Prince Adekunle, the Yoruba Juju music maestro of the 1970s, once sang that a tree which falls in the forest cannot kill someone right inside their home; nor could a fallen rafter kill a bystander in the forest (Igi kìí dá l’óko kó pa ará ilé; àjà kìí jìn k’ó pa èrò ònà). We have found this not to be absolute. The falling tree and rafters of Western Nigeria once killed a bystander First Republic Nigeria. FCT Minister Ezenwo Nyesom Wike is a phenomenon. He is someone many love to hate. When the Secretary of the APC, Dr. Ajibola Bashiru,…
Author: Editor-in-chief
Yesterday, President Donald Trump unleashed his fury on the South American country of Venezuela. Woken to Trump’s tweet on his Truth Social that the US had carried out a ‘large-scale strike’ against Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolas Maduro and wife, Cilia Fores, the world was aghast. Sensing where Trump was going, Maduro had accused him, in an earlier statement, of “extremely serious military aggression”, stating that, “Venezuela rejects, repudiates, and denounces before the international community the extremely serious military aggression perpetrated by the current government of the United States of America against Venezuelan territory and people”. There is huge…
As I write this, I am listening to a line of the song of my favourite Jamaican reggae music superstar, Peter Tosh. It is a 1979 track entitled Jah Seh No, from his Mystic Man album. When life becomes too convoluted to comprehend; when it seems I am running mad, I run into Tosh’s embrace. But, running to Tosh for an embrace is problematic. Tosh himself was like a mad man. He was unconventional, an iconoclast who didn’t see life from the prism of the living. A devout adherent of the Rastafari faith, he was highly spiritual, was a poet,…
In Nigeria, on Tuesday and Thursday last week, two precision airstrikes hit targets. As similar as the pains the airstrikes brought, they were also marked by dissimilarities. While one hit the country’s northwest target against ISIS terrorists on Thursday, Christmas day, earlier on Tuesday, the other hit the heart of state capture in Nigeria. But localities of the strikes were miles apart. The Donald Trump strikes were launched from maritime platforms domiciled in the Gulf of Guinea but the one that exposed the rump of one party rule in Nigeria was launched from the Agodi Government House in Ibadan, Oyo…
He who finds favour of the world is without blemish in its eyes. “Eni ayé ńfé ò l’árùn kan l’ára”. That was a verdict given close to five decades ago by my musical idol, lord of Apala genre of Yoruba traditional music, Ayinla Omowura. This verdict of his came in one of his songs after a self-assessment of his personal existential uplift. The bard must have wondered at his transmutation from the rung of societal ladder to a place of reckoning in the commanding height of society, especially in Yoruba popular culture. Stardom replaced outlawry, wealth came in place of…
Today’s Gen Z world may not know of “Eddie Kwansa”. It is a famous folk song Owerri, Imo State, donated to the rest of Nigeria. Released shortly after the piercing agony of the Nigerian civil war in 1972 by Dan Orji and his Peacock Band, the song should remind people of my generation of the equally famous NTA soap opera, New Masquerade. The Orji song became the signature tune of that opera and it runs thus, “Eddie Kwansa oo, bia o, bia o (3ce) Izu ka nma na nneji oo, bia o, bia o…” Translated, the melodious song says, “Come,…
Famous Ogbomoso, Oyo State-born bard, Ogundare Fọyanmu, had some words for evil spins and spinners. Religionists call these spinners “workers of iniquity”. They are a legion in Nigerian politics. Fọyanmu popularized this genre of oral poetry called Ìjálá Ọdẹ traditionally chanted by hunters and warriors. Though a special verbal art of worshipers of Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron and war, Ìjálá is sung by hunters most times at their leisure, upon return from hunting expeditions. In an Ijala chant which he entitled Òré Òdàlè – Betrayer – Fọyanmu chanted: “While the liar dies and his legs are buried in…
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused state-backed actors and expelled party members of leading a violent attempt to block its newly elected National Working Committee (NWC) from accessing the party’s National Secretariat on Tuesday. In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Ini Ememobong, the PDP said Nigerians showed “remarkable courage” by standing with the party as security operatives and hired thugs allegedly loyal to expelled former National Secretary, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, and FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, barricaded the entrance and fired tear gas at governors, party officials, and supporters. The party claims over 200 canisters were fired,…
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) strongly condemns the attack on the Government Girls Comprehensive Senior Secondary School (GGCSS), Maga, in Danko Wasagu Local Government Area of Kebbi State, where bandits killed the Vice Principal, Hassan Yakubu Makuku, and abducted 25 students. In a press release signed by the National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Ini Ememobong and made available to journalists in Abuja on Monday, the PDP emphasised that the tragic incident further highlights the alarming rise in insecurity that has become the lived reality of majority of Nigerians under the Tinubu-led APC administration- which has consistently preferred the politicization of governance…
President Bola Tinubu did the unexpected last Wednesday. He attended the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) Conference 2025. It was the very first for any Nigerian president. Quite absurdly, the watchdog, the Nigerian press, willingly moved into the tiger’s buba – the lair – for deliberation on its welfare. Ayinla Ade-Gaitor, the Iganna, Ìwájòwà LGA of Oyo State-born Apala musician of the 1970s/80s fame, equally wondered at this quixotic equation. My compatriots, can a tiger and a dog co-habit in the same lair? – “K’ájá ó dúró, k’ékùn ó dúró, ńjé yíó seé se, èyin alárá wa?” Ade-Gaitor asked in…