Category: Olakunle Abimbola

You can’t, in all good conscience, expect Christian indifference to the texture — and perception — of a presidential ticket.

So, if a segment of Nigerian Christendom appears hysteric over the Bola Tinubu-Kashim Shettima “Muslim-Muslim” ticket, cut them some slacks.

If the situation was flipped, and Nigeria had a “Christian-Christian” ticket, the Muslim folks would perhaps make no less row.

Yet, beyond religion as emotive red herring that crowds out clinical reason, there are more serious dynamics worthy of voters’ attention — a critical x-ray of the two major parties’ tickets, for instance.

Add to that the noisome blokes of Peter Obi’s new love, Labour Party (LP), and you won’t be conceptually wrong.

Between LP and Rabiu Kwankwaso’s New Nigerian People’s Party (both by the way, potential spoilers: LP for PDP in Obi’s South East; NNPP for APC in Kwankwaso’s Kano and the North West), there’s no rigorous study to determine the bigger.

But LP makes this analysis (with APC and PDP) because of its stunts on the social media which, by the way, registers its raucous presence.

Besides, LP has been there for quite a while now.  That means it can be fairly x-rayed, unlike NNPP, a mint-fresh platform, even if its sponsors are veterans.

In LP, the candidate meets the platform on the altar of conceptual lies.

Perhaps the first time LP tried to play the honest and conscientious platform was in the build-up to 2007, when Adams Oshiomhole’s LP teamed up with Tinubu’s Action Congress (AC) to challenge PDP’s ruinous hegemony in Edo (1999-2007).

They triumphed, even if the PDP oligarchs, with a colluding “federal might”, tried to steal that mandate.  Still, the crowning ticket was AC, which seemed to have gobbled up LP, its legacy partner.  Oshiomhole would go ahead to make a rousing success of his retrieved Edo mandate, under the progressive tenet.

But even as early as that, LP’s partisan prostitution was becoming manifest.  In Ondo, the slippery Segun Mimiko had fallen out with PDP, after earlier junking the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) and needed a dais to realize his gubernatorial ambition.

Again, LP was game — milking Mimiko for funding as Mimiko milked it for pseudo-ideology — in a fit of mutual parasitism.

All too soon, however, the party was over.  After dumping LP, and messing around with a wannabe Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), Mimiko is back to his PDP vomit, in near-political wilderness.  The last time he ran, he couldn’t even win a Senate race.  So long for a self-dubbed Yoruba political leader-in-waiting!

Now, comparing LP to candidate Obi, what strikes you is their bond of conceptual lies. Then, their mutual peripatetic profile.

On conceptual lies: Obi hit the polity with his China stats, a euphemism for blatant lies, passing for racy but false stats on TV, with the ignorant but starry-eyed in raucous cheer. Hence: Obi’s not unfair public political persona as reflex liar!

Then, he is peripatetic as LP is deep in partisan whoredom — just any candidate goes, so long as the cash is right!  Remember: Obi started with APGA, flirted with PDP and is now locked-in-love with LP.

For the historic-minded, his APGA entry point might well have been nothing but fine opportunism.  Chinwoke Mbadinuju (first governor in 1999) had run Anambra down.  In the PDP sweepstakes, the likes of Peter Obi stood no chance, with the likes of Chris Ngige waiting in the wings.

With Emeka Ojukwu brimming vibrant Igbo nationalism, against PDP’s national appeal but Awka paralysis, APGA offered a rather convenient berth for Peter Obi, with all the thick Igbo symbolism to spare.  But with Ojukwu gone, Obi had moved on.

Yes, he stanched the wastes of the Mabadinuju years, which nevertheless was logical follow-up to Chris Ngige’s stellar work, though Ngige’s tenure was declared void.

But beyond stopping that bleeding, Obi left not much legacy.  If some folks now crow over his basic work, it’s perhaps due more to Igbo trademark over-exhibition, as noted by Chinua Achebe in his swan song, There Was A Country, than any legacy worth its brag.

Now, would any serious country put its fate in a collapsible platform like LP and a fleeting candidate like Obi?

The electorate would decide.  But it’s sure a much more critical interrogation of platform and ticket, than waxing emotive on religion, the bastion of personal faith.

Now, to the big two, APC and PDP, and their candidates. On this, we have a ready historical frame: Atiku Abubakar was Vice President when Bola Tinubu was governor of Lagos, between 1999 and 2007.

Now, the similarities.  As Atiku had challenges with his principal, so much so that their second term was sheer mutual attrition, so did Tinubu have challenges with his deputies, which spanned his eight-year tenure.  Indeed, Tinubu changed his first deputy (Senator Kofoworola Akerele-Bucknor) early with Femi Pedro, himself to be replaced by the elderly Prince Abiodun Ogunleye, at the twilight of his second term.

Yet, the impact of this political tension, on the two administrations’ policies, couldn’t be starker.  While the one appeared badly dented, the other appeared unscathed.

Take their approach to the Lagos Bar Beach ocean surge.  Abuja’s joker — and the pun is very much intended! — was giving party hacks the contract to supply endless tipper loads of sand and sand bags.  But Ikeja’s cutting idea was to dream a new smart city from the ocean surge crisis: the Eko Atlantic City.

Living history has shown whose policy mind was sharper!

Indeed, the approach to the Bar Beach challenge was a fitting metaphor for both administrations.

Tinubu and his Lagos policy gang were frothing innovative ideas: multi-modal transport — rail, road and water; independent power (the Enron scheme), smart investment in GSM telephony, pioneering the bond market to raise cheap funds for infrastructural upgrade and federalizations of core agencies, like transport police (LASTMA) and sanitation police (Kick Against Indiscipline corps).

But the unfazed projectors of power and brawn from Abuja were busy boasting, bragging and flexing muscles; obstructing and throttling every fresh thinking!

Achebe was right: when a bully sees one he can thrash, he becomes hungry for a fight!

Still, the fair question is: had Atiku and Obasanjo ruled Nigeria as Tinubu had managed Lagos in those critical opening years from 1999 to 2007, would the country still be grappling with core issues as power and infrastructure uptick today?

These are key questions for the major tickets in the run-up to 2023.  True, it’s much more difficult than easy luxuriating in the hot passion of Muslim-Muslim/Christian-Christian tickets.

Yet, they are the crucial questions that can, from candidates, elicit the truth which, in Bible-speak, would set everyone free; and make election cycles a referendum on rewarding progress and development; but punishing failure and paralysis.

In his National Conference of 2014, former President Goodluck Jonathan erected a Trojan horse to buy cynical support.  That gambit blew up in his face but he now mounts a crow, of what could have been.

From the Bible came the lamentation of David over Jonathan.  Now, our own Jonathan is screeching a jeremiad over his sweetheart but miscarried gamble.

He can tell his tale to the marines!  Given the cynical motive behind that enterprise, it couldn’t have ended any other way.

If you feel these assertions are rather harsh, check out Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential timelines, vis-a-vis the timing of his National Conference.

Vice President Goodluck Jonathan — a loyal vice to his president as he was trusted deputy to Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, as Bayelsa governor and inimitable “Governor-General of the Ijaw Nation” — was named Acting President on 9 February 2010.

A “Doctrine of Necessity” from the Nigerian Senate clinched the deal.  President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s illness was taking a near-fatal turn.  Yet, a power cabal was doing everything to stonewall Jonathan’s ascendancy.

Jonathan was unobtrusive, unambitious and supportive: the quintessential traits of the loyal Vice President.  Yet, being the “heartbeat away from the presidency”, particularly with a president in clear distress, ascendancy as president was Jonathan’s lawful right.

Jonathan’s Abuja odyssey had an earlier parallel in Yenagoa, his native Bayelsa. As then President Olusegun Obasanjo fiercely battled Governor Alamieyeseigha in some anti-corruption feuding, Deputy Governor Jonathan was not one to dive for power, even if the Obasanjo establishment kept on prompting him to.

In Abuja, it was the human rights army, and their media enforcers, that urged Jonathan — and not without merit — to assert himself and claim his constitutional right.  Yet, the man from the creeks was rather reticent.

So, as the regional power irredentists warred to fend off Jonathan, the media-powered human rights crusaders, most of them domiciled in the South West, brawled to press Jonathan’s right.  The Senate’s necessity doctrine, as shock therapy, settled it all!

From Acting President on 9 February 2010, therefore, Jonathan took over as President on 5 May 2010 after Yar’Adua’s death.  By 29 May 2011, Jonathan was sworn in for his own full presidential term after completing the ill-fated Yar’Adua’s.

Yet, President Jonathan did not launch his National Conference manoeuvre until 17 March 2014, at the twilight of his first full term, and virtual eve of election for a possible fresh term, after he seemed to have gutted — from both ends of the candle — the goodwill that propelled him to the Presidency in 2011.  Indeed, the confab didn’t roll to a close until 21 August 2014.

To tell the truth, Jonathan had to wage a battle on many fronts, against the powers and principalities that fetched him the Presidency but who now came at him with cleavers, hankering for their IOUs, real or imagined!

Among these irate principalities was former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Jonathan benefactor turned implacable malefactor.  Obasanjo had plucked Jonathan from the placid Bayelsa creeks of relative obscurity and tossed him into the Abuja maelstrom, where our Goodluck would ironically locate his presidential good luck.

But as with Yar’Adua, the party ended too soon.  Faced with flak that he had sold the nation a pig in a poke in his sickly choice of successor, Obasanjo had disowned Yar’Adua on his virtual death bed.  Too soon too, he would move against Jonathan after — many claimed — he found Jonathan not quite the presidential poodle the Ebora Owu had smirked his lips to savour.

The power hustlers that lost out in the Yar’Adua court also came after the troubled President Jonathan.   They pronto turned their personal distress into a collective northern angst; and from that launched an explosive rally.

Tales of Jonathan agreeing to do only one term started making the rounds.  The logic of that was simple: since Yar’Adua, a northerner, could only do a little over two years of his tenure, it was only fair for Jonathan to yield the position to another northerner, after one full term.

That would, the lobby reasoned, “compensate” the North for its “loss” — more so when Obasanjo, a southerner, just did full two terms of eight years.  In truth, rumours of such a deal filtered out in the media during those momentous months of Yar’Adua’s passage.  But there was no clear proof of its truth.

Still, the most visible, if not formidable, anti-Jonathan forces would appear his estranged South West allies who, like Obasanjo, had turned implacable foes.  Somehow, the Jonathan government had alienated the Yoruba mainstream.

These blokes controlled the media; and certainly had the sympathies of the human rights lobby.  Both came through for Jonathan during those crucial days when he battled the Yar’Adua cabal.

The only people unperturbed by the anti-Jonathan roiling were his Niger Delta folks.

Old man Edwin Clark was playing the majestic presidential godfather.  The likes of Tompolo — indeed, a one-man government if ever there was one! — on behalf of his unfazed swamp dwellers (apologies to our own WS), were grossing sweetheart pipeline deals.  And, o yes: Pentecostal Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor too, then president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), was busy playing Rasputin to “Christian” President Goodluck Jonathan!

The lure and magic of presidential power had re-made the Niger Delta into bragging with untrammelled arrogance, the self-same hauteur the Nigerian minority ethnics often accuse the majorities of!

Yet, another people not quite worried about the looming Jonathan danger were the Igbo political mainstream.  ”Cousin” Jonathan had charmed them with “Azikiwe”.  They too had returned the hot love.

That rich exchange, in political quid pro quo, had resulted in sweat pork, that turned many crucial federal ministries and parastatals into virtual Igbo colonies!  Those quick to scream “marginalization!” were, in Achebe-speak, in no hurry to spew out rich palm kernel tossed inside their mouths by benevolent spirits!

Still, the troubled President Jonathan must have realized the numbers were not adding up, despite the loud South-South and South East merry-making in his presidential backyard!

It was at this juncture, like the deus-ex-machina in Greek classical drama, that the National Conference 2014 was tossed into the fray.  That Anyim Pius Anyim, then Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), came bearing the marine tales, of why the confab’s recommendations were never implemented, only completed the cynical metaphor of a grand cynical gambit.

Despite the earnestness and hard work of many of the 492 conferees — a few among who didn’t receive a dime for their labour in the Abuja bazaar — Confab 2014 was too rigged in cynical politics to produce a wholesome result.  That’s the bitter truth!

Intellectualizing the Yoruba state in the Nigerian union got a boost, with the dawn of the Apero caravan of weekly exchanges, by Yoruba resource persons at home and in the Diaspora.

It’s a fitting piece of intellectual “referendum”.  It calls everyone to reason together; and find mutually accepted solutions to whatever present angst.

What is more?  Nothing is off the table: from the two extremes of the Ilana Oodua clamouring for “Yoruba Nation” now; to the opposing liberal tendencies, of “restructuring” to make a federal Nigeria work for all.

The Apero organizers, led by Professor Segun Gbadegesin, chair of the Apero Planning Committee, put their fingers on the prime Yoruba dissonance today, in a season of self-loathing, ethnic doubt and allied social pathologies:

“Apero planners understand the divergence of views on the future of Yorubaland in the context of a paralyzed Nigeria.  Between advocates of Yoruba Nation now and proponents of restructuring,” it rightly noted in a promotional piece, “there is no meeting of minds.”

Going forward: “Apero provides an opportunity for rational dialogue not only on these alternative visions, but also on the concrete developmental issues that we must grapple with, no matter what vision we adopt in the end.”

About time!  Rational dialogue — not the open sesame of empty emotions.

Still, no wonder: Apero lays great store by buying the inputs of as many as possible and available, in contradistinction to Ilana Oodua’s presumptive ultra-nationalism; fuelled by explosive, if vacuous, emotion that every Yoruba must, willy-nilly, buy into its agenda, because it can appeal to sweet base instincts.

That approach would appear an insult to the Yoruba psyche, with its well-trumpeted Awolowo tutelage, which ranked clinical thinking over base emotions.

If Awo himself declared that no one could lead the Yoruba by the nose, it was perhaps a clear admission, by the immortal avatar himself, that his own social reforms, as radical and epochal as they were, were only a modern consolidation of the Yoruba native instinct of critical thinking; and asking hard questions.

From the Sunday Igboho debacle and the way the Ilana agenda seems to have flagged since then, it would appear clear that that is no way to go.

The Bible warned that strike the shepherd, and the flock would scatter.  That played out in the seizure of the Christ Jesus; and how Peter, the Rock of the faith, denied him thrice!

In the Ilana case, however, only Igboho, the battling ram (who even hardly understood the full ramifications of his actions) ran into a ditch.  Yet, the Ilana leadership virtually froze; and the body’s social media fire and brimstone, suddenly neutered!

That cold ash of reality, from extreme thunder to extreme quiet, speaks to its founding dynamics.

In other words, how much of its agenda — no matter how nobly intended — resonated with the ordinary folks, outside the loud minority that make a row on social media; or even the malcontent in the Diaspora, who love to show off the base grudges they emigrated with as new, cosmopolitan, liberationist thinking?

Even if these condescending exiles have indeed processed their homeland grudge into finer, liberationist thinking, how many of the Yoruba ordinary folks share the emigres’ glib Armageddon, about their homeland — beyond the stoking of naked fears?

For or against, it would be difficult to say.  The fact is no one has carried out a definitive survey to determine which is which.

But by its fact-seeking and legitimacy-buying caravan of weekly dialogues, the Apero seems avoiding the Ilana pitfalls.  Hardly any thinking is smarter!

Again, for emphasis, listen to the Apero pitch, in original Yoruba, and its English translation:

“Apero Yoruba Nile Loko”: the dialogue (or summit) of the Yoruba, home and abroad.

But to what purpose?

“Atunbi ati isodotun Ile Yoruba”: “Yoruba renaissance and renewal” is the English translation, even if that cannot fully capture the full evocative majesty of the Yoruba original.

Compare and contrast the democratic ethos inherent in the Apero process, to the seeming group and individual crowing of Ilana’s own processes.

Here is a Facebook pitch of Ilana, to prospective members: “Ilana Omo Oodua worldwide is the apex body for the Yoruba self-determination and self-preservation struggle.  Membership registration, as flagged off by the ALANA (capitalization theirs) of Ilana Omo Oodua Worldwide, Professor Banji Akintoye …”

Now, what Yoruba inclusive processes, climaxing in a referendum, gifted the good professor and eminent historian that Alana (Yoruba for pathfinder), beyond the lionization of his own group, who claim to speak for all Yoruba without any proof?

Again, it’s good that the Apero is shunning a similar path, in its newly launched series of weekly virtual summits, to dissect issues and plot codified probable solutions.  However its endeavour ends, it stands a far better chance to legitimacy — if its more democratic process remains un-ruptured.

On this score, it’s gratifying that the Apero summits are cross-sectoral: “education, health and social welfare, rural development and employment generation, challenges of governance, security challenges, renewal of cultural values and norms, repositioning our youths, political pathways, and a new paradigm of development for Yorubaland”.

In this agenda, there is no visceral anti-Fulani ogre, that would embolden a Sunday Igboho to dash to Idi-Iroko and shut the “Yoruba border” — whatever that means — at the apex of his explosive rashness!  But when the flak came, he faced it all alone, after those goading him on had all but melted!

Still, such matters are covered under the Apero series: challenges in governance, security, and renewal of cultural values and norms.  Besides, all of these would be clinically analyzed and discussed, and possible solutions proffered, with neither charity nor grudge to anyone, in a sober and rational environment.

Neither charity nor grudge!  The cold fact is: every part of Nigeria needs cold self x-ray, to plot a better future.  But you don’t — nay, can’t — do that with smouldering cross ethnic hate or grudge.  That will only distract you from getting together your act.

Indeed, every part of Nigeria needs an Apero summit, as intellectually structured — and the Apero should radiate such to other ethnics.

That way, everyone would realize terrorism (among other challenges) is no threat from the Fulani or the Igbo or the Yoruba, but rather, a collective threat to everyone.  If we don’t kill terror, terror will kill us all!

Such sober intellectualization of that grave challenge would wean it of the flawed and present cross-ethnic blame games.  That way, the prospect of a robust, enduring and pan-Nigeria antidote to it would begin to emerge.

The inimitable James Hadley Chase would have put it in biting wit: Nyesom Wike, the combative Rivers governor, simply loves the sound of his voice!

Now, while that could provide some dart and dash for fawning gubernatorial courtiers rippling for the boss to say the word, it could be fatal to winning new friends.

But if you stayed with such boisterous, yet ruinous braggadocio, the Yoruba wit would muse: now, his kith-and-kin claim his case is but a mild ailment.  But those who know him not swear he is raving mad!  Don’t know if the Ikwerre have a similar concept.

Indeed, it’s the fatal cut of the unbridled tongue!  The braggart-in-chief, to commander-in-chief, has proved a bridge too far!

That rather unflattering, if dramatic metaphor, aptly captures Wike’s dash — and crash — for the PDP presidential ticket, as he bristled with contempt, talked down on friend and foe, and yelled, bawled and barked: give me the ticket!  Give me the ticket!  I’m a man of dash and grit!

That might well be — that bit about dash and courage.  Still, our own WS would have remonstrated with poetic wit: must a tiger proclaim its tigeritude?

The PDP had better win the presidency in 2023. If not, the way Wike crashes bridges both in Rivers and across the country, feigning Solomon and Sampson in one incredible, if delusional hulk, his might just be the political humpty-dumpty, who all the king’s horsemen couldn’t cobble together again, after a big fall!

But Wike’s presidential debacle is not even the news. The real gist is losing the vice presidential ticket to Ifeanyi Okowa, Delta governor, despite Wike’s loud loyalty to the PDP in its most troubled of times.

Truth be told: Nyesom Wike was there for his party, at its lowest hub and weakest spoke.  While the trio of Atiku Abubakar, Aminu Tambuwal and Bukola Saraki galloped away in the so-called n-PDP into the new APC, in mortal combat with the bumbling Goodluck Jonathan, Wike stayed true to the PDP cause.

Yes, Cousin Goodluck was embattled president, ogling four more years; and Niger Delta presidency was the endangered species; and the likes of Edwin Clark, unfazed presidential godfather, were also rallying the South-South herd, in a plucky puff of self-interest; and Elder Godsday Orubebe did the final naked dance in the market.

Yet, the brutal truth is that Wike never betrayed his party; and if Atiku, Tambuwal and Saraki (ATS) had stood firm as Wike did, PDP would probably not have lost power, to now languish in opposition.

Besides Wike, perhaps more than anyone, saw through the Trojan horse, in the alleged Ali Modu Sheriff ploy to ruin the troubled PDP from the top, when he birthed as controversial national chair.  Wike again fought the alleged impostor to a standstill, until he was vanquished.

All of these heroics the Rivers governor trumpeted, with undisguised moral scorn, as he pushed his crashed presidential nomination run.

If he wasn’t strafing the trio ATS prodigals, he was savaging Godwin Obaseki, who he conked, not without merit, as the “Ingrate of Edo”!  Obaseki, of course, returned fire for fire.

Still, aside from splashing the cash and raking others with his fiery tongue as Wike, Okowa has been no less faithful to the PDP cause.

Okowa never joined the n-PDP.  He never, despite the prison baggage of their paterfamilias, abandoned the Ibori Delta power clan, the group “dynasty” that has triumphed in Delta State since 1999.  He never crowed about his golden taciturnity, in quiet service.

Yet, his pick over Wike, as Atiku’s running mate, birthed as a spectacular sweet-sour, exciting marginal players that loom large in ethno-regional identity politics, but punch well above their paperweight in real realpolitik.

These are the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum coalition, of Afenifere (South West), Ohanaeze (South East), Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF: South-South) and Middle Belt Forum (North Central).

That media-powered coalition is now up in arms against Okowa, for “betraying” Nigeria’s political “South”, by accepting Atiku’s pick as running mate. But back to the sweet-and-sour motif.

Atiku’s Okowa pick is sweet because you can trust the medic-politician not to talk out of turn on the hustings.  That you cannot assure of Wike.  In a tempestuous campaign, with Wike’s tongue let loose, the party might find itself putting out irrelevant fires, as rival APC gallops clear.

Assuming a PDP presidential triumph, Okowa cuts the perfect Vice President — more seen than heard, and merrily so! That would appear the very diametric opposite of Governor Wike, with his eternal boasting and bragging.

Such troubling cohabitation (were Wike to be the pick) could open the ogre of Olusegun Obasanjo-Atiku Abubakar 2 — the bickering presidential pair that marked the beginning of the end for PDP as federal ruling party, even if it was not so apparent back then in 2003-2007.

Now, Okowa’s sour bit: he hosted the Asaba Declaration of May 2021, which fumed that after President Muhammadu Buhari, the presidency must revert down “South”.

Now, that was high-powered blustering, made more thunderous by a southern media blaring own home agenda — no crime, any more than a northern media doing same.

But in truth: is there a Nigerian political “South” as there is the political “North”, despite the exertions of MBF?  Even at the height of that bluster, it was clear the APC governors (dominant in the South West) were only lending credence to their PDP peers’ opportunistic hell-raising.

The so-called “South” had diametrically opposed meanings to both.  As the APC, PDP primaries fully played out, even the South-South has own intense interpretation of “South”!  So, on the day of reckoning, it was “To your house, O Israel!”, to borrow that evocative biblical phrase.

Still, Okowa would live with the stigma of grand treachery. If he hosted the fiery Asaba Declaration, how come, without much ado, he’s now coupling Atiku, he of the much maligned Fulani stock?

Nevertheless, the same query would be valid and legitimate, had Wike, Anyim Pius Anyim or Enugu’s Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, become Atiku’s pick.  Wike and Ugwuanyi might not have hosted the Asaba declaration.  But both would have been no less guilty of “betrayal” — at least on the scalding, emotive front.

Yet, the stark reality is that Atiku won the PDP ticket; and he’s constitutionally obliged to pick a deputy; and the lot fell on Okowa, over Wike.  That can’t be a crime, can it?

For PDP, the Atiku move is 1999 all over again.  True Obasanjo, an ethnic Yoruba, was top draw.  Still, he was only the Hobson’s choice, of the so-called “owners of Nigeria” (with his Yoruba kith-and-kin screaming and kicking), who coupled him with Atiku, and gave the Igbo mainstream political elite an el dorado of ceaseless political spoils.

Too bad Wike can’t be part of that renewed ticket — no thanks to a scalding tongue!

Omolúàbí!  — Yoruba for good breeding of the purest crust — seized South West public imagination from 2011, after the final collapse of the Olusegun Obasanjo willy-nilly mainstreaming, which left the region of Awolowo dazed with electoral capture.

As Rauf Aregbesola, in November 2010, regained his stolen Osun governorship — the last of the slew of PDP-stolen mandates: after Edo, Ondo and Ekiti, spanning almost four years —Omolúàbí  reverberated among the Yoruba electorate.

It was severe electoral beauty against Obasanjo’s brutal political thraldom.  Ogun (Obasanjo’s home state) and Oyo (the Yoruba political capital) would be free of the conservative shackles after 2011’s general election; thus confirming the supremacy of political Omolúàbí in the old Yoruba West.

Needless to repeat: the main gladiators, in that progressives’ counter-attack from 2007, were Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (from retired Army General, the ex-president had become generalissimo of conservative forces) and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, former Lagos governor, who led the progressives army.

Aregbesola was first to capture the essence of the moment.  In an elaborate rebrand, he re-made Osun as Ìpínle Omolúàbí, (State of the Well-Bred, against the original moniker: State of the Living Spring).

Kayode Fayemi’s Ekiti would weigh in with its new variant: Oni Uyì, Oni Eye — Ekiti dialect for “People of Honour”, another Omolúàbí variant.

But in the brutal run-up to the APC presidential primaries, which Asiwaju Tinubu eventually won, pretty little of the Yoruba political Omolúàbí played out.  Rather, it was elements from the North that stood firm.

For context, see the political trajectory of Governor Fayemi and former Senator Dayo Adeyeye.  In 2007, Adeyeye huffed out of the Action Congress (precursor to the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria and today’s APC) because he alleged the AC Ekiti gubernatorial ticket was skewed for Fayemi against him and others.  Those miffed, back then blamed Tinubu for it all; and for that, Adeyeye stormed into political Siberia in PDP.

In 2022, Fayemi (the “favoured boy” of 2007) was contesting the APC presidential ticket against Tinubu while Adeyeye, the complainant-in-chief back then, was rooting for the Asiwaju as chair of SWAGA — the South West Agenda for Asiwaju!  How roles change!

Yes, Governor Fayemi redeemed his honour, on the convention grounds by stepping down for Tinubu.  For this, he earned due plaudits: it was a remarkable act in courage and common sense, with such high and electrifying stakes.

Yet, in the Omolúàbí cosmos, such last-minute redemption could hardly excuse not knowing the ètò (Yoruba for norm) and not respecting the eto (legitimate due).  The hallmark of Omolúàbí demands you know the eto and respect the ètò.

It’s the Yoruba equivalent of the Biblical golden rule: do unto others as you want others to do unto you; to teach that English aphorism: prevention is better than cure.

That the Ekiti governor ran against his age-old benefactor at all violently breached Fayemi’s own “Oni Uyì, Oni Eye” credo.  Still, Fayemi saved himself — virtually by the bell, to borrow that evocative imagery of boxing.  Kudos!

Now, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (PYO), Vice President of the Federal Republic, Tinubu beneficiary and eternal ally?  Well, before you judge him too harshly, witness how others in history — well, literature — fared at critical junctures, when stakes were really, really high.

Rehoboam, heir to the throne of King Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, gobbled up the fatal folly of “useless young men” — as a version of the Bible described his debacle — and fulfilled the dire prophesy that the self-exiled Jeroboam would rule over 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel!  That was 931 BC, thus splitting old Israel into Samaria and Judah.

Mark Anthony, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, was the swashbuckling general who led the forces that crushed the conspirators that killed Caesar, when Octavian (later, Augustus), Caesar’s adopted son, was but only a callow subaltern.

Yet, in Anthony and Cleopara, the same Anthony, lost in the seductive bosoms of alluring Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, threw a party on the eve of a crucial battle against Augustus.  That was the beginning of his end as co-ruler of Rome, in the post-Caesar triumvirate of Anthony, Lepidus and Augustus Caesar.

The Omolúàbí purists are within their bounds if they insist on the ètò and the eto; and lampoon poor Prof. Osinbajo as no more than, to put it in spicy Yoruba, “eni rí n kàn he, tó fé kú pelú e; owo  eni tó ti sonù n ko?...”(Remember the evergreen Ebenezer Obey lyric?)

That translated into English could mean: “If you’d rather die than part with a chanced treasure, what would the one that lost that trove do?”

It’s the ultimate moral censure in the Yoruba cosmos, without which Yoruba politics is incomplete.

Yet, culture is culture; politics is politics though one is incomplete without the other.  That the British Constitution is “unwritten” yet it has run for centuries underscores the crucial role of culture, mores, conventions, etc, in politics.

Unlike Fayemi, Vice President Osinbajo didn’t step down at the last minute.  Yet, he has congratulated the victor and pledged his full support — a cardinal democratic canon of gallant loss and graceful win.  That might not be enough for culture but it’s certainly decent closure for politics.

PYO, in his post-defeat address to his TPP (The Progressive Project) coalition, even hinted at building a future network on that movement.  That can’t be bad for democratic deepening.

Still, were that to mature and PYO become a formidable political force, perhaps he would appreciate the deep feeling of hurt, from brazen plots, to prise you off the network you’d built and nurtured all your political life.

That triggered Tinubu’s Abeokuta “Eléyìí” thunder; and Adam Oshiomhole’s  jumpy foxtrot at the Eagle Square, after the Asiwaju’s triumph. The fear of Asiwaju cost Oshiomhole his APC national chair; and rubbed in his Edo Obaseki humiliation. You can’t therefore grudge Oshiomhole his dramatic “toast” to those two Pyrrhic victories!

Reggae great, Jimmy Cliff, once crooned: “Every tub has to sit on its own bottom; every man has to stand on his own two feet.”  The Yoruba too would say: ”Ojú àwo l’àwo fi n gb’obe”: the dish soaks in the stew with its dominant part.  In other words, take your destiny in your hands.  That about captures the Abeokuta Eléyìí spirit.

But the morning after, the Asiwaju had moved on — not given to base gloating and allied destructive passions, though every inch human.

That is just as well — for Tinubu would need every help in his titanic tangle with Abubakar Atiku, the PDP candidate, Peter Obi, the Labour Party candidate, and others for the Nigerian presidency.

Let bygones be bygones.  It’s a new day!

I dreamt I saw an eye
In your hands
Glittering, wet and sickening
Like a dull onyx set in a crown of thorns
I did not know you were dead
When you dropped it in my lap …
— Kwesi Brew, “The Executioner’s Dream”

No, no, no one died — not by the hand of an executioner; not by any other.

Rather, it was eye restoration by a quad of angel-surgeons, on a short procedure to remove a stubborn cataract that for too long had held that eye captive.

Did the eye glitter in their hand?  Was it wet too?  Was it sparkling or sickening — like the one the Executioner saw in his dream?  Honestly, you couldn’t say!

Your head was bottled up in a surgical muffle, leaving open only the cataract-blocked eye.  You felt only a scratch on the eye, suggesting the lightest of surgical touches.

Then, you saw the most enchanting wave of stars, thousands and thousands of them, in blue family colours, cool and gentle, like some galaxy, in some starry paradise.  As the procedure lasted, the richer the galaxy, and the sweeter the colours.

Any pains?  Hardly.  The light sedation took a good care of that.  But you were all nerves, though calm — laying there all helpless; at the mercy of God and the skilled hands of the surgeons; and praying furiously!

There, you suddenly remembered that cynical quip: “Danger averted, God forgotten!”  How futile and foolish!  How could you even forget God, any time, in prosperity or in adversity, since He held all the aces over all creatures?

What if something went wrong?  What if there were some complications, which threw the surgeons at the end of their wit and skill?  What if the eye was never the same again?  What if …

Then, the sing-song voices of Dr. Omolola Okunade and her surgeon peers, exchanging banters and helpful clinical ideas, wafted across to you at the other side of numb consciousness.  That cooled your nerves.

“Are you okay?  Are you comfy?” came the calm yet bright voices.

“Yes, ma’am”, you returned.

All of them were women, save the surgical assistant, who had earlier thrown rib-cracking riffs at your gaunt psyche, as you waited, all anxiety, with some five other patients at the theatre’s dressing room and waiting wing.

Still, the procedure couldn’t have gone off to a more worrying start.  The old lady that just got off the surgery bed suddenly declared she couldn’t see — not with the left eye just operated upon (which was patched up, anyway) but with the right, untouched by the surgeon’s scalpel.

“How come?” The doctors wondered aloud, “we didn’t touch the other eye?”  Even then, there was no panic, just some nonplussed wonder.  That got you, the next patient, asking; and your nerves jangling: would I have the same complaints after?

You later got to know the eye was okay; that nothing was amiss, save patients’ post-surgery theatrics, which the surgeons were used to.  As that reassuring piece of news drifted to you, you felt relief and bolstered confidence.

The journey to the Victoria Island eye theatre of Skipper Eye-Q, an Indo-Nigerian chain of eye hospitals, boasting 42 eye hospitals in India and Nigeria; and tucking 14 years of eye care under its belt, dated back to no less than five years.

Driving on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway on a travel jaunt, Ripples blinked and felt some light clouds floating on the left eye.  That cloudy see-saw would continue as the cataract grew, and well-nigh “captured” the eye.

An earlier attempt at surgery, at the Guinness Eye Centre of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), was aborted: no thanks to a high sugar level, which called for a radical change of diet.

But as the surgery got delayed, so did the anxiety mount.  Meanwhile, for the eye, no respite, as you flogged it in routine daily labour: acute research, writing and never-ending deadlines, and even more endless glare at the computer screen!

You could bank on public sector doctors, more so at teaching hospitals like LUTH.  The cost too was not unreasonable. But not so the indifferent, condescending medics; and their rude support staff — not to mention the market-like crowds on consultation days!

But can you on private hospitals — on delicate procedures as the eye?  How much can you trust these folks, in an ultra-delicate procedure: a precise operation that left almost a zero margin of error?  If you could, can you pay the huge service cost?

The anxiety to commit, even after sound referrals!  Then, the fearful fire to burn your pocket!

In its Facebook promotional pitch, Skipper Eye-Q claimed that in all of its facilities, patients got the quality treatment they would in the United States, or in the United Kingdom, India or any other part of the globe.  It not only boasted the latest technology in eye care, it had also, under its wings, world-class surgeons.

If the taste of the pudding were in the eating, the hospital was all that and more — if you had the cash!

From its Ilupeju tributary where Ripples linked up after referral from Hillcrest Hospital, one of The Nation  official clinics, to its Victoria Island head hospital and theatre, Skipper Eye Q was the epitome exceeding care: pre- and post-surgery; and certainly during the procedure itself.

Sure, the cost was stiff!  Not many could afford the N400, 000 to N900, 000 bracket, minus pre-surgery tests (to reconfirm the eye’s vitality, aside from testing for Glaucoma) to ensure cataract was the only problem.  For those tests, add another N55, 000.  The stiff cost of an eye!

But it’s as they say: if education is expensive, try ignorance!  If value is costly, try quackery!  The hefty cost of an eye!

This imperative for value in critical surgeries again makes the urgent case for mainstreaming health insurance.  With vibrant health insurance, much of the cost would be absorbed: from the low-end to the premium surgical and general healthcare market; and much more could afford critical value at far cheaper costs.

For now, Ripples is all thanks for the doughty institutional support by The Nation.  From Victor Ifijeh, managing director and editor-in-chief, to about everyone, the support was awesome!  Thank you folks.

The Editorial Board?  My peers in there were something else!  Sam Omatseye’s call came just as Ripples was being prepped for surgery!  You know how awesome that felt?

Then, Mrs Omatseye, goodly woman!  She was prayer advocate-in-chief on her prayer-warrior WhatsApp platform!  All this from a woman I’d met only twice!  Thanks all so much madam. God bless you and yours!

My colleagues on the Editorial Board, can I ever thank you enough — your sweet yet unobtrusive inquiries, love-wrapped care and wishes, telephone calls, heal-soon text messages?  Thanks guys!

For readers, fulsome apologies for missing in action for two long weeks!  That’s pretty much eternity in Nigeria, where events tumble out at a crazy pace!  Thanks too for your texts and good wishes.

Now, where did we leave off?  It’s time to play catch-up!

This headline could equally have read: “Before South West self-destroys” but for the turn of fate that took the wind off the sail of “Yoruba Nation” agitators.

Nevertheless, the mis-principle behind both is the same: the tragic delusion that you can milk visceral hate of others to drive fraternal love among your own.

In those heyday of love to hate, the “Fulani herdsmen” committed every crime in the land, with hot vengeance to destroy the “South”; and the dominant southern media, with bated breath, boomed that hateful gospel!

Yet, those same “ethnic cleansers”, allegedly with the sworn mission to wipe out the “South”, are now busy savagely sacking their own, in Sokoto, Kaduna, Zamfara and Niger, as bandits, terrorists and sundry doomsday wreckers!

Talk of misdiagnosing a national security crisis for an ethnic affront!

But back to the South East, where the gruesome killing in Imo State, of a military couple en route to their traditional wedding, just headlined that region’s mad bolt into unfettered barbarity.

It all started with Prof. Chinua Achebe’s There Was A Country, the celebrated writer’s swan song, which nevertheless gave a garbled account of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).

Then, the Igbo political elite lost federal power in 2015 and Nnamdi Kanu, a PDP diaspora hustler, in the Jonathan era of PDP rule, became acclaimed hater-in-chief, hauling explosive slurs at other ethnics.

Those who should have cautioned Kanu kept mute; sure Kanu’s scalding hate could only hurt the non-Igbo.  Costly delusion — for the tragic reverse is playing out!

Now, Kanu is in the can, defending himself against terrorism charges.  But the South East dirge may well go back to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, his debut classic:

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …”

True, those were original poetics from the Irish William Butler Yeats, in his famous poem, “The Second Coming”: itself echoing Irish troubles and explosive Europe, immediately after World War 1.

But those words were irretrievably etched in local Nigerian minds by the Achebe classic, Things Fall Apart!

So, Achebe’s swan song, There Was A Country, provided philosophical vim for Igbo romantic anomie, from Civil War hurts.  But his glorious debut also captures the creeping anarchy — Things Fall Apart!

Talk of an Alpha and Omega of a sort!  Yet, the old man rests deep in his sleep!  Only the living — and the youth — carry the can!

Turn the camera to pan the South West, and the difference  may not be so glaring, particularly with the exploits of Prof. Banji Akintoye and his “Yoruba Nation” lobby.

Prof. Akintoye, revered historiographer, wrote a glorious account of Yoruba history, A History of the Yoruba People — an authoritative account that makes your head swell as an ethnic Yoruba.

But the scholar’s latest campaign should worry not a few. Yoruba nationalism is not the problem, per se.  In a jumbled Nigerian federation, where each ethnic fiercely competes to corner the national cake, a touch of ethnic pride could come handy.

The snag with the “Yoruba Nation” push, however, is that it is powered by extreme Fulani hate.  Hate is always no good, for it cripples your thinking process.

Besides, even from Prof. Akintoye’s A History of the Yoruba People and from Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s excellent developmental work in the old Western Region, the Yoruba would appear too accomplished to need the visceral hate of others to fly.  Yet, what drives the Oodua Republic push is ethnic phobia, powered by Fulani hate and condescension.

If you doubt, see how “Yoruba Nation” went ga-ga, after UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterress confirmed that Boko Haram was much curtailed in the North East.

To be sure, the Guterress verdict, based on verifiable facts from his May 3-4 tour of Nigeria, could be unintended de-marketing of the “Yoruba Nation” cause, since the lobbyists never tire of claiming the UN right to self-determination supports their cause.

Even then, the lobby’s disdain for the president and his Fulani folks was all too predictable: Buhari, a “Yoruba Nation” release by Maxwell Adeleye, its communications manager claimed, was running a “government of the Fulani, by the Fulani and for the Fulani.”  Imagine the cross-ethnic bile — hot, fresh and smoking — oozing from that base statement!

Yet, a Yoruba man, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, is not only No. 2 in that government, he is among the 25, across many ethnics — and still counting! — clamouring to take over “a government of the Fulani, by the Fulani and for the Fulani”, in the ruling APC alone!

Of course, the “Yoruba Nation” lobby have their democratic right to love or hate.  But to suck in the entire Yoruba to their whims is as presumptuous as it is tragic, especially since they have no democratic instrument — a plebiscite, for instance — to that effect.

Besides, you only can see the start of a hate campaign.  You can’t fathom the sure self-destruction mass hate would bring.  If you doubt, see the South East killings.

This is tough but nevertheless must be said: Prof. Achebe’s There Was A Country provided the philosophical base for today’s creeping anarchy in the South East.  The good professor had done his bit; and rests in bliss.  But the Igbo youth carry the can.

May Prof. Akintoye enjoy many years yet, in good health and in sound mind. But as former President Olusegun Obasanjo would say, the famed historian sits at the departure lounge.

All those Yoruba youths and others being sucked into his lobby’s Fulani hate campaign had better learn from what is now playing out in the South East.  Long after the good professor is gone, these youths and others would hold the short end of the stick.

You can’t but feel for Chukwuma Soludo, the new Anambra governor.  Many had swooned and sworn his coming would be some Ndigbo renaissance.

Yet, all he has to contend with is the rubbish of the so-called “unknown gunmen” bumping off innocent people; or some thugs, imposing sit-at-home on Mondays, when even IPOB claims it is through with such mercantile no-brainer.

That reminds the historic-minded of the Niger Delta New Avengers, sworn to crippling the new Buhari government, simply because PDP lost power; and New Avengers’ cadres lost Jonathan-era sweetheart deals!

The South East experience appears extra-horrific because even IPOB now cries — earnest or dissembling? — whodunnit?  Imagine New Avengers back then screaming  ”who did it?”, at the bombing of yet another oil facility!

Things fall apart!  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the East!

Sure, Nigeria has challenges.  But the cure is clinical introspection and deep thinking, not the emotive self-destruction, playing out in the South East.

That is the war cry the South East elite must bawl, as they start a race against time to save their cherished homeland from self-destruction, by home-bred dregs.