BY AHMED AKANBI
The Yoruba Revolutionary Movement (YOREM) has defended the African Democratic Congress (ADC) governorship candidate in Lagos State, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, against attacks over his inability to speak Yoruba fluently.
YOREM described the campaign questioning his Yoruba identity as blackmail and propaganda allegedly driven by the All Progressives Congress, APC, ahead of the Lagos governorship election in 2027.
The group stated its position in a statement titled “Culture, Language and the Hypocrisy of Ethnic Politics in Lagos,” signed by National Coordinator, Comrade Wale Balogun, on Sunday.
Balogun said while language is a repository of identity and collective memory, fluency should not be the sole measure of cultural identity or political legitimacy.
He said identity should also be assessed through connection to a people’s history, traditions, values and collective advancement.
Against that background, YOREM found criticism of Rhodes-Vivour appalling and intellectually dishonest.
”The APC propaganda machinery and its political data boys are making a spectacle of Gbadebo’s language proficiency, as though fluency in Yoruba were the ultimate measure of Yoruba identity, political legitimacy or commitment to Lagos. It is not,” Balogun said.
He argued Rhodes-Vivour has shown commitment to Yoruba culture through frequent use of Yoruba traditional caps, public identification with Isese, and his Obalefun title defended by traditionalists.
Balogun said culture should not be an electoral costume and language should not be a weapon of ethnic exclusion, faulting inconsistency in celebrating foreign religious influences while questioning Rhodes-Vivour’s identity.
He accused political actors of recycling the 2023 “Omo Igbo” propaganda against Rhodes-Vivour because his mother is Igbo, calling it primitive ethnic politics.
Citing inter-ethnic marriages like that of late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu to Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu from Imo, he asked why maternal ancestry should determine loyalty to Lagos, a cosmopolitan city with deep Yoruba roots.
Balogun challenged whether previous Lagos governors including President Bola Tinubu and Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu routinely addressed Lagosians in Yoruba, urging consistent standards.
He urged voters to focus on governance — flooding, housing, transportation, youth opportunities, accountability — rather than ethnicity, noting Rhodes-Vivour has engaged a Yoruba teacher to improve.
”Yoruba identity is bigger than language alone. Yoruba civilisation is bigger than political propaganda,” he said, concluding “Yoruba o ponu” — Yoruba people are not stupid.