On Wednesday, February 25, 2025, a very toxic but innocuous advertorial was published in the Punch newspaper. It was authored by a group which called itself De Renaissance Patriots Foundation. Entitled Systematic Marginalization of Lagos State Indigenes, and signed by Major General Tajudeen Olanrewaju (rtd.) and Yomi Tokosi, the advertorial explains the legislative gangsterism currently going on in Lagos State, ex-Speaker Mudashiru Obasa’s impudent audacity and President Bola Tinubu’s nauseating silence on the civilian coup ongoing in the State of Aquatic Splendour. The only fitting narrative that can explain the Obasa phenomenon and the Lagos godfather’s paternalism for Obasa and…
Author: Editor-in-chief
The Nigerian Senate erupted again last week. This time, it was not about allegations of its leadership being a cesspool of sleaze, a home of self-serving parliamentarians or corruptible budget-padding that have become a boring refrain. Sequel to an earlier seemingly infantile squabble over sitting arrangement, the female anti-hero of that row, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, came on air on Friday to allege that her continuous spats with Senate President Godswill Akpabio were due to a sexual harassment she rebuffed in the past. And the social space went bonkers. First, the two issues that threw Akpoti-Uduaghan and Senate President Godswill Akpabio to…
Since Thursday when his autobiography, A Journey In Service, was launched, former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, has taken center-stage of national attention. The autobiography reminds me of James Hadley Chase’s Make the Corpse Walk. It is the story of eccentric millionaire, Kester Weidmann, who in his weirdest best, believed money could buy everything, life and death inclusive. So, one day, Weidmann woke up with the crazy idea that his dead brother could be brought back to life. He then enlisted the services of a voodoo specialist to perform this crazed task. Rollo, crooked nightclub, owner was his perfect find…
Nigeria has just had one hell of a week. Like an evil spirit, hell hovered over Nigeria with fraught silence. To stave it off, Muslims will seem to have recited the Quranic verse of the Yaseen to keep the evil away. Christians banned and banished. Hell held on regardless. Hell was first let loose when a hellish temperament of the country’s National Security Adviser, (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, escaped from its scabbard. Ribadu is ostensibly managing a loose, hellish temperament. In a moment of unguarded, loose hold on his temper, Nuhu declared that Canada could go to hell. Ribadu’s temper escaped…
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 Obasa emerged on Saturday to claim that he remained the Speaker of the parliament, Alice’s wonder at the mysteries of Wonderland became a fitting description of the theatre of the absurd that Lagos politics is. Before now, everything that emanated from the January 13 impeachment…
Last 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 chancellor of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University. In 1981, a conclave of Ifa priests in Yorubaland anointed Abimbola as the Àwísẹ Awo Àgbàyé (World Ifa Priest). He was then investured by the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade. It was…
The door of life is binary; it opens either ways, inwards or outwards. So goes an age-long wisdom. When the Thisday newspaper, on January 1, 2025, 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 newspaper’s editors must have meandered into some kind of trance, communed with with some unseen spirits and emerged therefrom with their odd pick. To others, Thisday hit the bull’s eye. Suffering Nigerians were even ready to, in the lingo of the millenials,…
Last Friday was the first anniversary of the passage of Rotimi Akeredolu, ex-Ondo State governor. It was also the first anniversary of his successor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, in office. We thus must be grateful to Aiyedatiwa for immortalising Akeredolu, famously known as Aketi that same day. Aketi was an ecumenical spirit – borrowing from Wole Soyinka’s burial oration for Chief Bola Ige. Aside from naming a court after Aketi, Aiyedatiwa organised a lecture in the former NBA president’s remembrance. Stubbornly courageous, Aketi cared not whose ox got gored while he spoke his mind. You could be president or an emperor; Aketi…
I have been asked severally what my opinion was on last week’s presidential media chat. First, I must commend the presidency for hosting the chat, though belatedly after 19 months of holding back. When the people hear directly from their leaders and not from third parties they didn’t elect, it affords them opportunity of psycho-analyzing the man at the helm of affairs, match his gestures with policies and project what the leadership’s future strides will be. It was also gladsome to see the president radiating warmth, confidence and mastery of his craft. He appeared to have learned the ropes of…
This past Monday, Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, held the fèèrè (flute) and blew it admirably. However, bystanders listening to the rhythm of his flute didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Moyo Okediji, Assistant Professor of Art at the Wellesley College, Massachusetts, in his “Art of the Yoruba” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, (Vol. 23, No. 2) described the flute held by Shettima as a symbol of the trickster god Esu, also known as the divinity of the crossroads. According to Okediji, Esu was so powerful that he could help or hinder the craft and life of man.…