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One of the bitter lessons Bola Tinubu may have learnt in his abortive war against Niger Republic’s military junta is that with northern Nigeria, blood will always be thicker than water. In this matter, Niger Republic is blood; Nigeria, especially the part of it outside the Muslim north, is water. Northern Nigerians will not sacrifice […]
Continue ReadingSix contiguous states across Africa, from Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean to Sudan on the Red Sea, have suffered eight military coups since 2020. The United States Institute for Peace (USIP) noted and wrote the above in relation to last week’s coup in Niger Republic. It described the situation as depressing. It is. Depressing means […]
Continue ReadingGiven today’s state of the nation, it is likely that both Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi are thanking their stars that they were not the ones declared as our elected president on March 1, 2023. If they were, each of them would have done what Bola Tinubu did with petrol subsidy with consequences […]
Continue ReadingImmediate past Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, recently waxed proverbial and made a Facebook post which sounded like a loud complaint: “The axe forgets but the tree remembers…They are the axe. We are the trees. We have long memories. God Bless Nigeria. Amen.” El-Rufai made that sour post on June 13, 2023 – about three […]
Continue ReadingThere was a time in Nigeria’s media history when a certain Ebenezer Williams was arguably one of the country’s best newspaper columnists. But that popular name was a pseudonym, a fictitious identity. The masquerade donning that beautiful costume was Abiodun Aloba, colonial and post-colonial Nigeria media genius. He died in 2001. In the Daily Express […]
Continue ReadingIn 1948, Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, thought of the best way to protect his country’s security information from invasive media toxins. He summed his strategy up in one short sentence: “Take the thief and make him guard.” But a thief would remain a thief even if he is made the chief hunter. A […]
Continue ReadingIn the end, we realise that nothing really belongs to us; not power, not life. Power is fragile; it can also be deadly. It shares properties with candle flames. I take this idea from Brandon Sanderson, author of ‘The Way of Kings.’ Sanderson thinks the lives of men are as brittle and lethal as candle […]
Continue ReadingIt was quite nice seeing President Bola Tinubu as he waltzed into the chambers where he met security chiefs last Thursday. “Morning,” he greets the chiefs. “Shall we sit or…” They murmur. His gaze is fixed on his guests. What are they saying? “Eh?” He asks; they murmur. “We just sit?” The president asks again. […]
Continue ReadingExactly one week from today, Muhammadu Buhari will stop being our president; his place another shall take. But what kind of leader has he been? The best assessment of a leader you get, not from his fanatics – boys who eat directly from the leader’s palm – but from men with cocks that crow as […]
Continue ReadingMay Sudan not happen to Nigeria. This piece starts with prayers. It has to. “Everyone in Africa believes in God…It’s the only way we can survive. People leave home praying that there will be electricity when they return. On the road, they pray that they will avoid motor accidents. If they crash, they pray the […]
Continue ReadingThe one who hasn’t been hit by war calls himself a man (Eni ija o ba nii pe ‘ra e l’okunrin). The word for ‘fight’ in Yoruba is ‘ija’; but ‘ija’ is much more than ‘fight’. It means battle; it is also war. If you’ve never been caught up in or overtaken by war, it […]
Continue ReadingThere are books and films on the life and times of Efunsetan Aniwura, the second Iyalode of Ibadan. She was rich, powerful and cold-hearted. Her success as a woman; her manly carriage and ruthlessness made her a perfect mark for envy and destruction. And she lost everything. But Iyalode did not say goodnight gently; she […]
Continue ReadingLand grabbers would seize your land at gunpoint and ask you to go to court. What would make one of INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) do what he did in Adamawa State yesterday (Sunday) other than the effrontery of land grabbing? Who asked him to do it? Declare a winner even while vote collation is […]
Continue ReadingMy mystery Hausa friend has been busy with me lately. He has been firing a series of probing (invasive) messages. Sometimes, he asks questions; other times, he comes plain and provocative. On March 28, my friend told me “Igbos and Yorubas have been Nigeria’s problem since colonial times. They are still the problem. They heat […]
Continue ReadingLike Nigeria’s multiple-award winning poet, Professor Niyi Osundare, I am also “farmer-born, peasant-bred.” Like him, I “encountered dawn in the enchanted corridors of the forest.” A powerful pastor once came to our village with drums and flutes. It was supposed to be a one-off visit but that first arrival was a harvest of blessings for […]
Continue Reading“The ides of March are come,” Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar says in utter derision and dismissal of a life-and-death warning. And the soothsayer replies “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.” And truly, they were not gone. The 2023 elections should be over by now but they are not. There are people everywhere mocking poets and prophets. Clouds […]
Continue ReadingUnder the cover of darkness, a dish was placed on a highway in Lagos at the weekend. It was food for the gods but it was a madman that we saw eating it on Saturday morning. The video trended online in competition with the shrieks of electoral madness which thundered through the Nigerian skies on […]
Continue ReadingIf you were in Western Nigeria in the 1980s, you would remember a television drama with the title Fó’po mó’yò which featured Fadeyi Oloro, the hugely popular ‘venomous’ actor who died last week. May God rest his soul. Fó’po mó’yò is about the appointment and installation of a new king. It is about the intrusion […]
Continue ReadingThe 2023 presidential election in Nigeria is not the worst in human history. That dubious reputation belongs in Liberia where, in 1927, the then President Charles D.B. King scored 234,000 votes out of a total of 15,000 registered voters. The victor was also kind enough to give his opponent 9,000 votes as a mark of […]
Continue ReadingWho registered the kids we saw in the election queues in Kano on Saturday? I watched video clips of women on lines with four, five, six-year-old kids. They were all there to cast votes. I saw, in another video, a boy – a child – who was emphatic that he was at the polling unit […]
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