*2O24 Yoruba Nation Day: _Ore Mekunnu,_ Friend Of The Needy Award Goes To Ogungbangbe, Oyetola, Gbenga Daniel, Sheu-Sani, Awolowo-Dosumu, Ladoke-Akintola. Ariwoola, Egbetokun, Ajomale, Hamzat, and 15others honoured with awards. By ISAAC OLUSESI

The venue was the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, but just at the campus gate tower, my upbeat, chilling and hair raising, practically, plunged, crash dived, the offshoot of some psycho bruises from the fear of the initial agitations for Yoruba Nation and the consequences the disquiet had to bear.

But the abrasiveness and impaction of whatever my fear was, caved in to a certain helplines: the 2024 Yoruba Nation Day, Monday, inside the Wole Soyinka amphitheatre of the university, tapped a pleasant rhythm. The event was the ethnic appearance of the Yoruba people and their adventitious values of nationality, characteristics, backgrounds, politics and self-determination. And at that, every other person at the event came on the same page and the resoundingly concordant nexus was the event theme: _Agitations For Self-determination and National Unity: The Way Forward For Nigeria._ 

The event, in honour of the birthday of a veteran Yoruba film actor, Chief Lere Paimo (MFR) Eda Onile Ola, aged 85, reached its consummation with the award investiture as part of the panoply of activities that headlined the celebration of Yoruba Nation Day just as the guests continued in their briskly arrival at the event that promised to be great from onset by the vista of the venue. The Itsekiri cultural dancers' flurry of drums and intoxicating legworks, ensigned the scenery of a large carnival with dignitaries thrilled to the blaring chants and raps by the folk dancers.

Soonest after, the award recipients climbed the dias for investiture, and the barrage of camera flashed from Photo Journalists and general iPad phone users, clinking away to ensure a scene was not missed out.

And the moment that the compère read out *Ore Mekunnu,* the award titled in Yoruba and for Dr Thomas Olaleye Ogungbangbe, the roofline was seized, and the award, denotatively, *Friend of the Needy* (FON) is a definitive statement, _summum bonum_ alluding to his philanthropic passion. The prime of the All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain in the Ife/Ijesa axis of Osun State, is the primacy of others' well-being. Responding, the awardee said, "we all must be directly dedicated to service to others." And on the theme of the event, he succinctly called for "increased human capital development and improved national security."

By the theme, found thematic, no one at the event, nipped away, in any awckward stance, at the cynicism or skepticism to create needlessly any base impulses, aggressive or combative to keep any edge from the common orbit.

In the main, the event was the Yoruba affairs and place-kicked augmented argument for the place of the Oduduwa tribe in national enterprise in terms of enhanced strategic security that guarantees trust and confidence in the region, re- invigorates congruence and peace, and vulcanizes self- determination, in contra-stance to phantasmic, imaginary fragmentation.

"Any further security entanglements in Yorubaland could cause an impasse," one speaker at the event, noted; and "any renewed invasion of security in any parts of Yorubaland could be costly," another speaker warned. Other speakers on the theme of the day, one after the other were security denizens in unassailable lead in security matter, not dreamers, talkers or affronted voices from the margins, with just a burst to impress and fall for seductive lore, ethnic baiting and trivialization of the issue on hand. 

Rather, at the 2024 Yoruba Nation Day, the speakers were peeved and miffed; and they know when to whistle stop security invasion.

 *OLUSESI writes via* isaacolusesi@gmail.com