This column’s article for last week, titled “World Folklore Day 2025: Proverbs,” celebrated the Day which came up on 22 August with a look at proverbs and how some of them derive from certain fields of the social sciences, agriculture, natural sciences, engineering and medical sciences. Today, a continuation of the celebration looks at how proverbs relate with politics and how they are used by an individual to achieve specific communicative goals in particular contexts.
Human beings are political animals. This is the famous Greek Philosopher Aristotle’s summation of the belief that it is from participating in community with others that a human being achieves the ultimate human goal of being happy. Derived from a keen observation of human nature, and being short, witty and often repeated, this Aristotelian statement has become a political proverb.
A Yoruba proverb which deals with the nature of the political system adopted by a society is: “Idálú ni ìsèlú” (‘How a community originates determines how it is run.’) In other words, the peculiar circumstances surrounding the creation of a society determine the political system, for example between Liberal Democracy or Communism, that would be most suitable for its administration.
Another political proverb is: “Ohun tí a fún èsó só ni èsó n só” (‘It’s what a guard is charged with guarding that the guard guards.’) With ‘guards’ meaning the armed forces in today’s context, the underlying principle is that different categories of human beings in a society are trained to play different, but complementary, roles for the stability of the society and the benefit of all. This Yoruba proverb therefore abhors coups d’état which undermine both the quality of governance (for which the army are not conventionally assigned or trained) and the quality of security coverage which is the military’s primary duty.
A quite confounding political proverb that a respectable, elderly Yoruba man once cited in a conversation with me is: “Eni tó bá gò níí joyè” (‘It’s a foolish person who accepts leadership position.’) This proverb presumes that there are all sorts of people in a community, with some of them quite wise and some glaringly foolish. Usually, even the foolish would insist that they are wiser than the leaders, through pontificating and expressing magisterial opinions about issues they are ill-informed about. And it is the duty of a ruler or politician to play the fool once in a while, and allow these foolish people to have sway, and strategically allow foolish pressure to supplant wise vision.
One interesting dimension of the proverbs and politics nexus is the use of proverbs by or with respect to a politician. It would be insightful to see how this plays out in the case of Chief Bode George, a retired Commodore of the Nigerian Navy, a former Military Governor of old Ondo State (before it was split into the current Ondo and Ekiti states) from 1988 to 1990, and a former Deputy National Chairman and now Life Member of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He is from Lagos and belongs to the Yoruba ethnic group.
Remarkably, the eighty-year old Chief Bode George has had numerous television interviews on, notably, ARISE News, Channels Television and TVC News. In a 4 July, 2025 Channels Television interview with Maupe Ogun-Yusuf, Bode George called the PDP “the real iroko political tree”. Explaining the point, he said: “You know what is called an iroko tree in the bush? It is the strongest. Its roots are so deep rooted. No matter the storm, they will weather it.”
It would therefore be interesting to look at Bode George’s use of proverbs in the context of PDP politics. The party has been bedevilled by a series of internal problems. First, as the national ruling party from 1999, it was defeated in the 2015 presidential elections and thrown into disarray and abandoned by a remarkable number of those who were its leading lights. Second, the PDP national convention in preparation for the 2023 elections threw up a Northerner, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, as the presidential candidate of the party, despite the fact that another Northerner, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, was already the National Chairman.
This contravened the PDP’s constitutional stipulation that if one of the two offices was held by a Northerner, the other one should be occupied by a Southerner. This Atiku upset gave room for other unsalutary developments which have undermined harmony in the party. This has led prominent members of the PDP to defect from the party and join others to form a coalition yoked to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) which they declared was to remove President Bola Ahmed Tinubu from office in 2027.
Asked, by Vimbai Mutinhiri in an 11 July, 2025 interview on ARISE News, about his assessment of the coalition political parties to which PDP members have been presumed to be flocking, Bode George said: “There is an adage in my part of the world that says ‘No matter how many clothing a young man has, he can never have as many rags as the old man.’” In its original Yoruba form, the proverb is: “Tí omodé bá l’áso bí àgbà kò lè l’ákísà bí àgbà.” ‘Clothing’ in this proverb is a metaphor for the zeal of the smaller coalition parties, and ‘rags’ are the vast experience and extensive structure that the PDP possesses. The underlying message is therefore that defecting to those weaker opposition parties was ill-advised.
Moreover, in a 21 August, 2025 interview with Nifemi Oguntoye of TVC News, Bode George said that the PDP members who moved to the ADC were exactly the ones who created the mayhem at the last convention of the PDP. He also noted that Atiku wanted to contest when President Muhammadu Buhari, a Northerner, had just completed an 8-year term. Chief George continued: “We said, ‘No. … Mr. Atiku, you cannot.’” Chief George also said that it was this position that accounted for Atiku’s “shifting, rolling around like a rudderless ship,” and “running helter-skelter like a little rat.” He then cited the proverb, “A rolling stone gathers no moss” to admonish Atiku to be politically stable to be able to record significant achievements.
Furthermore, some aggrieved and influential members of the PDP, including the party’s Governors’ Forum, wanted Senator Samuel Anyanwu to be removed as National Secretary; and the South East zone of the party had, in fact, already chosen a replacement for him. However, he could not be removed due to legal encumbrances. In an effort to appease those who could not have their way, Chief George, in the interview with Vimbai Mutinhiri asserted: “Sometimes in an association, you lose some, you win.” This consolatory proverb is normally cited as “You win some, you lose some.”
With respect to the PDP’s zoning of party and electoral offices to accommodate diversity and promote inclusivity, Bode George said: “In the First Republic, majority had their way, minority were onlookers. Second Republic, the same thing. That’s why they collapsed.” The proverb which Chief George varied for communicative here effect is: “The minority will have its say, but the majority will have its way.” He cited the varied proverb to show his opposition to the inconsiderate exercise of numerical superiority and the foisting of a Northern presidential candidate on the party for the 2023 elections, in disregard of democratic equity.
Furthermore, on those who claim to be PDP members, but concurrently belong to the ADC-based coalition of opposition forces or pledge to work for the presidential candidate of the APC in the 2027 election, Chief Bode George said in a 13 August, 2025 ARISE News interview: “You cannot serve two masters.” Christian.com elucidates the point as follows: “In Matthew 6:24, Jesus states, ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.’” In other words, the Naval Chief used the biblical proverb to condemn political double-dealing.
Chief George also notes in a further romanticisation of the PDP in the 4 July, 2025, Channels Television interview with Maupe Ogun-Yusuf: “There’s no individual in our party that can claim that he owns this party. That’s the beauty of the PDP. … No individual owns our party. It will be a collective decision who will be our presidential candidate. We need to show to the electorate that this party can be trusted. … How do the lawyers say it now? He who comes to equity must come with clean hands.” In other words, using the legal proverb, he continued his public relations offensive to encourage those who had defected from the PDP to return and make the party attractive to the electorate in forthcoming elections.
Moreover, in the 13 August, 2025 ARISE News interview, Bode George stated: “In any organisation, there must be laws … and there are also red lines. You should not cross the red line. … If you want to be a responsible, respectable member of this organisation, you must obey their laws. If you can’t stand the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen.” He complements this culinary and temperature proverb with the following proverbial admonition: “… let’s call a spade a spade. … Enough is enough.”
Commenting on the 25 August, 2025 National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the PDP at which significant reconciliatory decisions were reached, Chief Bode George, in a 26 August, 2025 YouTube post of a Channels Television interview with Geoffrey Uzono, said: “It’s a refreshing gallop to see us come together as one indivisible members of this party; because the more a divided house, it will remain a defeated house.” The proverb here is an electoral adaptation of “A divided house cannot stand.”
He also said with respect to other salutary NEC decisions, including zoning the 2027 presidential candidacy to the South: “No matter how long a load of lies keep flying, it doesn’t take time, when the truth is said, [for it to] catch up and leave [the lies] behind.” This is an adaptation of the Yoruba proverb “Tí iró bá lo l’ógún odún, ojó kan soso l’òdodo ó lee bá” (‘If a lie travels for twenty years, truth will catch up with it in just one day.’)
As Nigeria continues to strive to reform its electoral system, attention needs to be paid to folklore which can facilitate the process. But even closer attention needs to be paid to folklore which can undermine the effort. For example, an electorally-perverse Yoruba proverb is: “Omodé ò j’obì, àgbà ò j’oyè.” (‘If the youth don’t eat kolanuts, the elders can’t reach the throne.’) Like ‘stomach infrastructure’, ‘kolanuts’ in this proverb is a fanciful or permissive name for electoral inducement or bribery.
