The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

Nigeria’s image: Need for national awareness

It seems to me that there is a coordinated international effort to damage the image of Nigeria and news from Nigeria are not helping in giving us a positive image. Recently, there has been an outbreak of so-called monkey pox and the western media has been reporting that the monkey pox got into their countries either by some people visiting Nigeria or central Africa. Why Nigeria has to feature in the origin and dispersal of this new viral infection is not clear. We are told the disease is endemic in western and central Africa and I suppose Nigeria is the best known country in the region and therefore Nigeria must carry the can. When Ebola first surfaced in Liberia and then imported to Nigeria, we were immediately declared the origin of the viral disease. There was some attempt to declare Africa the home of the new coronavirus when it was suggested that it could have come from wild birds or animals imported into China from Africa until it became clear that the thing originated in China, an occurrence which China has hotly denied by accusing the USA as being responsible for bringing it to China through some accident in a laboratory in China operated by Chinese and American scientists. Up till today nobody has come out with the definite source of the current coronavirus and the attempt by the World Health Organization (WHO) to trace the origin to China has been rebuffed by that country.

Power is the subject of international relations! If a child in a primary school in the West is asked what he or she knows about Africa, the poor child would probably say Africa is home to wild animals and diseases and if prodded to say more, he would add the home of underdeveloped people. (les pays sous developpe).

There has been several postings on the internet specifically about the so -called “Nigerian crimes” in the USA and the West generally. We are regaled about welfare crimes and identity frauds perpetrated by Nigerians. It is not that these crimes were invented by Nigerians but it is said Nigerians have given them the Nigerian touch and perfected them. We hear about the hushpuppies of this world who built an enterprise of crime in Dubai using his hacking into some American payments scheme to make himself and his accomplices rich and was dining and wining with visiting Nigeria’s high society including Abba Kyari, a high ranking policeman and presidential candidates until he was caught and they all denied him. There have been so many Nigerians caught in the USA doing what they should not be doing to put it in diplomatese. A story was trending recently that a Nigerian sold to a consortium of Japanese business men a non-existent airport in Nigeria for $400 million. It was after paying this humongous sum that the apparently foolish Japanese group found out they had been duped. Recently cars stolen in Canada and the USA were found being openly sold in Apapa port in Nigeria with the state tags still on the stolen cars! A former student of mine, who works for an international bank, told me that during their induction of trainees that pictures of Nigerians and Chinese are used to warn the trainees the nationals they should be careful about when they come to the bank to transact business. She told me this went on for years until she protested to the management and the odious mugshots of Nigerians and Chinese were removed.

Any regular traveller would have noticed that our green passports are like waving a red cloth in front of a Spanish bull when we are about to enter any foreign country after a short or long flight. This can be so annoying when one is grilled about where one is staying and how long or how much one has on one never minding how long the visa one has permits one to stay as a visitor.

It is not every criminal who is arrested in a foreign country who says is a Nigerian that is actually a Nigerian. There have been instances of other Africans carrying Nigerian passports which can apparently be bought if the money is right. Sometimes ago, a British soldier was murdered cruelly with kitchen knives on the streets of London by so-called two Islamic fundamentalists of Nigerian origin. The recent killing and burning of Deborah Samuel by Islamic fundamentalists paints our country as a violent country.

The recent news of the Accountant General of the Federation arrested for ferreting N80 billion kept in his care is also not too good for our country. If the head of the fish is rotten one wonders what the other parts of the fish will be like. This guy would not have been found out but for the complaint of relatives of a 15-year old girl the accountant had married by force on whom he had showered insane amount of Naira from the stolen Nigerian money kept in his care. Some wisecracks asked if there was no auditor general in the country to which others replied, wait until the auditor general is found out! This is probably unfair comment.

I remember an incident in 1994 I believe, when the auditor general of Nigeria and his team were sent round to audit the accounts of some embassies in Western Europe. I asked him if the job was not too small for a whole auditor general. The poor man agreed with me because what they were auditing at most was not more than a million dollars per embassy while the accounts of the NNPC and the CBN as we later found out, remained unaudited for years and from where huge and humongous wealth of Nigeria was stolen.

It is not our politics that needs fixing and even though we all agree that something is fundamentally wrong with the political structure of our country; there will be need to fix the country’s institutions at local, state and federal levels so that whether there is a government or not, the wheel of governance would roll on. I will never get tired of the need to suggest we need a moral rearmament if one can call it that name, because we have reached a point that if we don’t do something radical, the entire country stands the risk of going under.

President Muhammadu Buhari when he first came in 2015 went round the capitals of the Western world saying Nigerians were incorrigibly corrupt and that previous Nigerian governments were corrupt and that he was going to do something about it. The judgement of his regime is blowing in the wind and the judgement of history may not be sparing. What is however important to prepare for is that whatever happens in 2023, there will be a lot of work to do to rehabilitate Nigeria and to try to recover from its sordid international image.

May 26, 2022
Yoruba; remember how we got here

Last week, this column closed with Anthony Enahoro’s apprehension about the fate of the Yorubas within the Nigerian state with leaders “who in pursuit of positions, are ready to inflict rain on themselves and undermine one another by declaring innocent guilty and guilty innocent because of wealth”. He was reacting to Chief Akintola’s decision to exploit his close relationship with Ahmadu Bello and Balewa to bring down his leader and the Yoruba nation rather than abide by the result of Enahoro’s motion for his resignation for anti-party activities, carried by 3-1 votes.

Akintola although, a master of ambiguity, (Macpherson) was nonetheless a man ‘naturally opposed to violence and according to Trevor Clark, “would have never confronted his leader but for the pressure from his wife, a human reluctance to lose face”. Thus with the characteristic display of Yoruba false sense of self-worth, Akintola resolved that if he could not have it, no one else would have it. Consequently, he sought the help of the Fulani and Igbo political elite that had an axe to grind with his leader. And with their help, he and his group of self-serving Yoruba leaders on May 29, 1962 buried their leader along with their 10 years of unparalleled achievements.

Apart from the troika of Ayo Rosiji, Okunowo and Akerele, who raised false allegations, there was Dr Majekodunmi who befriended Balewa and some northern leaders for which he was bountifully rewarded as personal doctor to Balewa and his two Lagos-based wives, graduating to Minister of State for the Army in 1959, and by 1962, the tyrannical administrator of the West under emergency, a period he fought like a slave to please his northern friends.

He did the bidding of Balewa by ensuring the dispersal and restriction of AG supporters across the old Western Region with Awo himself sent to mosquito-infested Lekki Government Guest House, accessible only through steam boat and a two-kilometre trek from the shore sometimes inside a knee-deep flood especially when there is a storm. When the probe therefore opened, he was denied access to his files which had been carted from Ibadan to IG Lynn’s office in Lagos where Akintola and Coker had access to them. He also had no access to his restricted party members with whom he ran the government from 1952-1959

Other key actors who were mostly NCNC sympathisers include Ayodola Coker, (chairman), a blood relation to Zik, Akintola Williams (member), brother-in-law to Coker and Kassim who was chief magistrate in the Eastern Region under Okpara. The Chief prosecutor, Okorodudu was of course a prominent member of NCNC while Sobo Sowemimo and Alhaji Sofola, counsels to the commission were also prominent members of NCNC.

When the heat was turned on by a vindictive federal government, some of Awolowo’s loyalists jumped boat to join Akintola now installed as governor without election. Even some concerned Obas including the Olubadan, the Olota of Ota and Oba Akran, mocked that “All the four governments of the federation are against you, what can you do, nothing; The wise course open to you is to go to the Sardauna and Balewa and beg them. Otherwise worse things will happen.”

But Awo insisted that “God who sees our hearts and knows why we have refused to bow to blind tyranny… will protect me and my colleagues from any harm”. Those who did not jump boat including those who upon resigning from government in 1959 claiming he could not work under Akintola and on request got about 3,000 pounds from the party to procure books in readiness for NPC’s unconstitutional moves after independence, for fear of a vindictive federal government, resigned from the AG.

Coker Commission of Inquiry into the affairs of Certain Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria was based on May 29, 1962 allegations of Rosiji, Okunowo and Akerele. It according to Awolowo turned out to be “a cruel quasi-judicial machine….for the total destruction of political rival….its proceeding were in the main a travesty, and its conclusions were a parade of naked and unabashed injustice, inequity and inhumanity dispensed under the auspices of a tyrannical reign, a reign of terror, of search without warrant, of restrictions and detention of persons without trial and without any specified charge”.

The six statutory bodies investigated according to Professor H. A. Oluwasanmi (Daily Express January 28, and 29 1963) “were corporations established to perform functions that are fundamental significance to the economic, social and cultural development of the people of Western Nigeria”. For instance, they helped in the procurement of farmers’ farm products which they also helped to sell in foreign markets. They were responsible for provision of affordable houses on easy term. They contributed to the “development of agricultural industrial and commercial potential of the West, through investment of surplus resources, through provision of credit to farmers, industrialists and business men and development and propagation of Yoruba culture through radio and television.”

One of the principal targets of the inquiry was NIPC which according to A. O. Rewane was founded for the sole purpose of funding the AG. Following a survey of how political parties were funded in Europe and America, the AG committee saddled with the task recommended NIPC which was to be patterned after an Israeli Labour Movement -owned ‘The HISTRADUT’, which engaged in business activities with the largest shares in civil engineering firm, Israel Airlines and Shipping lines.

The Coker Commission and it sponsors were obsessed with the #6,210,000 pounds NIPC owed Western Region Marketing Board, WRMB. But the company even after “giving substantial financial assistance to the Action Group, its properties which include Investment House, Bristol Hotel, Bagatelle building, Cocoa House, LAPAL properties that owned all the SCOA buildings in Lagos Ibadan Port Harcourt Aba, Onitsha, Kano, Jos Gusau, Sapele and other places SCOA operated from and Amalgamated Press all valued at about nine million pounds thus fulfilling the purpose for which it was set up. When the properties were taken over by WRMB and transferred to a company known as WEMABOD Estate Limited by mid-eighties, they were worth about N80m.

As for the WRMB, the success was phenomenal. Between 1954-1959, surplus funds not needed for stabilisation purposes were used in building the infrastructure including road development and agricultural commercials and industrial undertakings. If there were problems after 1959, it was according to Professor Aluko, probably due to Akintola’s dubious policy of transferring liquid assets of the board to the regional government, a deviation from the recommendations of the International Bank Mission.

Yet Akintola as “NIPC first chairman for the two years, who presided over approval of investment, instructed and paid over #2.7m pounds for acquisition of companies and landed properties and personally intervened in the personnel affairs of the corporation, was never questioned along other chairmen of the company but found guiltless while Awo who was never chairman was indicted for alleged irregularities while he was premier”. (S A Aluko Sunday Express January 27, 1963)

It was therefore not a surprise that Chief Awolowo according to Coker’s report “has failed to adhere to the standards of conduct which are required for person holding such a post, while there is no evidence in our view to say the same of Chief Akintola and we absolve him in all grounds”.

Although the report according to Oluwasanmi was however “silent, funereally silent Awo’s tremendous achievements as premier of western Nigeria, it can be said that long after the Coker Commission Report shall have been forgotten in the archives, as a spiteful document, the work of Chief Awolowo in Western Nigeria will remain monument to brilliant planning and administrative genius”.

May 19, 2022
Deborah Samuel: Hell in the spoken word (1)

To the religious bigot, humanity is barely skin-deep. He lives in a world of surfaces, a world of masks and artifice. Thus he espouses the absoluteness of externals.

To such a zealot, Deborah Samuel’s murder was both a performance of surface religiosity and an ode to the inhumane. It was yet another premise of mindless violence.

The deceased student’s ill-starred end is hardly the consequence of an unpardonable crime. It represents a radical theatricality in which wild artifice is dubiously interpreted as fine morality.

Deborah incited the mindless horde in her bid to enforce order perhaps in a social medium; she allegedly chided her mates for sharing religious posts in a classroom Whats App forum.

But her rebuke of the culprits resonated as the culmination of a protracted toxic exchange between the parties. It was yet another shriek of Nigeria’s fractured, fractious religious war.

As Nigeria dissects Deborah’s misfortune, we must be wary of the anarchic danger of fostering misinterpretations. Was Deborah’s tirade borne of intolerance or someone’s previous insult to her faith? Did she overreact? If that’s the argument against her, how justifiable is the reaction of her killers?

There is an urgent need to establish the full context of Deborah’s outburst. Did she react to a threat? Whatever the details, it was gross and unjustifiable to lay a finger on her.

Interpretations of her tirade differ across sophists’ soapboxes and media platforms. Parties advance narratives amenable to their prejudices. It’s for the most part base sentimentality.

The Holy Quran cites several blasphemous attacks by non-believers against Prophet Muhammed (PBUH), but no consequence or physical punishment for the perpetrators. Rather the punishment for blaspheming God and His messenger is emphasised to be God’s exclusive preserve.

The authority to punish blasphemers, as an Islamic scholar, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, rightly notes, has not been delegated to anyone. Not even the Prophet.

Despite the ill-treatment and disrespect shown to both the Prophet and the Quran, Allah instructed him not to retaliate, because He (Allah) is sufficient to deal with those who commit blasphemy against Him, His beloved messenger and holy book.

The Quran further educates Muslims on what they should do when blasphemy is committed against their religion. Allah says:

“When you hear the sign of Allah being denied and mocked at, sit not with them until they engage in a talk other than that, for, in that case, you would be like them. (Q4:141).”

“With such beautiful guidance promoted in the Quran, how can anyone contend that the punishment of death for blasphemy is justified in Islam?” notes Hamzat while quoting Sheikh Tahir in his piece.

Predictably, the social space has morphed into a war zone in the wake of Deborah’s death, as citizens engage in battle frenzy; like medieval crusaders in visceral herds, they mentalise war and seek to actualise it.

Predictably, media platforms offer fosterage of dubious sophistry in patronage of the warring herds. Most commentators are not saying anything new, however. Like spectres of battle sound, they amplify prejudice and slaughter jazz. Ultimately, they refasten the religious war harness and enable Pyrrhic claims to victory of their favoured divides. Shame.

In the wake of the Sokoto crisis, several bigots have seized the trending toxicity to advance their gospels of hate and Islamophobia. It’s oft amusing to see Christian fanatics subject every Muslim to unfair labelling, accusing them of complicity in Deborah’s killing. Every Muslim is innately violent, they’d say.

While more enlightened Muslim groups have been seen to recoil from the random attacks launched against them across both formal and informal social circuits, less informed characters have been seen to engage their traducers in heated arguments, oft to unwholesome ends.

As clergymen, journalists, teachers, and school administrators dissociate faith from compassion and pure thought, the brilliant sheen of bias in Nigeria’s popular religions makes the eye “glide” along its shiny surface. The hardness repels vision, like medieval savagery cast unto humane civilisation.

Beyond the arguments and counter-arguments, ‘gospel’ truths and relative truths, sophistry and arrant bigotry, a bitter truth subsists about the Sokoto religious debacle: that several faithful practice faith without compassion, salvation without spirit.

The killer mob’s reactionary premise is borne out by political history, where herd tyranny weakened centralised authority, aiding the blooming of anarchy and the ethnoreligious mob.

Since independence, the history of Nigeria is replete with variations of religious chaos fostered in the foundry of errant bigotries and herd irrationality. Mayhem is the rule.

Religious war and intolerance are, however, a disease of the poor. The political class looting our coffers does not engage in ‘pious’ wars in their circuits of expediences. Rather they hobnob and marry off their children in oft arranged inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriages.

About 800 choice assets bought in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), by looted funds, have been traced to some ex-governors, ministers, senators, and military officers in Nigeria.

Such loot would serve a better purpose if committed to youth empowerment and infrastructure development. Yet most of the looters are self-confessed Christians and Muslims, and they co-exist as landlords and neighbours in Dubai, a Sharia province, without incident.

Indeed, religious intolerance is the plague of Nigerian segments rendered bitter and disillusioned by poverty and bad governance. It’s an avenue for them to let loose their frustrations and reenact against each other, the oppression they suffer at the hands of the ruling class.

When presumed intellectuals jump in the fray, they often do so as a necessary performance of prejudice. They are never found at the crossroads, where ‘righteous souls’ clash and maim their reckless spirits. Theirs is to incite Nigeria into a needless war in fulfillment of their treasonous pieties and questionable allegiances.

Like I opined in the wake of the Kwara hijab crisis, there is a paranoiac neuron characteristic of the Christian and Muslim bigot; it is resident in the terrorists that abducted Leah Sharibu and subjected her to sexual captivity and premature motherhood. It is resident in every Nigerian, who sees something horrid in a harmless school girl donning the hijab. It is the affliction of the mob that hacked Deborah Samuel to death.

Bigotry thwarts humane understanding. It keeps the faithful mired in sulfurous rhetoric and whim. It destroys the search for the common good; it dices faith, the faithful, and finally religious leadership into venomous, weaponised fragments.

Bigotry allows religious faithful to retreat into self-imposed tyrannies and ‘sacred’ grottoes while neglecting the most pressing spiritual, moral, political, and cultural questions. Those who critique the system itself are stigmatised and shut out of the mainstream debate.

Religious bigots resort to emotion cultism, whereby, they banish self-criticism. They characteristically refuse to question the self-justifying system that drives their gospel of hate.

In 1967, Theodor Adorno wrote an essay titled “Education After Auschwitz.” He argued that the moral corruption that made the Holocaust possible remained “largely unchanged” and that “the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds” must be uncovered, examined, and critiqued through education. Schools had to teach more than skills. They had to teach values. If they did not, another Auschwitz was always possible.

“All political instruction finally should be centered upon the idea

that Auschwitz should never happen again,” he wrote: This would be possible only when it devotes itself openly, without fear of offending any authorities, to this most important of problems.

To do this, education must commit itself to progressive sociology, that is, it must teach about the societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of social, economic, political, and religious forms.

May 19, 2022
Is Nigeria the ‘sick man of Africa’?

The Ottoman Turkish Empire in 19th century Europe used to be derided as “the sick man of Europe” apparently because it was an effete empire, a caricature of its glorious history when its suzerainty extended over most of North Africa, the Middle East and south Eastern Europe particularly the Balkans. The decline eventually was stopped when the military under Mustafa Kemal the Ataturk (leader) overthrew the Ottoman emperor in 1923 and ruled the country with iron fist until 1938 and began the modernization of the country. No aspect of the country was left untouched even up to the way the Turks were attired. The only thing that the Turkish leader did not touch was Islam, the religion of the people. He however enshrined in the Turkish constitution that the state would forever remain a secular state whose secularity was guaranteed by the all-powerful military. Turkey, despite the attempt of its current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to tamper with the secular constitution has not succeeded and his attempt almost led to his being overthrown by the army and what has now come to be described as the “deep state” otherwise known as the national bureaucracy and all the institutional paraphernalia that makes a state run whether there is a government or not. There is no doubt however that the legacy of Mustafa Kemal, the Ataturk has survived in modern Turkey which no one would refer to as a “sick man” of Europe any longer. Turkey today is one of the strongest countries in Europe and reputedly has the largest army in NATO bestriding the borders of Europe and Asia. The country also has a reasonably strong economy; of course it could be stronger if it was run as a strictly free enterprise and democratic country without the military breathing down its throat.

I have used the analogy of Turkey to try and dissect the current malady of Nigeria characterized by violence and religious fanaticism.

Nigeria at independence had all the attributes of a future powerful and successful state and has perhaps the potentiality of becoming the Japan of Africa. Nigeria was seen as a country capable of wiping the racial slur on black peoples as never-do-well, some kind of what Germans would call “untermenschen” or sub humans. The prime minister of Nigeria was the toast of the powerful countries in the world. President J. F. Kennedy lavishly welcomed our prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to the White House in 1961. The British knighted him and even the USSR under Nikita Khrushchev tried unsuccessfully to open its country’s embassy in Lagos but was rebuffed by a proud country which did not like the “subversive tendencies” of the USSR in Africa. The imperious General Charles de Gaulle met his match in the standoffish Sir Abubakar who cut Nigeria’s ties with France in 1965 when France refused to accede to the request of Nigeria and other West African states to stop testing atomic bombs in the Sahara desert because of its radioactive fallout which might have endangered the lives of Nigerians and other Africans. Even the prime minister of Great Britain, our former colonial masters, Harold Macmillan, took seriously Nigeria’s positions on institutionalized racial discrimination in apartheid South Africa which forced its prime minister to withdraw the country from the commonwealth in 1961.

The point I am making is that all the auguries were positively indicating a bright and great future for Nigeria in its early years of its independence. Our country even called an extraordinary Commonwealth Conference on Rhodesia towards the end of 1965 to get the Commonwealth to take a united position on ensuring that Rhodesia did not go the odious racist way of South Africa when its white government was determined to gain independence under minority white regime.

A few weeks after this demarche, the prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the premiers of the West and the North and high ranking military officers were slaughtered in a coup overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Nigeria. That was the beginning of our problems. The country was not perfect before this time. The British colonial masters were not philanthropists who cared for any black people whether in Africa, Asia or the Americas. They naturally cared for themselves and their country’s future. They planted seeds of future divisions in our country so that we would always be beholden to them as our patron to whom we would always run to during our predictable problems. The dice was heavily loaded against us. The federation of Nigeria was an unbalanced state with the size and population of the North bigger than the two southern regions combined. The population of the north appeared to have been rigged by the British to give it numerical advantage over the south. In spite of these hidden problems, Nigeria perhaps could have remained on the path of steady growth and reform until perhaps a reformer in the mould of Mustafa Kemal would have appeared on the scene. Nigeria has not had that fortune but rather what we have had were military adventurers and soldiers of fortune who conquered the state and treated it as a conquered territory good for plunder. This is what has happened to Nigeria since 1966.

The corrosion and coarseness that have afflicted the state manifest in the general and unbelievable poverty in many parts of our country. Rather than to build a secular state as enshrined in our constitution, what we have done is to abandon the state to religious bodies – some moderate and others extreme – to deal with the state the way they wish. The manifestation of these tendencies can be seen in our people abandoning their responsibility and hard work and pinning all their hopes on so called breakthroughs on God/Allah.

When the poor people do not get instant gratification they either become violent or reverse to their primitive pre -Christian or pre-Islamic beliefs and practices including human sacrifices which we have witnessed in many parts of Nigeria where people are killed in rituals supposedly designed to make money. All these maladies and killings including the recent killing of Miss Deborah Samuel Yakubu are a manifestation of state failure and state collapse.

Most Muslim leaders in our country and outside including Sultan Abubakar and King Husain of Jordan have said peace and tolerance are the hallmarks of Islam. I was surprised to hear King Husain say the Holy Koran says Muslims should love God and their fellow human beings as themselves and that Allah did not say love fellow Muslims but all humanity created by God. This is exactly what our Lord Jesus Christ said was the kernel of the Christian religion. Prophet Muhammad forbade his followers attacking Christians and Jews because they are “people of the book”. I am told by people who are intimate with Islam that the concept of even jihad is misunderstood. The greatest jihad a Muslim can fight is against self. Disciplining oneself to go in the way of Allah is more difficult than fighting to defend the faith of Islam. Islam deprecates forceful conversion, so jihad is essentially a defence strategy to protect the abode of the faithful.

I remember President Barack Obama saying he cannot understand any Muslim fighting God’s war because that presupposes that God is so weak that He needs puny human beings to defend Him or fight his battles. Our Muslim leaders have a job to do in the education of our people along the right path.

But it is not the religious leaders alone who have work to do. Our political and other leaders have work to do also. We need to build our country into a modern state where it will not matter whether one is a Muslim or a Christian. We must stop using religion as the opium of the people. Highly educated people whose material needs are met by the state or through gainful employment will not resort to murder over religious differences. This is why the crowd contesting various elections next year should first take a look at the country they want to rule. If we continue like this there will be no country to govern.

It has also become clear to most knowledgeable people in this country that even if an angel becomes president in 2023 under the present constitutional structure of the country he will not succeed. So let us put first things first. The politicians should first be talking about establishing a constitutional grundnorm (basic law) dividing the country along its natural linguistic lines while the centre as in most federations remains a coordinating centre with its powers specifically and specially defined. We must also map out a strategy to distribute wealth to all Nigerians and to make sure all Nigerians are properly educated to appreciate the sanctity of life.

Electing a president is the easiest thing to do but having a country that is worth living in and dying for should really be the focus of our national aspirations and not which person or ethnic group is in or out.

May 19, 2022
Out of control

Islam is a religion of peace. So, we were taught in school. Ahmadiyya College, now known as Anwar-ul Islam College, Agege, Lagos, though founded by Muslims did not place premium on religion. The school was and is still open to Christians and Muslims. Of course, as a Muslim school, Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK) and Arabic were taught.

Arabic was not a compulsory subject. Just as Yoruba and French were not compulsory. But because of the adventurous nature of children, we sampled all the subjects. It was pure joy to see Christians and Muslims alike reciting alif, ba, ta, sa… the Arabic alphabets like the a, b, c… that we first learnt in primary school.

Religion? Who cared about that. It was a non-issue among us and our teachers led by example in that regard. A pupil was treated based on his character and not his religion or ethnicity. If in a secondary school, pupils could live together harmoniously despite professing different faith, it should be expected that things would be better in a higher institution, except we are saying we are sliding backwards.

In the larger society too, religion and ethnicity were no issues. Muslims and Christians, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba lived together, worked together, played together and ate together. All of a sudden, things changed. We no longer saw ourselves as brothers and sisters. We began to see ourselves as enemies and everybody kept to him or herself.

This was where societal fabric began to tear. Parents warned their children against going to their neighbours’ houses. This was something that was not common then.Common, how? It was not even there. It was unheard of for a parent to do such a thing when people lived together as one big family. Now, we are divided by our faith, which ironically should be a binding factor.

Christianity and Islam share many things in common. Both religions believe in the sanctity of human life and warn against taking a person’s life for no just reason. A life for a life, the religions say. Meaning anybody who kills a person without justification must pay with his own life. This is different from the mosaic law of an eye for an eye. A life can only be taken for a crime committed and for which the perpetrator has been found liable.

In effect, the person must have undergone trial and be availed of every opportunity to defend himself. But as men some of us like to play god. We believe that by so doing we are more pious than others. Faith is not a show thing, it is a heart and mind thing. No wonder, the scripture says man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart. Fighting for God does not make you holier than the other person if it is not for a just cause. Jihad is not waged for the sake of it, it is waged to build a better society.

In his days, the Prophet waged Jihad against idolaters and the enemies of Islam. A good Muslim can also wage an internal Jihad to make himself a better person. It is not Jihad to kill someone in the name of Allah because he said or did something that is wrong. That is criminality. A man cannot be the complainant, the prosecutor and the judge in his own case. Our society has since moved beyond that stage.

Those who killed Deborah Emmanuel were not doing Allah’s bidding. They were only consumed by their belief that by so doing, they were waging a war that will earn them paradise in the hereafter! To be consumed by religion is a pitiable thing. When people carry religion too far, society is at risk. We have seen not once, not twice, but on several occasions, what religious crisis can cause. Villages and properties were destroyed and people maimed and killed on the flimsy ground of doing things which ordinarily should not attract any attention.

Why was Deborah killed? What did she say about the Prophet to have earned her that kind of death – stoning and burning in full public glare? The so-called devotees who carried out that dastardly act should go and read the Quran and Hadiths again. When can a Muslim woman be publicly stoned or flogged? It is when she is found to have committed adultery. Deborah was not a Muslim nor did she subscribe to the Islamic law of Sharia.

She was killed for speaking out against the abuse of a forum created for the advancement of learning at the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto. When did it become a crime to express one’s view, no matter how objectionable it may be to others – and in a higher institution, for that matter. What kind of citadel of learning is that where the other view cannot be tolerated? What kind of teaching is going on there? The teachers must share part of the blame for what those students did.

What happened in Sokoto on May 12 is horrendous and heartwrenching. It is unfortunate and sad. It shows that things have gone out of control in the country. The killers of Deborah must not go scot-free. It is written in all the holy books that those who kill for no just reason must be killed. They should get their just deserts after their day in court. My heart goes out to the Emmanuels and may their daughter find rest in the Lord’s bosom.

May 19, 2022
2023: Ambition, God and man
There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face – Shakespeare

Looks can be deceptive. If not, Nigerians would have seen through Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele and the game he is playing in the countdown to next year’s presidential contest. Emefiele does not look like the typical rambunctious politician. Drab and dry, he carries himself like the banker he is. Now, the banker wants to switch job, but does not know how to go about it.

Some of his faceless friends have been mounting a media campaign for him to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, who is leaving office in 2023. As the nation’s number one banker by virtue of his position as CBN boss, Emefiele cannot take part in partisan politics. He is free to hold political views, but he cannot publicly express them to avoid being seen as supportive of one party or the other.

Most especially, he cannot afford to be linked to the ruling party, which though appointed him, he is not in anyway beholden to, as CBN governor. The office Emefiele occupies carries a high price. He is under watch and every move he makes is subject to interpretation. This is why central bank chiefs all over the world tread gingerly. They work with politicians but they cannot mix their work with politics. For them, politics and work are not mutually inclusive. They must forgo one for the other.

Emefiele is not ready to do that. He wants to have his cake and eat it. He cannot. He has to choose one. Whichever he chooses, he will still be serving the nation. But he must be honest with the nation and let the people know where he stands on 2023. His disclaimer of those goading him to run is weak. The way he is handling the matter shows that he is either involved in the shenanigan or he is enjoying it.

Emefiele never spoke officially on this serious issue since the campaign to draft him into the 2023 race began until his beloved rice farmers got the expression of interest and presidential nomination forms of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for him. If he were honest with himself, his office and the country, he would have since moved to stop those jesters long before they got the forms for him for N100 million! Since our country is a nation of anything goes, Emefiele and his co-travellers in government interested in becoming president have been having their way while sitting pretty in office.

The President is keeping quiet because he is the one encouraging all of them to run. I do not see the sense in telling everybody who comes to you whether or not they have what it takes to do the job to join the race. Even those not interested in the race, the President is said to have told them to go and contest. At what point will he stop coopting people into the race? By the time the number reaches 100 since they are buying the forms for N100 million! Even if the President so advises, an individual is not bound by the advice, if he knows he cannot do the job. The least these individuals can do is to say: ‘Mr President, thank you for the advice’ and take their leave.

But, it is convenient for them to use the President’s name to mask their ambitions. Emefiele’s foot soldiers have repeatedly described him as the man for the job and he seems to believe them despite disowning them in a series of tweets after they bought him the nomination forms. He did not say he would run or not. He left that decision for God. “This is a serious decision that requires God’s Divine intervention: in the next few days, the Almighty will so direct”, Emefiele said. How did he know that God will ‘direct’ him in the next few days. Was that from God?

Emefiele has unwittingly revealed where he stands. His tweets said more than he intended. His intention was to douse the fire over the speculations about his ambition, but he ended up stoking it. If he is not interested in running, he should have simply said so because of the short time left for parties’ primaries and the general elections. He did not do that. With his tweets, he compounded the whole matter. But for the discerning, who can read between the lines, Emefiele should not drag God into the matter since it seems he wants to run.

It is his personal decision to run and he should take responsibility for it and not bring God into it. Did he register, as reported in the media, as an APC member in his ward after communing with God? If that was case, what is he going back to God for? Is his registration not a sign of divine blessing or better still, anointing for him to join the presidential race?

But, wait for this. The same man, who said he was waiting on God, rushed to court to seek an order that he should be allowed to remain in office while pursuing his presidential dream. Why bring God into the matter since he had gone to court to test the waters? Is this the kind of president the nation needs in 2023 – sly, cunny and untrustworthy? The answer is capital NO.

Emefiele ought to know that as CBN governor, there are certain boundaries that he cannot cross. If he crosses them, he loses his job. But, he wants to enjoy the best of two worlds by remaining in office and contesting for the presidential ticket of APC. His calculation is that if he fails in his bid, he will retain his seat at CBN. Fa! Fa!! Fa!!! Fa!!!! Foul!!!!! A CBN governor is expected to be non-partisan, even though he is not apolitical. He can only vote, if he wishes, during elections, but cannot be on the ballot.

For him to be on the ballot, he has to quit his job. Emefiele is not ready to do that, yet he wants to be president. His reported registration as an APC member should be investigated to ascertain when he actually did so. It would be understandable if he registered before he became CBN governor. But if he did so after he took office, he has breached the code of conduct, which stipulates that occupants of that office cannot be card-carrying members of any party so as to avoid a conflict of interest.

Those calling on him to resign and face politics, his new found love, are on track. It is annoying to have a sitting CBN boss not only involved in politics, but also showing interest in being president on the platform of the ruling APC, which is one of the parties taking part in the 2023 elections. This is not fair to the other parties and the system. Emefiele should not keep his job a day longer if he cannot publicly disavow interest in the 2023 presidential election today. He should not take God’s name in vain.
- This piece had been submitted before the presidential order that the contestants should resign.
May 12, 2022
Beyond bestiality

Veegoddess’ grin is “expensive.” For the right price, it will slink into a sneer, while she receives pounding from a dog.

The teenage TikTok user in Lagos, who went viral after claiming she slept with a dog for N1.7million, is simply one of the teenagers and young ladies who think it isn’t a big deal to have sexual relations with a dog.

“I only slept with a dog, I didn’t kill somebody. You, in your life, you have done worse, and besides, have you seen N1.7million before? As if it’s a big deal. And mind you I’m not infected or anything. Stop dying on the matter, I’m enjoying the money,” she said.

Although she has since recanted, claiming she was simply “cruising” (fooling around), the fact that she deemed such social harakiri status-enhancing depicts a new low for modern Nigeria and her dysfunctional family units.

Through Veegoddess’ cocksure demeanour, her voice crashes through the video like a broken scream, and a silent shriek creeps into her narrative. The impact is chilling.

It resonates in the tenor of Lagos sex vixen, Angela Jika’s carnal roar. Angela Jika (pseudonym) can “act anything.” She would submit to restraints and take a beating from a dominant male or dominatrix. She would feign a rapture by draping a slick, sultry mask on her face. For N50, 000, she would spread out and make a flora bed of the studio.

Money teases off her inhibitions. Hard drugs too. She’d do anything to feed her drug dependence hence at age 17, she let two married neighbours sleep with her in the backseat of a car, while her boyfriend, Azuka, secretly filmed them.

Now 22, she has become a prominent feature in porn movies. Angela’s role models in the industry are Ajibola Elizabeth aka Maami Igbagbo and Tobiloba Jolaoso, popularly known as Kingtblakhoc. It would be recalled that Jolaoso was arrested for allegedly recording a pornographic movie at the Osun Osogbo sacred grove on the outskirts of Osogbo, the Osun state capital, and a UN-designated World Heritage Site.

From Jolaoso’s desecration of the sacred grove to his teeming fans, including Angela’s celebration of his “feat,” a generational conflict resounds with an instructive peal. It highlights the widening cultural chasms between the older generation and millennials channeling degenerate impulses in defiance of puritan values.

Nigeria has a thriving, underground porn industry but both the government and citizenry are living in denial of it. Astonishingly, for a country, that’s deeply religious, and prominently split along Muslim, Christian faiths, Nigeria has never outlawed pornography, not even in the 1999 Constitution.

While the country’s criminal code slackly defines “obscenity” as any article whose effect, “taken as a whole is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt,” those exposed to it, Lagos State has, however, outlawed the public display of graphic sexual material.

But due to a lack of federal law against public broadcast of smut movies, pornographic content can be accessed online at any time by anyone including teenagers and minors.

Until recently, all domestic porn was heterosexual but there has been increasing production of same-sex porn. While homosexual activity attracts a 14-year sentence in the country, a couple of actresses have engaged in lesbian porn to wide acclaim. More worrisome is the teenage girls’ enthrallment with bestial sex; more girls would sleep with a dog or a horse for “as little as N250, 000,” said a porn producer.

Desperate actor-producers seeking to make a name and overnight renown, employ commercial sex workers, teenagers, and the underage as performers.

Male performers make about a third of the money paid to their female colleagues. Their fee stagnates around N15, 000 to N20, 000 for a 5-10 minute feature.

And the average porn actor must struggle to sustain the singular talent of keeping an erection for long periods of time. Consequently, some actors inject Alprostadil or Caverject into an open vein in their penis. The average cost of the drug is N15, 000 for a single chamber dose and N30, 000 for a dual-chamber dose. It used to be N28, 000. Not many actors can afford that.

So, they resort to taking Viagra and local alcoholic beverages mixed with cannabis and other psychotropic substances; anything to get them high and hard, very fast.

Some actors who inject, keep an open wound at the base of their penis through which they inject the stimulant into their organ. They do this to maintain a single needlepoint on the penis. The downside of this is that they bleed on their onscreen female partners thus increasing their chances of contracting Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs).

Auditions comprise another crisis point in the porn business. The glut of aspiring porn actors furnishes smut filmmakers with a vast array of easy girls for the picking.

Performers in pornographic material are often female victims of sex trafficking. They are often forced to recreate pornographic scenes by abusers adept at mental and economic exploitation.

My investigations within and outside Nigeria, from the streets of Lagos to the shanties and underground brothels of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, revealed how Nigerian sex traffickers use pornography to groom the victims of sex trafficking.

Despite its apparent dangers, porn addiction has become pop culture, cutting through swathes of conservative norms. As it knifes through the country, cyberspace becomes a garish, raunchy boulevard; a theatre of libertine delight, fetishes, and rendezvous for voyeurs and porn stars. It also offers a negotiation point for the addicted desiring real physical action. The social space thus unfurls as an esplanade of taboos and fetishes that expands and contracts to temptation and patronage.

Although porn producers talk shop about running tests on actors to prevent STDs spread, there have been cases of infections in major studios. Notwithstanding, porn allows the youth, safely removed from the traditional norms and social etiquette, to be voyeurs of a frighteningly prejudiced world of taboos and sexual stereotypes, where all the conventions of civilized society cease to exist. And viewers are invited to slum in this world of debauchery.

On the flip side, most Nigerian porn is digitally airbrushed to hide the squalor beneath. Competition is fierce. Girls bring their friends and earn kick-back. So, a lot of girls are desperate to do anything. The lighting in most films is coarse. Pubic hair is shaved off to give the actresses the look of supple divas – warts and all. Yet the staple is often poor acting. The plastered bodies, exaggerated moans and facial contortions, the erections that never go down, and the evidently limp male organs been forcibly put to work, heighten porn’s unreality.

Then, there is the dank smell of human bodies, the thump of studio filth, and the indelicate tenderness of onscreen partners. But despite an upbeat campaign to wean the addicted off porn, such homily hardly serves the interest of porn artistes like Jika.

The 22-year-old has done a lot of gang-bang and “taken it up the arse.” She recently acted as a slave in a Bondage, Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadomasochism (BDSM) movie.

She was tied up and gang-raped, severely beaten, and penetrated in every orifice. “Viewers would love it,” she enthused.

Yet through her enthusiasm, she slunk into a flat, numbing monotone, like a victim of trauma; a cottony shriek drifted across her coarse, heavily made-up face, and for a moment, unmasked the scarred youngster cringing beneath the icon of the sultry siren.

“What you just described, was it painful?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered quietly.

May 12, 2022
Now’s time for the world to intervene in war in Ukraine

It is going to three months since Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine, a sovereign state and member of the United Nations without proper declaration of war even though Russia had been fighting Ukraine since 2014 after seizure of the Crimean peninsula and also supporting Russian nationalists in the Luhansk and Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine. Russia claims that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deliberately provoked Russia into this war by expanding its membership right to the borders of Russia in the Baltic Sea nations of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania that were previously part of the Russian empire in the defunct USSR which dissolved into its constituent parts in 1991. This was on top of its expansion to the former Warsaw Pact countries of Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, East Germany and to some of the former states of the former Yugoslavia. What appears to have raised the alarm bells in Russia was the intention of Ukraine to not only join the European Union (EU) but NATO. This to Putin was a bridge too far because Putin sees Ukraine as historically and culturally part of Russia and whose total independence was only to be tolerated as long as it remained in the Russian orbit.

The desire of Ukraine to be a Western European country enjoying some form of democracy and free enterprise economic development was unacceptable to the Kremlin whose path of development was not far from centralized communist dictatorship of the past. A successful Ukraine would therefore be a challenge to Russia. The desire of Ukraine has now been embraced by the West even though this is a recent development because throughout the Donald J. Trump’s administration, Ukraine was kept at arm’s length and denied both the military and financial support that would have deterred Putin from the costly invasion he has embarked upon. It now seems the Joe Biden‘s administration is determined to make up for American tardiness in its support for Ukraine. The issue therefore is Russian feeling of threat and Ukraine’s desire to assert its independence.

It seems the aims of Russia and Ukraine are irreconcilable and the only way to end the war is through negotiations and compromise or the total destruction of Ukraine which NATO is determined not to allow with the possibility of escalation and threat of a Third World War. Only mad leaders would want to destroy the whole world over territorial dispute in Eastern Europe. We must however remember that the world has seen two world wars over disputes between the Austro- Hungarian Empire backed by the might of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, with Serbia backed by the Russian Romanov Empire in 1914 and Hitler’s Germany’s desire to carve out a Lebensraum in Poland and Russia in 1939 led to the Second World War. The cumulative loss of lives in the two world wars, in which Nigerian troops were involved, in wars, the causes of which they didn’t know, would be close to 200 million if one added the loss of lives caused by the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 to war casualties and deaths from collateral damage.

The world must always keep this in mind. Sometimes ago, President Putin joked about unilaterally destroying the whole world if Russia continued to be badly treated. He was heard to have said what is the point of a world existing without proper recognition of Russia. Recently some Russians with some cynical views of the world said they could throw a powerful nuclear bomb into the Western Atlantic that would precipitate huge tidal waves that would sink the entire British Isles that is the United Kingdom and Ireland. This may have been a cruel joke but it seems to capture the dangerous scenario the world is being confronted with.

President Putin had wanted to celebrate the accomplishment of his war aim in Ukraine by announcing the surrender of the country on of May 9. This would have been during the annual military parade in the Red Square in Moscow celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany by Russia in 1945. He was denied this by the robust resistance of the Ukrainian army hugely supplied with arms by the West. There seems now to be a stalemate. Russia is not winning while Ukraine is suffering from widespread destruction and killing of innocent civilians of children, women and the elderly. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are also dying in their thousands even though the Russian authorities are hiding this from their people. Ukraine seems to be ready to abandon its desire for membership of NATO and to become a neutral state like Finland, Sweden, and Austria and Switzerland. Will this satisfy Russia? And will Russia be ready to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereign independence?

The United Nations that should make peace has been rendered ineffective because of the veto powers of Russia and China in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The Secretary General Guiteres was not even successful in securing safe way for women and children trying to escape from fighting in many of the theatres of the war in Ukraine.

Perhaps this is the time countries in the so called Third World should revive the spirit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and send to Moscow and Washington, a delegation of select countries like Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina to seek for peace. Their concern should be based on preventive diplomacy of not allowing the conflict to spread to the whole world leading to the destruction of humanity. This is because if the war spreads, it will lead to nuclear Armageddon which the late President J.F. Kennedy said will eventuate in the “living envying the dead” because the suffering from radioactive fallout will be so intolerable that instant death would be preferable to surviving.

Even without the war becoming a world war, the entire world is already suffering with shortages of wheat, vegetable oil, gas and oil and inflation everywhere leading to social uprising in some countries already. This actually proves Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant right that global free trade should normally lead to global peace. This war has shown that we all live in a global village of economic and political interconnectedness on which mankind should build to secure global peace and harmony. Can we imagine if the trillions of dollars spent on armaments were invested in amelioration of conditions of man on this planet what effect this will have on everyone?

We cannot say we haven’t been warned about the danger of allowing “the war parties” in our countries to take over the deep state and dictate national policies. General Dwight Eisenhower, the Second World War hero who later became American president warned against the military industrial complex seizing the control of America and always benefiting from putting America on warpath and so-called military preparedness. The war in Ukraine has gone on for too long and it is within the power of mankind to stop it through diplomacy mounted by neutrals that are not directly involved.

May 12, 2022
Awo more relevant 35 years after death

Obafemi Awolowo, the best president Nigeria never had was Yoruba’s gift to a nation hijacked by brigands. He was a philosopher king, an African pride and a man with a large heart who gave back to society what society denied him by accident of birth. Thirty-five years after physical death, Awo, the African sun continues to shine in spite of evil conspiracy of his people and the owners of Nigeria.

He was committed to finding solution to problems associated with multi-cultural nation like Nigeria. ‘The Path to Nigeria Freedom’ which he believed would liberate Nigerians from the tyranny of the state is one of the products of such search. That he led by example explained why he, along with like minds, also inaugurated the Action Group party as a modernisation agent. The basic principles of the party as stated in his inaugural address in Owo on April 28, 1951 were: the immediate termination of British rule in every phase of our political life, commitment of the party to the education of all children of school-going age, the provision of health and general welfare for all our people and finally the total abolition of want in our society”.

The party’s free primary education scheme inaugurated on January 17, 1955 with about 400,000 children had by 1960, risen to an enrolment of 1,124,788 children. The major principle of the party’s health scheme was ‘provision of adequate pure water, progressive build-up of environmental hygiene; and the expansion of hospital, maternity and child welfare, and dispensary services, coupled with a campaign of preventive medicine’. Within a period of five years, the number of hospitals increased by over 60 per cent with six new 32-bed hospitals sited at Afenmai Etsako , Ekiti, Epe, Egbado, Aboh and Okitipupa divisions.

His agriculture policy was informed by his belief that the causes of poverty are: “the abject state of the peasant class of this country… their antediluvian methods of cultivating the land”. Consequently, his party’s agricultural reforms were tailored towards allowing farmers to enjoy the benefits of organized marketing. In this regard, the government assisted plantation development, with focus on rubber, cocoa, oil palm, citrus, cashew and coffee, through the Western Nigerian Development Corporation (later Industrial Investment and Credit Corporation (IICC).

His government also set up a finance corporation agency, to provide loans to Nigerian entrepreneurs. To increase electricity supply for domestic and industrial purposes as well as make electricity available in all Yoruba major cities by 1962, the Western Region government granted to the former Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, (ECN) a loan of 1,300,000 pounds free of interest for a number of years.

To address shortage of houses, Western Region Housing Corporation was established which had by 1959 built 173 houses in Bodija, Ibadan and 44 at the Ikeja Estate and granted loans totalling 110,000 pounds on mortgage to 44 borrowers. The government also built a 40,000 capacity Liberty Stadium through direct labour at a cost 520,000 pounds and went on to build the first television in Africa in 1959.

Awolowo who had preferred Anthony Enahoro or Rotini Williams as successor premier was at the end vindicated. With the typical Yoruba false sense of self-worth, Akintola wanted to upstage Awo and become premier and party leader. The fall out of the party’s adoption of democratic socialism during its 1962 Jos convention, was the defeat of Ayo Rosiji by Sam Ikoku as secretary-general and the consolidation of power by the radical group.

Akintola who later pleaded guilty to the charges of maladministration and antiparty activities was indicted by 81 to 29 votes and replaced as premier by Alhaji Adegbenro. Both Ahmadu Bello and Okpara refused to recognize Adegbenro while Balewa directed the Commissioner of Police who had earlier pledged his loyalty the new premier to withdraw his service.

Following an attempt by Western Region House to have a vote of confidence on the new premier as advised by Balewa, E. A. Oke from Ogbomosho started throwing chairs and ‘shouting fire on the mountain’ while F. Ebubedike an NCNC member from Badagry broke the mace. The house was dispersed with tear gas. Later, Akintola went with thugs to attack the premier’s office.

Akintola challenged his removal in court. But Balewa was not taking chances. He convened the meeting of the parliament to declare state of emergence over what he described as “uproar in the western house”.

Then the usual Yoruba predilection set in. “If I cannot have it, no other person must have it” The minority held the majority to ransom. Ayo Rosiji, (Egba East) , Chief E A Okunowo (Ijebu) and Chief Abiodun Akerele (Oyo Central) for a pot of porridge decided to sell their leader to his political foes.

The charges of Ayo Rosiji who was aided into office by Awo in 1954 were: “The motivating factor all Awolowo’s activities is himself;. Awolowo has no abiding principle. Rather than look on whilst another person occupies the position of Prime Minister in this country, Chief Awolowo is prepared to destroy this country; Awolowo is arrogant, conceited and self-opinionated”.

Okunowo begged Balewa to remove Awolowo because it would mean “removing nepotism, and financial irresponsibility from the region; wanted Balewa to investigate NIPC; He is an Ijebu man like myself. Why should I support Akintola if Awo was doing the right thing? How can we work when one man is saying he is the enemy of the Sardauna, the enemy of Azikiwe the enemy of Okpara consistently? We appeal to the prime minster to find an asylum for Awolowo and send him to asylum to have him mentally examined; here in this house today we are singing the political death song of Awolowo”.

As for Akerele whose adoption was also aided by Awo in 1951, because he had never been to Oyo let alone knowing his quarters, he wanted Balewa to probe NIPC for giving loans to members of AG including Tarka, Ibrahim Iman and Bisi Onabanjo to build houses”.

Anthony Enahoro who probably remembered the lyrics of Hubert Ogunde’s evergreen song “Yoruba Ronu” about how Yoruba “inflicted rain on themselves for the sake of wealth, undermined one another in pursuit of position and declared innocent guilty and guilty innocent” opened his speech by saying “I wonder what is going to happen to the Yorubas”.

He reminded members that “Ayo Rosiji had no complaints whatsoever against this party until he was removed as federal secretary at the Jos Congress. Ever since then, nothing his party or his leader did has been right”. On Okunowo, he revealed: “Our parliamentary council has met once and the executive once on the question of his contract disputes with the Ministry of Works at Ibadan” (Awolowo had stopped him from using his position to secure a contract for importation of asbestos pipes for water project). On Chief Akerele, Enahoro had this to say: “there had been a firm of Awolowo and Akerele Solicitors and since they broke up, nothing Awolowo stands for or has ever done can receive favour with Akerele.”

His warning that “It is only those who cannot look far who will think this the end of everything. It may well be the beginning of chain of events, nobody knows and nobody can tell when it will end” was ignored by Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Azikiwe and Dr Okpara who had only one thing in mind: bury Awo.

With Ayes 232, Noes 44, they disabled the tripod holding Nigeria together. The struggle ever since has been how to return to Awo’s ‘path to Nigerian freedom’ never taken.

May 12, 2022
Because our daughters sleep with dogs (1)

Bestial Nigeria can only be cured by farming our loins for the hidden cowries of a nobler race.

The brothel prostitute, foul-mouthed roughneck, political assassin, ballot robber, kidnapper, rapist, and bestiality enthusiast are produced not by society’s savagery or sexism but by society’s absence.

There is no gainsaying the girls featured in the viral videos of bestial sex with dogs are consequences of the breakdown in Nigeria’s family unit.

Recently, social media has been agog with videos of Nigerian girls having sexual intercourse with dogs. Amid public criticism, another video of a girl having sexual intercourse with a dog has emerged.

The new footage is coming amid the trend of ladies sleeping with animals for N1.5m in Lekki area of Lagos. Previously, a teenager cum self-confessed bestiality enthusiast, Veegoddess, had come out to defend her action, insisting that she only slept with a dog and didn’t kill anybody.

The teenage TikTok user in Lagos went viral after claiming she slept with a dog for N1.7million, stressing that she did not think it was a big deal to have sexual relations with a dog.

“What is the big deal there? I only slept with a dog, I didn’t kill somebody. You, in your life, you have done worse and besides, have you seen N1.7million before? As if it’s a big deal. And mind you I’m not infected or anything. Stop dying on the matter, I’m enjoying the money,” she said.

The video post incited harsh criticism from the public, she recanted in another video. She said, “Guys I was just catching a cruise. I didn’t sleep with any dog. My boyfriend just broke up with me; help me to beg my boyfriend. I’m sorry for the video I made, it was purely cruise. (sic) “I don’t advise someone to be with animals. It was just a prank video, just cruise; you guys know Nigerians and cruise. I apologise to the public, please take my apology.” she said.

Subsequently, the Nigeria Police Force has launched a manhunt for the lady seen having a sexual romp with a dog in the viral TikTok video.

The Force Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, said posting videos of bestial sex online won’t be tolerated and vowed that the police would apprehend the lady in the viral video.

The situation requires more drastic action than threats of punitive measures from law enforcers.

The family is the building block of society and civilisation. But in the wake of its dissembling, the responsibilities of raising a child are borne by a single parent, often times, the mother.

There is no disputing the sacrifices borne by a woman for the sake of her loved ones. In many instances, she is a worker of marvels. She is a peasant farmer and market woman of the sidewalk. She is a maternal hero and guardian of fruits from errant male loins. She is the spangled artisan mining the dreams of those that would put her in fetters.

A woman is, then she must be free. Her total freedom, she would tell you, isn’t in the hands of any man. Nor is it some grant to be enjoyed from an abusive patriarchy.

But is sleeping with a dog for money another vista of freedom? Is it another manifestation of woke womanhood or fiery feminism?

Freedom without responsibility, corrupts, and a corrupt female in her youth, like her male peer, often manifests dangerously. For instance, she would never become into a model citizen of the society. She would never raise a proper family. She would most probably scoff at established norms of marriage and societal continuity. She would probably end up as a single mother. She would always be the defective parent raising a damaged child.

Sometimes, she is a victim of circumstance: rape, child marriage, errant hormones and what social media warriors now call ‘dead beat father or husband.’ Sometimes, she is a victim of her own demons; like the young ladies seen having sex with dogs in the vulgar videos.

Of course, there is nothing wrong in being strong and emancipated, whatever that intones; it’s the tenor of brute strength and infernal freedom that’s often cringe-worthy. If she chooses to be a brute, sex becomes a weapon to her, a frantic means to her ends. Where she misappropriates the ‘freedom’ of being ‘woke,’ feminism becomes an itch and a fetish to her, like bestial porn. She dulls down to an artificial set of sexual-political sensibilities to satisfy her lust for self-actualization in one breadth and her claims to being perpetually ‘oppressed.’

Like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists, and racists, such a female is an emotion junkie, infinitely handicapped yet propelled by her lust for unearned benefits. And when she seems truly deserving of sought benefits, gluttony and wile pervert her claims until her agitation attains the tenor of a ruckus, much like the ghastly cries of feral cats jostling for the largest chunk of carrion flesh.

In the wake of her failed marriage or romance, she celebrates on Facebook, her exit from what she terms the concentration camp of wedlock, and goes on to groom her daughters and sons to live in her jailhouse of notions.

If money isn’t her problem, she makes sure her wards lack nothing. Eventually, she raises them as glamour pets, ensuring her son grows up to become “nothing like his father.” So doing, she infects him with gall and womanly fits. She overcompensates and splurges to make them miss nothing about their ‘deadbeat father.’ That is hardly child-grooming, its called child maintenance; keeping a child like an expensive pet.

To the feminazis already wailing, yes, orthodox families may occasionally fail in child grooming; and this is not about the ‘prominent’ or ‘successful’ few, who “made it” despite being raised by a single mother. It’s about the many who grew up broken, partially or completely damaged, because they were denied a father – be it their mother or the absentee father’s doing.

It’s about the ‘woke,’ street-smart females sleeping with dogs for money within and outside the country. It is about the monsters of men and women, paying them to engage in bestial porn.

The creepy men and women holding the recording devices must be acknowledged for what they are: the greatest affliction to modern Nigeria.

The girls sleeping with dogs for money are products of dysfunctional families. Dysfunctional families result from an accentuation of poverty and the gender wars. Call it a manifestation of flawed choice, an ultimate human dilemma, precipitated by survival instinct in a blemished system. The gravest challenge to our hopes and dreams as a nation, beyond the messy political transactions prevalent at the grassroots and party arena, every minute and hour of every day, are the scandalous male vs female high dramas rocking the boats of Nigerian families and ravenous relationships.

More women suffer the scourge of tarnished awareness in a political high drama that renders their conscience, a pitiful hostage of its flesh envelope; “whose surges and secret murmurings they cannot stay or speed,” says Paglia.

The consequence is that instead of enjoying life naturally and as each situation peculiarly demands, the new Nigerian female reduces her own quality of life by seeing the world through an opportunistic and sexist filter, and not as it truly is.

This goads her to pursue, passionately, the perversion of certain established social and universal absolutes that had at one time or the other served as their moral and psychological compasses and comfort zones.

To be continued…

May 5, 2022