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Wise old Tortoise sat his children down. “My dear ones, two things are essential for your growth and wellbeing in life: Always tell the truth, and never ever take whatever is not yours.” The attentive children nodded; they promised to do as their father counseled. They bowed before their dad and left. Four years down […]
Continue ReadingPreparatory to his exit from power last year, President Muhammadu Buhari warned all of us to let him be after office: “Nobody should ask me to come and give any evidence in any court; otherwise whoever it is, he will be in trouble because all important things are on record.” Buhari uttered those words in […]
Continue ReadingA colleague yesterday shared a 1992 campaign video of Chief M.K.O. Abiola promising to demystify governance in Nigeria and stop “people’s heads” from being “shaved in their absence.” A professor friend (political scientist) commented that “that’s partly why he never became president.” Becoming president or king comes with a price. When ‘The Price of Kings’, […]
Continue ReadingThe last premier of the Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, asked his guest what the town was saying. The guest told him the town was solidly behind him. The guest backed his claim with a cassette which he said contained the adulation with which the people of Ibadan welcomed every step so far taken by Chief […]
Continue ReadingSports, especially football, have opiatic effects on Nigerians. I call it kinetic booze. The ongoing Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) football competition has been remarkable in numbing the people’s terrible pain and pangs of hunger. Since this thing started, morbid fears of violent death and of mass abduction get forgotten every night in sporty ecstasy. […]
Continue ReadingIf we take the Central Bank of Nigeria to Sokoto, will that translate to wellness for the seat of the caliphate? The Central Bank of Nigeria recently announced a decision to send back to Lagos some of its departments. The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) also announced a decision to go back to its […]
Continue ReadingMr Youssouf Sawane, a Malian money-maker, leads miners from Mali in Oyo State. He was asked by the Nigerian Tribune how much his group was paying into the coffers of the Oyo State government. He answered that he owed the Oyo State government nothing; his business was with the Federal Government. Displaying a remarkable knowledge […]
Continue ReadingA gentleman strolled into my office sometime ago and gave his surname as Adamasingba. In my almost thirty years in Ibadan, I had identified the name ‘Adamasingba’ solely with a stadium in the city. I never knew there was a family in Ibadan – or anywhere in Yoruba land – with that name. But here […]
Continue ReadingSome cabinet members went to Western Region premier, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, to complain about the corruption of one of their colleagues. They said the man was stealing their party’s funds and eating government money with reckless abandon. They said the gentleman’s impunity knew neither the fear of the law, nor of the party and the […]
Continue ReadingThe first day of the year is never a good day to write about death and dying. Rotimi Akeredolu spent the last three or four years hard-headed on the frontline. As planted in his name, Akeredolu, he was a small man who nurtured himself to bigness on life’s battlefield. He was not my friend. Apart […]
Continue ReadingAhmadu Rabah was 28 years old in 1938 when he made a very strong bid for the Sultanate of Sokoto. He lost the throne to Alhaji Siddiq Abubakar, a man who was not even on the list of three submitted to the British Resident. Fatalists would say that was destiny at work. Ahmadu Rabah later […]
Continue ReadingThere are very good people in our courts; there are very bad people there too. Unfortunately, a one-eyed man gained prominence in a town and the whole town got called the town of the blind. The courts below can be both bad and incompetent. We will still be safe if the Supreme Court is a […]
Continue ReadingOn the streets of Ibadan, there is an Aisha Suleiman from Kano State begging for alms. The about-22-year-old lady suffered a sudden divorce and everything around her collapsed. The only option she could thereafter think of was to move down south in search of hope – to do street begging. At a spot along the […]
Continue Reading“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.” Imagine this George Orwel dystopian quote in his ‘1984’ applying directly to […]
Continue ReadingA commercial flight landed in Asaba on Sunday but its cabin crew welcomed passengers to Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja. A certified true copy of an Appeal Court judgment last week gave victory to both the respondents and the appellants. Nigeria of today is the textbook definition of confusion. I seek to describe what the Court […]
Continue ReadingIf I were a politician, my devotion hours would be to the courts instead of pouring oil on INEC and voters, deities of limited powers. If the gods complain, I would ask them where they were when ugly death was killing sinners and saints. The buck – our electoral buck – stops at the courts. […]
Continue ReadingWe sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it.” I do not know under what condition Bob Dylan wrote that song line. All I know is that it serves my purpose as I sit here at the bank of Nigeria searching for the right metaphor for what the country has become. […]
Continue ReadingBefore Abuja, there was Lagos as our Federal Capital. And this is where I would want to believe that there is something about our North and Federal Capital Territories. Before independence and immediately after independence, Lagos had a succession of two ministers of Lagos Affairs, both were northerners. One was Alhaji Musa Yar’Adua, father of […]
Continue ReadingSusanne Wenger was famous as Adunni Oloriṣa. The BBC in 2008 described her as “white priestess of ‘black magic.’” A Nigerian said she was “white priestess of an African goddess.” Until her death in 2009, she was the custodian of Osun Osogbo grove and everything connected to its sacredness. But that task was not what […]
Continue ReadingIf history were a child, the Yoruba would insist on calling it an Abiku. History keeps climbing the chimney and, in Wole Soyinka’s voice, yelling at us: “I am Abiku, calling for the first/ And the repeated time.” And with J.P. Clark’s opening glee, his entrance chant, history revels in “coming and going these several […]
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