gone wrong in matters and circumstances. The stimuli for chaos in Host-Guest relationship, and the eventual social mishap they tend to provoke, are usually rooted in power equations, it's sharing and political differentials.

While the perceived guest in such arrangement sees more acquisition of powers as necessary intruments in furtherance of his perceived rights and as an essensial ingredient to push forward and harness all potentials convertible to economic and identity survival, the host perceives same as a quest fixated in domineering invasiveness and a clear threat to her own identity and therefore, a breach of the conceptual social accord.

While no tribe is right to claim supremacy or superiority over another, be it of jewsih tribe or of egyptian ancestry, History hijacks a central stage in the life of human kind. We are embodiment of history ourselves because it gives meaning to our identity as individual beings and as tribes, and to our purposes in life as the species of beings we are. History, is the compass by which we navigate through the world. It is the searchlight we beam to the past to enable us reconcile motivs and destinies. It also serves as the guide for the journey into the future not readily understood from the present. There is no such thing as innovations, inventions and development, they are all adventures under history itself. In our journey through life as beings, there are only three things and others are necessarily sub-issues under them: Identity, Time and History. The movement of identity in time is what history seeks to encompass. Without history , we are empty and non-existent. Science, fictions and spiritualities are the ways in which we manifest the essence of the trio of History, Time and our Identity. All the great men of the ancient and the present, sees our life in these philosophical compass. History, History, history I repeat is the link between our yesterday and today and it is also the lead into our tomorrow.

As vagues and unassuming the concept of 'history' itslef tends to sound, it is a formidable instrument by which a people can be united and dis-united, their ethnic sentiments provoked and revoked. Any subtle attempt to distort the history of a people especially by a force historically perceived alien is like declaring a war on what such group considers her heritage and feelings of suspicions will be followed by misgivings and ultimate contortion on the fabrics of mutual existence hitherto enjoyed.

It is through those philosophical prisms that; the social mishap and the socio-ethnic political disturbance of the delicate balance easily perceived in Lagosians' clime.

Mending the current tears in the fabrics of this social order can never be a process undergone in such a jiffy. It will linger in the process of time and gradually fade along the passage of same. While our threatened peace and harmony struggle to survive, our mutual patience and sacrifice must be made to endure while we all take our gaze away from those happenings provoking our current furies.