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…
Author: Editor-in-chief
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…
Greek philosopher, Socrates, may be the most famous Western figure of his time to have swallowed the poisonous plant’s juice called hemlock. But, Africa, too had its. As he was sentenced to death in 399 BCE, Socrates was forced to drink this poisonous plant secretion which causes muscular paralysis, leading to respiratory failure. As he lay dying, having swallowed his own hemlock kept in a calabash bowl, the tragic life of Kurunmi, 19th century Yoruba military general and Yoruba race’s 10th Aare Ona Kakanfo, stands as a huge lesson for contemporary leaders. Though Kurunmi learned the lesson too late, its…
I have read enough works on the phenomenon of sycophancy in politics to know that it is a democratic curse. Whenever I reflect on its curse on development, my mind hovers over a character called Abulu in Akure, Ondo State-born Chigozie Obioma’s The fishermen (2015). A fictional book that got the shortlist of The Booker Prize, in it, four well-brought up kids of same parents, in the city of Akure, where the tragic plot was set, capitalize on a parental lacuna of their father’s absence to manifest traits of truancy and tantrums of youth. Their father having been transferred to…
Today, Nigerian leaders are busy playing the biblical couple, Ananias and Sapphira, on allegation that they abet genocide in Nigeria. They do this while being enveloped in how to rig the 2027 elections. As they do, Citizen Yahaya Sharif-Aminu is on a death row. On February 23, 2020, this then 22-year-old was arrested for posting blasphemous statements on WhatsApp against Prophet Muhammad. The Kano bigoted mob, renowned for its hyena-like thirst for flesh and blood, immediately burnt down Sharif-Aminu’s family home. A musician, what Sharif-Aminu posted was, “there is no great pagan like prophet Muhhamad (PBUH), he is a complete…
While growing up, I went on hunting expeditions with elderly men. From there, I found out that the forest, as an ecosystem, is diametrically opposed to the human world. In the forest, the hunter exists with “other beings”- animals of different shades and character, plants – whose existences bear similarity with man’s. One of such beings is an unseen spirit whose existence the hunter can take for granted only at his own peril. In the forest, the hunter is in a continuous struggle with these beings but is seen as an interloper. In this forest community, every member of the…