I recount this story because of the impact it had on me and its significance to our society. Besides, it happened to be the only opportunity I ever had to engage veteran actor, Mr Olu Jacobs, whom I have always admired from a distance. In 2003, I had been invited by Cadbury Nigeria Plc to the ‘Bournvita Award for Teachers’ ceremony in Lagos to read the citations of awardees along with Mrs. Adesuwa Onyenikwe of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) fame. Jacobs was there, as he explained, to give moral support to his wife, the effervescent Joke Silva, who compered the event. Somehow, our conversation centred on the loss of societal values, with the respected thespian remarking that in Nigeria, when a neighbour with no visible means of livelihood suddenly becomes a billionaire, questions are never asked about sources of such wealth. “The next thing you hear is someone saying, ‘see that man who was living in a Face-Me-I-Face-You house two years ago, see how God has blessed him’. Jacobs then looked to the sky with both hands raised to dramatise his punchline: “Oh God! Where is your face?”
Three weeks ago in the United States, precisely on 26 August 2025, the Apetu of Ipetumodu in Osun State, Oba Joseph Oloyede, was sentenced to 56 months in prison for fraudulent practices. This is a sacrilege of the highest order in Yorubaland. But the real tragedy is having to read about conversations in the community where some people believe the throne should remain vacant, probably so the monarch could resume whenever he completes his ‘tour of duty’ in American jail. That is worrying. Perhaps to understand the significance of this tragedy, one may have to read the paper, “Iku Ya J’ẹsin: Invitation to Suicide in Yoruba Ontology,” in the London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, Volume 17. Written by Emmanuel Oladipo Ojo, it explains why our ancestors would rather take their own lives than face the kind of ignominy that the Ipetumodu monarch has brought on himself and his people.
Sadly, even before the monarch was jailed in the US, his incarceration for more than a year was already an open secret. That the authorities and the community did nothing betrays a lack of outrage about such a disgrace. But it is unpardonable that there would even be a debate about the monarch’s fate after being officially confirmed and convicted as a criminal.
From about April 2020 to February 2022, according to the American statement, “Oloyede and his co-conspirator, Edward Oluwasanmi, conspired to submit fraudulent applications for loans that were made available through the U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio where the 62-year-old monarch had been resident, said he would pay $4,408,543.38 in restitution after completing his jail term. “He also forfeited his Medina home on Foote Road, which he had acquired with proceeds of the scheme, and an additional $96,006.89 in fraud proceeds investigators had seized.”
There are many issues involved in this tragic saga, but I will highlight only two: The blurring of lines between right and wrong in our country and the corruption of the traditional institution, especially in Yorubaland. On the first issue, I once wrote a column about a disturbing exchange on X (formerly Twitter). This was in response to someone who had posted: “I lost my teaching job today (32K) where I teach (Maths and F/Maths), because I refused to assist the students in the exams hall (during NECO) having taught them very well…” Not only were there many negative responses but some were particularly striking: “You should have helped them though, you put yourself into this”; “Sorry about that but it’s your fault…it’s not a bad option assisting students”; “Are you a good teacher when your students fail? I got my current job through the help of a parent I taught the ward some years back…the ward is in FUNAAB (Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta) now doing fine. My dear, don’t let us deceive ourselves. You should have pushed…”; “African teachers are terrible and just love to see students fail exams.” The last response before I stopped reading formed the crisp title of the column in question: ‘Na you fuck up!’
The real issue here is that the virtual collapse of the moral frame of our government mirrors the other fractures in our society. Yet, we must be honest with ourselves: A decadent society can only produce the kind of government we have in Nigeria today at practically all levels. Since many Nigerians tend to see public funds as belonging to no one in particular, the matter of cybercrime is even more worrisome. The typical cybercriminals do not even see themselves as robbing anyone. When monarchs who ordinarily should uphold the highest standard of integrity also think like that and acquire immunity from opprobrium, in part because they may be generous with such stolen wealth, it is the society that is in danger.
In the face of this apparent moral wilderness, we must insist on abiding by the dictates of civilized conduct and law-based punishment for all crimes that violate both domestic and international law. On that score, Governor Ademola Adeleke must institute the process through which the jailed monarch is dethroned, if only to make a statement. But perhaps the bigger challenge is in Yorubaland where people of dubious character are now being enthroned as monarchs simply because they have political connections or stupendous wealth not tied to any productive endeavour. That is why many of them are no better than content creators who command zero respect beyond their followers on social media.
Indeed, as I wrote recently, nothing illustrates the crisis of the traditional institution better than the process that eventually culminated in the enthronement of the current Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Owoade. A former vice-chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and globally renowned traditionalist, Professor Wande Abimbola, whose intervention eventually led to a resolution of what had become a logjam, revealed some sordid details. “The kingmakers were consulted to pick a successor, and then interested individuals started giving hefty money to influence their decision. This later divided the rank of the kingmakers because they discovered that the money their leader shared to them was a far cry from what he collected,” Abimbola explained. “The five kingmakers had earlier supported a particular prince who gave them the heaviest sum but after discovering the act perpetrated by their leader, two of them backtracked. They reached out to the government to say they were no longer in support of the candidate, adding that they just discovered that the money their leader collected from the said prince was incredibly heavy from which he gave them peanuts.”
In Yorubaland today, according to Abimbola, enthroning a king is now a cash-and-carry affair. “They would buy generators, cars and what have you for the kingmakers to influence the process. The kingmakers may collect money from a hundred candidates; it’s the highest bidder that they will give the stool to. That’s how they are doing it now.”
That, in a nutshell, explains why some communities have on their thrones ‘419’ monarchs who end up in an American jail!
Greed and the Nigerian Elite
I belong to the generation of Nigerians who grew up reading the late British writer, Rene Brabazon Raymond, best known by his pseudonym James Hadley Chase. In one of his many enjoyable novels, ‘The Paw in the Bottle’, the central character, an eight-year-old Julie Holland, refused to heed the warning of the lenient judge in a story that ended tragically. “Have you ever heard how they catch monkeys in Brazil, Julie?” the Judge asked the little girl before sharing the story that became a prophecy.“Let me tell you. They put a nut in a bottle and tie the bottle to a tree. The monkey grasps the nut, but the neck of the bottle is too narrow for the monkey to withdraw its paw and the nut. You would think the monkey would let go of the nut and escape, wouldn’t you? But it never does. It is so greedy it never releases the nut and is always captured. Remember that story, Julie. Greed is a dangerous thing. If you give way to it, sooner or later you will be caught.”
A property dispute ruling in North London involving a Nigerian army General (now deceased), a Nigerian woman who allegedly died during the court case, but never existed and other actors has given the world a stranger-than-fiction story that reads like a James Hardley Chase novel. Of course, with various members of the Nigerian elite alleging fraud against one another in a bid to corner a property evidently acquired with stolen Nigerian public funds. Posted online by the United Kingdom Director of Open Justice, Adam Wrey, readers are treated to salacious details of a ‘very long affair’ between this (now deceased) army General and a female ghost whose ‘funeral rites’ were covered by a photographer who was then ‘killed by a bandit’ two days later. We also learn how money made from selling ‘groundnuts and mangoes’ on the streets of Jos could buy a London property with the ownership ‘transferred’ to a lawyer decades later “not for money or anything that has a monetary value” but, a ‘gift’, and ‘out of gratitude’!
I enjoin readers to find and read the long and entertaining judgement of Judge Ewan Paton of the First-Tier Tribunal Property Chamber Land Registration but here is the brief, according to Wrey. Although the property in question was purchased on 16th November 1993 (incidentally, that is 24 hours before the late General Sani Abacha toppled the late Chief Ernest Shonekan to become Head of State!) the fight for ownership began about four years ago with a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) making an application to register its transfer to himself. He was challenged by a ‘Ms Tali Shani’, who claimed to be the owner, even when her identity documents turned out to be fake. When this Tali character (who answered to both Mr and Mrs) suddenly ‘died’, the ‘son’ surfaced to claim ownership. But in another twist, the General, who was supposed to be the principal witness for the SAN, told the court that he was indeed the owner of the property. And he had no intention to hand it over to anybody!
Although the General is now late, the meticulous judge was able to follow the paper trail to him as the real owner of the London property. “Both applicants had tried to claim the house through identity theft. Both lose and have their case dismissed. The actual owner is now dead, so the house is still owned by ‘Tali Shani’ a woman that never existed,” Wrey concluded in his post on X. At the end, the court held that since the army General who owns the property is now deceased, the ownership could go to whoever obtained probate of his English assets, but that decision also rests with relevant authorities in the UK. I don’t know how this will work out, but I believe the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) should take an interest in this property. The real owner are the people of Nigeria.
Meanwhile, there is a way in which we can connect this tragic saga to the story of the monarch caught in the web of fraud. As relatively young as many of us are, in the Nigeria we grew up, achievement and success were not measured by possession of ill-gotten wealth. But today, everybody just wants to ‘hammer’. In his report, ‘Tali Shani vs Tali Shani: Tales of the Bleak House occupied by the Nigerian elite,’ Feyi Fawehinmi (Aguntasolo) sums up this tragedy in his conclusion: “That a revered Silk and a former General could be implicated in a scheme built on such pathetically transparent falsehoods – lies too pathetic to deceive a child – exposes a staggering cultural rot. It proves that for this class, there is no bottom; there is only the grift. They are not leaders, but mere predators in tailored suits, indistinguishable from common hustlers in their desperate avarice. A profound and utter disgrace.”
I have nothing more to add!
Credit: Olusegun Adeniyi
