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Ovation publisher Chief Dele Momodu popularized the expression “owners of Nigeria” to denote a coterie of power brokers and traffickers of influence who habitually sit in conclave to teleguide the choice of political leaders, particularly presidents, and to whom everyday Nigerians are helpless political captives. Although they peddle influence and engage in elitist exclusion, “owners […]
Continue ReadingWith the inauguration of Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji as the governor of Ekiti State on October 16, 2022, Dr. John Kayode Fayemi has become the latest ex-governor who is succeeded by his handpicked favorite. But how long will the honeymoon between him and his successor last? Will Fayemi join the already long list of past governors […]
Continue ReadingQuestions and concerns over Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s absence from the Nigerian public space, which has trended on Twitter for days on end, are not misplaced or ill-willed gotcha maneuvers by political detractors. They are legitimate expressions of anxieties over the fitness of a man who has the most probable chance to be Nigeria’s president in […]
Continue ReadingIn contemporary Nigeria, the term “restructuring” has become something of a “God term,” as rhetorical scholars call words and expressions that instinctively evoke warm fuzzy feelings in people, that galvanize people into action, that are unquestioningly sanctified by a cultural community, that people associate with affirmative attributes, and that people are prepared to make sacrifices […]
Continue ReadingTwo certainties have underpinned voting behavior in Nigeria, which APC’s Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Labour Party’s Mr. Peter Obi will either uphold or explode in next year’s presidential election. While one of the certainties is time-honored, the other is more contemporary and enabled by social media. The most time-honored fixity in Nigerian electoral politics […]
Continue ReadingPeter Obi comes across as a humble, conciliatory, mild-mannered, and good-natured person—in contrast to his toxic, obnoxious online devotees whose rhetorical causticity he habitually has a need to restrain with words of caution. I honestly have a hard time understanding the untempered hate often directed at him by his critics. You may disagree with his […]
Continue ReadingNews from Nigeria these past few weeks read like an implausibly dystopian fictional plot written by an inept author. Events of the last few days particularly feel like a series of unstable and disordered parade of terrifying mental images and emotions that might seem perfectly logical during the subconscious moments of sleep but that strike […]
Continue ReadingFormer Anambra State governor Peter Obi is inspiring a powerful, social media-enabled, youth-led political tidal wave that will radically change the contours of the 2023 election. But APC and PDP operatives, still inebriated with the overconfidence of the size and deep pockets of their parties, are sniggering at the suggestion that Peter Obi’s Labour Party […]
Continue ReadingIn Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s unusually acerbic and desperate political speech in Ogun State on Thursday, he dropped four unmistakably broad hints that he will transition to secessionist Yoruba nationalism should the All Progressives Congress (APC) deny him its ticket, especially if this is done through the circumvention of the established protocols for choosing a party […]
Continue ReadingAlthough traces of Islam first came to Yorubaland through the Trans-Saharan Trade (from about the 8th century through the 16th century), which saw Arab traders travel from Arabia through North Africa to parts of West Africa in search of gold, salt, and human labor, it was the mass migration of Malians to the area from […]
Continue ReadingYou don’t promote unity by simply glibly mouthing off infuriating platitudes about unity being “non-negotiable.” You promote it through meaningful symbolic gestures to reassure estranged groups that they, too, matter. Unity is promoted when conscious efforts are made to heal national wounds, to accommodate disadvantaged groups, and to make political concessions to restore faith in […]
Continue ReadingMany readers of this column—and of my social media interventions—have asked me to endorse a candidate for the 2023 presidential election. Although I have my mental archetype of the kind of person that should be president, I won’t endorse a candidate for at least three reasons. One, I am not important or influential enough for […]
Continue ReadingThe two most disadvantaged groups in Nigeria’s representational politics are northern Christians and Southern Muslims. In Nigeria’s internal geopolitics, these two groups are structurally invisible, politically subjugated, and told to be content with their political and symbolic marginality. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a Muslim from Osun/Lagos states, and Yakubu Dogara, a northern Christian from Bauchi State, […]
Continue ReadingAlthough I have said in the past that next year’s presidential contest will be a short in the dark in light of the continually shifting political variables in the country, the auguries for Bola Ahmed Tinubu to clinch the nomination of APC aren’t looking pretty. Unless something really dramatic happens between now and the next APC convention, […]
Continue ReadingIt has turned out that it was actually Buhari himself, not the Aso Rock cabal, who wanted Goodluck Jonathan to succeed him in 2023! Apparently, even members of the cabal were disquieted by this. The cabal played along for a while (knowing Buhari’s well-known cognitive impairments and imperviousness to reason) and, at the right time, […]
Continue ReadingAnyone who has monitored Nigerian political punditry in the institutional news media and on social media in the last few weeks would be led to suppose that only candidates of the improperly named All Progressives Congress (APC)—who are actually a bunch of opportunistic, conservative fascists— would be participating in the 2023 presidential election. The bulk […]
Continue ReadingThere is probably no “indigenous” Lagos family that is more famous than the Tinubu family. But, although the family is now clearly culturally Yoruba, its ethnic provenance is traceable to what is now Borno State, according to Lagos historians, underscoring the historical and sociological inaccuracy of notions of ethnic purism in Nigeria. The patriarch of […]
Continue ReadingIn his interview with Arise TV recently, Ovation publisher and presidential hopeful Dele Momodu talked of the “owners of Nigeria” who teleguide the selection of political leaders, particularly presidents, and to whom we’re helpless victims. They are an amorphous group of crafty old stagers with enduringly deep roots in the structure of Nigeria, and include such people […]
Continue ReadingA quotation in which Bola Ahmed Tinubu called Muhammadu Buhari a “bigot” and an “agent of destabilization” has resurfaced on social media and is being shared by people who are opposed to Tinubu’s presidential aspirations. But Tinubu supporters are countering the quotation with a February 7, 2020 rebuttal by Tinubu’s media aide by the name […]
Continue ReadingGroup Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Malam Mele Kyari, said on November 23 that the Buhari regime will inflict yet another pain at the pump by jacking up petrol prices to N340 per liter in February 2022. If this materializes, it would be the fourth time the regime has increased […]
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