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When audacity of immorality is at issue, the celebrated case of Smith v Hughes is always referenced. It is also used to explain the mischief rule in law. By the 19th century, the English society had become so notorious for the infiltration and embarrassment caused it by commercial sex workers on the streets of London. […]
Continue ReadingTwo anecdotes have been used to justify the controversial pulpit tirades of senior pastor of Citadel Global Community Church in Lagos, Tunde Bakare, whose video went viral last week. One is that famous Obinde proverb, popularised by former governor of Lagos and Osun States, Olagunsoye Oyinlola. The second is one I stumbled onto during the […]
Continue ReadingWhat could have prompted Aunt Adelina to declare in The Feast of the Goat that, “Well, that’s what politics is, you make your way over corpses…”? After seeing what politics and politicians do with us in Nigeria, should I have asked that question in the first instance? Optimists that Nigerian politicians are, they have started a race […]
Continue ReadingTwo anecdotes, told by keynote speaker, Professor Adeolu Akande, at a congregation of lawyers in Ibadan, Oyo state last week, drew the graph of the gripping state of the Nigerian union, in the most spellbinding manner. Two other narratives which strengthened his argument, came in the form of news stories which dominated the media during […]
Continue ReadingBritish statesman and Liberal politician, William Ewart Gladstone and this white friend of my Shaki, Oyo State-born friend, who we call Kollysho, seem to be in a consensus of mind about the dead and their treatment. Kollysho and his white friend both live in Maryland, United States of America and one evening, during the reign of […]
Continue ReadingWith the most recent tragic news of the slaughter of over 40 rice farmers by Boko Haram in Zabarmari, Jere local government of Borno State yesterday, virtually all Nigerians must have arrived at same juncture of opinion, something in the neighbourhood of what lawyers call unanimity of purpose, on how we horribly we fare at […]
Continue ReadingThe Yoruba anticipated the fate of Mrs. Aishat Mohammed. In the aftermath of the murders, horrendous plunder and arson on the city of Lagos about two weeks ago, Mohammed was one of the captives of the law. Or lawlessness. Gagged like sardines in a can among about 500 persons paraded and labeled as culprits of […]
Continue ReadingA few days ago when he provoked the failed state thesis, unbeknown to him, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was stirring up attention to the medical condition called gangrene. In its manifestations, gangrene bears similarities with the political condition of a failed state. If a patient of gangrene is put side by side the victim of […]
Continue ReadingYou may not understand what inimitable Fela Anikulapo’s early days of Koola Lobitos’ ballistics-sounding song, with the refrain, Alujanjan kijan, was about until you hear the full anecdote. It goes thus: A very debilitating drought had seized the village inhabited by Tortoise, that figurative animal with huge cunning. Hungry and despised, he one day met the […]
Continue ReadingAs the August 27 anniversary of the 35 years that wily military General, Ibrahim Babangida, gunned himself into office draws near, his baptism with a national uproar on account of his attempt to drag Nigeria into the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will remain indelible in the national mind. As soon as the information […]
Continue ReadingAny student of autocratic rule will tell you that free speech is always the first casualty of a budding despotism. So, watching the viral video of how development economist, polymath and former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) deputy governor, Obadiah Mailafia, spurted out his seismic allegations against runners of the Nigerian state last week, my […]
Continue ReadingIn a recent viral video, Hassan Ayariga, founder of the All People’s Congress (APC) of Ghana, publicly reminded Nigerians that their country has become a butt of jokes in international discussions. Right before our very eyes, Ayariga rudely poked his hands into our eyeballs. Nigerians are however taking the insult in their strides because they […]
Continue ReadingAgain, the system felled Ibrahim Magu, Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) last week. It had always done that. Olusegun Obasanjo, the maiden president at inception of Nigeria’s fourth republic, first erected the crucifixion upon which a crime-fighting czar was hung. While employing the old Yoruba verbal denunciation of thieves by […]
Continue ReadingProfessor of Linguistics and president, Academy of Letters, Francis Egbokhare of the University of Ibadan, on an Ibadan, Oyo State radio programme, where we both appeared yesterday, did a profound analysis of the ongoing political chess-gaming in the All Progressives Congress (APC). Only last week, at the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the party, […]
Continue ReadingCourt-suspended All Progressives Party (APC) chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, a few days before his ouster, subtly flexed his power muscles and demonstrated a commendable grasp of African proverbs and aphorisms. Taking to his Twitter handle to do this, Oshiomhole had announced that, “You don’t run after a snail. When you’re ready (to make it a cuisine), you pick it up and […]
Continue ReadingYoruba people have been serially accused of over-explanation of their world. Perhaps, just like every other tribe in Africa. Chinua Achebe’s explanation of “the word” to the Igbo is that they regard the art of conversation very highly, to the extent that “proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten.” Traditional Yoruba society […]
Continue ReadingIf citizens of the world didn’t know that they lived in a global village, the COVID-19, otherwise known as the Coronavirus, has demonstrated this starkly. Virtually all parts of the world have paused on account of the ravaging pestilence, with very earth-shaking implications for the global economy. Even world leaders with war-like inclinations have come […]
Continue ReadingAll right, you do not know what the mistletoe is? It is, according to a dictionary definition, a “leathery-leaved parasitic plant which grows on apple, oak, and other broadleaf trees.” The Yoruba call mistletoe ‘afomo.’ What this weed does is to stick to trees, whether the cocoa or kolanut. Farmers are always watching out for […]
Continue ReadingThe Nigerian parliament regained its balls last week. Before now, it was coasting home to victory as the most supine legislature in Nigeria’s recent history, especially with its leader’s effeminate claim that parliament would rubber-stamp every leaflet with presidency’s imprimatur, including any trash-receptacle from President Muhammadu Buhari’s lavatory. Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, it was, who […]
Continue ReadingAfter watching the viral video of several Ilorin, Kwara State old women, referred to as arugbo in Yorubaland, pleading with the Kwara State governor, Abdulrazaq Abdulrahman, not to demolish the Ile Arugbo (Old people’s home) built for them by the old Kwara political warhorse, late Dr. Olusola Saraki, and his eventual demolition of the property […]
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