The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

The smouldering volcanoes of Eastern Congo
- Open fractures of the nation-state paradigm in Africa
Eastern Congo, a peripheral part of the inter-lacustrine region(among lakes) of highland Central Africa, is an achingly beautiful chunk of tropical Africa. Its enchanting and alluring landscape ought to be the nearest thing to a Garden of Eden on earth. Surrounded by majestic lakes and a range of dormant and active volcanoes with its rich and alluvial soil feeding off the volcanic nutrients, it is capable of growing anything. Beneath the soil are what can only be described as an embarrassment of mineral riches making the Democratic Republic of Congo potentially the richest country in the world. But never in the history of humanity has such potential and putative wealth been accompanied by such appalling human suffering, such biblical horror and such existential miseries.

Since flag independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960 and since the gruesome murder of its founding president, Patrice Lumumba on January 17th, 1961, in an open western conspiracy, the people of Congo have never known any peace or happiness. The Congo is a vast and open concentration camp of unbelievable atrocities and man’s inhumanity to man stretching far back to the nineteenth century when King Leopold seized a huge chunk of tropical Africa for himself and his family naming it with oxymoronic bravura as “the Free Congo State”.

Several decades later after the monstrous tyrant was forcibly divested of his holding, the “freedom” had cost the people of the Congo a third of its people either amputated or summarily executed for failing to submit to forced labour. Never in the history of humanity and modern capitalism had the world seen such a penal colony. It is a vision of hell which is still engraved in the memory and imagination of the Congolese people, a people known for their docility, joyous hedonism and animist submissiveness to fate.

To enhance analytical integrity, the historical canvas ought to be expanded. It has not always been like this. When Portuguese adventurers arrived at the ancient Kongo Kingdom around the middle of the fifteenth century, they met a thriving, prosperous society far superior in political organization and social cohesion to the rudimentary, semi-feudal kingdom they left at home. They searched for the mighty military force that underwrote the sophisticated structure. Alas, there was no army worth the name but a ragtag military unit brimming with ill-assorted hunters.

The Iberians could not believe their luck. They proceeded to decimate the African kingdom and over several decades virtually the entire populace had been enslaved to be transported to the new colony of Brazil via the slave port of Luanda. In the course of formal colonization, the old kingdom was to suffer three different types of colonial rationalizations: Belgian, French and Portuguese. One can then imagine the kind of intellectual disorientation, cultural schizophrenia and spiritual deracination people who once belonged to the same organic political kinship have been forced to go through.

Last Tuesday as hordes of alienated and de-civilized humanity rampaged through the empty battle-weary streets of Goma looting everything on sight even amidst blazing guns, one began to think the unthinkable and question the unquestionable. Is the Democratic Republic of Congo as it stands—or is not standing—simply too big, unwieldy and chaotic to remain as one unified country? Nations are made for people and not the other way round. As it is, the stricken enclave is not a passable democracy, if you remove the force that underwrites the travesty in Kinshasa. Neither is it a Republic nor an organically unified nation. Between Goma and Kinshasa are three thousand miles, most of it impenetrable jungle punctuated by anarchic mining enclaves ruled by the law of the gun. Between Kinshasa and Gbadolite, Mobutu’s former fortress and redoubtable retreat on the border with Central African Republic, there is another thousand miles. A modern country with a well-heeled army, a vigilant citizenry and the most sophisticated security and surveillance network would be hard put to manage this, not to talk of a patchwork country that cannot even boast of a durable military force.

   It was a top Nigerian military kingpin who once famously admonished his compatriots that he did not know about a country that has survived two civil wars. Let him come to the Congo and see African wonder at work. In its sheer mellifluence and catchy refrain, the old Congolese music is an enchanting balm for the soul. But so is the chaos and horror that course through the history of the place which must remind one of unfinished business. There have been at least a dozen civil wars since the dawn or din of independence, and still counting. In living memory, Goma itself has changed hands so many times that one can be forgiven for thinking that its capture or conquest is an alternative military academy test for rebel commanders specializing in asymmetrical warfare.

Now, it has changed hands once again this time with the rebel M23, openly aided and abetted by Rwandan forces, heading for the scenic and beautiful city of Bukavu. Earlier, it was reported that demoralized and defeated elements of the Congolese Armed Forces who had fled from the fighting were driven back on Lake Kivu by units of the Rwandan army ordering them to go back and surrender to the rebel force. It doesn’t get more tantalizingly postcolonial and African to the bargain. All the Congolese president, Felix Tshisekedi, could offer was that he would not sit down to negotiate with Rwanda.

Whoever told the poor fellow that Rwanda wants to sit down with him? It reminds one of a historic footage of a stricken and cancer-ravaged Mobutu still insisting that he was the legitimate president of old Zaire while being helped to his feet by a bemused and elderly Nelson Mandela as a quietly indignant Laurent Kabila watched with mischievous relish. It was taken on a frigate moored off the Atlantic Ocean in Angola as Kabila’s forces surged through the outskirts of Kinshasa. In a question of days, the old morbidly corrupt dictator would be history.

Ever since 1996, or more appropriately since the Rwandan genocide, Paul Kagame has been the big elephant in the Congolese living room. It is useful to note that while the armies of neighboring countries appear to have gone into serious decline as a result of internal national contradictions, Kagame has gone on to build a prime, punitive military machine which has transformed into an unchallengeable terror for the whole region. This is in addition to building a modern prosperous economy. The fear of Rwanda is the beginning of wisdom. For those who might have forgotten their history, it may be useful to remind them that it was the Congolese that first drew blood. For decades, the two countries lived together in peace and harmony sharing kinship ties and organic cultural amity until the Congolese authorities, in a feat of harebrained opportunism and spiteful condescension suddenly woke up one day and expelled all the Congolese Tutsis with the war-cry: A tree trunk does not become a crocodile simply by spending time in water. This was in addition to serving as a haven of destabilization for retreating Hutu rebels that have lost out in the apocalyptic meltdown of the Rwanda state after the genocide. Kagame, a tested insurgent, accepted both insults with his miserly grin, organizing cross-border raids into the DRC until the rump of the Hutu army was decimated and render hors de combat. The Kabila uprising presented Kagame with an opportunity to try out new tricks from the playbook of state decapitation. There was no need for an inch by inch contention to conquer the moribund Congolese postcolonial state since in a cruel policy of deliberate re-forestation of his country to prevent his paradise being overrun, Mobutu in over forty five years of inhuman predation never built any passable road, the rebels simply airlifted themselves to the precincts of the capital after capturing the main cities. There is an iconic picture of the younger Joseph Kabila brandishing his assault rifle after liberating Kisangani.

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Almost thirty years after seeing off the monstrous Mobutu, Paul Kagame stands triumphant over the volcanic debris of the entire region. He appears unchallenged and unchallengeable as the new emperor of the Eastern Congo. Nothing is standing in his way. There is a new boldness and contemptuous clarity in his current moves; a hunger for annexation which he can get away with very easily. And here is why. The AU is in dire straits and cannot pass any military muster. The UN is fighting for its own survival in the hands of a rampaging American president who does not care a hoot about what Africans do to themselves. The less the merrier. Having lost several peacekeepers of South African origins in recent days, the UN is wisely refraining from joining a nasty African fray it cannot hope to win.

   We are at the threshold of a new international order. Having been repeatedly snubbed by both Russia and Israeli and having been steamrolled into compliance by America’s virtual withdrawal of strategic fiscal support, Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, is taking it all in the chin with a wince and a grimace, the wise Iberian nobleman that he is. He might have recalled that an earlier UN Secretary General, the equally respected and well-regarded Swede international diplomat, Dag Hammarskjold, was killed in an air crash on 18th September, 1961 while brokering peace for the selfsame Congo. There is only so much a single person can do in a world out of joints.

It is now hard to see how Africa can avoid a Pax Rwandan in the Eastern Congo. It is hard to see an African statesman with the possible exception of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, a fellow former guerrilla chieftain, that Kagame truly respects or has regards for. The withering putdown of South Africa and its president shows the extent of Kagame’s disdain for contemporary African leaders. Yet a way must be found to bring him to the negotiating table. If Africa had been blessed with truly visionary statesmen, they ought to have found a way of addressing the Congolese Conundrum, that is unwieldy, unviable and chaotic African nations imposed on the continent by imperialist fiat with appalling human suffering and bestial dehumanization. The Congo should be at least three countries. But it cannot be done by hostile interlocutors without throwing the continent into millennial chaos. The problem with the forcible annexation of an African nation as proposed by the Kagame Doctrine and its rampart militarism is that it will blow the lid off a veritable Pandora Box. The original crisis in post-independence Congo signposted the crisis of the postcolonial state and nation in Africa. Sixty five later we may be witnessing its apocalyptic denouement.
February 2, 2025
Aregbesola’s controversial APC exit

Last week was a momentous time in the political career of Rauf Aregbesola, a former Osun State governor on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and Interior minister. His group, the Omoluabi Progressives, sensing impending expulsion from the All Progressives Congress (APC), had resolved last Sunday to exit the party. News of their exit was published on Monday. Three days later, the APC wielded the big stick, disregarded the voluntary exit of the Aregbesola group, and expelled them. Whether voluntary or compelled, Mr Aregbesola is now in limbo. Soon, however, he and his group are expected to berth in another political party, for he is still determined to have the last laugh over his opponents whom he has continued to excoriate.

Mr Aregbesola occupied a commanding height in the Bola Ahmed Tinubu political family for about 15 years, seemingly unable to put a foot wrong in the eyes of his political mentor. There was of course no foundation to his prominence, not ideological, though he pretends to some amorphous form of socialism, and not even private or public principles, for he was incapable of both. But he was mildly charismatic, voluble, self-absorbed, and capable anytime of promising more than he could ever deliver. His mentor, however, trusted him and canonised him. For eight years between 1999 and 2007 he was a commissioner in Lagos State, and worked quite well under supervision. But as governor of Osun, again for eight years between 2010 and 2018, he floundered badly, subjecting the state to all kinds of sophomoric Cuban-style regimentation, and strewing the state with half-baked social organisation experiments.

If his mentor and party began to doubt his administrative capacity and temperament, they did not betray their suspicion. But the boisterousness of his youth and his appointment as Interior minister for eight years soon led him to the idiosyncratic overreach that plagued his past, revealing the speciousness of his philosophy, the indiscipline that permeated his governorship and politics, and the wild assumptions that persistently undermined his judgement. In 2018, he was determined to impose a successor as Osun governor, but failed for a number of reasons that were not beyond his feeble ability to manage had he possessed the right temperament and judgement. In 2022 he also aligned his political group with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to prove the point that he was a force to be reckoned with in the state. But his characteristic impatience made his victory Pyrrhic.

By 2022, his fate was sealed. There was little he did in the past, including his contributions to the APC presidential election victory in 2015, that was capable of sustaining his self-confessed prodigious talents for political mobilisation. But circumstances propelled him forward and upward until he climbed the dizzying height from which he has now plunged to earth precipitately. Believing he had an unbreakable hold on his political group, and assuming that his popularity in Osun had not waned as much as his enemies imagined, he took on his mentor with the thunderous blather about how God abases the proud. Said Mr Aregbesola with inflated pomposity: “As it was in Lagos yesterday, so shall it be in Osun today. What is good for the goose is also good for the gander. Only God can terrify us, not man. Go and tell them wherever they are, we own this party. We own this Afenifere group. We own this people-loving group started by our patriarchs, Obafemi Awolowo and Bola Ige. This was Elder Akande’s group before he temporarily left us. That was how it was in Lagos at a time; a governor derailed and the party members unseated him using the ballot boxes. We exalted him beyond his status and he turned himself to a god over us and we had sworn to ridicule anyone who compares himself to God. God has no competitor; He is enough to be God.”

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The problem was not that he disagreed with his party or his mentor, or that he insulted everybody who did not kowtow to him. The problem was not also that he felt genuinely aggrieved that he was stripped of any significance in Osun, and castrated in Lagos Alimosho local government politics. The problem was not even that it was despicable that he looked his mentor and party in the face and imperiously cautioned them about their political choices. Mr Aregbesola’s problems are two-fold: his impatience borne out of his hubris, and his poor judgement borne out of his lack of depth, contrary to the impressions he had created since 2010 when the courts validated his election as Osun governor in place of the usually somnolent former governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola. Regarding his feistiness and impatience, they were intrinsic to his mental constitution. No surgery could help him, and no shrink could mollify his moods. As for his superficiality, he needed it to bamboozle the impressionable youths of the Osun backwater. He made casual allusions to Marxism and Fidel Castro’s Cuba to which he was unquenchably besotted, but without contextualising his beliefs within the global pushback which that ideology was experiencing. And to worsen his plight, he menaced the state and everyone with his closet fanaticism, leading the state’s intelligentsia to feel wearied by his propensities.

Having fallen from his Olympian heights, and disdaining wise counsel to stop struggling when trapped in quicksand, Mr Aregbesola must now ponder his future. He could not conceivably jump into the PDP, for that major opposition party is itself engaged in a titanic struggle to stay afloat and remain politically relevant following the schisms that have skewered its administrative organs. The former governor had helped the party take Osun to prove a point, and would be tempted to cavort in it for the coming 2026 governorship election; but he cannot seriously see a pathway to any continuing relevance in the state through the PDP. Not only that, the PDP governor in the state, Ademola Adeleke, apart from being fundamentally incapable of ruling anything, has formed the atrocious habit of elevating trivia into a governing art and dancing the day away in the heat of competition among Nigeria’s governors. Osun has always been regicidal, but it is hard to imagine that they are also impervious to the national ridicule they are been subjected to on account of their governor.

Mr Aregbesola is not endowed with significant administrative acumen. To opt for the PDP despite that party’s troubles is to believe he possesses the magic wand capable of affecting the fortunes of the party positively or bathing and salving its wounds. As large as his hubris is, it is unlikely the former governor can be so optimistic. Worse, PDP leaders, though temporarily distracted by in-fighting and sloppy politicking, are unlikely to see a largely diminished Mr Aregbesola as an asset. To join the PDP would also mean adopting the frolicking Governor Adeleke as his party leader in Osun, a prospect so galling to even a fake communist that he has probably never contemplated it beyond using the party as a tool to exact revenge on the APC. Some media reports suggest that the former governor and his group, knowing full well that they must berth somewhere, might be considering an association with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) led by Shehu Gabam. Indications are that some key PDP leaders, including former vice president Atiku Abubakar, disaffected Labour Party (LP) leaders such as Peter Obi, and even New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) leader, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, might be eyeing the SDP if reconciliations in their parties proved intractable. But the fringe party also harbours a few acolytes of the late Gen Sani Abacha.

The choices facing key opposition leaders regarding how to proceed politically in 2025 and 2026 are obnoxious. For Mr Aregbesola, they are horrendous. Not only would he go into the SDP, if it came to that, a very diminished man without party and shorn of reputation, the other party leaders who might saunter into the party would keep a wary eye on him and cast furtive glances at him. They would wonder whether he could be trusted, considering how close he was to President Tinubu but did not bat an eyelid in denouncing him violently and persistently. Unfortunately, once a politician acquires the reputation of a betrayer, rightly or wrongly, fairly or otherwise, it is hard to reignite confidence in him. Every step Mr Aregbesola takes will be dogged by his now sullied reputation. His new party may relish his role as an attack dog, especially against the president, but as reckless and ruthless and boastful as he has become, he would feel demeaned being turned into a feral beast. He would like to be rated fairly and highly, but there is nothing in him or about him to indicate that his new party leaders and associates would not prefer to see him through their own cautious lenses.

What is certain about Mr Aregbesola is that he does not have a political party at the moment. It is inevitable he must find one very soon, where he can probably feel comfortable. But he is condemned to joining other aggrieved politicians united by their common animosity towards the APC, and perhaps by their common detestation of President Tinubu. With his long years of unprincipled politicking, Alhaji Atiku is now fated to be lumped together with other waspish firebrands like the inconsiderate Rotimi Amaechi, the intransigent Mr Kwankwaso, the stormy petrel el-Rufai, and the immoderate Mr Aregbesola. There are some associations in which one must never be found, and ideas one must never be associated with. It is the humiliating irony of life that all these eminent men started out well in their political career, but, given their famous lack of prudence, are now condemned to joining a motley crowd of jaded politicians united for the common cause of taking the presidency in 2027.

February 2, 2025
Trump angles for third term, already

Deeply mortified Americans may soon discover that in voting Donald Trump as president last November, they bought a pig in a poke. They thought they knew him, but they failed to really and cogently inspect the commodity they have now installed in the White House as the 47th president of the United States of America. President Trump utterly lacks circumspection. He was barely two weeks in office when he began to suggest a third term for himself, adjudging that his second term would be insufficient to transform or remake America in line with his dreams. As he put it while addressing the 2025 annual conference of the House of Representatives near Miami, Florida: “I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100% sure. Because I don’t know, I think I’m not allowed to run again. Am I allowed to run again?”

It is unlikely that the worst of African leaders could, less than two weeks in office, begin to campaign for an unconstitutional third term. The US Constitution’s 22nd Amendment makes it impossible to get a third term, except the constitution is amended. To amend the constitution, both the House of Representatives and the Senate would first have to pass an amended bill by two-thirds majority. That would mean 290 agreeing to the amendment out of 435 House members, and 67 out of the 100 senators. At the moment, there are only 218 Republican representatives, and 53 Republican senators. But it gets worse. To complete the amendment process, 38 state legislatures will have to approve the change. However, the Republicans have a majority in 28 state legislatures. President Trump, however, appears willing to defy the odds, convinced that since he defied the odds to win a nonconsecutive second term as president, he could reorder the galaxies.

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President Trump, it is turning out, in case anyone still doubts, to be much worse than any African president. Still feeling euphoric over his election and inauguration, he assumes that his party would clear the mid-term elections and one way or the other go on to cobble a coalition to do the job of entrenching him as president for a third, or as he joked in November, fourth term. In addition, after failing to learn a thing or two from President Joe Biden’s sudden disintegration, he assumes that he would still be cognitively sound and physiologically agile to run another campaign after four years. Talking about and flying the third term kite is overall a waste of time, perhaps to keep Americans preoccupied with fruitless debates.

What is more remarkable is that no sooner President Trump flew the third term kite than Republican representative Andy Ogles of the State of Tennessee took up the battle cry. President Trump, he said, “has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal…To that end, I am proposing an amendment to the Constitution to revise the limitations imposed by the 22nd Amendment on presidential terms. This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.” Flattery, it is sadly clear, is not limited to ‘shithole’ countries. It is a human failing, and it is universal. Both President Trump and Representative Ogles ensure the continuing demystification of America. The US may be militarily powerful and economically dominant, but many of their leaders are as ordinary, if not more deplorable, as any third world leader most of whom would never dare this effrontery.

February 2, 2025
Needless uproar over Sharia in Southwest

The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) completely misread the apprehensions of the Southwest over the attempt by some individuals in Oyo and Ekiti States to establish Independent Sharia (Arbitration) Panels or Sharia Courts. The apprehensions are well grounded, and it is not surprising that NSCIA can’t seem to grasp that probably the most secular region in Nigeria wants more secularism rather than any genuflection to anything that proposes more religion. There is no judicial system that is intrinsically unqualified to mediate disagreements and conflicts, but in a country where religion has become so badly politicised and even weaponised, and at a time when the country is immersed in unending insurgencies, some of them inspired by religious fanatics, it is unhelpful to accentuate religious differences.

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Contrary to the impression the NSCIA gave in its public statement of January 29, the groups advocating judicial status quo in the Southwest are a mix of Christians, Muslims and other indigenous religions. They remember how in the name of Islam, the traditional authorities in Ilorin, Kwara State, attempted to unconstitutionally suffocate indigenous religious worship and observances. They also recall and indeed worry that Sharia courts and panels in the North have been unable to stanch the flow of blood in that region, let alone promote tolerance for other religious practices. When it comes to intolerance, the Southwest advocates for secularism allege that the North appears to be the guiltiest.

After decades of bloodletting in different parts of the world, everyone yearns for more inclusiveness, tolerance and secularism, not the birthing of more religious organs. When about 12 northern states opted for Sharia law during the Olusegun Obasanjo years, beginning with Zamfara State, few expected that the region would become convulsed with mayhem. The Southwest is right to be apprehensive. That apprehension is neither intolerant nor discriminatory; it is instead precautionary. Better not go down a slippery road whose gradient and culmination are unpredictable, especially in a region that continues to remain the enviable bastion of peaceful, harmonious and inclusive living in Nigeria.

February 2, 2025
SNAPSONG 243

Who is afraid of the Tree*?

Who is afraid of the Tree

     The forest’s green glory

Skyscraper and loyal carpet

     Robe and sash that never fray nor fail

Who is afraid of the Tree

     With roots deep down in earth’s mysterious basement

Where tangled toes renew the union of mud and matter

     And the merry murmurs of sober soil

Who is afraid of the Tree

     Whose mothering shade embowers our blessings

The philosopher’s evergreen crown

     Rousing roost for the poet that stands and stares

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Who is afraid of the Tree

     Who doctors our lungs

And un-chains our nerves

     Whose canopy is our cap and crown

A song winds through the woods

     Echo from the hills

Magic to the ear

     Eternal fun for the laughing leaves

Sheathe that machete

    Un-tooth that chainsaw

Remind the timber merchant of their prodigal greed

    Plant tomorrow, un-desert our dreams

*Ask the ecocidal chainsaws of University of Ibadan’s Heritage Park

February 2, 2025
The Meranda revolution

Two Mondays ago, the curtains were drawn on the political career of Hon Mudashiru Obasa. By the time of his impeachment on January 13, he was nearly two years into his third term as Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, having been elected speaker first in 2015. By the time of his impeachment, too, he had no lawmaker or any godfather left in his corner. He had alienated everyone alienable: the governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC), which is the highest decision-making organ of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), and most portentously of all, his colleagues in the legislature. He had no friends left, and it is doubtful whether he even had any admirers left, except a few roughnecks. Hon Mojisola Meranda, who was elected speaker in his stead, was the immediate beneficiary of the legislative putsch. But it was clear she did not lead the revolt, nor had the capacity to inspire its ideological direction were such required for its success.

So, by and large, Lagos has in its hands the Meranda revolution, an opportunistic movement that capitalised audaciously on the numberless misdeeds of Hon Obasa, barely a month and some few weeks after he in turn led some sort of a second revolt against the governor. In 2023, he had got the assembly to turn down some 17 of Mr Sanwo-Olu’s 39 nominees for the state cabinet. And last November, he got his colleagues decked out melodramatically like the Cosa Nostra, as they humiliated the governor before and during the 2025 Budget presentation. At the same occasion, he embarked on a lengthy harangue of the governor and other dissenters. His cup full, and the GAC and just about everybody else livid, the powers that be kicked Hon Obasa out during his vacation in the United States (US). He will of course return, but only as a floor member of the legislature, considerably deflated and chastened. The manner of his rancorous politics and open animosity to the governor unfortunately set the stage for the colour and texture of the Meranda revolution.

Having taken the oath of office, and following the ‘gross misconduct’ of the disfavoured former speaker, Hon Meranda, the new speaker, soon embarked on visits to the power centres of Lagos, beginning with the powerful GAC, and following up with a courtesy call on Mr Sanwo-Olu. A day after the putsch, she and the assembly’s principal officers met with the GAC at the State House, Marina, ostensibly to brief them about the Obasa impeachment, and to secure their blessings. Emerging from the meeting later, she claimed to have received the needed endorsement. Last Monday, she and the principal officers finally visited the governor at the Lagos House, Ikeja, where she called for the alignment of the two arms of government, the executive and the legislature. The governor could not agree more on the need for alignment and rebalancing of the relationship of the two arms.

Read Also: Obasa, Lagos Assembly differ over his impeachment

It was important that the Meranda revolution abandoned the legislative belligerence of the past few years under the insufferable speaker who strangely began to see both the executive arm and his colleagues as minions to be ridden roughshod over. But, surely, there are better, cleverer and more mature ways of carrying out the same mission of resetting relationships. The visits, though clearly well-intentioned, should have come a little later than they did, and should have been called in different circumstances. The party, of which the GAC and the governor are members, should have been made to call a high-powered meeting to be attended by all the relevant officials. At the meeting, pledges would have been made without any condescension or airs, and key leaders prompted to make soothing and placatory remarks after a closed-door session.

Unfortunately, by visiting the governor and meeting with the GAC, Hon Meranda and her team gave the impression of eager subordination to the powers that be, even if that was not her intention. Hon Obasa turned the legislature into an opposition army within an army, and managed in a subtle, if not actually sublime, manner to beguile the public into viewing the assembly as a model, independent and bold legislature. He overplayed his hand, partly because he lacked the subtlety, depth, altruism and most importantly character to inspire and lead an independent and courageous assembly. He saw himself transcending the legislature itself as well as every other organ of government in the state, not to say every other party leader, while in the same breath indulging in Levantine luxury fit only for a monarch – all this in a democracy. It is understandable that Hon Meranda wishes to repudiate such hubristic aloofness, but she has been unable in her first few giddy weeks since the putsch to dispel the impression that she is ingratiating.

Hon Obasa was too big to need political tacticians and bold and brilliant advisers; Hon Meranda, given her suspect and awkward visits so far, clearly needs even more brilliant and bolder tacticians and advisers than her predecessor. It is important that the Lagos House of Assembly should be the pacesetter in Nigeria in the midst of a depressing field of spineless Houses of Assembly all over the country. Hon Obasa couldn’t give what he didn’t have; it remains to be seen what stuff Hon Meranda is made of. Indications so far are that she may enact many more awkward moments ahead. Yet, even in a legislature dominated by one party, it should still be possible for a farsighted speaker and competent principal officers to lead the Assembly with firmness, even-handedness and fairness in such a way as to raise legislative standards in Lagos and make it nonpareil.

January 26, 2025
Israeli-Hamas ceasefire deal

In the end, the ceasefire deal entered into by Israel and Hamas was nothing but a hostage deal. It had been in the offing since last May, but it was not consummated until last Sunday, a day before President Donald Trump, who had threatened ‘all hell to pay’ should a deal be wanting, was sworn in as the 47th US president. The hostage deal was essentially, in tone and content, the one presented by the Joe Biden administration, and it is a three-phase deal, with the last two phases yet to be negotiated. The combatants will be lucky to pass the first phase which involves the release of hostages (One Israeli civilian hostage for 30 Palestinians, and one female Israeli soldier for 50 Palestinians) and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from parts of Gaza.

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Given the tentativeness of the deal and the fragility of the Israeli parliamentary coalition, the combatants will be lucky to get to or surpass the second phase that deals with the release of more hostages, negotiation of a peace deal, and complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The ceasefire deal, as tentative as it is, is guaranteed by Egypt and Qatar. What is clear so far is that the scale of destruction brought upon Gaza has not debarred Hamas from recouping its personnel losses, and may even be loth to give up power over the strip. But it lost almost its entire leadership, not to talk of Gaza’s infrastructure. Israel clearly won the war against Iran and its proxies, dealing devastating blows to them from which they will need many years to recover. While Hezbollah lost its nerves (as well as its entire leadership) for being unable to bear the Gaza scale of destruction on Lebanon without risking revolt against its influence, Iran’s regional agenda was dealt mortal blows, and the Middle East changed substantially in ways difficult to remake quickly.

January 26, 2025
America in ebullition

The return of Donald Trump in triumphant relish to the power sanctuary of the White House from where he was virtually expelled four years ago is a defining moment in American and world history. It will be recalled that the real estate magnate did not go lightly. It took dark and dire warnings from the military echelons to dissuade him from staying put. But this did not stop him from encouraging a massive civil disruption which led to bloodshed and mayhem. One of the first things Trump did on getting to the Oval Office this past Monday was to sign an Executive Order granting state pardon to all those convicted of taking part in the uprising, a thousand, six hundred and sixty stalwarts in all. It is a deeply divided and culturally polarized America all against itself with the rest of the world looking on askance and perplexed.

   When applied to politics, ebullition is a condition of turmoil and turbulence leading to generalized disorder and deep anxieties. It was introduced to Nigeria’s pre-independence political lexicon by Adegoke Adelabu, a remarkable political prodigy of Nigeria’s pre-independence politics who was killed in a car accident about sixty seven years ago. He had titled his survey of pre-independence politics in Nigeria as: Nigeria in Ebullition. Adelabu could well have been thinking about America in particular and the world in general in the Trumpian era of multi-lateral meltdown. Donald Trump has made it clear that it is America that matters to him most and not some bogus mythical order known as world order. The rest of the world must either key into this American neo-Exceptionalism and frenzied one-upmanship or seek the nearest exit door.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the brainy American president and former university professor, who put the League of Nations together, must be turning in his grave. An ebullition either simmers down or it boils over into anarchy and chaos. An early indication of how things can shape up is the fact that a day after Trump issued his blizzard of executive orders eighteen states had already taken him to court to challenge the constitutional validity of the forfeiture of citizenship by birth which is enshrined in the American constitution. The Illinois Police chieftain has let it be known that people under his command will not be part of any attempt to forcibly deport illegal immigrants. A police officer who battled against the invaders of the Capitol on the 6th of January, 2021 and was subsequently injured was heard muttering about the fundamental injustice and unfairness of it all. How did God’s own country come to this sorry pass?

History often unfolds in a neat symmetry and cruel symphony. Eighty year ago in the early summer of 1945, America emerged as the undisputed world leader and the greatest military power the world has seen up to the point. In terms of imperial reach and global influence, America represented the zenith of human capacity and aspirations. Not even the Roman Empire could hold a candle to it in scope and scale. America’s might was further symbolically showcased by the fact that it was enacted against a background of apocalyptic carnage and the ruins of old Europe; the nuclear evisceration of Japan and the virtual obliteration of several German cities. Eighty years after in 2025, a haunting and hugely symbolic reenactment of America’s global dominance and grandiose superiority over other nations was beamed to the world as Donald Trump is sworn in as the forty seventh president in a ceremony marked by medieval pomp and postmodern pageantry. It was a very cold morning in Washington, and only the arctic blast that banished the celebrators to the inner sanctuary of the Oval Office spoke to the need for some caution and soberness.

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But Donald Trump does not do things in half-measures. A master of hyperbolic bombast and factual exaggerations, he manufactures his own truth when acute truth stands in his way and tells his own story when faced by actual history without being incommoded. But you must give something to the old boy: his courage and indomitable will in the face of damning odds. Donald Trump reminds one of those great American heavyweights. No matter what you throw at them, they just kept coming until something gives. Last Monday as the man gave his underwhelming Inaugural Address, you focused on the hardened features to see if something would give way. Trump was wearing half a miserly grin and half a nasty sneer on a face already contorted and distorted by a paroxysm of rage and loathing.

   It was not hard to see why this moment of ultimate triumph was also the moment of ultimate despair. America’s democratic triumphalism was being enacted against a background of conflicting and confusing signals. The Middle East lies in ruins, its land blitzed into a millennial fiasco where former inhabitants could no longer recognize their own residence while their faith in the inviolability of their culture and religion has been contemptuously brushed aside by American munitions delivered by Israeli proxy. But unlike eighty years ago when America stood like a colossus unchallenged and unchallengeable, this time around there are loud external murmurs and internal grumblings. Inwardly, America is a deeply fractured and self-isolating polity. Equally interesting was the fact that the convoy of vehicles carrying aids and relief materials through the desolate and devastated streets of Gaza had barely reached their destination when Hamas started shooting in the air in a victory celebration. Something does not quite add up. Were these not the same fighters that the punitive and unforgiving Israeli fighting machine was alleged to have put out contention?

The arctic stillness that mugged its waters last Monday morning suggested that even the nearby Potomac River felt like something was amiss despite the Trumpian razzmatazz. The ancient American political elite and their old ruling classes have suffered a stupendous walloping. While reveling in martial glory and the political grandeur of liberal democracy particularly after its triumph over Socialist nations, the American ruling classes neglected and failed to act on what the average voters consider the most important needs of existence: food, shelter, medical care and quality education. The long list of Democratic presidents, hooked on fustian rhetoric and elevated platitudes about democracy and the inalienable rights of man, simply forgot the fundamental principle of liberal democracy: it is neither plausible nor possible on empty stomach.

Neither can it be sustained or defended by a horde of medically afflicted, ill-educated, shelter-less and economically resentful rabble tottering on the edge of the abyss. Since democracy is a game of numbers, this déclassé combo of the barely educated bristling with religious superstitions together with the multi-racial underclass, constitute the most potent danger to liberal democracy anywhere in the world. This is a lesson taken to heart by China, Russia, leftwing rulers and the authoritarian Arab monarchies. You cannot pursue earthly military glories at the expense of your own people’s wellbeing and happiness. They will come for you eventually.

Donald Trump, an astute salesman, celebrated con-artist and an implacable rebel against America’s established order, must have been listening in to the fierce rumbling from below while waiting for the opportune moment to cash in. The dramatic reprieve offered the old ruling class by a Joe Biden presidency turned out a damp squib with an exhausted, enervated and perplexed Joe Biden looking very much like a tragic victim of a cruel historic burlesque. Last Monday as a crestfallen and visibly distressed Joe Biden sat in the Oval office while Donald Trump, his bête noire, harrumphed his way through an inaugural address which gave the outgoing president scant regard or respect, it was clear that the new president has come to bury his old adversary rather than to cut him any slack.

   America has seen better times. This was not a normal succession order. It looked more like a churlish and victorious commander reading the riot act to the leadership of a defeated and utterly demoralized enemy force. Barack Obama sat as if transfixed, his legacy and two major victories together with the audacity of hope they revived for this racially, economically and culturally divided land in mortal danger. His no-nonsense wife pointedly stayed away. America is in radical ebullition which may boil over into commotion and chaos. The array of antagonistic forces already ranged against Trump should be noted. What should also be noted is the fact that the current animus against the system is not driven by a passion for social and political justice but by a thirst for political vengeance and social retribution.

Trump himself in the dark paranoid furies and unforgiving trauma that drive him epitomizes this tendency. There is nothing in him or about him which indicates a grand vision of a better society or a better world and the intellectual and visionary wherewithal to bring this about. His core supporters are even worse. As American history has taught us, the imperative of a better and more inclusive society is never driven by unenlightened hobos and rural yokels. This is the remit of visionary intellectuals such as the American Founding Fathers. Trump may end up inadvertently correcting some of the anomalies but at great social and political cost to the nation. That is just about it.

In 1945, the League of Nations lay in ruins as the collateral damage of the Second World War. But the process of creative destruction and the decolonization project that went with the war threw up a slew of visionary statesmen who were to put together the rubric of what came to be known as the United Nations which has turned out a better, more inclusive and far more coherent version of the older body. Eighty years after in 2025, the United Nations is mortally wounded as a result of American unilateralism and contempt for civilized global norms. It will take a new generation of global statesmen to help repair the damage and to set the world and America on a new course.

January 26, 2025
Okon arranges his own loan

As historic hunger coursed through the land, all has been quiet on the Okon front. These days, the crazy contrarian is more overheard than heard. And when he ventured to speak, it is in barely audible whispers, as if the mad boy is afraid of his own shadows. Okon has lost all his old ebullience and elocution. Field Marshal Hunger is indeed an equal opportunity terminator, not distinguishing between tribe or tongue, or between creed or credo. All is game. After a series of savage budget cuts and stringent austerity measures which reduced the entire household to the status of a penal colony with the dreaded scourge of famishment laying a siege on everybody in sight, Okon was overheard complaining to no one in particular. “He be like if say na hunger dem one take drive everybody comot Lagos. Yam we no fit chop. Garri man no fit smoke again. I hear say food still plenty for Etinam and Itigidi. Make man come begin waka go home.”

Last Wednesday, as yours sincerely was enjoying a mid-morning reverie, Okon suddenly jumped in. “Oga, I wan quickly reach dem bank for Allen make I collect free loan like everybody. As I come miss tradermoni, I no one miss dis one”, the mad boy hollered beaming a devilish smile.

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“Ah wait Okon, wait. First thing first”, snooper admonished, jumping out of bed in alarm.

“Oga, na you dey mention name. I never mention any Yoruba bank dem name ooo”, Okon cautioned.

   “Ok, what is your collateral?” Snooper demanded.

    “ Oga, sebi collateral na kolanut after loan? Make man collect loan first”, the mad boy snorted. Sensing a banking hall disruption and upheaval of apocalyptic dimensions, one began remonstrating with the crazy one. “Is Baba Lekki with you in this one?” snooper inquired.

“Ah dat one hunger don dabaru him head. Him de groan every night and him dey cry, osiki, osiki ooo. I come ask am wetin be osiki and him say na old name for Egusi soup. But dis morning him say him wan go sign condolence letter for Bode George.” Okon sniggered.

“Okon, it is not Bode George. It is a distinguished businessman and man of learning and culture”, snooper corrected the mad boy.

   “Wetin consign me about dat one? Yoruba people na the same”, the mad boy screamed and stormed out.

January 26, 2025
The wages of murder

It is sweet music that Rahmon Adedoyin is to die by hanging for the murder of Timothy Adegoke

I am glad to be back on this page, after about six weeks annual leave. But it is sad that I have to resume with my comment on the vexatious issue of an influential Nigerian who murdered a young and promising Nigerian, in the latter’s attempt to better his life.

But first, let me apologise to my readers, some of whom were wondering what the matter was, especially when they suddenly discovered my column had disappeared without notice early last month. So, so sorry.

I didn’t make any formal announcement about the leave because I wasn’t quite sure whether I would suspend the column during the period or not. Usually my column does not go on leave, except if for reasons absolutely beyond my control I couldn’t write in a particular week. Just that this time around, I felt I needed to rest my brain. I needed a complete break from every official routine. And I think it is good for my system. The truth is; it is not easy to sustain a weekly column, especially for someone who wants to focus on topical issues. So, whether it is a ‘dry’ week like the one you literally have to scavenge to get a topic; or one in which there is a glut of issues to comment on (that is typically Nigerian, with its one hour, one absurdity), choosing something topical to write on every week is laborious.

It is easy to be on annual leave and still be tasking one’s brain as if one is not, if the tradition of quality or standard must be maintained. So, once again, sorry for my deciding late to let the column too take a well-deserved rest with me. I must tell you though that came with its sacrifice. For example, I think it was the week I began the leave that the story of the 753 duplexes in Abuja broke. It took me some time and discipline to say ‘’no, I won’t comment on it’’ despite its significance, and also despite the fact that the person fingered to be behind them was a man I had devoted six or seven consecutive Sundays writing on when he decided to punish Nigerians with his cashless policy (which actually lived to its name as Nigerians scrambled for the few cash that was available) in 2022; a record yet to be beaten by any person, living or dead, in my decades of column writing.

My apology taken, I thank God for the privilege of resuming the column after my leave with the ‘Adedoyin affair’. I also thank the Court of Appeal for delivering its judgment on the case on January 23, barely 24 hours after I resumed, thus providing me the opportunity to start on a ‘good’ note. The court’s judgment was timely; at least I didn’t have to search too long for something to resume with.

I know you would be wondering what is ‘good’ in the gruesome murder of a young man, Timothy Adegoke, by a very important but characterless personality like Chief Rahmon Adedoyin, a prominent businessman and hotelier in Ile-Ife. Adegoke was a postgraduate student of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), also in Ile-Ife.

What happened was that in November 2021, Adegoke travelled from Abuja to Moro, Osun State, to sit for an examination at OAU’s Distance Learning Centre. He lodged in Adedoyin’s Hilton Honours Hotel in the town to prepare for his examination, only to be declared missing two days later when his wife could no longer reach him on phone. The family and the police then began the search for clues. Arrests were made, including some of Adedoyin’s workers in the hotel. Eventually, they found clues linking the victim’s murder to the hotel. To cut a long story short, Adedoyin was arraigned for murder alongside some of his hotel workers. Two of the workers — Adeniyi Aderogba and Oyetunde Kazeem and himself — were eventually sentenced to death by hanging by the Osun State High Court in 2023, after being found guilty of the 2021 murder.

Justice Adepele Ojo, the Chief Judge of Osun State, who gave the judgment, held that the circumstantial evidence presented to the court pointed to the killing of Adegoke while being a guest at the hotel owned by Adedoyin. The judge dismissed Adedoyin’s alibi that he was not within the hotel when the late Adegoke lodged there, as if physical presence was a prerequisite for committing a crime.

Apart from sentencing the trio to death, she also ordered the forfeiture of the hotel and the Hilux van used to transport the body of the victim after killing him. Not only that, she ordered that the victim’s children be put on scholarship by the convict.

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Like all criminals, Adedoyin attempted to avoid paying for his sin. He went on appeal and it is gratifying that the Court of Appeal finally disposed of the matter on January 23. The sweet music is that the appellate court affirmed the lower court’s main decision that Adedoyin and his accomplices killed Adegoke and they too must die. But the court quashed the order that the hotel be forfeited, and that asking the convict to take responsibility for the education of the victim’s children. “The order of forfeiture of Hilton Hotel is quashed and set aside. The order of education scholarship to children of Timothy Adegoke by Adedoyin and others quashed and set aside,” Justice Oyebisi Omoleye, who read the lead judgment, said.

Although nothing can be done now to bring back Adegoke from the grave, the least the society owes his soul is to get justice for him by making his killers get their comeuppance, which is what the courts have justifiably served.

Adedoyin’s sentencing is a welcome relief because we do not know how many such killer hotels exist in the country. Others who operate such death traps in the name of hotel should be made to know that they may not be lucky all of the time, since, as they say, “every day for the thief, one day for the owner”. We do not know how many innocent lodgers’ blood Adedoyin had shed before Nemesis eventually caught up with him.

It is particularly gratifying because many Nigerians had thought he would have been able to use his influence in the society to pervert the course of justice. He failed at the court of first instance that tried the case. To the satisfaction of many Nigerians, the Court of Appeal affirmed his death sentence, even though it rejected some aspects of the lower court’s judgment. But what Nigerians are interested in most was what the appellate court affirmed, to wit: that Adedoyin must die by hanging. This is not only true in law; it is what the scripture also says: the wages of sin is death. Someone who took another person’s life for no just cause does not deserve to keep his.

But there are lessons to learn from the gruesome murder of this young man. One, appearance or ownership could be deceptive, especially when checking into a hotel. Given the public perception of the murderer in this case, at least before his real character was revealed, who could have thought such a highly respected Nigerian could be involved in such heinous crime that bothered on rituals? Those who don’t believe in ritual killing would have to provide another reason why such a crime should have been contemplated not to talk of actual commission of the murder by an otherwise eminent Nigerian. Why would such a seemingly cosmopolitan and educated man be involved in the kind of gruesome killing if not for money or influence? Did he want to eat the victim’s body?

Mind you, Adedoyin is not just a business man; he also owns a private university, Oduduwa University as well as The Polytechnic, both in Ile-Ife. This was a man who claimed in an interview with a national daily that the Late Oba Okunade Sijuwade, the immediate past Ooni of Ife, had nominated him as Ooni before his death, due to his ‘’developmental strides, particularly in the cradle of Yoruba land’’.

If this is true, then we can only imagine what could have happened to the revered institution of the Ooni if a flawed character like Adedoyin ever mounted that throne. But thank God he never did and never can, at least not with his present baggage. Adedoyin’s story confirms the Yoruba saying that whoever does not know the source of his peer’s wealth would run to his death in his quest for wealth (eniti o mo bi egbe oun se la, onitoun a sare ku).

Be that as it may, we must realise that it is possible to get to the root of the murder because Adegoke made the appropriate contacts to let those who should know his whereabouts know. This is a mistake many people make. Many people behave like fowls when they go out. They just wander from one place to another without telling anyone their itinerary. They think letting one or two people know their movements belonged in the past or takes something away from them. Many people with such attitude have disappeared without trace.

I know Adedoyin would still want to try his luck at the Supreme Court. I wonder why people who see nothing wrong in snuffing life out of others unjustly want to protect theirs at all cost. Even after the apex court would have affirmed the death sentence, he would still ponder the possibility of appealing to God, even with his soiled hands.

But, let Adedoyin hear this: no matter the number of times one throws up a coin, it would always land on its side. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot escape this one. The blood that he spilled is too strong for him to escape justice. That was clear from the very beginning. And that was why all the buttons he pressed did not work. He should brace up for life in prison. Mercifully, governors no longer sign execution warrants in Nigeria. So, unless something changes that, he can only expect to spend the rest of his life in jail. Better still, he may look forward to freedom if one shameless politician decides to pardon him. But even then, things can no longer be the same with him or his brand again.

January 26, 2025