KABBA DAY: BEYOND THE ANNUAL CELEBRATION – Very Rev. Fr. Dr. Kunle James Dukiya
Kabba Day should be more than an annual celebration of our history, culture and achievements. It should be a moment of honest self-examination, a time to ask ourselves a difficult but necessary question:
What kind of Kabba are we building, and what kind of Kabba are we leaving for the generations coming after us?
Celebration without reflection can become ritual. Development without unity can become illusion. And a people who repeatedly celebrate their greatness without confronting the contradictions within themselves may eventually turn celebration into window dressing.
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There is a story from our history that deserves to be remembered.
The Governor and the Files
During the military administration of the then Kwara State, the late Colonel Sunday Ifere (Rtd.) made his maiden visit to Kabba. He came with files from Ilorin containing petitions and complaints involving Kabba indigenes.
The major issues were chieftaincy disputes, land matters and allegations against senior Owe civil servants. There were petitions written against one another, accusations, counter-accusations and an unhealthy competition among people who, by birth, heritage and destiny, ought to have been working together.
The Governor explained that from the moment he assumed office, he had asked for the files relating to Kabba. He had heard about Kabba since his school days and had developed a particular interest in the town. He wanted to contribute to its development and had made Kabba one of the areas of concentration of his administration.
What he found in those files deeply disappointed him.
I remember vividly that he came accompanied by many senior Owe sons and daughters serving in the Kwara State public service, before the creation of Kogi State. At that time, Owe people occupied many strategic positions in the state administration.
In the presence of those who had gathered to welcome him at the Local Government Secretariat, the Governor, visibly angry and disappointed, reportedly threw the packed files before the gathering. His anger was not simply about the petitions. It was about the deeper reality they represented: the rivalry, mistrust, personal ambition, accusations and hidden hostility among a people who should have been united by a common destiny.
That story should not be remembered merely as an interesting episode from our past. It should be allowed to question our present.
Have we really changed?
When Owe Held Strategic Positions
There was a time when Owe sons and daughters occupied some of the most influential positions in the Kwara State public service.
There were Directors-General, Permanent Secretaries, chief executives and senior professionals in strategic institutions and ministries. Owe people served as Accountant-General and Auditor-General, and in important agencies and establishments, including the scholarship board, Midland Stores, the sugar industries at Bacita and Lafiagi, and several sensitive ministries.
Sultan Street, behind the Kwara State Stadium in Ilorin, was almost an extension of Kabba. Some of the most influential Owe public servants lived there. Names such as James Olu, Kayode Joloko, Oyinbo of the Ministry of Lands, Happy Sam of the Ministry of Agriculture, and later S. O. Fashagba of the State Civil Service Commission, among others, remind us of that era.
I remember staying briefly with the James Olu family in 1978 as a first-year student at Ansaru Islamic Secondary School in Oloje.
There was fellowship, fraternity and a sense of community among these people. Yet beneath the surface, there were also suspicions and mistrust. There was competition for influence and position. There were instances of people quietly undermining one another, sometimes for personal advancement and sometimes because of perceived clan or sectional interests.
The uncomfortable truth is that some of those tendencies have survived the passage of time.
The Unfinished Work of Unity
Our problem today is not that we lack intelligent, talented and accomplished sons and daughters. We do not.
Our problem is that we have not always succeeded in converting individual excellence into collective development.
We have produced professionals, academics, politicians, entrepreneurs, civil servants, clergy, business people and community leaders, many of them in remarkable positions. But what have we collectively built with all these individual achievements?
There appears to be a persistent lack of trust among us. There is mutual suspicion. Relationships can become transactional. Friendships can be weakened by political affiliation, personal ambition, family interests or competition for influence.
When a community cannot trust itself, it becomes extremely difficult for that community to negotiate effectively with outsiders.
A divided people can be easily manipulated.
A people who cannot agree among themselves will struggle to present a common agenda.
A people who approach public affairs primarily through personal interests will find it difficult to demand accountability from those who govern them.
This is why Kabba Day must become more than a celebration. It must become a day of truth, reconciliation, renewal and recommitment.
The Political Question
We must also have the courage to speak about politics.
All is not well with the way politics is sometimes practised in our town.
Where traditional institutions, local government structures and political processes are perceived as personal enterprises rather than public trusts, development suffers.
Where there is no credible mechanism for accountability, citizens become frustrated.
Where aggrieved people have no meaningful avenue for redress, resentment grows.
Where political loyalty is rewarded more than competence, integrity and service, mediocrity becomes institutionalised.
And where politicians can mobilise our votes without being required to explain what they intend to do for Kabba, we should not be surprised when our collective interests receive inadequate attention.
Our votes must become instruments of development, not instruments of personal patronage.
Owe Needs a Political Agenda
I believe Owe needs a clear and coherent political agenda.
This does not mean that every Owe person must belong to the same political party. Democracy permits, and should protect, political diversity. But political diversity should not prevent us from having shared community interests.
Regardless of party, our representatives should be expected to defend certain fundamental interests of our people. We should develop a community agenda covering such matters as:
education;
healthcare;
roads and infrastructure;
employment and entrepreneurship;
youth development;
agriculture;
security;
traditional institutions;
environmental protection;
women’s empowerment;
support for vulnerable people;
investment and industrial development; and
the preservation of our cultural heritage.
Every politician seeking our support should be asked: What will you do for Kabba? Not merely: What will you do for yourself?
Let Our Votes Count
We must develop a mechanism for engaging politicians who seek our votes.
We should know what they stand for. We should examine their character, competence, record and capacity for leadership. We should ask what they have done before asking what they promise to do. We should establish measurable commitments and periodically assess those who receive our support.
This is not about controlling individual political choices. It is about creating an informed and responsible electorate.
We must move from politics of sentiment to politics of accountability. We must move from politics of personalities to politics of programmes.
We must move from politics of patronage to politics of development.
And we must move from personal negotiation to collective negotiation.
The Development Union Must Lead
If the Development Union is truly a Development Union, it must be prepared to confront these contradictions.
Its responsibility cannot be limited to annual celebrations, speeches, dinners, cultural displays and social gatherings. These are important, but they are not enough.
A genuine development union must become a platform for reconciliation, strategic thinking, development planning, political engagement, accountability and collective action.
It must create space where differences can be discussed without hatred. It must develop mechanisms for resolving disputes. It must encourage transparency in community affairs. It must bring together people across political parties, religious backgrounds, age groups, professional associations and family interests.
Above all, it must remind us that Kabba belongs to all of us. No individual, family, political group, traditional interest or faction owns Kabba.
We Need Reconciliation
Perhaps our greatest unfinished project is reconciliation.
We need to talk to one another. We need to acknowledge old grievances. We need to forgive. We need to stop carrying yesterday’s battles into tomorrow’s relationships. We need to distinguish between legitimate disagreement and destructive hostility, and to learn again how to disagree without becoming enemies.
Our elders must provide wisdom.
Our younger generation must refuse to inherit old animosities.
Our professionals must bring their expertise home.
Our wealthy sons and daughters must see Kabba’s development as a collective responsibility.
Our politicians must understand that political office is temporary, but the community remains.
And our traditional institutions must command respect through fairness, integrity and accountability.
Kabba Must Be Free for Every Son and Daughter
We must build a Kabba where every son and daughter feels that he or she belongs.
A Kabba where one’s political affiliation does not determine one’s dignity.
A Kabba where one’s family name does not determine one’s access to opportunity.
A Kabba where disagreement does not lead to persecution.
A Kabba where traditional authority serves the common good.
A Kabba where public resources are treated as a public trust.
A Kabba where young people can dream without having to belong to a particular political or social network.
A Kabba where the most vulnerable are not forgotten.
Kabba must be free for every son and daughter. That should be one of the central principles of our collective future.
From Celebration to Transformation
Kabba Day gives us an opportunity to move beyond nostalgia.
We can celebrate the Kabba of yesterday while building the Kabba of tomorrow. We can honour our heroes without becoming prisoners of the past. We can remember our achievements without becoming complacent. We can acknowledge our failures without allowing them to define us. And we can disagree politically while remaining united as a people.
The real test of Kabba Day is not the size of the crowd, the number of dignitaries present, the quality of the entertainment, or even the eloquence of our speeches.
The real test is what happens after the celebration.
Do we return to the same rivalries?
Do we continue undermining one another?
Do we continue allowing personal interests to prevail over community interests?
Do we continue giving politicians our votes without demanding accountability?
Do we continue treating the Development Union as an annual social gathering rather than an instrument of development?
If the answer is yes, then we have learnt nothing.
A New Covenant with Kabba
Perhaps what Kabba needs is a new covenant among its sons and daughters:
A covenant to put Kabba above personal ambition.
A covenant to reject destructive rivalry.
A covenant to pursue reconciliation.
A covenant to demand accountability.
A covenant to support competence and integrity.
A covenant to protect our traditional institutions from manipulation.
A covenant to invest in our young people.
A covenant to make our votes count.
A covenant to negotiate collectively with those seeking our political support.
And a covenant to ensure that the Kabba we hand over to the next generation is better than the one we inherited.
The late Colonel Sunday Ifere’s angry gesture with those files should remain a lesson to us. He saw something that should disturb us even today: a people capable of great things destroying their collective possibilities through internal suspicion, rivalry and division.
We must not allow history to repeat itself.
Kabba does not lack people. Kabba does not lack talent. Kabba does not lack resources. Kabba does not lack experience.
What we need is trust, unity, vision, courage and collective will.
Let Kabba Day become more than an annual celebration.
Let it become an annual examination of our conscience.
Let it become a forum for reconciliation. Let it become a platform for development.
Let it become a mechanism for accountability.
Let it become a renewed commitment to our common destiny.
Because if we continue celebrating while refusing to confront what divides us, Kabba Day will remain a window-dressing exercise, a motion without movement.
But if we summon the courage to confront ourselves, reconcile with one another, organise collectively and pursue a common development agenda, then Kabba Day can become the beginning of something much greater:
not merely the celebration of Kabba, but the transformation of Kabba.
DemocracyNewslineNewspaper November 6th, 2026
