Category: Vincent Akanmode

By  Vincent Akanmode

I have had an emotional attachment to Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, since my first visit to the historical town as a secondary school pupil in the 1980s. For reasons I could not fathom, my usually protective father, who had previously resisted my bid to travel to neighbouring Kabba town for an interview that would earn me admission into secondary school, strangely decided to yield to my Ilorin-based elder sister’s request that I should spend my holiday with her. It was my first real journey outside the village setting and away from the prying eyes of my parents under whose guide I could do nothing beyond going to school, accompanying them to the farm, performing the house chores they assign to me and doing some evening reading before retiring into bed.

In Iloring, it was a different ball game. My excited sister felt an obligation to pamper me with all manner of victuals and even take me to the state government owned park and garden located at the intersection between Ibrahim Taiwo and Unity roads, among other fun spots. So pleasant was my stay that I felt reluctant to return to the village at the expiration of the holiday. My suggestion that my sister should register me in one of the missionary schools in Ilorin so that I could continue to stay in the city was rebuffed by her. It was enough luck that she secured my father’s consent to spend my holiday in Ilorin, asking him for more would amount to pushing her luck too far.

Ilorin naturally became my base after secondary school, and I later realised that the city hosted a lot of my kinsmen from Okunland in the present Kogi State, who carried on like sons and daughters of the soil. So much so that when Kogi State was eventually carved from Kwara and Benue states with Lokoja as the capital, the Okun (Yoruba) people in Ilorin were reluctant to return to their new state until all the sensitive positions in the civil service had been occupied by the Igala from the Benue end. That became the genesis of the dominant influence of the Igala in the affairs of the state till this day.

From the foregoing, you can imagine my shock and pain at the news that a piece of head covering called  hijab is threatening the foundation of the peace and spirit of camaraderie that has governed Ilorin for ages. The Christian and Muslim population in the city who had lived at peace with one another for centuries are now at daggers drawn over whether the hijab won by female Muslims should be allowed in schools built and run by Christian missions.

Trouble was said to have begun on a fateful morning an okada (commercial motorcycle) rider took a Muslim student with the head covering to one of the missionary schools in the city. On getting to the gates of the school, the girl alighted and removed the hijab as she made to enter the school’s compound. The curious okada man called the girl back and asked why she removed her hijab. ”We are not allowed to wear it within the school’s premises,” the innocent female pupil responded, not knowing that she had just triggered the Third World War.

The okada rider, now in the garb of an advocate of the oppressed, told the girl to wear her hijab and volunteered to escort her into the school’s compound. Of course, her mode of dressing was met with resistance at the school’s gates and all hell was let loose. The okada man took it upon himself to call as many Muslims as he could to behold the ‘abomination’ that had just occurred. Thus was born the brouhaha that is threatening to tear the state apart. Unfortunately the age old counsel that a government can best deal with religion by not dealing with it was lost on the state government, which has taken it upon itself to champion the course of the Muslims in the matter.

Religion is a private affair; a personal relationship between an individual and God. Granting aides to the mission schools in the state does not necessarily transfer their ownership to the government. Schools everywhere in the world have codes of conduct, among which is the mode of dressing, which must be respected by anyone who desires to pass through them. The previous administrations in the state apparently realised this and chose not to teach the owners of the schools which mode of dressing should be accepted or rejected. School uniforms convey a sense of belonging and orderliness among pupils, but the idea of hijab, particularly in schools founded by Christian missions, has put the concept under severe threat. What happens, for instance, if members of the Celestial or Cherubim and Seraphim Church decide to turn up in school in their long, immaculate robes, claiming that it is part of their religion?

I am not a Muslim, but I have many Muslim friends, neighbours and relations whose wives and daughters do not wear the hijab. It takes nothing away from their identities as Muslims or their belief in the oneness and supremacy of Allah. If for many months during the recent COVID-19 lockdown the mosques had to be shut just like the churches and the heavens did not fall, the few hours a female student would spend in school without the hijab cannot determine the extent of her piety or her candidacy for al-Jannah. Other than political reasons, the hijab crisis is a needless controversy.

By  Vincent Akanmode

An intriguing aspect of life is the ability of matters considered dead and buried to rear their heads again, sometimes in a manner as furious as the second wave of an epidemic.  Consider the case of former Delta State governor, James Onanefe Ibori, whose loot of 4.2 million pounds (about N2.4 billion) during his time as the state’s chief executive the British government promised to return during the week. This was four years after Ibori presented himself before the congregation as a martyr at a Baptist Church in his Oghara hometown where he declared himself as clean as a hound’s tooth in respect of the twin allegations of corruption and money laundering for which he spent 13 years in UK prisons.

Upon the completion of his jail term in 2017, Ibori had returned to Nigeria amid pomp and ceremony, culminating in a thanksgiving service at the Oghara church, declaring that he was not a thief and would never be one. He said: “Today, I have decided to speak for myself. I am not a thief. I cannot be a thief. Today is the day they say I should give testimony to God. For Those that know me, you know that my entire life is a testimony itself, and I have said it over and over again that my life is fashioned by God, directed by God, sealed, acknowledged and blessed by God, and I believe that since the day I was born. “

Cheered on by ecstatic supporters and family members, Ibori had made his boastful declaration in the belief that the chapter concerning his arrest and conviction for corruption and money laundering had closed with the completion of his jail term. That, however, was not to be as the promise the British government made during the week to return his looted funds sprang the entire episode back to life and subjected him to fresh public scrutiny.

Ibori’s case is symbolic of how much joke our country makes of corruption and how much fun we are willing to poke at God by turning his altar into a stage meant for comedy. Many Nigerians are living witnesses to how Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd) literally made corruption the guiding principle of state matters in his time as the head of the country’s junta. Till today, he enjoys the singular honour of being the Nigerian head of state that introduced the settlement culture into governance. His then second in command, Vice Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, would later earn the reputation for publicly making a distinction between embezzlement of funds and misappropriation of same, and implying that the latter is much less in gravity than the former if ever it is considered an offence.

Read Also: Reps move motion to halt spending of £4.2m loot linked to Ibori

Former President Goodluck Jonathan would later prove himself a good student of Babangida and Ekhomu when he declared in the build-up to the presidential election he lost to Gen. Muhammadu Buhari in 2014 that corruption should not be equated with stealing. The former president also sent mouths agape during one of his campaign rallies in the build-up to the said election with his castigation of the military administration of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari between 1983 and 1985 for committing former civilian governor of Anambra State, Chief Jim Nwobodo to prison for stealing a sum Jonathan said could not even buy a brand new car.

Jonathan’s statement, it was gathered, has since become the pivot on which anti-corruption studies in Oxford, Cambridge and other world class academic institutions now rotate, as scholars and academics seek to determine how much a public office holder must steal before he or she could be accused corruption.

Yet Ibori must be given credit where it is due. He has not only proved to be a good student of the pro-corruption school, he has also provided leadership in terms of daring God. It is now fashionable among governors, senators and other public office holders to head straight for the altar to give thanks after some abominable exploits. That explains why every election year, we are confronted with the sight of politicians storming churches and mosques for thanksgiving after rigging their ways to victory, conscious of the evil means they deployed, including the shedding of innocent blood. They think nothing of their abominable deeds because they know that with the patient and merciful God Christians and Muslims worship, there would hardly be consequences for their actions.

The foregoing is the basis of the agitation by some of our patriotic countrymen that political office holders should no longer be sworn into office with the Bible or the Quran but with the symbols of traditional deities like Ogun, the god of iron.  I wager that most of them would shudder at the prospect of being sworn into office with a piece of iron, knowing that they risk being ripped apart by lightning if they renege on their oath.

By Vincent Akanmode

Former head of state, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, began his military administration in 1985 by throwing the nation into a debate on the propriety or otherwise of Nigeria taking a loan dangled before it by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) otherwise known as World Bank. Majority of Nigerians who contributed to the debate were of the opinion that the nation should not take the loan because given the conditions on which the loan was premised, it was nothing but poisonous bait from which Nigeria may never recover.

In those days Babangida’s identity as ‘Maradona’ or ‘evil genius’ was yet to unfold and the philosophy of his government as one that would rotate on the pivot of chicanery was yet hidden from the public eye. So, Nigerians, in infantile innocence or ignorance, took the debate with all the seriousness they could muster, with a clear majority telling Babangida that the loan should be avoided like leprosy.  Unknown to them, the administration had gone behind to take the loan, agreeing to such conditions as the introduction of structural adjustment programme (SAP), second-tier foreign exchange market (SFEM) and other arcane policies that heralded the crash of the high-value naira against other world’s major currencies.

The self-styled evil genius would later seek to justify his action by declaring that there was no alternative to the IMF loan. I recall that one of the strident voices against Babangida’s declaration then was Sam Aluko, the inimitable professor of Economics who responded that there was nothing in life without an alternative, includes life itself, whose alternative he said is death.

More than three and a half decades after the great IMF debate, it would seem that the nation is ripe for another one on account of the crisis that has been provoked by the activities of bandits and killer herdsmen, particularly the confrontations between them and farmers  in different parts of the country, as well as the threat by cattle breeders during the week that they would stop supplying cattle to markets in the southern part of the country if herdsmen were further threatened with eviction in any part of the country they chose to graze their cattle.

Speaking at a press conference in Abuja on Monday, the National President of the Amalagamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria (AUFCDN), Muhammad Tahir, said the association would have no choice but to withdraw its services if the Federal Government failed to address its grievances before Wednesday, February 24, 2021.

With the expiration of AUFCDN’s ultimatum, Nigerians in the southern part of the country face the grim prospect of being starved of beef, a delicacy that cattle dealers think is organically linked to the survival of southern Nigeria. Considering that the security crisis that has bedeviled the country in recent times is centred mostly on movement of cows, the natural question would be whether it is worth the while for Nigerians to continue their association with the animal or the consumption of its meat. Put differently, will southern Nigeria cease to exist in the absence of cows or cow meat?

Of course, I know what the late Aluko’s response would likely be as a Yoruba man if he were confronted with the poser, for a Yoruba adage says ‘a o ni tori pe afe je’ran ki a pe maalu ni boda (you don’t have to call a cow ‘Uncle’ because you want to eat meat)’. I also doubt if any Igbo man or woman would revere the beast as ‘Master’ because they want to eat beef. This is particularly so because they can count on many alternatives to cow meat, among which fish, chicken, snail, shrimps, pork and even bush meat are numbered; a fact that is probably lost on AUFCDN, the Myetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria and other bodies related to cattle rearing, who are in the habit of threatening the nation with a strike action at the slightest provocation.

If beef is so indispensable to human survival as cattle dealers in the country would have us believe, there would be few lives left in India where Hindus, who make up nearly 80 per cent of the country’s population of 1.3 billion people, regard the cow as a sacred animal and its meat a taboo. And to come nearer home, there are vegetarians even in Nigeria who would not touch meat with a pole, much less consume it. Health experts are always reminding us of the dangers that inhere in the consumption of red meat of which beef is a major source. Red meat (beef, pork and lamb), they say, has more saturated (bad) fat than chicken, fish and vegetable proteins like beans, hence it raises blood cholesterol and worsens heart disease.

The foregoing are ample standpoints from which inferences can be drawn by protagonists and antagonists of cow meat once President Muhammadu Buhari gives the nod for a national debate.

By Vincent Akanmode

It is just as well that Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, saw the need to “clarify” his widely reported assertion that herdsmen have the right to go about brandishing AK-47 rifles because they need to defend themselves.  Amid the outrage provoked by herders’ killing of hundreds of innocent people across the country, Governor Mohammed declared at the closing ceremony of the 2021 Press Week of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Bauchi State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists penultimate Thursday that herdsmen have no choice but to carry arms because of the insecurity they encounter while herding their cattle through Nigerian forests, particularly the attacks on them by cattle rustlers.

“The Fulani man is practicing the tradition of trans-human pastoralism,” he said. “He has been exposed to the dangers of the forests, the animals and now the cattle rustlers who carry guns, kill him and take away his commonwealth, his cows. He has no option but to carry AK-47 and defend himself because the society and the government are not protecting him.”

As it would be expected, his pronouncement sparked widespread anger, particularly in parts of the country that have been at the receiving end of the horror unleashed by killer herdsmen. Among those who expressed anger were two governors, Daniel Ortom of Benue State and Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo, who have had to experience the herdsmen’s reign of terror firsthand.

Expressing shock and disappointment at Mohammed’s statement, Governor Ortom, whose government had to conduct mass burial for 72 Benue indigenes on New Year day in January 2018 after the terror unleashed by herdsmen reacting to the enforcement of the state’s new anti-grazing law, challenged the Bauchi governor to point out the law that permits herdsmen to carry Ak-47 rifles. Ortom wondered why a colleague governor who took the oath of office to protect and preserve the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria would take the lead in violating the provisions of the same constitution by calling for lawlessness. Governor Akeredolu, on his part, wondered what would become of the country if other governors encourage their citizens to carry arms in self-defence.

Impelled by the widespread condemnation of his statement, Governor Mohammed issued another statement on Sunday purportedly clarifying the earlier one in an attempt to justify same. But the so called clarification was nothing short of adding insult to injury; a specious afterthought so arrogantly tendentious to qualify as a ploy meant to call the bluff of the governor’s traducers. The significance of the statement is not the clarification it purports to seek but the realization on the part of Governor Mohammed that the earlier one was unbecoming of a statesman.

In the clarification statement signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mukhtar Gidado, the governor said his primary objective was to avert “the dangerous prospect of a nationwide backlash as tempers flared and given that the phenomenon of inter-ethnic migration is a national pastime involving all ethnic groups in Nigeria. By extension, the governor made it abundantly clear that it will be inappropriate to label any one tribe based on the crimes of a few members of the ethnic group.” He then added that the reference to Ak-47 “was simply (meant) to put in perspective the predicament and desperation of those law-abiding Fulani herdsmen who, while carrying out their legitimate cow-rearing business, have become serial victims of cattle rustling, banditry, kidnapping and assassination.”

The legitimate question that flows from the clarification is which part of Nigeria does not experience the air of insecurity for which Governor Mohammed is advocating Ak-47 for the Fulani, sometimes in worse dimensions? In Cross River State, for instance, hapless medical doctors have been the targets of kidnappers and armed robbers in recent times because their troublers perceive them as the most prosperous professionals in the state. Should doctors in the South-south state now carry arms because their lives are under threats of kidnapping and armed robbery?

As a journalist, I have lost count of the number of my colleagues who have been robbed, abducted or assassinated. In the recent EndSARS protest hijacked by hoodlums, both TVC’s and this newspaper’s offices were attacked by gunmen who also set fire to the buildings that house the two media organizations. Would these be justifications for media practitioners to carry arms? In Borno, Lagos, Adamawa and other states, there have been reports in recent times of schools invaded by insurgents or hoodlums to abduct students and teachers. The question Governor Mohammed should answer is whether teachers and school pupils should now carry arms because they desperately need to defend themselves in the face of the glaring failure of government to do so.

Clearly, Governor Mohammed has no one but himself to blame for the vitriol his infamous outbursts have drawn from well-meaning Nigerians. And he deserves no pity because his descent from the zenith of grace to the nadir of infamy was a personal decision. It is a form of misfortune that the good people of Bauchi State are saddled with a leader whose utterances can be so reckless in a matter that borders on national security.

By Vincent Akanmode

From the governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, came the cheering news during the week that governors in the northern part of the country had declared open grazing an obsolete practice that must come to an end in the country. Instead, they said, Nigerian herdsmen must embrace ranching, which is the vogue all over the world. A communiqué issued by Lalong as the Chairman of Northern Nigeria Governors’ Forum after its virtual meeting on Tuesday stated that the current system of herding conducted mainly through open grazing is no longer sustainable in view of growing urbanization and the geometric rise in the nation’s population. The forum stated the need to sensitise Nigerian herdsmen in this regard and appealed to the Federal Government to support states with grants with which they can undertake pilot projects of modern livestock production.

In recent years, the nation has been goaded almost inexorably on the path of ethno-religious war as a result of clashes between herdsmen and farmers whose crops are often destroyed by the former’s cattle. The development has in recent times pushed the nation to the edge of the precipice with drumbeats of war getting louder and louder in different parts of the country. From Benue, Taraba and Kogi to Enugu, Edo, Delta, Oyo and Ogun states, bloody clashes are reported between herdsmen and farmers almost on a daily basis, farmers almost always at the receiving end as they find themselves perpetually at the mercy of AK-47 wielding herders who kill or maim them and rape their wives and daughters after destroying their farms.

In Benue State, for instance, residents of many communities in the state have become refugees in other lands, having been displaced by herders who invaded their communities and took over their lands. On a particular day in January 2018, the government had to conduct mass burial for 72 of its citizens after the violence provoked by the enforcement of a new anti-grazing law in the state. “They had threatened to wipe out the whole state if we did not repeal the law and allow their cattle to graze wherever they liked. The rule of law should be respected and punishment should be meted out to those who violate it,” a sobbing governor of the state, Samuel Ortom, told reporters afterwards.

Lately, world’s attention has been on the Ibarapa axis of Oyo State where herdsmen were said to have turned the killing and maiming of the inhabitants of the area as well as the rape of their wives and daughters into a past time. For decades, the hapless indigenes endured the reign of terror until a messiah arose in the person of Sunday Adeyemo, an indigene of the area, popularly called Sunday Igboho.

Worrying as the situation has been for well-meaning Nigerians, the shock of it all is the dead silence maintained by President Muhammadu Buhari on the matter. The President, who himself is a member of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, the umbrella body of herdsmen in the country, has not as much as called the leadership of the association to order, even in moments when they made inflammatory remarks to further inflame passion and rub salt into the wounds of the people at the receiving end of the wicked deeds of killer herders. Rather, the President is either admonishing the people whose loved ones are killed to learn to live in peace with the invaders or even defend the herders by holding the remnants of the army of former Libyan leader, Moammar Ghadaffi, responsible for the evil deeds.

Not surprisingly, Buhari’s loud silence on the sordid activities of herdsmen has given rise to all manner of postulations, including the one by the leader of the outlawed Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) that the man that steers the affairs of the country from the Aso Rock Presidential Villa is no longer the Buhari Nigerians voted for but a certain Jibrin from Sudan redesigned by some arcane devices to look like him. Others are of the opinion that Buhari’s decision to keep sealed lips on the matter was deliberate—a way of harassing the inhabitants of the different parts of the country that have caught the fancies of herdsmen to accept to host ruga in their domains as the only way out of the crisis that threatens to claim more lives than the civil war. It is all borne out by the Yoruba adage that says Bi nani nani ba n nani, ti eni to tonii gba ko ba so fun nani nani ki o ma nani mo, a je wipe oun lo ni ki nani nani  maa nani (when a strong man bullies a weaker one and the third man endowed with strength to stop the bully chooses to stand aloof, he is definitely an accomplice).

Mercifully, the voice of North’s governors combined is almost as strong as the voice of the President as far as the matter in question is concerned. An adage says if a man sights a snake and a woman kills it, what matters is that the snake dies. A python hitherto pampered by Mr. President is about to be eliminated by North’s governors. They deserve nothing but commendation.

By Vincent Akanmode

The crisis of confidence that has rocked the Buhari administration with respect to national security assumed a new dimension last week with the emergence of a warlord determined to rescue his kinsmen in Igangan and other communities in Ibarapa North Local Government Area from the grips of gun trotting herdsmen alleged to have turned the killing of hapless farmers in the area into a past time.  Sunday Adeniyi Adeyemo, popularly called Sunday Igboho, has been the subject of rave reviews in the social and traditional media since he took upon himself the task of liberating the traumatised inhabitants of the area.

The activist had sent shock waves into the camp of herdsmen in the area when he led his foot soldiers to Igagan to confront the Seriki Fulani, Saliu Kadri, asking him and other herdsmen in the area to quit within seven days or face his wrath. He accused the Seriki of shielding the herdsmen who allegedly killed an Oyo State businessman, Dr. Fatai Aborode, the CEO of Kunfayakun Green Treasures Limited, who was said to have returned home from his base in Scotland to establish a large farm that employed many indigenes of the area, as well as a local prince and the owner of Subawah Petroleum, Alhaja Sherifat Adisa, her two children and other victims. Igboho made it clear that he was acting on pleas by some Yoruba traditional rulers who had grown weary of the prevailing situation.

Although Kadri denied that he and his Fulani kinsmen in the area had a hand in the murder and abductions recorded in the area in recent months and blamed it all on some marauders from Zamfara, Kebbi and other locations outside the Southwest, the threat to evict the Seriki was made good at the expiration of the deadline as his house and cars numbering about 11 were burnt, forcing him and family members to flee Igangan community.

The incident, as would be expected, drew the ire of many Nigerians who believe that it is not in Igboho’s place to issue a quit notice to any resident of Oyo State, particularly one like Seriki Saliu Kadri who has resided in the area for decades. Prominent individuals like the Oyo State governor Seyi Makinde and human rights lawyer Femi Falana were particularly unsparing in their condemnation of the actions of Igboho and foot soldiers. While Makinde was quick in calling on the Oyo State Commissioner of Police to arrest Igboho and treat him like a common criminal, Falana made it a duty to push the Fulani community in the area to drag the activist to court.

The truth, however, is that given the prevailing situation in Igangan and the surrounding communities and the failure of government at federal and state levels to respond to the cries of the inhabitants for an end to incessant killing, abduction, rape the and other crimes perpetrated by herdsmen and drawing from the ugly experiences of the inhabitants of other communities in Benue, Taraba, Enugu and Delta and other states previously tormented by herders, the emergence of a warlord figure like Igboho was inevitable. Of course, there have been various accounts portraying Igboho as a political thug and a puppet on the chessboard of some Southwest politicians including three former governors. But as far as current events are concerned, his kinsmen regard him as a hero. They have forgiven whatever sin he might have committed against democracy. Igboho is now a new creature. Old things have passed away and everything about him has become new.

There is but a tenuous line between a villain and a hero where people’s lives are involved. At critical moments like this, it matters little if the saviour is Satan himself. Igboho’s past is consigned to the anthill of history, and from the ashes of it, a messiah has risen. If Nigerians could find the heart to forgive President Muhammadu Buhari and vote him twice to become their President years after he deployed the barrels of a gun to overthrow a government they democratically elected, Ibarapa and Oyo people in general will have no problem writing off Igboho’s inglorious past.

If Makinde were wise, he would tread softly in his antagonism against Igboho. Whether the governor knows it or not, the momentum is with the activist not just in Oyo State but in the entire Southwest region because of the sensitive nature of the issue at hand. Here, Governor Makinde would profit massively from the Yoruba adage that says Eni ba f’oju ana wo’ku, ebora a bo l’aso (he who relates with the dead the way he does the living risks being stripped naked). I make bold to say that Makinde would stand no chance against Igboho if the two were to contest an election in Oyo today. The earlier the governor realises the popularity the matter at hand has conferred on Igboho and make up with him, the better. A word is enough for the wise.

By Vincent Akanmode

Poor Adam Nuhu. The moment the news filtered in a few weeks ago that the erstwhile managing director of First City Monument Bank (FCMB) was accused of eating the forbidden fruit of one of his female underlings, my instincts told me that he was in for a long night.  For more than two decades, he had studiously avoided scandal or controversy as he preoccupied himself strictly with banking activities, pledging unwavering loyalty to the marriage with Hauwa, his beautiful wife.

But if there is one thing that cannot be disputed about life, it is its unpredictable nature. Like biscuit, no one knows when or where it would crack, especially when one is surrounded by detractors as seems to be the case with the erstwhile MD of FCMB.

As the story goes, the suspended MD was allegedly engrossed in an amorous relationship with a former female employee of the bank named Moyo, who reportedly bore him two children while she was married to another man. Moyo’s husband was said to have been so shocked at the discovery of the romance between his wife and her boss and the realization that their two children belonged to Nuhu and not he, the authentic husband, that he developed a stroke and later died of heart failure a few days to his proposed wedding with another lady.

In a society of hypocrites where infidelity is considered a sin smaller only than murder, emotions were bound to run wild with loss of life and paternity fraud involved. That became the basis for the outrage that greeted the news and the pressure mounted on the Central Bank of Nigeria and the authorities of FCMB to investigate the matter and sanction Nuhu. It did not take long before the board of FCMB yielded to pressure and ordered Nuhu’s suspension as the MD, appointing Mrs Yemisi Edun as the acting MD.

But just when everyone thought that the former MD had seen the worst, the news filtered out that his wife of many years had deserted him. The ugly prospect of Nuhu losing his exotic and dignifying job as the chief executive officer of the prestigious bank was thus compounded with the threat of a desolate life for the once hearty and bubbly family man. His fate of seeming abandonment by the home front contrasts sharply with the show of solidarity the members of Moyo’s family exhibited for their daughter.

For the alleged love birds, it has been a case of different strokes for different folks. While members of Moyo’s family are rallying round her, defending her desperately and declaring her clean as a hound’s tooth in the allegation of marital infidelity leveled against her, members of Nuhu’s family appear less enthusiastic about sticking their necks out for him even while the result of the investigation ordered by the authorities of FCMB was yet to be made public. It once again provokes the question as to why the male partner is almost always the one at the receiving end in such matters.

But Nuhu must not be left to bear this cross alone, if only for the sake of humanity. Even if he was guilty of the alleged act of misdemeanor, it still will be too much a punishment that a man who once boasted a beautiful wife and another beautiful side chick would suddenly be turned into an absolute recluse. Everyone with any measure of influence on Madam Hauwa must do everything they can to persuade her to return to her matrimonial home immediately. To err, they say, is human and to forgive divine.

As a first step, I recommend that a committee be constituted to look into ways of eliminating the threats to the marriage of the embattled chief executive. Their terms of reference will include establishing the veracity or otherwise of the claim that the erstwhile managing director was in the habit of philandering with female underlings while giving Hauwa the impression that he was working very hard in the office. They would also have to find out from Hauwa if Nuhu has a record of winking at other chicks whenever they were together on social outings.

The committee must of necessity summon Moyo from her base in the US for a physical assessment of her looks, figure and shape with a view to establishing or dismissing the likelihood of Nuhu being attracted by them. While the authorities of FCMB must be commended for insight and thoughtfulness with their decision to opt for a woman as a replacement for the suspended MD, it is important to know what features of a woman can constitute banana peels for future male MDs.

Not the least, the committee will have to find out what lessons other male bosses in the habit of seducing female subordinates can learn from Nuhu’s experience.

By Vincent Akanmode

The past week has been one of contrasting fortunes for the male folk and their female counterparts. For the female folk, it was a week of triumph in the art of chicanery for which they have built a reputation.  For their male counterparts on the other hand, it was a week that once again highlighted their weak and vulnerable nature with regard to women’s antics. In the week under review, no fewer than three prominent men were at the receiving end of the treatment the biblical Eve meted out to Adam, with dire consequences staring them in the face because they allegedly ate the forbidden fruit or attempted to do so.

It is a development that has left the male folk prostrate in a seeming battle of wits between the sexes. Two of the men in question have had their jobs on hold while the third, one of Africa’s wealthiest and most influential businessmen, is battling to sustain his hard earned reputation after pictures of his alleged philandering with some ladies became the butt of cruel jokes on the internet.

It all began like a piece of mischief when the story filtered out penultimate Friday that a former female employee of First City Monument Bank (FCMB) had declared the managing director of the bank the authentic father of her two children against the widely held belief that the children in question belonged to her husband. The shock of his wife’s admission of extra-marital affair with her boss was said to hit the husband so badly that he developed a stroke and later collapsed and died. Of course, both the MD in question and members of the deceased man’s family fought tooth and nail to put a lie to the story, but their efforts would not deter the board of the bank from suspending the MD and appointing a female successor in acting capacity.

Simultaneously as the paternal scandal in FCMB raged, the social and traditional media were awash with the story of a serving Commissioner for Environment in Ogun State whose alleged attempt to rape a 17-year-old girl resulted in his suspension by Governor Dapo Abiodun. As the story goes, the embattled commissioner had invited the hapless girl to his house to pick up a job as a computer operator only to take her into one of the rooms in his house and fondle her breasts. Although the accused commissioner has pleaded innocence, Governor Abiodun insists he must step aside to make way for a thorough and unhindered investigation.

And while the dust was yet to settle on the scandals involving the MD of FCMB and the Commissioner for Environment in Ogun State, two ladies sought to pull the lid off the largely anonymous social life of Nigerian businessman and one of Africa’s richest men by flooding the internet with pictures of their escapades with him, including one that exposes his backside as he lies on a bed. One of them even accused the businessman of breaking her heart while the other dismissed her claim as false, saying: “She’s not only looking for attention, she’s a hungry thug.”

To be sure, the guilt or innocence of the aforementioned men is yet to be decided. But if history is anything to go by, they will most likely end up with the shorter end of the stick. Since creation, the male folk have ended up the losers in battles of wits involving them and their female partners. In the Garden of Eden, Adam was the loyal, obedient servant until he pandered to the promptings of Eve and lost favour with God. Samson was a strong and highly successful warrior until his path crossed with Delilah and he lost his unique natural endowments after revealing the secrets of his life to her. King Ahab was a victim of Jezebel’s inordinate lust for power and affluence.

In contemporary times, we are living witnesses to the helpless condition of our own very President in his failed bid to confine his wife to “the other room”. The more he has tried to do so, the more she is out in the world launching tirade after tirade against him. So much so that it was recently speculated that she had become a virtual citizen of Nigeria, only paying occasional visits to the country from her base in the United Arab Emirates. When she is not accusing her husband of yielding his government to the jackals and the hyenas, she is threatening not to support his future political endeavours.

The question should not arise as to who is the weaker sex between the man and the woman. It is the women that lord it over the men, taking advantage of their purported disadvantage as the weaker sex. The arrangement that portrays man as the head of the family is a ruse. The woman only gladly concedes the headship to the man and contents herself with being the neck because she knows that the neck determines the position of the head. Whatever hold a man seems to have on his family would only last until the children are old enough to be on their own. The power baton changes hands at that point because the average mother takes advantage of their closeness to the children to tell them what to do for, to or with their father.

The feminine web from which the three men aforementioned are battling to extricate themselves is neither new nor easy. One can only pray that they succeed where Adam, Samson, Ahab, Macbeth and other men in similar conditions before them had failed.

By Vincent Akanmode

It would appear that there are no limits to the dimensions by which the coronavirus can impact on human
life. The deadly virus has proved to be capable of being a blessing almost in equal measure as it could constitute a curse. Of course, many would consider the thought of the COVID-19 pandemic as a blessing preposterous, seeing the damage it has done to humanity since it broke out in China towards the end of 2019. Besides the millions of lives that have been lost to the virus worldwide, it has found diverse ways of inflicting hunger, pains and misery globally. Among them was the global paralysis of social and economic activities for months, leaving one to wonder how an organism so tiny as not to be seen with the unaided eye can be so ruthless to bring the world to its knees.

Yet the virus is one more proof that there is nothing in life without a positive side, no matter how bad or useless it may look. It is a fact borne out by the realization that even a dead clock is correct two times in a day. The coronavirus has had its own usefulness if only we are careful enough to see it from the other side. For instance, many homes on the verge of break-up before the outbreak of the pandemic were unwittingly rescued with the lockdown impelled by it. Many of such homes have since been enjoying the peace and camaraderie that had eluded them for years because it was the first time that couples and children in such homes would spend hours together, with the result that there now exists between them a kind of matrimonial bonding hitherto not experienced.

Even business wise, the lockdown that followed the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was a blessing to many. For instance, while many entrepreneurs were lamenting the lull in their businesses, a friend who runs a POS centre in a popular community in Ogun State was grinning from ear to ear as he revealed how much the lockdown imposed by the state government was a blessing to his business. This, according to him, was on account of the huge patronage he enjoyed from residents of his neighbourhood who ordinarily would not withdraw money unless they got to the bank but were handicapped by the restriction the state government imposed on movement.

“To be honest, I have enjoyed the lockdown a lot. The money I have made from the commissions on transactions carried out on my POS machine is in millions,” he said. It was a case of one man’s meat being another man’s poison.

But a different dimension to COVID-19 blessings emerged during the week with the news that 500 secondary school girls in northeast Benin Republic were pregnant from the romps they had while their schools were locked down in response to the outbreak of the pandemic.  According to the Beninese news agency (ABP), which quoted Thomas Adam, a representative of the Child Protection Department of Secondary Education and Professional and Technical Training Ministry, altogether, 547 out of 36,487 school girls regularly registered were pregnant during the 2019-2020 school year. Adam attributed the increase in the cases of pregnancies to the long cessation of classes observed during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ordinarily, it would be a bad piece of news that girls who were barely out of diapers are about to become mothers. But given the peculiar condition of the neighbouring West African country, expecting a minimum of 500 children in one fell swoop could be a huge source of blessing. It is almost as certain as daybreak that the government of Benin Republic would consider the news a cheery one, considering how much Nigeria has lorded it over the neighbouring country simply because of the latter’s edge in terms of population. The neighbouring country has been heavily dependent on Nigeria for the sale of the goods they import from Europe, such that the country’s economy nearly collapsed when Nigeria decided recently to shut her border with the country.

And as observed by a social media activist, the government of Benin Republic should be glad that the pregnant pupils have proven their fertility and could become the veritable vehicle for the actualization of the country’s ambition for population explosion. If the Benin government needs to worry about anything, the social media activist posted, it would not be about the pregnant pupils but the ones among them who were involved in the romps but could not get pregnant. What is more, the Patrice Talon-led government in Cotonou would be glad that their youths took advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown to engage in such a highly productive venture while their Nigerian counterparts preoccupied themselves with a protest that was eventually hijacked by hoodlums with its consequent killing, looting and burning.

From the Benin experience, we all now know where the fault lies between teachers and parents in terms of failure to rein in undisciplined pupils. The pupils’ experience in Benin Republic should set the alarm bell ringing for the federal and state governments on the danger that inheres in another lockdown, considering that thousands of our female compatriots who got pregnant in the previous one are yet to be delivered of babies. Unlike her Benin counterpart, a second wave of COVID-19 pregnancies may not be a palatable experience for a country that needs to check its population growth