“Everything is my business. Everything. Anything I say is law…literally law.” Barbara Geddes, et al in their How dictatorship works (2018) quoted Malawian dictator, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, as having once said the above. In Nigeria of a little more than a week ago, they all came in quick successions: A National Assembly where libido ran riot; a son who said his father was Nigeria’s best president; a corps member who condemned that same father as terrible and that president, when he wakes up and looks at the mirror, like Banda, sees himself as “the law”. In the hands of Bola…
Author: Editor-in-chief
An ancient Yoruba anecdote narrates the destructive nature of the tongue. Its moral is specifically targeted at leaders who take unconscionable decisions as dictated by their fleeting passion. It is the tragic life and reign of King Odarawu. Odarawu was an Alaafin in the old Oyo Empire. His brief reign in the late seventeenth century, after he succeeded his father, Aláàfin Ajagbo, made him the first Alaafin to be rejected by the Oyomesi, Oyo Empire’s council of state. Odarawu was a prisoner of his tongue and fiery temper. These led to the brevity of his rule. His vile anger and…
Former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai caused a mild stir last week. Though the resignation of his membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and gravitation towards the Social Democratic Party (PDP) did not come as a shock, the ruckus that attended them have been instructive. Torrents of negative comments have been heaped up as reactions to his decamping. And they are expected. Brilliant politician, intelligent and renowned for his organizational ability, El-Rufai is one politician you would love to hate. Since 1999, he has been a factor, either for ill or good, in Nigerian politics. Many have glibly…
In South Africa under the presidency of Jacob Zuma, any analysis of government and governance without factoring sex into the mix was tame and lame. Zuma was a notorious polygamist who had six official wives as president, many more by unofficial account and 22 children from the liaisons. He was a kingpin of lechery. On May 8, 2006, a South African court under Judge van der Merwe acquitted him of rape of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, an HIV-positive AIDS activist, who was the daughter of his friend, Judson Kuzwayo. During trial, Zuma pleaded that the sex was consensual but admitted that…
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…
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…