The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Sim the Tragic

    Sim the Tragic

    Some historical monikers are sane.  Others, by contemporary temper, absolutely insane.

    Alexander the Great (256-323 BC), formally Alexander III, King of Macedonia, was not only the greatest warrior-king in Greek history.  He also counts among the greatest military strategists of all time.  At 30, he had carved out an empire, which stretched from Greece to the western part of India’s north.

    If ‘Alexander the Great’ made sense, William the Bastard (1028-1087) made little sense – or did it? William the Conqueror – as he was otherwise called – sure earned his stripes: from the Duke of Normandy and eventually, the first Norman King of England.

    But not even all his accomplishments, in war and in peace, could blot the sobriquet: William the Bastard. His parents, Robert I, Duke of Normandy, and Herleva of Falaise, both in France, were unmarried.  Medieval temper was much starker and far less filtered!

    If we pivot from ancient wars to the eternal war that is the Rivers’ present politics, how would you brand the leading dramatis personae?  Riled godfather, ex-governor, and now explosive Abuja Minister, Nyesom Wike: Ezenwo the Brash?

    Or foxy but extremely annoying godson, with a gubernatorial term of one day, one trouble, Siminalayi Fubara: Sim the Tragic?  He goes on dabbing himself with petrol, knowing full well the Wike camp won’t blink from lighting up the fire that could burn him to ashes!

    By the way, given the political straws now posturing with Fubara, in his meaningless, yet explosive grandstanding, the Rivers six-month emergency debacle seems to have taught the governor nothing.

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    One is Daniel Bwala, a Tinubu loyalist from Borno State, North East – until the issue of a Muslim-Muslim ticket.  Pronto, he bailed from the winning boat, in a blind splash to the losers’ camp – whatever the northern Christian minority fears, which pushed the sheer panic of his jump.  But later, he would pivot back from the failed Atiku Abubakar camp, landing the visible sinecure of the presidential special adviser on Policy Communication.

    Does Bwala think his posturing, on Fubara’s account, would weigh more with the president – who seeks a second term – when the chips are down?  Bwala, who bailed out at the first hint of ticket danger, would weigh more than Wike – hate him or love him – who grinded everything out, when the danger was red-hot, though he belonged to the rival PDP?

    What hubris!  Folks who enjoy the grace of second chances should learn to be humble!

    The other is Ajibola Basiru, PhD, eminent lawyer and a former senator to boot, from Osun, South West!  Did former Senator Basiru think national visibility, as APC national scribe, equate a full grasp and control of local politics?

    Well, if he did, he has learnt nothing from his predecessor, Iyiola Omisore! Once-upon-a-time, Omisore enjoyed that exact klieg light.  But it proved utterly useless when issues returned to the realpolitik of Osun politics.  Pray, how did national secretary-emeritus help Omisore’s umpteenth bid for Osun governor 2026?

    Just as well Basiru is walking back his talk!  He and Bwala ought to have been far more circumspect.  If they cannot ease their principal’s bid for a second term, they should avoid empty noise that could make it tougher.

    But back to Rivers emergency rule and its plus-and-minus for embattled Governor Fubara.  Yes, it could have been worse: that emergency shunted him aside for six months. But it also preserved his battered office.  Had emergency rule not come as some contrived wonder-machine, which froze his looming impeachment, he would probably have been history by now.

    True, no one could have predicted the political thunder to follow that interregnum, including the Armageddon his famed “Ijaw youths” could have unleashed in the creeks.  But no meltdown could have restored him to office, except the courts fault his impeachment processes.  It’s the grim beauty of the rule of law!

    That is why it is tragic that the governor seems to have forgotten the baleful, shrieking, if impotent, voices that last pushed him to the brink, while he committed impeachable offences that would have made his political guillotining a breeze.  He seems repeating the same mistake, post-emergency.  Sad!

    Between Wike (warts and all) and Fubara (all guile, little gumption), is a huge study in contrasts.

    Wike’s politics, no matter its rough exterior, shows a sure-footed mastery of his environment, mastering the push before they come to the shove.  Outside politics qua politics, he has also proved a brilliant policy boss.  That is clear from his records, both as Rivers two-term governor, and as sitting FCT minister. 

    That’s why it’s such a laugh: the clearly sponsored media hysteria, calling for his sack – for what exactly?  For showing, so far, a near-complete mastery of his Rivers political environment: morphing from a strict PDP partisan to cobbling together a cross-party ensemble he dubs the Rivers Renewed Hope Ambassadors, for Tinubu’s reelection in 2027?  Or: for brilliantly delivering on his FCT ministerial mandate?

    Put Fubara on a similar podium and what do you see?  A 21st century Greek, Icarus, in the thunder of Rivers politics!  Daedalius had warned his son, Icarius, not to fly too close to the sun, lest the heat melt the wax that grafted his wings!  But in the euphoria of the moment, Icarus soared too high, got his wax melted, and plunged into the sea!

    The classic making of Sim the Tragic: this running, gripping, all-riveting tale of self-doom?  Yet, with a tad of political gumption, it just might have been doom avoidable!

    Still, is Wike’s own politics all that immaculate?  Hardly!  Wike seems deaf to the wails of the drum he beats, ever so violently.  As the drum wails, he beats it even more.  That the drum might tear hardly ever occurs to him! Wike’s hamartia? He never knows when to stop!  But until that drum tears, he holds the ace!

    Let Fubara change tack, if it’s not already too late.  He should renounce any pretence to a second term.  He has made enough bungle of his gubernatorial tour of thorns.

  • January 15: tragic cabal, lronsi mess

    January 15: tragic cabal, lronsi mess

    By Azubike Nass

    I am a seeker after facts in historical matters. I have read, and continue to read books and commentaries on the events of January 1966; and the developments that followed, leading to the 30 months civil war of 1967-1970.

    I have also sought and had personal discussions with three of the active planners and participants in that coup, asking frank and uncomfortable questions. I have tried to keep aside emotions and sentiments, to confront the naked facts.

    The fact is that about 90% of the original planners of that coup were officers of Igbo extraction. Among the prominent victims of the coup included: Sir Ahmadu Bello (Premier of Northern Region), Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola (Premier of Western Region), Sir Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa (Prime Minister),  Brigadier Samuel Adesujo Ademulegun (Commander, 1 Brigade Kaduna); Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari (Commander, 2 Brigade Lagos); Col. Raphael Shodeinde (Commandant NDA, Kaduna).

    The others were Lt-Cols James Pam, Kur Mohammed, Abogo Legema and Arthur Unegbe.  Unegbe was the Quartermaster-General: an Igbo who was shot when the coup was already on.  Some of the plotters got to him and demanded more arms and ammo from the arms store.  He got shot when he attempted to notify Ironsi on the phone, of what was happening). 

    Though there were other lesser known victims, the officers that led the teams that executed the killings were virtually all of Igbo extraction.

    Who were Nigeria’s Five Majors — the title of a book, by Ben Gbulie — that originally hatched the 15 January 1966 coup? Majors Chukwuma Nzeogwu,  Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Donald Okafor, Chris Anuforo and Humphrey Chukwuka.  They were all of Igbo extraction. 

    There were other officers, though, mostly captains and lieutenants.  They included Capts Ben Gbulie and Emmanuel Nwobosi — both again, Igbo.

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    But there were also Capt. Adewale Ademoyega: a Yoruba and signal officer based in Lagos, who was mostly communicating the timing with the groups in Lagos, Ibadan and Kaduna, and some others.

    There were yet some other coup participants who were not really part of the planning, such as Lt Harris Eghagha: an Urhobo native, who had turned out for a programmed training exercise in the Nigerian Army Training School, Jaji, Kaduna, only to discover that Major Nzeogwu and other Igbo officers had turned it into a coup plot; and had secured live ammo.

    He was briefed on the spot and asked to declare his position. He paused for a moment and declared to go along. It was obvious he would be eliminated if he did otherwise.

    After any failed coup, there would be multiple arrests, which would include identified plotters and any officer whose movement at that time could attract suspicion, whether you travelled on official pass, or you attended a night party somewhere. The Special Investigating Panel (SIP) would sift through the arrested people and decide who to free and who to indict to face trial for what offence. That’s the normal thing.

    From this perspective, the number of officers arrested and detained for the coup may not be a good indication of those actually involved in the coup. And in the January 1966 coup, the benefitting Head of State, Major-Gen Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, flatly ignored persistent calls to investigate and try the coup plotters, in accordance with standard military law.

    Was it an Igbo coup? Semantics of language may come in here, but certain facts remain sacred.

    The Igbos as an ethnic group never sat down in a meeting or had any consensus to plan a coup. The coup, which was very bloody, was a military boys’ affair.  But the killings were skewed against other regions and ethnic groups. Every military officer planning a coup knows the consequences of failure.

    The coup had failed and was causing much anger and bitterness among those who bore the brunt of the killings. And Ironsi, who became a beneficiary of the coup, flatly ignored all calls to try the coup plotters, as if he didn’t even want them to lose their ranks and commission. 

    He acted as if they were welcome revolutionaries who had committed no serious crime. He had hawkish Igbo advisers, in control of national authority, preening in their Igbo exceptionalism.

    Besides, Ironsi was enjoying the glamour of unexpectedly acquiring national authority.  Clannish advice from his close Igbo aides drummed into his head that it was his golden turn.

    In the heat of the explosive anger, created by the actions and inactions of the Ironsi military government, more related actions were adding salt to the injuries of those adversely affected.

    Just one sample: in the annual Army promotion exercise of April 1966, out of 21 officers promoted from Major to Lt-Colonel, 18 were Igbo-speaking.  Only three were non-Igbo. That was the height of insensitivity to the sensibilities of other members of the Nigerian space. The fuse of the time bomb was burning fast.  Soon, it exploded in catastrophe — a catastrophe that consumed Ironsi’s military government with no remedy.

    I remain blunt and fearless in condemnation of such stupid and insensitive actions of the past. I remain convinced that if one refuses to learn from past stupid actions, he/she would remain incapable of making correction and will be condemned to cycles of disaster, always pointing accusing fingers elsewhere, and blaming the gods for misfortunes, when the gods are really not to blame.

    It’s from this perspective that I repeatedly condemn the shenanigans of some of our Igbo leaders on the matter of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

    He and his group have committed every imaginable form of bestial criminality and hate violence, in the name of fighting to re-establish the dead and decayed Biafra Republic, which was a misery better forgotten.

    It has been an explosive cocktail: wild claims of marginalisation without any rigour of verifiable evidence to prove the case. Endless propaganda and hate against other members of the Nigerian space. No apology, no remorse, no repentance. Clearly curting disaster in many ways!

    I have told some of my Igbo close friends that if President Tinubu ever made the mistake of releasing Nnamdi Kanu — just like that — he would have faced a negative whiplash from the military and other law-enforcement institutions; just as there would be a furious reaction from the North, who were the primary victims of Kanu’s hate propaganda and gun attacks.

    I remain unapologetically stubborn to my conviction on this matter. I fear no evil. “Death is a necessary end which will come when it will”.

    •Azubike Nass, Enugu, 19 January 2026.

  • U.S. felon, global outlaw

    U.S. felon, global outlaw

    US felon, global outlaw?  A grim logic, isn’t that? So, why is the globe acting surprised? 

    Whatever the utterly insecure US President, Donald Trump, tries with the world — thus making it far less safe — he had practised (and gone away with) in his own country. Will he get away with global outlawry?  That is still in the womb of time!

    Back to his American felony.  On 30 May 2024, Trump earned due conviction for 34 felonies in his native New York.  Instead of the state tossing him inside the can, though an ex-president, all he got was a confetti of votes to return to the White House.

    In that theatre of the absurd, the US court that should sentence for felony duly proven, solemnly pronounced its own impotence.  After being voted president though a proven felon, the court neutered its power to punish, after due process.

    The final verdict?  “Unconditional discharge” — to commit more felonies?  That was 10 January 2025, after Trump’s triumph in the November 2024 presidential election.

    Four years hitherto — 6 January 2021 — he had spat and shat on the holiest shrine of American democracy.  That day, to reverse his defeat by Joe Biden in November 2020, he had marshalled his thugs to sack the US Capitol.

    But by institutional self-loathing and partisan brinksmanship, the Republican segment of the US Senate gave Trump a slap on the wrist, though the House of Representatives did own duty to duly impeach.

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    The moral of this judicial-legislative abandonment: if Trump’s own country fled  from bringing the felon to heel — if not for out-and-out criminality, then for violent political chaos — what global order, which at best runs on conventions, can stop Trump from becoming a preening, dashing, unfazed global outlaw, unleashing US fearsome might to hide his personal shame and sate his sundry insecurities?

    That’s the Trump global tragedy playing out!  US felon, global outlaw!

    On 25 September 2025 when Trump went to the United Nations General Assembly to ridicule everyone (see “Nebuchadnezzar”, 30 September 2025), this column dismissed the US president as the 21st century Nebuchadnezzar, doomed to falling on his sword, at the zenith of his hubris, just as the Babylonian original (reigned: 605 BC-562 BC).

    But that image is a tad too restrictive.  Nebuchadnezzar seems even truer of the American electorate.  If a fella had sacked your parliament — the very sacred symbol of your republicanism, your liberty and your democracy — and was also duly convicted by your court — what sort of hubris would make you pick him as your president?

    The haunting words of Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic Party opponent, still hang eerily in the air, an eternal rebuke, long after the deed had been done!

    “On day one, if elected,” Vice President Harris had warned, “Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list … Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him.  People he calls ‘the enemy from within’.  This is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make you better.  This is someone,” she insisted, “who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power”!

    Talk of Kamala hitting the bull’s eye, home and abroad!  What prescience!

    At home, Trump’s paramilitary US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with icy terror, wields raw power to maul, crush or even kill, particularly that Trumpian scum, called “immigrants”. 

    Incidentally, documented or not, Trump and fellow hypocrites and xenophobes, once belonged to this class, being settlers from Europe and elsewhere.  Only the native Indians were no immigrants.  They owned the land.  But those had been near-blotted out by frontier savages, the western world imposed on their native horizon.

    Then, the US president’s flagrant misuse of the National Guard, against Democratic states he dubs “enemies”, though he has been forced to retreat in some states, after being blocked by the courts.

    But either by ICE terror or National Guard muscling, the “immigrant” scum aren’t the only victims.  Collateral damage seeps into the Trump racial blue bloods, as the Minneapolis woman in Minnesota, Rennee Nicol Good, fatally shot by an ICE agent. She was neither Latino nor Black, nor was she an “immigrant”!  The rich also cry?

    Still, it’s on the global plain that Trump’s mail-fisted outlawry has been most rankling in its triumphalism.

    After his initial rhapsody over seizing Canada as America’s 51st state, punching Mexico hollow with US trade tariffs and unilaterally renaming Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America — a move the world ignored with quiet scorn — Trump made the most brazen of his move, thus far, at the turn of 2026.

    On January 3, he announced that his goons had captured and kidnapped Venezuela President, Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. In a fit that hovers between triumphalist glee and outright power lunacy, the US President, a few days later, even proclaimed himself “Acting President of Venezuela”, on his Truth Social platform, to a roar of applause from his MAGA fanatics!

    Though he code-named that invasion “Operation Absolute Resolve”, it’s Trump’s own roguish “Operation Shock and Awe” — a parody of President George W. Bush’s 22 March-9 April 2003 Iraq II campaign, which not only nabbed Iraqi strongman, Saddam Hussein, but eventually hanged him on a Sallah day!

    That Iraq invasion — crooked, to be sure, but glossed by the legal technicality of a UN Security Council approval — stole the Iraqi soul.  But it also unleashed ISIS terror on the globe.  What further chaos will the Venezuela invasion and Maduro capture unleash on the Americas?

    Flush from this roguish victory — and his insane lusting after Venezuela’s oil — Trump has upped his ante to grab Greenland, a frigid, autonomous region of Denmark,  whether “they like it or not!”  Indeed, such is the gripping power lunacy, sweet and delirious, that Randy Fine, a Republican member of the House of Representatives has drafted a bill to cover the proposed Trump steal! 

    Just imagine: the US House of Representatives turning House of Representathieves over Greenland!  Still, there’s a counter-Bill by a Democratic member, aside a bi-partisan Senate bill.  Trump times!

    A menacing, self-destruct image looms: a mad dog mauls foes, no big deal. But when it mauls its owner?  That’s the Trump misadventure into Greenland! That land is under NATO protection, which guarantor-in-chief is Trump’s America!  That he’s threatening his Europe opposers on Greenland, with hefty tariffs, is a classic bandit’s bay!

    Much eerier: Trump’s global outlawry is flaring in 2026 — the year America clocks 250 years!  At 250 years, the British Empire, hitherto the ruthless global lord of the manor, started melting.  So did the Ottoman Empire, which peaked at 250.

    By this year too, trust in US public institutions will sink below 20%. That fatal threshold (19% trust in public institutions), triggered the fall of the old Soviet Empire in 1991.

    So, deja vu America at 250?  We’ll see!  That obtuse Trump can’t grasp the force of history is a red flag.  So, are a FIFA President gifting Trump — a war monger — global football’s peace tinsel, and Maria Corina Machado, giving Trump her Nobel Peace Prize he’ll never own, in a fit of self-loathing!  Both are a false lull, in a historical tempest.

    But one thing is clear: the American century and days of blind global bullying is ebbing! 

    Nigeria — and other smart nations — should brace up for a post-American epoch.

    Happy new year, folks!  It’s nice to be back!

  • Life for an ‘international terrorist’

    Life for an ‘international terrorist’

    An uncouth child, untrained and untrainable, is fated to a harsh tutorial outside — Yoruba saying.

    It was “Six for the PM” (September 9): Simon Ekpa’s terrorism conviction in Finland.  Now, it’s “Life for an ‘international terrorist’”:Nnamdi Kanu’s life jail for terrorism, on November 20.

    As Ekpa’s Finland canning, it’s Nigeria’s renunciation of atavistic savagery, veiled as self-determination.  Any polity, ruled by law, logic and decency, has no other way.

    So, if some South East elite still huff and puff; and the ignorant hoi polloi spewing emotive rubbish — both on X and allied social media — can’t still see the clear folly of terror tactics clothed as “self determination”, then the cruel joke is on them.

    Even if the rest of Nigeria, victims of Kanu’s violent ethnic chauvinism, decide to “move on” (and that is far from certain!), what of his fellow Igbo: from Orsu, Ozubulu, Agulu, Orlu, Okigwe and Arondizuogu, hacked and slain by Kanu and his IPOB/ESN terrorists?

    Their lives are worth nothing, so long as Kanu and co-criminals claim they shed their blood to water a neo-Biafra — a neo-Biafra where the Igbo, under whatever guise, are free to slaughter fellow Igbo? How long will such an enclave even last, before sinking in its own violent contradictions?

    Besides, the South East elite should explain: how a rogue Eastern Security Network, busy devouring its own, thrived; and the Ebube Agu (Igbo for “Fear/aura/glory of a lion”) hardly made it beyond the conception slate, despite the opening salvo of ex-Ebonyi Governor, David Umahi?

    Indeed, Ebube Agu, a regional security bloc, was to the South East, what Amotekun (Yoruba for Leopard, but formally: the Western Nigeria Security Network) is to the South West; just as the numerous Joint Civilian Task Force (JCTF) cadres are to the North — already integrated into that region’s anti-terrorism/banditry security buffer.

    So, the South East orchestrated anguish, loud and tactless, echoes the opening quote of this piece: a child with no home training is yoked to a shattering lesson outside. 

    That essentially is the Kanu tragedy: loud, rude, uncouth, cocky and insufferable!  He just birthed where he belongs.  Good riddance!

    So, those claiming his jailing is tantamount to jailing the entire Igbo are entitled to their self-deceit. They should walk their talk, though: join him in the slammer!

    Besides, has it ever happened anywhere: that a docked person would bawl at his trial judge: “Omotoso, show me the law!”? — and all that from what has turned out to be no more than combative ignorance?  In the open court too!  What heresy!

    Now if after, the South East elite still deign to muster such indignation at a criminal getting his glaring desert, they must accept they have been horrible “parents”, that unleashed such a horrible — nay, evil! — “child”, on their entire Nigerian “neighbours”. 

    Instead of this empty blather and bluster, they should show contrition and — pronto — apologize to other Nigerians!

    Indeed, for an elite ever eager to clamber on tales of victimhood, they show pretty little sensitivity on how, by their reckless jibes, they routinely bruise others.

    Which takes the matter to another post-jail campaign: instant mercy and pardon — an unthinking call, after the illogical pre-trial thunder: “Release Kanu unconditionally!” Isn’t it sheer lunacy to do exactly the same thing, yet expect a different result?

    Even if you were to credibly beg for Kanu, where would you begin?

    The courts whose sedate practitioners he throatily traduced, in his empty attempt to subdue?  Remember these four Justices: Ahmed Mohammed, John Tsoho, Binta Nyako and James Omotoso, all sitting as justices of the Federal High Court, Abuja?

    Kanu bludgeoned three out of the four to recuse themselves.  Justice Omotoso, that eventually convicted him, was patient and long-suffering to defeat Kanu’s stalling tactics.  Even then, he cursed, yelled and growled at the judge like some mad dog! 

    Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN, Kanu’s prosecutor-in-chief?  He insulted him twice  — first, with Justice Nyako; and after with Justice Omotoso, after Kanu’s unruly conduct earned him expulsion from the courtroom on judgment day! 

    Yet, the same court, peopled by same jurists, will handle his appeal, after his crude boast that no court could convict him!

    The security agents that he goaded his goons, via his insane EndSARS broadcasts in 2020, to go slaughter during the EndSARS riots? 

    The sitting President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose alleged assets he told his IPOB thugs in Lagos to go raze, or possibly kill him if they could get him? 

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    The late President Muhammadu Buhari, a proud son of the North who, when ill, Kanu’s evil tongue floated the morbid lie that he had “died”; and that the “clone” that made it back as President was some Jubril of Sudan?

    Pastor Enoch Adeboye, of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), who he cursed, dubbed his church a “Yoruba church” and  every Igbo that worshipped there, an “imbecile”?

    Will Lagos ever forget the evil of the atavistic savage that incited an IPOB mob to set on fire its historic monuments and landmarks, aside razing a new fleet of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) buses — among other investments Lagos made to ease life for his fellow Igbo and other ethnics in the Lagos cosmopolis?

    Will the Igbo ever tolerate a non-Igbo savage, direct his co-savages to go on an arson spree, on the Igbo cherished landmarks, in the Igbo homestead?  That’s what Kanu did to Lagos — and jail is where he eternally belongs!

    Indeed, which section of Nigeria has Kanu not profaned?  Where will this so-called “political solution” issue from — his rogue exceptionalism that because he is Igbo, and he’s fighting for Biafra, so he can destroy others’ lives and livelihoods, and walk free?

    How would that even sound with victims in Kanu’s Igbo homeland: Miracle Nwobodo, Dr. Chike Akunyili, medic and spouse of the late but impactful Dora Akunyili, and the Army couple, Gloria Matthew and her beau, Linus Musa Audu, humiliated, beheaded and desecrated by IPOB, among thousands of nameless others?  And Ahmed Gulak, will Adamawa ever forget?

    Again, those who continue to mouth “injustice against Kanu” can enjoy their wilful lies.  But even his lawyers knew he had absolutely no defence for his terrorist acts — so did Kanu himself.  Thus, their stalling tactics that dragged the case for 10 years.

    Fittingly on judgment day, his loose tongue nailed him — and spectacularly so.  Indeed, had Justice Omotoso handed down the death penalty, that tongue would have handed the authorities a long rope to hang the condemned.

    All of a sudden, the scriptures become so haunting: it’s the nonsense you spew that nails you, not the chaff you eat! The blood of his IPOB/ESN victims cried for justice –and secured judgment.

    Let the lifer endure his life jail.  But that’s even his least worries.  The blood of his terror victims cry, will taunt him and challenge him for the rest of his life.  It’s hard, lonely, miserable road to travel!

  • No, to military hauteur

    No, to military hauteur

    The Wike-Yerima face-off, over some Abuja plot of land, has again brought to the fore the vexed issue of military hauteur — that complex that spews and acts as though the civil majority are no more than contemptible “bloody civilians”!

    Any democracy worth its name must discount with such a temper without much ado. The military caste is honourable. Officers and soldiers should be loved and admired for their sacrifice to the state.  But that’s only when they too revere the civil authority.

    On that, there can be no quibbling — especially for Nigeria, that has had more than its fair share of ruinous military rule.

    Growing up on Lagos Island, if you drove against the traffic, the neighbourhood kids would flood in from nowhere and bawl: “one way!” “one way!”  Shame-faced you’d turn back — an adult being heckled by children before doing what was right!

    But then came soldiers — and they would drive against the traffic as they well damn liked!  With foreboding looks and guns at the ready, which child would shout them down with “one way!”?

    It was the beginning of the best-forgotten era of military rule.  Riding roughshod over such basic traffic mores began a comprehensive assault on basic urban decency — and they went on to shred the societal moral fabric — just because they wore a uniform, and could cork a gun!

    It was, Lady Macbeth-speak, the “eye of childhood that fears the painted devil”!  But unlike those child eyes in Shakespeare’s historical fiction of old Scotland, reasonable Nigerians have developed adult glares, very scornful of military hubris, with or without the threat of cocked guns!

    Indeed, arrogant military rule, at its tragic zenith, bred a band that figured it could cancel Basorun MKO Abiola’s June 12, 1993, presidential mandate, and live happily ever after!  It also bred another that pushed his martial sole right to sleaze, at the risk of hot death to fellow thieves!  Both grand delusions ended in grief!

    So, those military top brass, active or retired, serenading the martial hauteur of the young Navy Lt. A. M. Yerima, against Nyesom Wike, the FCT minister, miss the point. 

    Such conceit, laced with sinister threat and force, led their command ancestors astray, brought the military into disrepute and brought our dear country, Nigeria, to a sorry pass.  Such should never be repeated — or, if they are, instantly slammed.

    But back to the Wike-Yerima confrontation — a parallel of two riveting paradoxes: Yerima looked decent for a bad cause.  Wike appeared gross for a good cause! 

    Beyond those contrasting optics — for which not a few have boisterously nailed Wike — hardly any other thing can justify Lt.  Yerima!  Now, let’s break it down.

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    Navy Lt. Yerima looked every inch the golden soldier boy: cool, calm, polished and unruffled in the eye of a ministerial storm — this one, the ever brash Hurricane Wike, which violent bursts and fiery puffs know no end, until it has uprooted all in its sight!

    Yerima was supposedly the younger one.  Yet, he showed admirable composure, even as the far older Wike blew his tops to assert his ministerial authority.  Aside moving a sinister inch closer to the fuming minister, as things got to a head, hardly anyone can fault Yerima’s self-control.  Wike was the diametric opposite on all counts.

    Still, why would a fine, young military officer exercise such martial refinement, in a civil space, standing guard over a disputed piece of land?  That’s the critical question.

    A lawyer friend, more anti-Wike than he’s pro-Yerima, swore that were he on the same spot, as the retired Navy chief alleged to own the land, he would do “anything” to safeguard his land. He even dived into legal “proofs” to buttress his point. Fair enough!

    But what if, as emerging information seems to show, the Navy chief’s claim to the land could be tenuous?  There are claims that the original owners acquired the land on the proviso that it would be developed into a park — the purpose for which the area was designated — not residential houses.

    This claim puts forth two points.  One: that the ex-Navy chief is a third-party claimant. And two: that he might have deviated from the FCT original plan for the area.  These points, if true, point at the age-old abuse of power and privilege, which often brings the otherwise cherished military caste into civil scorn.

    In any case, if the naval top gun has licit claim to the property, why cordon it off — a civil space — with a military truck, post a Navy lieutenant (an equivalent of an Army captain) there on guard duty, leading other lower ranks, guns a-popping? 

    To intimidate and scare off civil authority?  Are martial laws then superior to civil laws, in the civil space?  If so, can martial laws overwhelm general civil laws in a democracy?

    Except all these questions are answered in the affirmative, Navy Lt. Yerima, his guards and whoever posted them there, stand on slippery grounds.  Indeed, for the honour and dignity of the military, it would have been better for whoever that sent them there to have engaged thugs, on what appears a clearly illegal guard duty!

    That you can’t deploy licit guards, to an illicit space, trumps whatever might have been the ugly optics of Minister Wike’s rather brash intervention.

    Yes, not a few have weighed in with an emotive appeal to fear. What if the young naval officer had flipped in the passion of the moment, and Wike had become history?

    Yes, that would have been a catastrophe.  But it still would have showed the brazen illegality of trigger-happy fingers, which would still have attracted the direst lawful consequences. 

    That further reinforces the point: that the state gives you lawful arms doesn’t canonize you as gloried outlaws in uniform, free to kill fellow citizens, without question!  So long for that ad baculum appeal to fear!

    But that’s even at one level.  The other level, on citizen-to-citizen direct comparison, makes the military conceit clearer — and starker (read uglier).

    Citizen Wike, after his basic education (like the rest of the civil population) paid his way through university and Law School, even if the Nigerian state also subsidizes tertiary education.  Whatever he had after, he sweated hard to acquire.

    Citizen Yerima, on the other hand (as the rest of his military class), got his training absolutely free.  Any post-Defence Academy training, home or abroad, the state also fully bears.  His smart uniform, the fierce arms and ammo he carries, come courtesy of the state, preparing him for the grim duty of defending the state.

    So, how can such a pampered and beloved son of the state come challenging and obstructing (with state arms!) the Minister from doing the FCT work, which the President — that soldier’s commander-in-chief — has entrusted to the minister, as his FCT personal representative? Arrant indiscipline!

    Isn’t that rash power — wherever Lt. Yerima’s “orders” had come from — challenging a higher authority, especially in a civil space?  If the chips are down, can this act of martial bravado stand up to legal scrutiny?  This is a country of law. That’s the young officer’s cross right now.

    Still, beyond who is wrong or who is right, a civil state thrives on cherishing its military: the state is incomplete without its “teeth”.  But the military too have no choice: it must subject itself to civil order.  An unhinged military is a recipe for chaos.

    From Nigeria’s painful experience, any other way is anarchy.

  • Madmen and specialists

    Madmen and specialists

    America’s “mad men”, that shun the mental rigour to analyze, and loathe the humble intellect to appreciate Nigeria’s grim security challenges, are now “specialists” on that grave matter! 

    They are in such a fizz; so tizzy with empty pride that goes before a fall. They christen themselves rogue crusaders — galloping into town (guns a-blazing, crowed US President Donald Trump!) — to save Nigerian Christians from “genocide”!

    Yet, President Trump and his simplistic band don’t know jack — to use that American idiom — about the problem.  If that wasn’t so tragic, it would have been so comic!

    But then, thank God for Prof. Wole Soyinka, our Nobel laureate, for his prescience.  He had it all figured out in 1971.  That year, he had published Madmen and Specialists, an absurdist play that beamed the strains of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), reflecting the mental health collapse of the Beros, army medic father and son. 

    The medic father was crazy.  The medic son too was unhinged.  Enter, the “mad” father, and his “specialist” son — a tale of a lunatic son, “treating” a lunatic father!

    That was eons before the United States fell under the unthinking spell of Trump and his MAGA plebs.  But that Soyinka play, among the darkest in his rich repertoire, could well symbolize, on the globe, America’s crazy electoral choice of November 2024. 

    The latest manifestation of that is Trump’s vile threat against Nigeria.  Indeed, the grim humour in Madmen and Specialists, linked to America’s present global tomfoolery — hare-brained tariffs and wanton war threats against others — is grim life imitating art! 

    Imagine Ted Cruz and co! In fashionable ignorance, they work up a storm over a fictive “Christian genocide in Nigeria” on X, worked themselves into an evil lather, confusing and confounding other global simpletons, and feeling hip about it all!

    And the ludicrous climax?  Trump himself threatening a US invasion of Nigeria, to bomb off genocidal Islamists — classic, unreflective Trump!  Just like that?  Ha!

    Still, if this band had been a tad humbler, they would have known the data, with which they huff and puff, are cooked-up duds by IPOB and its neo-Biafra secessionist lobbies, home and abroad; aside save our soul wailings from some Middle Belt priests.

    But just as “Fulani herdsmen” — as gloriously parroted by the Nigerian southern media during the Muhammadu Buhari years, with IPOB itself the triumphant hate cheerleader — IPOB doesn’t automatically equate the entire Igbo, any more than criminal herdsmen equate the entire Fulani.

    Indeed, the Igbo are self-endangered: with the “Christian” IPOB, brutally culling fellow “Christian” Igbo in the name of Biafra, but now calling in the “Christian” Trump and co — from words and deeds, the frenetic anti-Christ! — to come bomb out “Islamist” killers that hardly exist in the IPOB native South East!

    Funny?  No, gloomy! It’s of course a mighty scandal that the global crux of scholarship, with its Harvard’s, Stamford’s and MITs, would fall for such simplistic thinking!

    But it’s also true: the dominant western media, often in a huff, savour a simplistic — and lazy — classification of Nigeria as “the Muslim North and the Christian South”: as empty as Nigeria’s southern media, that claims the North’s majority is “Hausa-Fulani!” 

    Well, breaking news!  The Fulani vs Hausa banditry crisis has shown the Hausa are Hausa, and the Fulani are Fulani!  That same simplistic grouping — plastic, shallow, supercilious and condescending — would make a foreign power, like Trump’s war-mongering America, to rein in victims of banditry (overwhelmingly Muslim) as “proof” of Islamists massacring “Christians” in the “Muslim North”!

    To think that this fella just hankered after the Nobel Peace Prize!

    Still, to be clear: only in the Middle Belt (Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa); and in southern Kaduna (North West) can any claim of majority Christian victims, from mainly ancestral violence — less Islamist terror — be sustained. 

    The perishing Christians in that cruel and unfortunate theatre — gone on for too long! — crave our collective empathy and decisive action. In the hot grief of instant massacre, you could even excuse the wailing that the violence has religious undertones.

    That would explain the “Christian” reprisal attacks too: among the most recent ones,  the killings of northern Muslim pilgrims returning to Ikare, their Ondo State base, passing through Plateau State.  Though under-reported in comparison to Fulani attacks, reprisals from both sides are near-routine.

    The Trump call, as uninformed as it is, should therefore be a wake-up call for the Nigerian government to work harder to stop this menace.  Even then, the crisis is more ethnic, even more economic, than religious.  But it won’t be solved by some foreign army — “guns a-blazing” — invading the area, causing more catastrophe. 

    Rather, it would be by further federalizing the Nigerian security architecture. More effective “boots on the ground” — no, not of the Army but of state police and the new Forest Guards — would occupy vast un-policed spaces; and keep armed felons at bay.

    Only the North East has Islamist qua Islamist violence. But again, that is a Muslim majority belt.  Still, from the Buhari years, Boko Haram (which hitherto had turned entire local government areas into rogue caliphates) has been utterly degraded into hit-and-run opportunist terrorists. President Bola Tinubu has admirably built on the Buhari record these last two years.

    Read Also: Religion not Nigeria’s crisis, says Soyinka

    In this season of menacing over-simplification, conflating Shariah law with Islamist terror, could stoke fresh faith tension.  Let’s be clear: the problem with Shariah law is its misapplication on Christians; and its rogue “blasphemy” calls on practicing Muslims. 

    Now, these are abuses the Federal Government must curb, working closely with states that have Shariah law.  Judicial appeals already deal with “blasphemy”.  But that procedure, to protect the Shariah oppressed, must be made more robust.

    Nigeria is a federal state.  Though constitutionally secular, it’s in reality a multi-religious country.  Shariah is Islamic, not Islamist.  But the Trump noisy band mix up the two.

    The West clearly decries the so-called “African Big Man”, and just as well: corrupt, vain, evil, crooked, arrogant, unscrupulous, entitled, megalomaniac.  The Economist endlessly returns to that concept in its condescending African reports.  That harsh anti-African arrogance looms large in Trump’s “Christian genocide” in Nigeria.

    But if by his own power temper, the US President ticks all of these unflattering boxes, might we then welcome the American — read Western — Big Man?  Instructive!

    For the sake of whatever is left of America’s global prestige — beyond projecting blind, naked power that earns nothing but global scorn — the US president had better get accurate facts before blundering into other people’s problems.  For his reflex to bully others, our WS already dubs Trump the “White Idi Amin” — not unfairly!

    Nigeria should continue doing the needful: go on a global charm offensive to dispel these wilful and evil lies; and share the correct picture with the US government.  But more importantly: go on — and hard — with the war on terror!

    Still, the neo-Biafra mischief, behind it all, is another life imitating art.  Nnamdi Kanu, now awaiting judgment, once bragged he’d hang himself if he did not get Biafra within 18 months!  That appears a throwback to the tragic Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart!

  • Salami’s pound of flesh?

    Salami’s pound of flesh?

    Might Justice Isa Ayo Salami, revered jurist and retired President of the Court of Appeal (PCA), be seeking own pound of flesh from former President Goodluck Jonathan, now reportedly ogling a 2027 presidential run?

    Not likely.  For one, Justice Salami’s profile paints a rather grave jurist, with no less grave fealty to his calling.  That thumbs down any base predilection.

    For another, Justice Salami cuts the strict — almost sacred — quintessential jurist, the very diametric opposite of the frivolous. His rather limited tribe is the very antithesis of the flippant hugging publicity for validation, to veil a natural core of full emptiness.

    Still, Justice Salami’s sweeping dismissal of Dr. Jonathan’s yearning for a presidential encore, as far as the law goes, echoes a past political tango between the two.

    The one, the embattled President of the Court of Appeal, conscientiously doing his job, let the heavens fall!  He resisted judicial-executive bullying and he triumphed.

    The other, a rather naive — or wilful? — President of the Federal Republic, that couldn’t stomach stolen mandates judicially retrieved from his ruling PDP; and so, resorted to strong arm tactics, that eventually blew in his face.

    More, however, on all of that presently.  For now, what’s that Salami declaration, that must be causing quite some ache in the Jonathan camp?

    The headline, as reported by The Nation of October 31, is explicit: “Jonathan not eligible to contest in 2027, says Justice Salami.”  In the story, Justice Salami spoke with the finality of a judge that had examined forensic evidence, which he found immutable.

    Hear him: “It is painstakingly and dispassionately demonstrated abundantly to all and sundry that [the] ambition of Goodluck Jonathan to contest for office of the president, for the second term in the 2027 general election, is effectively and undoubtedly shot down by Sub-section (3) of Section 137 of the 1999 Constitution, as altered by the Fourth Alteration Act, No. 16 of 2018 which, to my mind is unassailable.”

    But should Jonathan even contest and win, Justice Salami’s legal prognosis is even direr: “In the event of his winning the election, he will be conveniently removed by the Court of Appeal in an election petition to that court, which removal will be undoubtedly affirmed by the Supreme Court on the ground that his total tenure would have exceeded the eight years maximum tenure.”

    That eerily echoes how Justice Salami’s Court of Appeal — then serving as the final court on gubernatorial election disputes — had removed PDP governors that, in 2007, brazenly stole the vote, in Edo, in Ondo, in Ekiti and in Osun: the last two after more than three years, during which the thieving governors usurped power sans a mandate. 

    Justice Salami himself chaired the final panel that tossed out Engr. Segun Oni in Ekiti.

    So, what legal principle would fling Jonathan against the rock and send him crashing, even if he won the election, given that the amendment, which Justice Salami quotes, was made after Jonathan had left office?  Wouldn’t  the non-retroactive principle count for him?

    It’s that definitive difference between criminal and civil rights, rarely espoused in the public space by jurists. 

    “The Constitution protects criminal right against retroactive legislation … The Constitution,” he admitted, “frowns at or forbids retroactive enactments with regard to criminal act, omission and penalties, and not civil or constitutional infractions.”

    So, on the grund norm, the difference can’t be starker: “It is trite that an amendment to an enactment relates back to the date the principal enactment (legislation it is seeking to amend) came into force.  In other words, the date for the commencement of the Fourth Alteration Act, No. 16 of 2018 is the date the 1999 Constitution of the Federal of Nigeria itself, came into force.”

    To buttress his points, Justice Salami quoted Section 4, Sub-section (1) of the Interpretation Act, viz.: “A reference in an enactment shall, if the other enactment has been amended, be construed as a reference to the other enactment as amended.”

    Thus, Justice Salami declared, with measured finality: “Consequently, the hue and cry that there has been a retroactive legislation is most unjustifiable.”

    Now, Justice Salami is retired.  So, this could be a mere legal opinion, to which serving jurists could differ.  Yet, such is his sure-footed references that a fit may be seizing the Jonathan camp!

    Which is why Dr. Jonathan would naturally permit himself to wonder: is that jurist after me, for past wrongs done him when I was president?  Ha!

    In fairness to Dr. Jonathan, it was strictly a judicial affair, though triggered by the excitable politics of the moment.  Seeing the Salami Court of Appeal retrieving PDP stolen votes in the then Yoruba opposition bastion of the South West, Iyiola Omisore, then a senator, penned a controversial piece in The Guardian.

    That piece — more angry than sober — insinuated Justice Salami might be an Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) judicial mole, an insinuation not only reckless but almost equating an apostasy, given Justice Salami’s whistle-clean image.

    Read Also: Nigeria must unite against fabricated divisions — Alawuje

    Somehow, however, the late Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, came up with a “promotion” for the PCA: a seat on the Supreme Court, at which Justice Salami balked. 

    The CJN called it promotion. Justice Salami called it elimination — elimination from the Court of Appeal, because that court had retrieved stolen votes from the ruling PDP! 

    Omisore was clearly peeved, because the last retrieval was in Osun: the judicial sacking of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, for ACN’s Rauf Aregbesola, the rightful winner of the 2007 election — but three-and-a-half years after, in November 2010!

    After CJN Katsina-Alu found Justice Salami would not be bullied, his deus-ex-machina, staged at the National Judicial Council (NJC) absurd theatre, was a sudden suspension from office, after an alleged misdemeanour, by Salami. 

    The trigger was another Sokoto gubernatorial judicial challenge.  In the ensuing exchange, CJN claimed PCA had “lied” against him.  That stalemate lasted between August 2011 and May 2013. 

    Dr. Jonathan’s role was how his government hurried to affirm Salami’s “suspension”, but tarried to obey his reinstatement, by the same NJC, after it found the jurist did no wrong. 

    But by then, CJN Katsina-Alu had retired, and new CJN Dahiru Musdapher crested Nigeria’s judicial system.  PCA Salami statutorily retired, with his honour intact, on 15 October 2013.

    Which is why Jonathan would wonder: is Salami after me?  Again, not likely; though the mind of the guilty, who are always afraid (to filch the title of one of James Hadley Chase’s crime fiction thriller novels), could run that way.

    But whatever the jurist’s motive by his legal opinion, it could well help to jar Jonathan back into the stark reality, from his reported latest dreamy fixation.

    Smell the coffee: the PDP, that staged the 2007 vote heist, is in disarray.  The ADC door is slammed shut — isn’t ADC an Atiku Abubakar special purpose vehicle (SPV)? The old South East/South-South alliance, that served Jonathan rather well, is all but vanished.  Now, Salami has added dreary tales on the legal front!

    Old Greek philosopher, Heraclitus was right: you can’t step in the same driver twice!  So, on what basis might Jonathan want to run?  Well, it’s a democracy!

  • Cowardice on four feet

    Cowardice on four feet

    Just as well: it ended a damp squib — Omoyele Sowore’s much touted rally to willy-nilly spring Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB leader, on trial for grave terrorism charges.

    Just as well, too: Kanu announced the start of his defence, never mind his soap opera stunts — and taunts.  The trial court has ordered, and his defence he must enter.

    Both developments reinforce a critical canon of civil society: that the majesty of due process can never be halted by cynical agitations — or how else do you describe the Sowore rascality of October 20, pushing the democratic right to citizen protest, to stall the sacred principle of due process: the hallowed backbone of any democracy?

    Still, Shakespeare was right: it was all “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”! A juvenile scheme to stall a court process was never more asinine!

    Indeed, Kanu’s cowardice, on four feet, is never clearer!  No less clear is his arch-delusion — and his proxies’ — that their braggadocio could indeed stop a criminal trial.

    Simon Ekpa, already nestling in jail in Finland, on his judicial day of reckoning, blabbed he was a content creator — a content creation that claimed lives and hewed limbs, of prominent Igbo folks as Dr. Chike Akunyili, the late Dora Akunyili’s husband; and non-Igbo, as Adamawa’s Ahmed Gulak!  Ekpa got his due.

    Kanu too has pushed his glorious right to agitation. Perhaps the Nigerian court would find for him, though the Finland court trashed Ekpa’s fib of content creation? 

    So, those busy hailing his juvenile showmanship in the dock, after he had sacked his lawyers, had better warn him he might just be nailing himself. The severe beauty of the judicial process is real.  It’s no Nollywood movie!

    Still, to float or to sink is a democratic choice.  But those first to scream and bawl and screech and screed “injustice!”; those who zealously boom “victimhood!” must apply their minds to the grim sequel of cynically skewing a court process; and the blatant injustice that grinds on the civil society, which apogee is that legal process.

    That’s what Kanu is up to. It’s in-your-face cowardice on four feet!  But when the sure outcome descends, let no one go berserk with cheap moans.

    After a long rigmarole that dates back to 2015, the present case is nearing a climax. The prosecution has closed its case, after calling witnesses; and tendering documents.

    But Kanu blustered with of a “no-case” submission, which the court threw out. To start his defence, Sowore hopped in with stunts, starry-eyed Kanu zealots  in tow.

    Clearly, Sowore and Kanu think the court is a place to catch a cruise, with thrilled plebs on the sidelines thundering with cheers.

    Take Sowore.  In fashionable lack of introspection, he’s nonpareil.  As if caught by a bug, he worked himself into a lather, drawing “Revolution Now!” graffiti all over the place!  It was his signal of an anarchist’s paradise! 

    But the late President Muhammadu Buhari would have none of that rubbish.  What followed was a period of arrest, detention and trial, until new President Bola Tinubu’s Justice Minister, Lateef Fagbemi, entered a nolle-prosequi.

    But not even that could wean Sowore off hare-brained agitations, hyped by brazen lies, spewed by his Sahara Reporters, now a virtual rag.

    During the so-called “Days of Rage”: the “End Bad Governance” protests, of 1-10 August 2024, Sowore and his “Take it Back” ensemble plunged into the fray!  Less than one year later, 7 April 2025, another “Take it Back” comedy, which drew little traction.

    From Sowore and co, it’s anarchy yesterday, anarchy today, anarchy forever.  With that troubled mindset, he romped into the Kanu matter.  Still, who in his right senses would follow Sowore in anything?  Apparently, though the “Free Kanu Now” protests proved a burlesque, many Kanu zealots still fell for it.  Gullible!

    Like Sowore, Kanu has not shown much sobriety, since his unfortunate saga broke on us.  Those blaming others for his prolonged trial are entitled to their crass pity party.  But even they know such a stance is a fraud.  Nnamdi Kanu is Alpha and Omega of his own fate.  No other one!  The facts are there for all to see.

    On 28 April 2017, he got bail on certain conditions: not to address any gathering, or grant a press interview. But he scorned his bail terms with a frenzy, abusing and traducing everyone, while those that stood surety for him looked askance.

    He claimed the Army invaded his space allegedly to kill him — maybe: and you can only be alive to fight any battle.  That would appear his prime reason for jumping bail.

    But does that also justify, from a safe haven abroad, the rabid launch of unvarnished sedition: raw hate against the non-Igbo: beasts, he claimed, in a zoo called Nigeria? 

    Does that justify the slaughter of fellow Igbo, caught in IPOB-decreed wrong places, during the so-called Monday sit-at-home strikes? Kanu himself — on record — bragged that anyone caught would be killed — a sickly threat the jailed Ekpa took to a grotesque new low from Finland!

    Read Also: Prioritise impact over building mega churches, Pastor Tobi urges Nigerian clerics

    Does that justify the mass slaughter in Orsu, in Imo, whose folks claim they had lost no less that 5, 000 kith-and-kin, over four years?  Their forest bore brazen criminality, allegedly by IPOB and the Eastern Security Network (ESN): rotten and smelly skulls and bones, and decayed remains of fellow Igbo!

    Does that justify the Kanu 2020 EndSARS pure lunacy: his deranged order to “burn down Lagos!” — and the high casualty figure of security agents on lawful duty?  Why, that Kanu mob even torched The Nation head office in Lagos!

    Does that justify Kanu’s endless uncourtly drama?  He lampooned the trial judge, Justice Binta Nyako, in the open court; and abused Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN — old enough to be his father, and, on all counts, far more accomplished — and all for what?  To press his democratic right to be rude, crude and uncouth?

    He would later apologize for his arrogant excitability, after the judge had stepped down.  But did he think that delinquency would halt the process?

    Then, the latter-day bombast of sacking his entire legal team, growling at his lawyers to “shut up! while I’m talking!”, the infantile “threat” to defend himself though he is no lawyer, and finally — on October 27 — his comic back-off from even that; and his claim (even after a definitive court ruling), that his “no case” submission was valid!  What hubris!

    Again, is he so delusional to think all this vile drama would make the case vanish?

    Let’s be very clear.  Nnamdi Kanu is no Obafemi Awolowo, whose 1962/63 treasonable felony trial, and the suspect way it was conducted by the then powers-that-be, are still a subject of controversy, some 62 and 63 years later.

    Nor is he MKO Abiola, who some misguided political soldiers thought they could cheat, annul his hard earned June 12, 1993 presidential election, and live happily ever after.  It took MKO’s martyrdom — a most costly act of cowardice from Abiola’s oppressors — to violently kick them out of their even costlier delusion. 

    They — too late — found out there’s no rest for the wicked!

    Whatever Nnamdi Kanu does in the dock is all on him. But he is charged with terrorism.  Those charges won’t just vanish, because he and his supporters are are playing games. And no evil can turn to good, because of the comedy of ethnic exceptionalism, as not a few are foolishly blabbing. 

    The law will take its course and heavens will not fall!  That’s due process: justice for Kanu, justice for the state, justice for the rest of us.  No more.  No less.

  • PDP: Old stab, new gash

    PDP: Old stab, new gash

    Idowu Akinlotan, the muse of “Palladium”, The Nation Sunday back-page column, near-prophetically declared the PDP won’t die: “Defections and wind of change”, October 19.  Maybe he is right?

    But except he used PDP as the opposition generic (as it was in the late 1960s/1970s, when the defunct Daily Times was so dominant it passed as a credible generic for other newspaper titles) — and not as PDP qua PDP — he just might be wrong.

    How?  Well, the Alliance for Democracy (AD), home to Yoruba pro-democracy heroes, and National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) veterans that wore a chip on their shoulders, as arch-conquerors of Sani Abacha and his political army goons, also died.  The AD died when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) delisted it on 6 February 2020

    Yet, in 1999, AD swept well-nigh everything there was to win in the South West, just as PDP, the special purpose vehicle (SPV) for the fleeing military, fearing a civil order puritanical backlash, made hay in other areas of Nigeria, save the defunct All People’s Party (APP, later, ANPP: All Nigeria People’s Party) redoubts mainly in the North.

    But Palladium was right on one score: even if PDP, as we know it now withers, the opposition won’t necessarily die with it. 

    There is a strain of AD in the present ruling APC (recall this chain: AD-Action Congress, AC,-Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN,-and finally, All Progressives Congress, APC). So, the PDP will also morph into some future opposition coalition.  The first stage of that is already manifested in the new SPV, African Democratic Congress (ADC).

    Therein then lies Paladium’s basic point: Nigeria would hardly succumb to a one-party rule, the hysteria the scattered opposition are now bleating, for cheap sympathy.  But with the havoc PDP had wreaked on Nigeria, may they long endure their blues!

    But even with its present bind, the opposition may yet, in future, clutch back at power.  That would power Nigeria’s democracy, as other global democracies that experience periodic power changes, by sheer voter power: for or against the ruling order.

    Yet, it’s joy, perverse and impish, seeing the PDP that, between 2001 and 2003, went berserk to kill the AD, now grouching, mourning and moaning, going through what seems the final dance of its own death!

    Indeed, it’s a classic comeuppance: the old cruel stabs PDP dealt the AD, and these no less ruthless gashes PDP is being dealt too! What goes around comes around!

    No less thrilling too: the two main orchestrators of the AD death and burial are very much alive, to see the PDP grand unravelling and chaotic meltdown.

    One is former President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007).  To, “by  force, by fire” seize a South West base, he must subvert and eventually kill the AD.

    The other is the martial Chief Olabode George, in their power heyday, Obasanjo’s dashing viceroy, in their joint scramble to “capture” Lagos!  Old man George did not retire as Navy Commodore for nothing!

    In that campaign was indeed mutual bliss: Bode George’s trophy as PDP National Vice-Chairman (South West) was nothing without the glorious vice of “capturing” — his very word! — his native Lagos!  Operation Capture Lagos was a task that must be done!

    For his imperial Abuja principal, seizing the crown jewel of Lagos was a worthwhile gambit: to consummate the grand surrender of his native South West which people, by the dire presidential results of 1999, didn’t exactly love him.  Indeed, they scorned him. 

    But the more the South West scorn, the harder Obasanjo’s will to crush!  PDP was the armoured vehicle.  George was the fearsome field commander.  AD was the nuisance to be squelched.  2003 was the year! 

    Mission accomplished?  Not quite! The South West did fall. But the crown jewel proved a bridge too far!  George would later tell Daily Champion (3 June 2025), though: “We also won Lagos but the result was manipulated.” Well, arch-delusion is democratic!

    Read Also: Jonathan’s ex-aide Dudafa dumps PDP for APC

    The same PDP opposition nemesis in 2003 is the same ruling party PDP nemesis now: Bola Tinubu, then the Governor of Lagos, now, the President of the Federal Republic!

    In closet, former President Obasanjo would wail for whatever befalls the PDP today, though the Owu chief makes a huge show of his divorce from partisan politics.

    Yes, the PDP might have been an Army Arrangement SPV, which was why Obasanjo, George, David Mark and other retired political soldiers, were very prominent in its ranks.  So, when folks wax poetic over some PDP founding ideals, Ripples just yawns! 

    The PDP “founding ideals” were nothing beyond power and how to grab it.  That was why it made a hash of governance for 16 ruinous years; and even a greater mess of the opposition, these last 10 years, since it lost power in 2015.

    Even then, ex-President Obasanjo knows the PDP, no matter how vacuous, would still have turned out far better, without the inglorious anti-democratic manouevres, under his watch, that further denuded the former ruling party. 

    But God has spared his life, to witness the mess he created, in its final putrescence!

    Chief George lacks such closet luxury: hence his dramatic collapse in public, at the defection of Peter Mbah, the Enugu governor and ex-PDP wonder boy of Wawa country. 

    To boot: Mbah reeled out his strides, in infrastructure and sundry achievements, in his PDP sack speech, to boisterous applause on October 14.  The next day, Bayelsa’s Duoye Diri drove another knife into the PDP spine. You can imagine the further meltdown in the George camp!

    The sheer anguish from the old man: “The governor” — meaning Mbah — “we all waded in … You’ll get whatever is due to the South East,” he told Channels TV, “But the rationale and emphasis he gave, it was like I was in a very long dream” — the same long dreams that the AD fellows felt in the PDP glory days!  All is turned gory now!

    But not even that would stop the old man from crunching sour grapes; and putting on a sheen the PDP never had — or would ever have — given its dire public record, both in power and in opposition. 

    “We’ll campaign, go to the field,” he blustered, “and tell Nigerians what the APC has done or failed to do to put smiles on their faces …”

    Pray, what glorious legacy might PDP campaign on?  Galloping corruption that nearly sunk Nigeria in 2015? 

    Or the eternal fumbling as opposition: that childish, silly penchant to lie, bare-faced, about its past, thinking folks are too fickle to remember its horrors-in-government?

    A very good luck on that!  With old habits, this PDP might just be beyond redemption!

    The opposition, victim of PDP’s use of brute power, is the same under which the PDP now grinds!  So, it too should know a future life in opposition is very possible!

    Which is why it must learn from the PDP bind.  That’s the only way it can, in future, avert the PDP current blight.

    Multiple governors swelling the APC ranks are good for optics.  But the real deal will be the ruling order domesticating the gains of its reforms in most, if not all, households. 

    On that, from the data coming up, it has the momentum. But it’s time to go for the kill, make the people happy, and kill off any opposition dream to milk subversive sympathy, in the run to 2027.  

  • Ariya Eko!

    Ariya Eko!

    “Metal on concrete jars my drink lobes …” 

    That opening phrase, by Sagoe in The Interpreters (published 1965), Wole Soyinka’s first novel, said it all.  Lagos of the 1960s: a vibrant night life grooving with Highlife, the king of urban music and popular culture!

    That metal chairs screeched on bare night club floors sent Sagoe grumbling about his hearing health!  Lagos nights and happy chaos!

    Sixty years later (1965-2025), Afrobeats might have upset Highlife; as twinkling new generation star, Modola, proved on the nite.  For the more nativist, Fuji could have also elbowed aside Juju — that 1930s musical creation of Tunde King.

    The eternal Lagos vibes — Ariya Eko! — propelled the MUSON mirth of October 5: the Ariya Eko Independence Music Festival, to toast Nigeria; and honour those that merit it.

    Its theme: Musical Journey of a Nation at 65. Venue: Shell Hall, MUSON Centre, Onikan.  Organizers: Evergreen Musical Company, the treasure the late Femi Esho left behind, flowering and booming still, under her father’s daughter, Bimbo Esho.

    Sponsors: the Lagos State Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture and Pastor Daniel Olukoya’s Mountain of Fire Ministries (MFM) extremely rich musical arm.

    The honourees: Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey (Ariya Eko Timeless Contribution), Lemi Abiodun Ghariokwu, aka “King of Album Sleeves” (Ariya Eko Graphics Gifted Hands), Evang. Funmi Aragbaiye, JP, (Ariya Eko Gospel Pioneers), Uncle Toye Ajagun (Ariya Eko Muscial Peacemaker), Alhaji Kolington Ayinla, aka Kebe nKwara (Ariya Eko Fuji Revolution Doyen), Yoruba poet, Ajobiwewe: Baba Sulaiman Ayilara Aremu (Ariya Eko Esa Oriki Resilience), D Guv’nor, Ken-Calebs Olumese (Ariya Eko Night Life Legend), Mainframe genius, Baba Tunde Kelani (Ariya Eko Distinguished Film Maker) and Admiral Dele Abiodun (Ariya Eko Juju Leaders).

    The others: Dr. Ola Balogun (Ariya Eko Pioneering Film Maker), Samba Queen Stella Ada Monye (Ariya Eko Cultural Values), Mrs. D. A. Fasoyin (Ariya Eko Evergreen Gospel Anthems), Tee Mac Omatshola Iseli (Ariya Eko Distinguished Flutist), King Jossy Friday (Ariya Eko Cultural Innovator), Laolu Akins (Ariya Eko Multi-Talented Producer), Queen Salawa Abeni Ibiwunmi (Ariya Eko Waka Transformer), Evangelist J. A. Adelakun (Ariya Eko Evergreen Gospel Anthems) and Premier Music (Ariya Eko Musician’s Backbone).

    The list speaks for itself: the showbiz spirit of the age. MFM’s Pastor Daniel Olukoya, duly represented, also announced N500, 000 for each honouree.

    Ebenezer Obey, with King Sunny Ade (KSA) drove the longest musical hegemony in Nigerian contemporary history.  Such durable quality!  Such classy fecundity!

    Admiral Dele Abiodun, with his Adawa Super hits, carved out a fair share of the Juju market, striking a rivalry of his own, with the late Emperor Pick Peters, but no less vibrant in their own rights!

    But Elder Femi Akinmade told Ripples during that memorable night, that many of the Juju hits had the muse, Ambrose Campbell (1919-2006), to thank.  Campbell, a Lagos-born Saro, founded the West African Rhythm Brothers (formed 1940s), UK’s first black band.

    Obey’s philosophical monster hit, “Eni Ri Nkan He”,  was a re-make of the Campbell original.  So was Dele Abiodun’s “It’s Time For Juju Music”.  Both, of course, added own contemporary flavours!

    Kolignton, with the late Ayinde Barrister — both of them Civil War veterans — were able Fuji pioneers. They transformed the Muslim “Were”, performed at dawn during Ramadan, into dance-floor commercial music. KWAM 1, Adewale Ayuba and co were the younger Turks that have deepened that heritage.

    Were Fuji to have a female gender, Salawa Abeni’s Waka would certainly be it!  Both had Islamic roots.  As Afro-Juju’s Sir Shina Peters (SSP) under Prince Adekunle, Salawa was a teen-wonder, that carved out own niche, in the Lagos music world.  Ariya Eko!

    But on October 5, Alhaji Jamiu Salami’s Lefty Band also outed with “ijinle” — rootsy –Sakara music from Isale-Eko!  The original “Lefty”, Alhaji Salami Balogun (1913-1981) is dead and gone.  But his left-handed percussion genius continues to define the group.

    Left-handed Balogun would send his favourite tambourine into provocative messaging, getting instant responses from dancing patrons! The “Lefty” legend was born!

    On the night, Lefty leapt right from the dead, when his current inheritor ignored the compere’s appeal to wind down.  With Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu in-situ, as the White Cap Chiefs that represented the Olowo Eko, Oba Rilwan Akiolu and the Oniru of Iru, Oba Wasiu Lawal, the Lefty Band would be damned to let go its day in the sun!

    Pray, what with the ijinle groove, went on in the governor’s mind? His Okepopo, Lagos, nativity?  The Iga Jakande (Jakande Palace) just a stone’s throw away?  The Igunnuko Oshodi clan at Epetedo?  Or the “felele” football challenge at Onola?  Memories!

    Obey, at own investiture by the governor, turned the Owanbe house bard, praising the governor, Lagos State and President Bola Tinubu, with other honourees — Salawa, and the Gospel pair of Funmi Aragbaye and Mrs. Fasoyin — all on the charmed roundtable!

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    Mrs. Fasoyin and her CAC Good Women’s Choir, Ibadan!  It was the age of indigenous carol challenge at Yuletide.  Prof. Akin Euba (1935-2020), leading the likes of Richard Bucknor, Art Alade, Afolabi Alaja-Browne, Roseline Ngor and  Funmi Adams, outed with “Elu Agogo Keresimesi”.  That carol hit clawed for radio air space with the traditional foreign ones. 

    Then, out of the blue, came “Odun Nlo S’opin O Baba Rere …” from the Good Women, with sizzling dancing, native Pentecostal mirth, vocals, percussion and allied flavour! It has since become a yearly constant on radio, as the year rolls to an end!

    Stella Ada Monye, the Samba queen?  The globe-beater Afrobeats Stars of today have her and the likes of the late Sonny Okosuns and Bongos Ikwue — very much alive — to thank for their pioneering works.

    Fela, the Abami Eda! Whoever dares talk of Fela, the patron saint of Afro Beat, in the past tense!  Who? And who, more than Lemi Ghariokwu, gave graphic poetry to Fela’s irreverent and incandescent music, the blight of military tyrants?

    Laolu Akins brought SSP out of a musical death-at-noon with monster hits like Ijo Shina, Ace, etc.  After the pioneering efforts of Dr. Ola Balogun, Tunde Kelani and his Mainframe gave new depth and poetic technicality to the local Nigerian cinema!

    The sight-and-sound of Lagos — and Nigeria — at 65! 

    No wonder, the likes of Baba Eto, the late Adeolu Akinsanya, also leapt alive, from the back-up orchestras, replete with the MFM Highlife band, bending old secular classics, with today’s proselytizing, to win new souls for Christ — Ariya Eko!

    But then: those who make others happy, often bear deep personal woes. Dele Abiodun dedicated his award to his late daughter; and King Jossy Friday, to his late wife, who ironically died after sending a text message to her friend who just became a widow.

    Stella Monye too was there with her only child, Ibrahim.  Ibrahim has been battling to stay alive, after a horrendous teen accident at 11 in 1999, when his mother was away on a national assignment.  Ibrahim is now 36.

    Who will help fund Ibrahim’s life-saving surgeries, so Mum Stella is not fated to a future morbid dedication, after a future award?  Who?