December 2024 was exciting, very exciting — for both news and column writing.
Kemi Badenoch, the British Tory Opposition Leader, who Sam Omatseye promptly re-named “Oyinbokemi”, was running her mouth to her heart’s content.
Her native Nigeria was a dystopia beyond redemption. Her new-found heaven, Britain, even with clear centuries of empire crimes, was a utopia without reproach.
Badenoch! Ever saw an over-zealous neophyte, with a knocked silly psyche — so mixed-up she pissed on her heritage but felt hip, so long as her beloved, right-wing Brits cheered? Oyinbokemi indeed!
Teasy Vice President Kashim Shettima nettled Badnoch to junk her Nigerian — not Yoruba — name, but the hyper-educated Mrs. Badnoch unravelled in full emptiness: she was Yoruba, she wailed; and the Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, et al, of the “North” (where Shettima belonged) were her ancestral foes!
Who told her so? The Yoruba Omoluabi ethos, of live and let live? Or parental poison, buried deep in her child’s soul, now nurtured into a cross-racial gargoyle of self-hate?
Did you ever see a hyper-educated woman manifest the basest of Plato’s allegory of the cave: that pit-black ignorance, before the naked lamp, then electricity, and finally glorious and dizzying sunlight, tore you from sweet dimness?
Well, nature abhors a vacuum. As Badenoch was throwing Nigeria under the bus, two other Brits — and both ethnic Yoruba — gave it a prime sheen, which politics could not.
Ademola Lookman, 2024 African Footballer of the Year, heralded his win, in Morocco, with a greeting in Yoruba, to the distinguished gathering: “E kaale Nigeria, mo nki gbogbo yin, e se, mo dupe …”
Mola’s accent was rather quaint. But it was quaint Yoruba that hugged all, repulsed none; which global TV beamed: “Good evening, Nigeria. I greet you all. Thank you …”
It was Shettima’s cheeky challenge come again to haunt — and taunt — Kemi. She self-devalued as no more than a garnished Sunday Igboho — who must hate the Fulani to prove his Yoruba love. Lookman is the quintessential opposite: no need to hate to prove love!
Every patriot latched onto that loving crow for motherland, in that moment of pan-Nigerian glory!
And before “Detty December” exited — that growing global tourism foray into Lagos, Nigeria — guess who fervently knocked, with high praise and love? Anthony Joshua!
Crest or dale in his world heavyweight boxing odyssey, AJ aka “Sagamu boy”, had always identified with his roots, warts and all.
So, when he visited Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) boss, Abike Dabiri-Erewa and hubby, in their Lagos home, it was the Badenoch rebuke, all over again. The original battle was drawn over Badenoch’s chill towards NIDCOM’s warmth.
Still, don’t be too hard on Mrs. Badenoch. She has chosen her path — and she’ll float or sink by it. It galls because her cross-racial opportunism courts cheap political gains.
Yet, Peter Obi manifests no less rank opportunism here — and his own forte is playing (and preying) on faith and ethnic — nay, clannish — divides, as emotive magnet.
He’s not about to depart that pious cynicism. He knows no other way to sate his zombie Obidient base!
But that high cynicism, without or within, which Badenoch and Obi epitomize, set the vacationing Ripples thinking of his column friends — across Nigeria’s geo-political zones, tongues and faiths.
Indeed, all the Badenoch fireworks caught me in the Ilorin home of one of such elderly friends, Uncle Ray Yusuf, a retired NTA broadcaster of the purest crust.
But he’s only few of these friends that Ripples ever met — with Uncle Saliu Ojibara, an Ilorin native and chartered accountant of high repute. He is ex-NTA too.
In his teenage years, he was a celebrated master-dribbler in the Lagos of mid-1960s and mid-1970s. He was nicknamed “Stanley Matthews”, for his audacious ball skills.
He rubbed shoulders with the great Haruna Ilerika (of blessed memory), as they set Lagos communal pitches on fire, with exciting “felele” challenge football! Uncle Ojii would buy The Nation, every Tuesday, only when Ripples is at work, not when on leave!
Most other friends, Ripples has not met — and perhaps will never meet. Yet, no week passes without each getting in touch, to share ideas on how to better Nigeria.
Madam Pet Mmonu saw the Civil War (1967-1970), in Enugu, as a sub-teenage girl. So, she cringes from the neo-Biafra hot heads that crave blood and gore. Every Tuesday, after reading Republican Ripples, her abiding passion: how do we fix Nigeria?
Col. Azubike Nass (retd) knows no clannish thinking. He applies his forensic mind to fixing Nigeria. We met on this page — but have never seen.
Prof. Ikenna Onyido, quintessential scientist, scholar and former vice-chancellor, calls me son. I call him dad. The one is Igbo. The other is Yoruba. But that bond is so pure, so strong, it won’t ever end as Okonkwo, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, killing Ikemefuna that called him father! Such trust! We met here!
Elder Frank Ede left Delta, for Lagos, to present me three copies of his friend, Engr. Alex Neyin’s autobiography: one for Tatalo Alamu; one for Sam Omatseye; one for Ripples. The magnet was again this column.
Years earlier, Igwe Pius Ojonile Omachonu had despatched two of his books, for my reading pleasure; and from time to time, we cut and thrust, on WhatsApp, over the Nigerian question! We’ve never met!
Can I ever forget Boluwaji Faseyi, the Akure-based youth who dots upon Ripples’ weekly offerings that he’s more or less virtual family, though we’d never met? Or Habibu Aminu Lawan, the teacher-broadcaster from Kano, who relates as if he’s kith-and-kin?
These networks beggar Badenoch’s the-North-is-Yoruba-enemy cave mindset!
But back to Uncle Ray. In his Ilorin home, a pan-Nigerian family is solving a pan-Nigerian challenge: playing foster-parents to Henry, a Christian teen from Biridaji village, Kebbi State.
The Yusufs — the patriarch, a Muslim; the matriarch, a Catholic, living happily ever-after! — are a loving rebuke to those who would war over faith and creed.
Now, a Catholic network, looking out for vulnerable youth — from faith fundamentalism and sundry violence — plants them in safe Catholic homes, away from harm. He, to help with house chores. They, to send him to school; or make him learn a trade.
That was how Henry — I call him King Henry for his winsome smiles and comely ways — ended up with the Yusufs.
Again, a pleasant irony: even if Henry was fleeing from faith tension, he has found peace, joy and comfort, with his future assured, in a faith-tolerant home!
Here, these folks aren’t pointing fingers. Or like Badenoch and Obi, scavenging for carcasses to foul the air.
They, instead, hanker down to dismantle as many challenges as they can, in their quiet homes — and they don’t even squeak about these breakthroughs.
Committed Nigerians will solve the problems of Nigeria. Political charlatans — home and abroad — will get what’s coming their way.
So, let Oyinbokemi, leaky mouth, et al, stick with her morbid fixation with Nigeria. Those are ripening seeds of her political self-destruction. But she’s too doomed to know.
Happy new year!
All too soon, rest is over and it’s time for work. Happy new year, folks!
