Praise and dispraise are two usages for which the tongue of a Nigerian politician can be put. This is a common perception among politicians themselves. In Nigerian politics, back-trackers are as common a sight as a fisherman daily sees shrimps in the creeks. Last Friday, Ekiti State’s former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governor, Ayodele Fayose, reminded me of Alamu Atinsola Atatalo, one of the pioneers of Dundun and Sekere traditional music in post-colonial Yoruba Nigeria. Atatalo reinforced the transition of the tongue of a Nigerian politician from one superlative extreme to the other, as defined by the esophagus. At a…
Author: Editor-in-chief
“Why should I bother myself with what is done to my body when I die? Oyomesi (the council of seven high-ranking chiefs in the Oyo Empire) knows what to do with my body!” That was what immediate past Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi 111, told me in his palace, a few weeks before he journeyed to Ibara – where Oyo buries its kings. He was furious with Ogun State traditional rulers. His grouse was with the Obas and Chiefs Law of 2021. That law has aberrant stipulations that are repugnant to tradition and customs. One of them is the…
As the All Progressives Congress (APC) prepares for its congress to elect delegates for the upcoming primary elections ahead of the August House of Representatives by-election in Ibadan North Federal Constituency, indications suggest that Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, has orchestrated a plan to manipulate the process. The party’s delegate congress is slated for tomorrow, Saturday, July 17, 2025. According to prominent party figures, Chief Adelabu has reportedly accommodated the Dr. Umar Duhu-led Delegate Congress Committee at Josephine Hotel, Ikolaba, Ibadan, in a bid to compromise the exercise. The group alleges that Chief Adelabu’s move aims to favor his…
Sometime in the early 2000s, at the cusp of Tafa Balogun’s glory as the Inspector General of Police, an oil magnate from a Southwest riverine area was arrested. He was travelling into the state capital from his riverine part of the country. It was at nocturne. The oil magnate, who moved like an Oba, was in a convoy of cars. Inside the car was a falange of private security persons. They were armed to the teeth with sophisticated weapons. It was obvious that this Oba-like man was into oil bunkering as well. At a checkpoint, the police stopped the convoy…
The Coalition of Civil Society Organizations for Good Governance (CCSOGG) has condemned what it described as a “reckless and desperate” call by Sahara Reporters publisher and former presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Mr. Omoyele Sowore, urging members of the Nigeria Police Force to join his planned protest scheduled for July 21, 2025. In a statement released on Wednesday in Lagos, the coalition criticized Sowore’s call as “irresponsible and politically motivated,” accusing him of attempting to incite unrest within the nation’s security architecture under the guise of activism. According to the statement signed by CCSOGG’s General Secretary Comrade…
“Death does not kill alone/Nor does he fight singly/He goes to war with plenty of warriors…/He sends Disease first/He sends Paralysis next/He sends Loss/He sends Curses…/Death finally comes to kill the hunter’s father/Who drinks now of heavenly water.” The lines above are from Professor Bade Ajuwon’s, ‘Ogun’s Iremoje: A philosophy of Living and Dying’, taken from Sandra Barnes’ ‘Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New’. It is a chant (Ìrèmòje) by one Lamidi in Akeetan, Oyo, Oyo State in 1976 for Ogundele, a deceased hunter. Ìrèmòje is Yorùbá poetic dirge sung at funerals of hunters. The bards, in total submission, acknowledge…
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress APC, Hon. Ezekiel Tunrayo has revealed that the Saturday meeting between some leaders of the party in Ibadan Southeast Local Government Area and the minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu was not an endorsement meeting. According to Hon. Tunrayo, “Chief Adelabu as a party stakeholder in Ibadan Southeast LGA invited leaders of the party in his local government to discuss how to reposition the progressive party in the council area ahead of 2027 elections” “The report that the leaders endorsed Chief Adelabu is a false and should be ignored” he said. Speaking with…
Last Monday, as noiselessly as a phantom, President Bola Tinubu brought home his strange friend. While an Igbo proverb says the footsteps of a man cannot create a stampede, Alexander Zingman, the president’s Belarusian friend’s sloppy footsteps created more than a stampede. It was as though the great South African poet, Mazisi Kunene’s lines were being chanted to scare us. They reverberated round the length and breadth of Nigeria. “The madman has entered our house with violence/Defiling our sacred grounds/…Bending down our high priests with iron…” Kunene wrote. We could have kept silent at the appearance of the man who…
The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR), Oyo State Chapter, sees the renaming of The Polytechnic, Ibadan, to Omololu Olunloyo Polytechnic, Ibadan, by Governor Seyi Makinde as mere symbolism. While we recognize this move as a tribute to the late Dr. Omololu Olunloyo, a former governor of Oyo State and the pioneer rector of the institution, we must stress that such an act, will amount to nothing if it is not followed by genuine efforts towards the real and transformative development of the institution. The renaming of the Polytechnic, on its own, does not address the deep-seated problems that…
Power politics in the animal kingdom could be as intense, deceptive and selfish as it is in the human kingdom. An ancient African allegory whose patent cannot be credited to a particular tradition, illustrates this. It is the fable of an old forest warhorse, the lion. After years of feasting on animals, his mane soaked in their innocent blood, Old Lion became too senescent to haunt for games. Stricken with old age, diverse infirmities and unable to put food on his own table, the King decided to get food by subterfuge and trickery. Always by himself and soaked in myriad…