Nigeria is the ultimate nightmare of the political analyst. The chaotic and anarchic realities do not conform to any model anywhere in the world. Yet they keep getting in the way, making a fool of the most determined of analysts and political scientists.

Sometimes only deliberately unstructured thinking can match adamant reality in all its unstructured and contradictory manifestations. In his discourse on the essay as a discursive form, Theodor Adorno, the great German philosopher and master dialectician, came to virtually similar conclusions agreeing with Hegel that if reality is inconceivable, then we must forge concepts that are inconceivable.

Adorno, a celebrated and much lionized central figure of the Frankfurt School, had a very unhappy time in America as a refugee fleeing from Hitler’s historic pandemic. He thought the Americans were an unserious bunch lacking in any rigorous tradition of thinking that can be described as a national philosophy.

One of his more abrasive refugee colleagues actually dismissed American Idealism as the businessman’s variant of Empiricism. The Anglo-American world is normally suspicious of people who take themselves too seriously. If their country was that good, why were they in America as refugees, the Americans scoffed at the self-regarding Germans. Those who write the books are not as important as those who write the cheques. Adorno was to return to his native country a very sad and depressed fellow.

Nigeria manages to solve some of its problems through superior tardiness and occasionally providential intervention. Four months ago, you would have thought that the entire country was on the verge of collapse and total disintegration. There were secessionist catcalls and separatist clamours all over the place. The oligarchy was having none of that.

They have now managed to redirect and refocus national attention on elections. Happy times are here again. 2023 has become the only game in town. There is almost universal compliance with the grand hoax of electoralism. Even IPOB had to tactically retreat from what would have been a political catastrophe for the Igbo people.

Yet despite the manoeuvring, the nation’s fundamental problems remain and they pop up every now and then in the least expected and most unlikely of places. Occasionally, there are signs of contraindication, a case of ignorant and superstitious overmedication.

In medicine, contraindication occurs when medications in violent antipathy are administered on the same patient with occasionally fatal result if not immediately remedied. For example, when another blood-thinning medication is administered in conjunction with aspirin, there is bound to be contraindicative reaction.

There were four major occurrences in the country this past week which give the impression of contraindication at its most damning and revealing. Yet taken together, they also represent the abiding trauma of an embattled country groping for solution to an endemic crisis of political, economic and spiritual modernity.

Last week, the highbrow suburb of Ikoyi was shaken to its foundation by the noise of catastrophic collapse as the high rise luxury tower complex under construction in one of its prized addresses gave way. Such was the impact that seismic tremors were felt miles away. A friend who has his magnificent pile in the vicinity spoke of the entire building quaking and then absolute bedlam.

Buried under the heap were the owner and developer of the luxury tower, some of his friends, associates, workers on the site and some wayfarers. This consuming tragedy highlights once again the unending struggle between modernity and our traditional ways of doing things which extend to building design and city planning. It has been alleged that since the Egyptian pyramids, Africans no longer do sturdy and enduring skyscrapers except via imported expertise.

Advertised as the ultimate in opulent living; a seven star residential hotel, the tower could not have been conceived to fail and fall off the sky just like that by the talented and ambitious owner. But it is obvious that a habitual tendency to cut corners and resort to unorthodox self-help spurred by unhinged profit motive took over all other considerations resulting in a national tragedy. Prayer sessions became more important than scientific certitude about the strength of materials.

It is akin to the case of a person named Folorunso who decides to climb a palm tree with banana fronds. Fate and faith are being sorely tempted. It is curious that all the miracle workers, the spiritual sorcerers and their apprentice sorcerers could not see where this contradiction was leading. In any society where human conduct is not regulated and subject to impersonal laws, the uncontrolled hunger for wealth often leads to avoidable amplification of hunger and disaster for the multitude.

Described by many who knew him as sharp-witted, focused and immensely resourceful, a man with a touch of Midas and Croesus combined, the Femi Osibona story would have been a fabulous example of a rags to riches extravaganza. As a youth, he was said to have known penury and privation, selling ties and shirts, clawing his way up to become a master-builder of global acclaim.

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Yet despite his business derring-do, a reputation for unsavoury deal-making and unethical practice dogged him all the way. There was something of the Great Gatsby about him. Famously described as a crook with the soul of a poet, this classic American wannabe was a man of mysterious wealth who delighted in throwing grand parties where he maintained his aloof mystique and puzzling personality. Until he lost his life in tragic circumstances, Gatsby thrived on perpetual magic and public mesmerisation before somebody decided to put a violent end to the confounding mystery.

Femi Osibona went down with his fascinating project of luxury in the skies taking many along. The opulent tower was intended to serve as the crowning glory of reaching for the sky and overreaching himself in the process. A throwback to the very beginning shows a gifted boy with a prodigious capacity for memory and memorizing.

Reciting off head Abe Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg address was a must for every student of Mayfair as prescribed by its iconic and pleasantly eccentric founder, Tai Solarin. But on his very first night of public entertainment at the school, the callow new entrant by the name Femi Osibona surprised and overwhelmed everybody present by reciting the entire address to uproarious applause.

This was the origin of the nickname “Four Score” which also became the veritable logo and insignia of his company. It was a tour de force and the boy could have gone on to become a professor of anything. But even here, the mystery deepens as somebody has obliquely hinted that it was not in fact the celebrated master-builder but an uncle who happens to bear the same name. It is not for humans to pass definitive judgement. The answer lies in the rubble of the Gerard Road apartment.

While one ambitious Nigerian project lies in ruins, another ambitious Nigerian project, this time a political project of self-emancipation, succeeded beyond belief in the same week. The people of Anambra succeeded in facing down the overwhelming and overweening might of the federal authorities by electing a candidate of their choice.

This was not the first time they have done so in the post-military Fourth Republic. But it is the first time they will be doing so in storied circumstances and in a condition of heroic vigilance and a minatory capacity to defend their vote even if heavens may fall. We must give credit and kudos to President Buhari and the federal authorities who wisely saw the handwriting on the wall. This was not the customary mind-set of the government at the centre.

But Nigeria has travelled quite some distance since 1999 when egregious rigging and massive vote-switching was the order of the day. There is a time for everything and anybody trying that in the current atmosphere of foul mood and national distemper has entered into a secret pact to terminate the Nigerian project.

It is a vote for self-determination and political autonomy in a stultifying unitary federation which will resonate and reverberate in the Nigerian political firmament as the countdown for 2023 commences. It must be stressed that it is also not a personal vote for Charles Soludo for all his credentials. If Soludo had stayed put in the PDP which is his natural habitat, he would have received a resounding shellacking at the polls.

How Soludo will now rule the state with the tempestuous and implacable IPOB breathing down his neck remains entirely his business. It is a pact with the devil. But we must single out for commendation the heroic resolve of the people not to be browbeaten by the federal might despite what is generally considered as the underwhelming performance of the outgoing state government.

Particularly noteworthy is what has come to be known as the heroic saga of the Ebenebe women who were said to have refused to be swayed or tempted by filthy lucre to do what is right for their people. They could have taken the humongous inducement from the carpetbaggers and still go ahead to vote for their choice. But they were having none of that nonsense on the day of the real owners of the electoral mandate.

Yet the triumph of the people of Anambra introduces a conundrum and utmost paradox to the contemporary political equation. By voting the way they did, the people of Anambra and to a larger extent the entire Igbo nation might have foreclosed the possibility of an Igbo presidency in the 2023 presidential election. Given Nigeria’s current skewed federation, it is only natural and logical to expect the two dominant state parties to choose their flag bearers from where they think the main votes will come from.

But this is small beer provided the contemporary Igbo leadership are ready to walk the talk of their own people. Despite the low turnout and in the absence of massive protest against the outcome of the election, the Anambra poll is a referendum on political autonomy and by extension the urgent restructuring of the country into a proper federation. Federal elections do not resolve the National Question, otherwise Ethiopia would not be on the verge of disintegration months after election.

This is why IPOB should sheath the sword of violent confrontation now that the moral and political momentum is with them. The struggle for justice and political equity in a country gradually emerging from the colonial debris is a multi-dimensional and multi-sector affair in which the use of force should only be the last option.

The battle for the soul of Nigeria and the inherent contradictions involved have now matured to a point where it is obvious that we cannot continue like this without a shattering implosion in the nearest future. Only the deaf and the dumb can continue to pretend not to see this.

When we factor in the two remaining contraindicative symptoms occurring around the same time, namely the jailing of Maina, the pension bogeyman, and the assent of the National Assembly to the electronic transmission of election results, we find that they are both important developments in the struggle to redeem Nigeria.

It is political immunity that breeds economic impunity. People get away with looting if they have it at the back of their mind that nothing will happen and nobody will ask them to answer for their contribution to the economic adversity of the nation. It is not as if attempts were not made to thwart the trial. But it is a long time ago when misappropriation of funds was officially substituted for misapplication of funds. Too much money has been stolen since then for the owners not to notice.

As for the electronic transmission of result, it is a huge blow to the Nigerian selectorate and electoral impunity. Manual transmission of election results allows secular authorities to tamper with and thwart the sacred will of the electorate. All these developments are products of relentless human struggles and the occasional miraculous intervention of unforeseen forces. It is not a done deal, but it is morning yet on the day of Nigeria’s reinvention.

Political magic has become a staple diet of governance in postcolonial Africa. Why tell a simple lie when a more complicated lie will suffice? Why remonstrate with the truth when you know that dispelling and dispersing it with a canister of lies is a more effective and direct solution?

When a whole Minister of Information, a man who is not always known for fidelity to the truth or loyalty to inconvenient facts, begins to moan and mutter about being bullied by the press, you begin to wonder whether the Oro-born master of dissimulation has taken the biggest flight of fancy from orotund reality. To be tormented by self-created fantasies is worse than being tormented by harsh facts.

Still, we need to be very careful about this business of Diezani’s bra. A woman’s bra often contains explosives carefully tucked away. African big men do not joke with their women or their bra for that matter. In 1975, the then Major Mathieu Kerekou murdered his deputy, a certain Captain Michel Aikpe , on the grounds that he was found frolicking with the First Lady. As Gbolabo Ogunsanwo was to put it in his celebrated column with unaccustomed indelicacy, the late Beninois captain rode to his death on the buttocks of Madame Kerekou.

Mobutu was even known to be more cruel and callous, often forcibly acquiring as concubines the wives of the men he had killed in a ghastly ritual of total subjugation. After butchering one of his wives on the grounds of infidelity, Idi Amin Dada opened the door for her children to view the grisly remains of their mother.

But it is not an entirely African phenomenon. In revolutionary Russia after Stalin beheld the wife of Nikolai Bukharin— his Politburo rival and intellectual superior— in all her rapturous beauty and chic sophistication, the cruel and wily Georgian cooed: “Comrade Nikolai, even here you managed to out-general me!!” It was the death sentence of one of the most gifted men thrown up by the Russian revolution.

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After the collection of bra purportedly belonging to Diezani was unveiled by the federal authorities in all their sassy obscenities, Okon roused himself to vigorous action.

“Oga, I wan quickly reach Abuja make man bid for dem Diezani bra. Dem say if man dey smell dem, money go come out yafunyafun. As I no get money like dem Yoruba boys who dey whack am, na good chance be dis one”, the mad boy snorted.

“Just shut up. Is it a fool like you they want there?” snooper screamed at the mad boy.

“Oga no be like dat. Dis kontri no be for Yoruba people alone”, the mad boy retorted. It was at this point that Baba Lekki cut in.

“Okon, I smell a rat “, the old contrarian scoffed.

“Baba which kin rat be dat one? Na Yoruba women dey carry rat inside dem bra”, the crazy boy snorted.

“The bra na from Victoria Secret”, the old man crowed.

“Baba na lie be dat one. Victoria no get secret. Na everyone dey wire dat one”,  Okon shouted. It was at this point that snooper drove the mad duo out of the house.

To the magnificent marquee at Harbour’s Point penultimate Monday for the eighth day fidau for our great pal, Adewale Adeeyo. OON. The weather was bright and clear but the mood this mid-morning was dark and sullen until you began to listen to the brilliant exhortations of the Muslim preachers from the historic town of Ede, the ancestral homestead of the remarkable Adeeyo clan, famed for its traditional music and culture.

Nevertheless, this is one of the most difficult pieces ever written by your sincerely. How do you begin to write about the death of a friend and soul mate who had virtually become a brother? The piece had been started, abruptly terminated and then wilfully resumed about eight times with the eyes clouding over several times. Yours sincerely is famous for his stout and stoic constitution. But there are events that could break the heart of the hardest of men.

How do you reconcile with the mysterious deaths of some of the most illustrious offspring of the nation in the past eighteen months? It is as if providence has chosen the best and brightest of the land for a special cleansing of this blighted landscape. Hopefully, the angry deities of Nigeria and the Black person will be placated and propitiated by these mysterious deaths.

On a scale of comparison, it recalls the late Professor Oyeleye Oyediran, a notable Political Science guru, breaking down terminally in tears at a conference on the Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria held in faraway Madison, Wisconsin, USA in November, 1995 exactly twenty six years ago this week. It was the week Kenule Saro-Wiwa was executed on the order of his friend, the monstrous General Sani Abacha.

Oyeleye had been narrating the experience of his friend and junior in school, General Olusegun Obasanjo, in the hands of the self-same Abacha when the dam broke and the old man gave way to torrid tears. That week’s edition of The Economist put out the cover which read: Nigeria foaming in Blood. Twenty six years after, Nigeria is still foaming in blood.

But this morning twenty six years after, having been unavoidably absent at the funeral which took place in Ibadan on Friday three days earlier, yours sincerely had joined the online Zoom virtual gathering and was settling in when a call came through from Sola Adeeyo, the deceased’s well-heeled business mogul nephew, who wanted to know where exactly one was keying in from.

Apparently there was a miscommunication somewhere, given the frenzied pace of events. When one responded that he was in Lagos, Sola insisted that one must come over to Harbours at once since one had been listed to speak on the life and times of his uncle. The other speaker was to be Professor Ibrahim Gambari, a close associate and friend of the deceased. One had raced post-haste to the place to join the live session.

It was a solemn and sombre gathering of many influential people who had come to pay their last respect to the late publisher of the now rested Anchor newspaper which made such a splash in the late nineties and early years of the new century and the crowd reflected Wale Adeeyo’s great emotional intelligence, his urban ubiquity and omnivorous sociality.

Among those who graced the occasion was a serving governor, Dapo Abiodun of Ogun state, the current Chief of Staff in the Buhari Presidency, Ibrahim Gambari, the immediate past governor of Ogun State,  Senator Ibikunle Amosun and his wife Olufunso, a former student and in-law of yours sincerely, and the man reputed to be the richest Nigerian ever, Alhaji Aliko Dangote.

Also in attendance were the closest pal and kinsman of the deceased, Dr Deji Adeleke, the Ede-born billionaire and business mogul together with his megastar troubadour son, Davido. There was also the quiet, self-effacing billionaire business magnate, Hajiya Bola Shagaya among many others.

In his lifetime, Adewale Adeeyo was quite a handful, a many-sided Renaissance figure who reminded one of what was said about Thomas Jefferson dining alone. Poet, philosopher, Yoruba patriarch, savant, raconteur of genius, gifted literati, publicist, publisher, shrewd arts collector, aficionado of fine music and recondite Yoruba culture and gamey matador of life lived at its most rarified and refined. He radiated immense goodwill and an endearing bonhomie even while choosing his friends very carefully.

Yet for all his gifts and accomplishments, he remained deeply spiritual, humble and self-effacing. He avoided loud and vexatious people like a plague. There was a deep Islamic piety about him and a fierce restraint which made him quietly disdainful of self-advertisement and fatuous exhibition of material prosperity and self-proclaimed accomplishments.

He was a Yoruba omoluwabi to the core: kind, genuinely compassionate and ever solicitous of the well-being of his friends and associates. But he can also be unapologetic in canvassing the virtues and values of those who choose to be self-effacing and understated in this Age of Conmen. He was the first publisher ever in Nigeria to put one on the front page of his now rested, agenda-setting newspaper. Such was his political nous and visionary idealism.

At a party in the garden of his beautiful home in Ikeja to felicitate and fraternize with the staff of the Federal Mortgage Bank where he had just been appointed Chairman by the federal authorities, everybody in the garden was asked to introduce themselves for ease of recognition.

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But when it came to one’s turn and one responded with a glum one-liner,  Adeeyo was having none of that nonsense. He snatched the microphone insisting that there were two people in the crowd who were fond of understating who they really were and underreporting their stellar achievements. He fingered yours sincerely and his remote and retreating kinsman, Dr Deji Adeleke. He then went on to make what he considered judicious amendments to great applause.

It has been noted that although humankind first civilized in Africa, he has not continued to do so there. Africa lost it a long time ago. The problem with contemporary Africa and in particular Nigeria is that they are ruled in the main by people on a lower scale of evolution and civilization, specimens of the lower species of humanity, who have seized the levers of power and atrocious governance.

Lacking in intellectual, moral and philosophical anchor, they are fundamentally and genetically incapable of coming up with a set of noble precepts and core values for purposeful and visionary governance which will ameliorate the dire circumstances of their distressed and disoriented people. The result is the frightful noise of state collapse everywhere in Nigeria with the politically undesirable leading the ethnically gullible and electorally culpable to sure perdition.

Hell is no longer the other but an integral part of the contemporary Nigerian condition. It is to be noted that before it mutated to a philosophy of permanent war and attrition, the Islamic concept of jihad was about strenuous striving or self-struggle for human improvement.

As for the led and even more particularly for the aspiring leaders, this regimen of constant self-improvement and unrelenting self-rectification is a categorical imperative. In one of his autobiographical ruminations, Chief Obafemi Awolowo noted how he strove to curb and conquer a tendency to irascibility and an intemperate impetuosity.

As it is for individuals, so it is for nations.  All serious nations must engage in constant striving for self-improvement towards a more perfect union and a more perfect nation as the Americans famously put it. In many nations, this jihad takes the form of relentless self-examination and critical self-interrogation. Nothing is taken for granted and nothing is left to chance. All the cards are put on the table in an unremitting ritual of self-purgation.

It is only in jaded and unserious nations like Nigeria that this ritual of self-renewal and self-validation are deliberately aborted and consciously stymied by an irresponsible political elite. But the result is the hell staring us in the face.

For example, when the newly consecrated chairman of the PDP opened his tour of duty by saying that his party was on a rescue mission without any sense of irony and without first apologizing for the sixteen year depredations the party unleashed on the nation, it is clear that a barbarous horde is about to overwhelm the nation once again. A sadly pedestrian and uninspiring rabble, this lot.

But historical logic suggests that it will never come to that. While not giving excuses or condoning the betrayals and shenanigans of the ruling party, the PDP is not an alternative to the APC. If the coming elections were to be stalemated between the two state parties, if it is too late in the hour for the political class to throw up some higher specimens of humanity, then the current anarchy will be a child’s play compared to what is looming.

As a committed adherent of Islamic faith given to long introspections and constant self-striving, the late Wale Adeeyo would understand the plight of his country and unhappy compatriots as well as the need for paradigmatic game-changers in this bedevilled nation. He could not have been a saint, but he strove for constant self-improvement demonstrating a prodigious capacity for self-recuperation in the process.

Unlike some of us professional agitators and spiritual rebels, he was given to a calm and fatalistic acceptance of what was beyond human capacity to change or alter. In one of our intense ruminations  in the garden of his house, I called his attention to the fact that duo of Ondo chieftains, Seye Ladapo and Ope Bademosi, that I sat with during the early morning prayers on the occasion of his seventieth birthday met there untimely deaths barely three weeks after. He responded sorrowfully that everyone had their allotted hour and nothing could be done about that.

But what he could change, he tried to change. He was a man given to quiet philanthropy and compulsive giving.  On his own and away from the public glare, he had honed his natural writing gifts to near perfection, becoming a master literary stylist in his own right.

His tributes to Justice Salihu Modibo Alfa Belgore on the occasion of his retirement from the Supreme Court in August 2007 and to Dr Williams on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, his powerful obituary of his cousin, the late Isiaka Adetunji Adeleke, as well as his memorable Commencement Lecture at the Adeleke University in 2115, Ede, are all stand-out monuments worthy of the greatest exemplars of the trade.

This is the gem of a man we lost a few weeks back. His own allotted hour had come and there was nothing anybody could do about that. May his remarkable soul rest in peace.

Wonders will never cease in this wonderful land. Reality keeps trumping fiction. The magic of America wonder is a very poor copy of real Nigeriana. Why read fiction when the real stuff, hot and unadulterated, keeps popping up everywhere?

Who would have thought that after the scandal of snakes, monkeys and baboons swallowing money, a federal department would actually go ahead to budget a whopping thirty nine million to combat snakes, monkeys and other extra-terrestrial terrorists? O ti sumi patapata, your worship.

In his preface to his only novel ever published, titled A Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil, the great German novelist, noted that his novel would not attempt to enter into any competition with reality. It is a very dangerous and precarious thing to do in a society that has itself become the stuff of outlandish fiction.

As it should be expected, Okon, the eternally loony chap, has been cottoning in on the latest outlandish developments in the land, exploring and exploiting their contradictory crevices for his perennial money-making scams. When it comes to thinking on his feet and working out the crude econometrics of the moment, the mad boy seems to be marked by genius.

The previous day, the crazy chap barged into the room with a collection of ancient catapults and what looked like a crudely improvised surface to air missile which he slung across his shoulders even as he beamed a satanic smile.

“Okon, what is the meaning of this nonsense?” an irritated snooper demanded in suppressed alarm.

“Ha, oga no be nonsense at all. I fit bring down any yeye plane now. I wan make dem military boys bring dem dollar come negotiate as dem do with dem Zamfara bandits. Otherwise, Anieke dem iron bird go fall from sky”, the mad boy chortled after which he commenced a vigorous war dance reminiscent of Tigrayan rebels.

“Not on your life!” yours sincerely screamed as one drove the crazy chap out of the room. Unknown to one, the crazy boy had been erecting no-fly-zone stumps around the house. But his luck ran out when he was apprehended by a police patrol unit led by a bluff rotund sergeant with a hint of affable criminality and who seemed to be carrying a ten-month old pregnancy.

“You see now? You see how wetin cobra go eat, he come meet am inside him hole? Dis one you don do you fit spend all your life for jail “, he rogue sergeant growled as he rubbed his palms together in a sinister relish.

“Wetin I do you now? “ Okon snapped as he was being manhandled by the cops.

“You still get mouth talk nonsense? Abi your mama juju don miscarry? Na treason you don commit with anti-state akitifity”, the rotund sergeant shouted as if he was reading from a charge sheet.

“I no dey do dem anti-state. Na dem Ambazona and Egbesu boys be dat. Na only interstate I dey do and dat one be when I reach Itigidi from Afikpo Junction”, Okon groaned under heavy physical restraint.

“Shut up!!! If I slap you with this right hand, you go dey see ya mama’s grandfather. Is that why you dey erect no-fly zone? You wan kill dem baba for Abuja? You wan shoot down Olori Oko him plane?” the sergeant screamed at Okon.

“Baba na my job I dey do”, Okon responded unfazed.

“Omo oloriburuku wetin be your job?” the rotund cop demanded.

“You know say I be cook and my office na kitchen”, Okon crowed sensing imminent victory.

“Hen, hen, if you be cook nko? Na you go be the first cook?” the sergeant shouted.

“So na dem fly, dem mosquitos, dem tsetse fly and dem flying insects I dey warn make dem no come near kitchen make dem no come spoil business for Okon. Abi I do wrong?” the mad boy crooned with triumphant relish. Deflated beyond description, the porky sergeant stood transfixed on the spot like the effigy of a misbegotten crusader.

“Oya make we go. Dis one no be easy food   Na kukuruku rogue and he be like if say him head dey do skein-skein. Na dat crazy baba lawyer from Ibadan who dey train am and dat one he get brain pass dem FRA and dem Richard put together pass”, the rogue sergeant rued as the patrol team disappeared into a dark alley.