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Lagos State and the drama of its embattled lawmaker and ex-Speaker of its parliament, Mudashiru Obasa, appropriately answer to an idiom in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Insatiably curious about the mysteries of Wonderland, Alice had used the word, “Curiouser and curiouser” to express the mysteries of how she shrinks after drinking a potion. When […]
Continue ReadingLast week’s ascension to the Alaafin of Oyo throne by then Prince Abimbola Akeem Owoade courted tremendous ruckus in Yorubaland. Why would an unseen Ifa deity and its cloudy, ancient system of divination choose an Alaafin? Implicated in the back-and-forth that followed was 92-year old Ògúnwán̄dé Abím̄bọ́lá, professor of Yoruba language and literature and one-time vice […]
Continue ReadingIn a viral video, Professor Wande Abimbola, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, and the Awise of Yorubaland – head of all Ifa oracle diviners – threw a bombshell. In it, he affirmed that the Oyo State government contacted him on the divination process leading to the nomination of […]
Continue ReadingThe door of life is binary; it opens either ways, inwards or outwards. So goes an age-long wisdom. When the ThisDay newspaper, on 1 January announced President Bola Tinubu as its Man of the Year pick, emotions of Nigerians ran riot. Was that decision a product of editorial science or newspaper shamanism? Nigerians asked. To many, the […]
Continue ReadingThe unnamed woman had just given birth to a baby five days before. Her body was still wet as Yoruba say of mothers who newly underwent the pangs of labour and delivery. Pains must still be ricocheting round her navel. Ex-Queen of the Ooni of Ife, Prophetess Naomi Silekunola, and an Ibadan-based broadcaster, Oriyomi Hamzat, […]
Continue ReadingIn 1992, Leon Mugesera, a senior politician in the then Rwanda ruling party, gathered a crowd of supporters at a rally held in the town of Kabaya. At the rally, Mugesera labeled the minority Tutsi as “cockroaches,” who must be eliminated. He then asked this East African ethnic group to go back to its place […]
Continue ReadingIn a gripping but evergreen musical rendition of a Yoruba fictional folksong, late Fuji music lord, Ayinde Barrister, once deployed the canvas of the forest to paint the inequality of the world. In his Fuji New Waves album, he also depicted the acrimonies that follow the sharing of jointly hunted games. What the anecdote tells […]
Continue ReadingThe above was the question asked by Britons and the rest of the world in the afternoon of May 22, 2013. Close to the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, Southeast London, two young men of British-Nigerian descent, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, had attacked a 25-year-old British Army soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby and killed him. […]
Continue ReadingAs I was concluding this piece, my eyes caught a presidential sledgehammer which landed on the head of Conscience Nurtured by Truth – The Guardian. In a release issued by the State House yesterday, authored by erstwhile Editor in Chief of TheNews, Bayo Onanuga, it was accused of what General Sani Abacha accused the paper of doing […]
Continue ReadingOn 4 April, 2021, I wrote a piece with the title “The President is a sick man: Buhari’s Secret Therapy Inside the ‘Oneida.’” It was a lamentation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s knee-jerk and off-the-cuff jetting out of Aso Rock Villa like a wandering evil spirit. At the drop of a hat, Buhari flew to the United Kingdom […]
Continue ReadingIn Arabian folklore, the genie is a spirit depicted as being imprisoned inside a bottle or oil lamp. No matter how impregnable the walls of its captivity are, the moment it is summoned, the spirit comes out and grants the wishes of the one who invoked it. Trust them for their gift of incredible ingenuity, in […]
Continue ReadingNigerians and indeed, the world, watched aghast last week as a South African grisly movie reel began to roll. Full of all the elements of a movie, it was however a real story. The cast was two black women who, on August 17, were shot and fed to pigs by a white farmer. The victims, […]
Continue ReadingOne by one, three former Nigerian military rulers, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, arrived at Babangida’s Hilltop Mansion in Minna, Niger State, last Sunday. So did former National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Gusau. The Minna meeting had every trapping of African witches assembling at the coven. Like owls, a pervasive symbol of […]
Continue ReadingOne of the thematic preoccupations of the book, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance (2014) is that, inside the forest, there is a consistent superiority war, often fierce, between man and animals. Written by Ayo Adeduntan, research fellow at the University of Ibadan, the book averred that, while animals sometimes win this […]
Continue ReadingThe duo of Abba Yusuf, governor of Kano State, and the Nigerian presidency stand the risk of plunging Kano back into the year 1893. Their weapon would be politics and votes of the over 2 million people of Kano. In the year 1893, in the words of highly rated scholar on Northern emirate administration, C. […]
Continue ReadingHave you noticed that in the last two weeks, Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State seems to have acquired an inexplicably large dose of boldness and courage? Conversely, you must have equally observed that, in the last couple of days, FCT Minister, the very loquacious Nyesom Wike, has taken an uncharacteristically large overdose of meekness and humility. […]
Continue ReadingLast week, Nigeria was faced with what Yoruba call “egbinrin ote.” When afflictions come in multiples, they become a plague. A plague is almost synonymous with the Yoruba’s egbinrin ote. Literally, egbinrin ote are leaves of conspiracy. When you pluck a single leaf out of the branch of a tree of conspiracy, another leaf sprouts […]
Continue ReadingThe scholar and researcher had taken a trip to an open market. There, he met a female fishmonger. Attracted by the casual attention this researcher paid to a croaker fish on display in her stall, the lady attempted to win this potential buyer to her stall. So, she began to dish out a combination of […]
Continue ReadingNative Brazilians arrest monkeys with what is called Cumbuca. They make a hole in a gourd that is big enough to accommodate the hand of a monkey. The gourd is then affixed to the ground of a place infested by monkeys. Placed inside the gourd is usually a banana for the attraction of the monkey. The monkey […]
Continue ReadingWhether real or imagined, none of the metonyms for “Lagos boy” is complimentary. The “Lagos boy” moniker once came up in the late 1980s. Commodore Olabode George, then military governor of Ondo State, had just been removed from office after spending two years. The African Concord magazine then did a post-mortem of his turbulent rule. Newly purchased […]
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