Tag: Ajekun Iya

For Dino Melaye, master of the din from the Eighth Senate and peculiar senator from Kogi West, Ajekun Iya appears morphing into Ajeku Iya — and it isn’t pretty!

In writing, that could be a careless typo, removing an “n” which should have gone with the phrase.  But in the highly evocative Yoruba language, which complex intonations echo with even more complex meanings, that is a big deal.

When the high drama started as “Ajekun Iya“, it was the flashing and mercurial and commanding Dino, that bristled and prowled all over the place, the hunter-in-chief and king of the senatorial jungle, roaring to hunt down any sorry soul, that as much as raised a wimp against his self-declared hegemony — Ajekun Iya!

But now, seeing the sorry sight Dino cut when he was stretchered to the Chief Magistrate’s Court, Abuja, lying in a heap of sorry beef, shopping for free sympathy, you’re constrained to think maybe, just maybe, the fiery hunter had become the sorry hunted — Ajeku Iya!

Non-Yoruba speakers may not fully get Hardball’s drift, and the devastating bite of the pun, instantly clear to native speakers.  Suffice it to say: while Ajekun Iya connotes the unsparing juggernaut willing and ready to further tan his luckless victim (Dino, then), Ajeku Iya is the direct opposite: the sorry glutton for punishment, whose plight is self-imposed and deserves no pity (Dino, now)!

But beyond the nadir of Dino’s empty politics and vacuous grandstanding, there is something in the self-caused fall of (wo)men of standing — and Dino, as a senator ought to be a man of standing, until he dwarfed his position with juvenile conduct and wayward behaviours — that demeans common humanity.

The great Roman masters called it hubris.  In Roman classical theatre and even in Shakespeare, the hero often develops a fatal flaw; and that flaw drives him or her to his doom — reference the great Anthony, in Shakespeare’s historical tragedy, Anthony and Cleopatra.

The Greeks were even more severe, as malevolent gods just seemed to snare uppity man, and glory at his loud fall — again, visit the travails of King Oedipus, in Sophocles’s famous play, Oedipus Rex: the man that did everything to avert a dire prophesy of killing his father and marrying his mother but ended up doing exactly both!

For poor Oedipus, the pathos was deep because he strove very hard to avert the catastrophe.  At least, in your deep sympathy, you blame the baleful gods, playing yo-yo with humans.

But how do you find sympathy for “gods”, who suddenly found out they were no more than men?  That’s the self-imposed tragedy of Dino.

But it’s no time to laugh, or to mock, or to gloat.  It’s only a time to be sober and learn.  However his trial turns, it’s clear Dino has run himself into a cul-de-sac — and it’s all so avoidable!

Meanwhile, when will Bukola Saraki’s Senate prorogue to attend Dino’s court sessions?  Isn’t what is sauce for the goose also sauce for the gender?

Again, it’s no time to gloat or to mock; just a time to drive home that harsh fact: if a Senate abandons lofty function of state to play in the nadir of empty politicking, it sets the Lilliputian level by which it wants to be rated.

So, as it was with the Saraki court sittings, so it should be with Dino’s court sessions — all animals, after all, are equal — Ajeku Iya!

Jimoh Akeran, a Facebook activist, has coined what has got to be one of the most devastating puns on Nigerian contemporary politics — “… scampering Kaba-kaba in Kabba …”!

No prize for guessing right: it was at the expense of Dino Melaye, Himself the Ajekun Iya exponent and senator of the Federal Republic.

In an eerie, even if surrealist near self-fulfilling prophesy, of Melaye’s Ajekun Iya best-selling video, the senator in the eye of a vicious senatorial storm had to scurry and scamper from reported stones and allied missiles, let fly by a mob, at a Kabba Day event, after reportedly announcing a donation of N3 million!   How so ungrateful!

But for his police orderlies, that did a yeoman’s job of ferreting him out of danger, Dino may have bitterly tasted the grim meaning of “ajekun iya” (thorough drubbing) — and from a mob too!  Lord have mercy!

For starters, Hardball decries any mob action, which could well have ended up in lynching.  That’s ultra-barbaric and ought to be condemned by every right thinking citizen.  On that, Dino has Hardball’s sympathy.

But Hardball condemns no less Dino’s cynical tactics too, in his relations to his constituents, not to talk of his contemptuous penchant for others, thus dragging his high senatorial seat in the mud.

The Ajekun Iya video, which now appears to be haunting Dino, was a direct affront to those who cautioned Dino to be more dignified and senatorial in his wild conduct.  The video was therefore to underscore his untouchability, some sort of senatorial Kabiyesi syndrome.

Regrettably, the Kabba fracas just shows those civility cannot touch, the mob reserves the right to deal with, in their own peculiar way.  On that lane, however, everyone is lose-lose.

Still, Dino had gone from one notoriety to another mistaking, in his high clouds of self-destruct infamy, notoriety for popularity.

When his constituents sent him a recall notice, he responded with a legal challenge.  That however is within his legal rights; and the matter is still on appeal, after Dino lost the opening battle at the high court.  It is a legitimate legal process.  Yet, not a few has interpreted it as nothing but legal stonewalling.  Emotions are free, but until the courts give their verdict, it’s a legitimate process.

Then, the senator at plenary, went appealing for relief, for the salary-starved constituents in the Kogi civil service.  Pronto, his senatorial peers reportedly donated bags of rice to feed the Kogi starving and hungry.

That might well be an exercise in genuine empathy.  But it might also mean a cynical dig at controversial Kogi Governor,  Yaya Bello, doting friend turned implacable foe!

Maybe the embattled governor turned on the screws.  Maybe Dino was haunted by his past mischiefs.  But in no time, a counter-narrative emerged that Dino, by his kind gesture, was turning his constituents into internally displaced persons (IDPs), condemned to living on other people’s charity, genuine or cynical!  Yet, shorn of the background politics, some families and households, driven to the end of their economic tether, do need those grains!

Meanwhile, Governor Bello, hearing of Dino’s sore treatment, reportedly exercised a fast and furious u-turn, from the Kabba Day venue!   Hmmnn … a mob is no respecter of persons or offices!

It’s certainly interesting times out there in Kogi — running kaba-kaba in Kabba, in the worst spirit of Ajekun Iya!

Heard the news?  Ajekun iya video exponent and senator of the Federal Republic, the irrepressible Dino Melaye, just gifted his constituents with two brand new school blocks!

Brand new?  Well, like everything Dino, which must carry its own din of controversy, there is already a howling controversy over any claim to “brand new”.  It is a function of that controversy that even the crowing picture, popping out of Dino’s Instagram page, itself fuelled the controversy.

The “din-y” senator triumphantly announced — well, pictorially — the completion of another initiative to sate his constituents of Ife Olukotun, in Yagba East Local Government of Kogi State, with the proverbial “dividends of democracy”, as the cliche goes.

A close-up on the picture reveals: “Senator Dino Melaye Constituency Project FCT/TB/(2016)(2)001 Olukotun”.

From the green/yellow painting, it appears like a renovation of old structures.  But if a renovation jazzes up an old structure, does it not have a logical right to some “newness”? Besides, the triumphant announcement, in the peculiar Dino “din-y” way settled all doubts — it’s new(ly renovated?) all right!  But that only leads to another din of arguments.

On that score, the cyberspace is still on fire, between Dino proponents and opponents, while the senator — the one without a dull moment — looks on bemused, while pondering the next Ajekuniya escapade.

But on one score, there is no controversy — the imperative to give the Dino latest intervention a befitting name.  Dino himself led the debate on the score — a point of order, Mr. Speaker, or Mr. President!, as they say in the red chamber — already kickstarted the debate on that.

Well, he christened his project “Senator Dino Melaye Constituency Project”.  Naaaaaa!  That’s too simple, too banal, too ordinary, without the Dino drama.  It can’t be Dino, except it is so raucously and dramatically racy, can it?

That has kicked off a fresh controversy.  What about Chairman’s Seeds?  Oh yeah, seeds: didn’t you hear Dino declare, in his affidavit in a suit, that he was eyeing running for chairman in his local government, in his post-senatorial days?  That has a strong basis in literature, especially for those who crave community value.  Remember Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native?

Still, “seeds” suggests some seediness, which, alarm of alarms, suggests the senator’s project has gone to seeds!  That can’t be.  There’s got to be a better name.  Hardball agrees.

Well, what about Ajekun iya Academy, in cognizance of the millions of youths nationwide, and billions of their ilk worldwide, merrily linked by cyberspace, doting on Dino’s Ajekun iya philosophy, after watching his monster hit, Ajekun iya video?

That’s something, you know!  A philosophy whose time has come, lapped up by youth, disoriented for too long!  But such stellar philosophy must not be limited cyberspace alone.  There has got to be some physical manifestation, some defining temple, some befitting shrine.

Well, there you have it: Ajekun iya Acadamy, live and direct to teach Dino’s Ajekun iya credo.  Indeed, a philosophy whose time has come!