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The above was the question asked by Britons and the rest of the world in the afternoon of May 22, 2013. Close to the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, Southeast London, two young men of British-Nigerian descent, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, had attacked a 25-year-old British Army soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby and killed him. […]
Continue ReadingAs I was concluding this piece, my eyes caught a presidential sledgehammer which landed on the head of Conscience Nurtured by Truth – The Guardian. In a release issued by the State House yesterday, authored by erstwhile Editor in Chief of TheNews, Bayo Onanuga, it was accused of what General Sani Abacha accused the paper of doing […]
Continue ReadingOn 4 April, 2021, I wrote a piece with the title “The President is a sick man: Buhari’s Secret Therapy Inside the ‘Oneida.’” It was a lamentation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s knee-jerk and off-the-cuff jetting out of Aso Rock Villa like a wandering evil spirit. At the drop of a hat, Buhari flew to the United Kingdom […]
Continue ReadingIn Arabian folklore, the genie is a spirit depicted as being imprisoned inside a bottle or oil lamp. No matter how impregnable the walls of its captivity are, the moment it is summoned, the spirit comes out and grants the wishes of the one who invoked it. Trust them for their gift of incredible ingenuity, in […]
Continue ReadingNigerians and indeed, the world, watched aghast last week as a South African grisly movie reel began to roll. Full of all the elements of a movie, it was however a real story. The cast was two black women who, on August 17, were shot and fed to pigs by a white farmer. The victims, […]
Continue ReadingOne by one, three former Nigerian military rulers, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, arrived at Babangida’s Hilltop Mansion in Minna, Niger State, last Sunday. So did former National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Gusau. The Minna meeting had every trapping of African witches assembling at the coven. Like owls, a pervasive symbol of […]
Continue ReadingOne of the thematic preoccupations of the book, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance (2014) is that, inside the forest, there is a consistent superiority war, often fierce, between man and animals. Written by Ayo Adeduntan, research fellow at the University of Ibadan, the book averred that, while animals sometimes win this […]
Continue ReadingThe duo of Abba Yusuf, governor of Kano State, and the Nigerian presidency stand the risk of plunging Kano back into the year 1893. Their weapon would be politics and votes of the over 2 million people of Kano. In the year 1893, in the words of highly rated scholar on Northern emirate administration, C. […]
Continue ReadingHave you noticed that in the last two weeks, Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State seems to have acquired an inexplicably large dose of boldness and courage? Conversely, you must have equally observed that, in the last couple of days, FCT Minister, the very loquacious Nyesom Wike, has taken an uncharacteristically large overdose of meekness and humility. […]
Continue ReadingLast week, Nigeria was faced with what Yoruba call “egbinrin ote.” When afflictions come in multiples, they become a plague. A plague is almost synonymous with the Yoruba’s egbinrin ote. Literally, egbinrin ote are leaves of conspiracy. When you pluck a single leaf out of the branch of a tree of conspiracy, another leaf sprouts […]
Continue ReadingThe scholar and researcher had taken a trip to an open market. There, he met a female fishmonger. Attracted by the casual attention this researcher paid to a croaker fish on display in her stall, the lady attempted to win this potential buyer to her stall. So, she began to dish out a combination of […]
Continue ReadingNative Brazilians arrest monkeys with what is called Cumbuca. They make a hole in a gourd that is big enough to accommodate the hand of a monkey. The gourd is then affixed to the ground of a place infested by monkeys. Placed inside the gourd is usually a banana for the attraction of the monkey. The monkey […]
Continue ReadingWhether real or imagined, none of the metonyms for “Lagos boy” is complimentary. The “Lagos boy” moniker once came up in the late 1980s. Commodore Olabode George, then military governor of Ondo State, had just been removed from office after spending two years. The African Concord magazine then did a post-mortem of his turbulent rule. Newly purchased […]
Continue Reading“I know the arithmetic of the budget and the numbers that I brought to the National Assembly, and I know what numbers came back… Those who are talking about malicious embellishment in the budget; they did not understand the arithmetic and did not refer to the baseline of what I brought,” President Bola Tinubu declared […]
Continue ReadingTalented filmmaker, Tunde Kelani, recalibrated a popular Yoruba folklore in his famous Agogo Ewo (the forbidden gong) movie. A supremacy battle ensued between Eledumare – God, and Land. The two earthly ancient principalities had gone hunting and jointly killed an Emo rat. When it was time for sharing of the game, both got locked in a duel […]
Continue ReadingThis is what Kurumi’s Ijaye looked like after it was attacked and defeated by Ibadan forces in 1860/61: “Old people, men and women and young children were being carried to the river Ose to die,” wrote John Iliffe in his Poverty in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland. He continued: “Whilst many others were left to perish in the streets. […]
Continue ReadingThe porcupine is a large rodent that is clothed with a thick coat of sharp quills. These spines protect it from rampaging predators. When it feels threatened, the porcupine shoots the arrows of its spines at its assailants. These deadly quills pierce the intending attacker, thereby allowing the animal to escape harm. As such, in […]
Continue ReadingNorthern Nigeria used to have a cult of power called the Kaduna Mafia. This Mafia decided who would become the Nigerian president, which road to build or to abandon, which industries to be sited and where. When it couldn’t help but hand the reins of power to the South, it determined which weakest link to […]
Continue ReadingFor the Algerian journalist, editor and editorialist, playwright and director, novelist and author of short stories, political essayist and activist, Albert Camus, life is meaningless and absurd. To him, it is inexplicable why we live, struggle all through and die. The meaninglessness of life is explained in his book, The Myth of Sisyphus, where he captures the […]
Continue ReadingIt was 25 years ago; Saturday, 10 October, 1998 to be precise. We were all inside the living room of the Yaba, Lagos modest home of Frank Ovie-Kokori. We were waiting for our heroes. In the heat of the June 12, 1993 presidential election validation saga, Kokori was secretary-general of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum […]
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