No, I am not about to change my name.
I have merely been paying closer attention than usual to the classified advertisement pages of the newspapers lately, following the example of the House of Representatives.
They are chockfull of notices announcing name changes that usually begin, “I formerly known as…” or “I formerly known and addressed as…” The closing phrase emphasises that all previous documents remain valid.
Advertisement revenue has been at an all-time low, forcing newspapers to cut pagination drastically. But revenue from the classified pages, especially those featuring name changes, has never been greater. By one estimate, the pages have grown at least five-fold. At N4,500 per crack, and with some 100 inserts crammed into one of the several pages featuring that kind of material, we are talking serious money here. In these hard times, it is almost as if the newspapers have struck gold.
And the process of effecting this transformative change is as easy as it is cheap. Just go to the nearest newspaper house with your marriage certificate or sworn affidavit and a draft of the statement you want published, plonk down N4,500 – one of the best bargains you will find anywhere in this era of the shrinking Naira — and it is done. Even if you factor in the fee for the commissioner of oath operating under licence or by the roadside, it is still a great bargain.
Many of the changes being advertised are innocuous, resulting mostly from marriage or re-marriage or divorce, or conversion to a new faith.
Or from revulsion at having to bear a particular name, especially if that name is identified with a public figure who has fallen into disrepute. An example that comes to mind here is Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, the last premier of Western Nigeria.
Following his assassination in the bloody January 15, 1966 coup, the classified advertisement pages of the Daily Sketch overflowed day after day with notices from his Yoruba kinsfolk sharing his last name disavowing it, despite its intimations of nobility. Not for them the risk of being associated in any way with the man they perceived as a major architect of the mayhem that had paralysed Western Nigeria for two years and in a way prepared the ground for the coup that would claim his life.
Today, if Akintola is not regarded as a martyr, he is certainly no longer an object of loathing abhorrence. He is acclaimed by many as a statesman and one of the founding fathers of Nigeria, patron-saint of the mainstreamers, and a communicator of the first rank. A public university, located appropriately in his hometown, Ogbomoso, in Oyo State, bears his name. The name has been decoupled from his persona, its lustre restored.
I should mention in passing that, down the ages, many who had found their names unprepossessing and could not bear to go through life so encumbered had changed them drastically. Who can blame the Soviet tyrant formerly known as Djugashvili for changing his name to Stalin?
Some of the name changes being announced in the newspapers are minor, the type I made more than 50 years ago by simply dropping the name I had been baptised with as an infant, long before it could appear on any official document that really mattered. You wonder whether it is worth bringing such changes to public notice. The persons doing so must have their reasons, I suppose.
But not a few of the advertised changes are intriguing. The new name is a re-arrangement of the old name, a permutation and combination of sorts. It is as if the advertiser had just realised or learned in mid life or even well past that milestone that the previous combination was an error requiring urgent correction.
The person formerly known and addressed as XYZ wishes henceforth and with immediate effect to be known and addressed as YZX, XZY,ZYX, or YXZ, without prejudice to all former documents
Examples, names slightly altered:
Omoloba Olanifemi Sadiku wishes to confirm to the general public that he is also Lanrewaju Olanifemi.
No doubt as an act of courtesy, and for the avoidance of doubt, as the uniquely Nigerian expression goes, Osunyemi Babatile Daniel wants the general public to know and remember at all times that he and Oladele Immanuel Babatile Daniel are one and the same person.
The gentleman formerly and variously known as James Okwat and Okwat Wiseman Okon now wishes to be known and addressed as Okwat Wiseman Okon James. Kindly take note of this change, Zenith Bank and First Bank in particular, and the public in general.
The lady who used to be known as Ethamor Mercy henceforth wishes to be known and addressed as Inneh Mercy Joseph Oluaye.
Moses Olusegun Asola now wishes to be called Durofola Olusegun Moses.
And please take note that Okafo Peter Amadi, Okoroafo Paul Ameobi and Okafo Pete-Bok refer to one and the same person who, desirous of saving the public and the institutions with which he has been affiliated the trouble of sorting things out, but without doing violence to previous documents on which those names appear, now wishes to be known simply as Okafo Pete Amadi.
Note, too, that Kassy Lundi Palinus, also Kassie Monday Paulinus, being one and the same person, now wishes to be known and addressed as Kassy Lundi Stallone.
Decidedly curiouser are the changes that amount to a wholesale repudiation of the name the bearers had answered for decades and used in all manner of transactions, and the adoption of new names that bear little or no connection to the previous names, previous documents remaining valid.
Here are some random examples, names slightly changed: and previous documents remaining valid.
The lady formerly Katharine Ifeyinwa Okunwa now wishes to be known and addressed as Oluwaseun Mustapha.
Legum Friday, apparently fed up with having his first name misspelled as “Legume,” now wishes to be known as Precious Agba Abaah.
The fellow formerly addressed as Omotegbe Osahunwa, and who has suffered the additional misfortune of having his birthday wrongly entered in official documents as May 4, 1981, now wishes to be known as Anaigolu Dodi Edmond, and to have October 4, 1982 recognised as his authentic birthday. Notwithstanding the errors aforementioned, all previous documents remain valid.
And the good lady formerly known as Ehimare Sandy Lawrenta will henceforth be known as Obihuku Ibheke Lawrenca.
It is this latter category of name changes that has moved the House of Representatives to call on the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigeria Police to check the antecedents of new applicants for the Bank Verification Number, persuaded that the frequent change of names in national dailies could be a way to circumvent the process and perpetrate fraudulent acts.
Nor did the House stop here. It mandated its Standing Committees on Information, Police, Judiciary and Banking and Currency to investigate the matter.
Easy, Honourable Ones, easy.
Nigerians can no longer change their names and identities as frequently as they please — they cannot exercise their freedom of speech —without the legislature of all institutions, inciting the banking regulatory authorities and the police and the EFCC against them?
What is this country coming to?
