December 15, 1970, was a terrible day in South Korea. The Asian country lost 362 of its citizens to a boat mishap. The South Korean ferryboat known as Namyoung, sailed out of Busan River, in Seogwipo-si, on December 12, 1970. It had on board, 338 passengers and crew members, heading towards Seongsampo Port in Jeju Island. The boat, according to the report, sank about 28 nautical miles (approximately 45 kilometres) away from Yeosu and Jeollanam. The sinking of the ferryboat was blamed on overloading. It was said to have 150 crates of tangerines on one side, which made it tilted.…
Author: Ayodele Suyi
On Friday, July 29, 1910, the Owa Obokun of Ijesaland was told by his messenger: “Aiyé ti bàjé (the world is spoiled). The oba responded curtly: “Mo j’Owá lónìí (‘I become Owa today’).” That is how British anthropologist, Professor J. D.Y. Peel, documented how the palace responded to the death of Ijesha war commander, Chief Ògèdèngbé Agbógungbórò. He was the king’s deputy, the Obaala of Ilesa. The Owá reportedly rebuked the messenger for announcing the death of his second in command as if it was a loss to the palace. Why would a king rejoice at the death of his…
“Generally, any of my children or wives can have access to my grave site to pray and or seek spiritual assistance.” This is the last paragraph of the Will of the late grandfather of human rights activism in Nigeria, Chief Gani Fawehinmi. The Will was dated December 19, 2008. The late lawyer, a devout Muslim in his lifetime, believed that the dead can commune with the living. Hence, in his Will, he granted permission for his children and wives to seek spiritual assistance at his graveside. Modern-day religionists would call him names. But the man called Gani would not bulge.…
Yoruba people have the right description for every concept and idea. They have the concept of Ìwòfà àdáwó jo yá (jointly owned pawn). With this saying, they bemoan the abject fate of anything that is jointly owned. They take this further by asserting that a publicly owned Ìwòfà must always look unkempt, his head bushy, his life unwell. The Daily Times was founded on June 6, 1925, by Richard Barrow, Adeyemo Alakija, Victor Reginald Osborne and other partners. That was 23 years before the Nigerian Tribune came to being. Daily Times was the doyen of the Nigerian press until Nigeria…
President Olusegun Obasanjo said Tinubu’s government came to power without a plan. The response from the Villa is the number of people who committed suicide under the government headed by Obasanjo. When one reads such base responses from the president’s handlers, one begins to wonder what happened to the antecedents of those guys in the Villa! If Obasanjo accused the government of being without a plan, what could have been a better response than to give the retired General the plans the government had initiated and executed? If it is true that more people died under the Obasanjo regime, must…
“In this geopolitical zone, we must deliver 100 per cent in favour of APC. Therefore, Ondo State, you must be at the forefront, the two other states – Oyo and Osun – we will capture them, but I will not reveal our secret. We are strategising. Everything must be 100 per cent behind President Bola Tinubu.” The above vow was made by Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, APC National Chairman, at a meeting with APC stakeholders ahead of the November 16, 2024, governorship election in Ondo State. He did not stop at vowing to capture Ondo State. He listed two other states:…
I do not claim authorship of the above headline. That credit goes to Bill Clinton, former President of the United States of America (USA), and his co-author, the American novelist, James Patterson, who penned the words as the title of their novel, roundly described as “a political thriller novel”, “The President Is Missing”, published in 2018. I adopted the title because the thematic preoccupation of the plot, with particular emphasis on the presence of inner enemies within power circles, resonates with the current state of the Nigerian presidency, especially under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. One of President Tinubu’s frenemies, Senator…
Omóníjó (A child has his day) was born into a small and heavily oppressed royal family. His lineage was marginalised by the other siblings. On his birthday, Omóníjó’s father, Ifátúbèrú (Ifa worth being feared), took him for divination to determine what his future would be. The diviner, an old blind man called Mókomomótunúrè (Don’t teach a child more than what nature has deposited in him), after casting his Òpèlè, sighed. He told the curious father that the little boy would be great and would triumph over adversaries. But there were conditions attached. The Babalawo told Ifátúbèrú that for the little…
Eniayéndàmú (He whom the world is troubling) was born good. His birth was celebrated. Leaders all over the world gathered at his christening. The expectations of what the baby would be later in life were high. And the expectations were not misplaced. Nature took care of Eniayéndàmú’s future from the cradle. Everything that should make life comfortable for him and his offspring was deposited in his backyard. To ensure that he attained the expectations of his parents and well wishers, God gave him good caregivers in his infancy. I mean men and women of honour who competed among themselves to…
Isabel dos Santos is the first daughter of Angola’s longest-serving president, José Eduardo dos Santos, who died on July 8, 2022. The late Angolan president ruled the country for 38 years (1997-2017). Isabel grew up in the presidential palace. She became influential in government circles. That transformed her to become rich, not just rich, but wealthy. At a time, Forbes recorded her as the richest woman in Africa. She leveraged on her father’s presidency to corner good business deals. She sat atop Boards of the nation’s biggest companies from telecommunications to oil, prospecting for precious stones and other thriving enterprises.…
You could not have noticed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came into the country on Sunday because he breezed in at night. Nigerians should be happy that our husband is back. We don’t deserve any explanation about how our husband, who told us he was going to China, ended up in the United Kingdom (UK). That is what a woman who married an Òrò, the nocturnal spirit of darkness gets. Òrò walks only at night; it tells no other spirits its movement. Not even members of his household. Kollington Ayinla, Fuji lord, once sang about an adulterous woman. The woman,…
Is the president back in the country from China? If he is back, how many vehicles did he see while riding his limo from the airport to the Villa? If he saw the roads empty, it was because of him and the ‘boldness’ he celebrated in Asia last week. Smile has left the streets. Maybe, I should use one of the most destructive wars in Yoruba history, the Ijaye War, as the allegorical platform to deliver my message to the president. The Ijaye War (April 10, 1860-March 17, 1862) was one of the fiercest Yoruba internecine wars fought in human…
The Benin people have long ago embraced the concept of ogieriakhi, which holds that an elder does not revenge an insult. This native wisdom is to ensure that the elders, who are the pillars holding the community, don’t engage in anything that would make anyone question their wisdom. The Oba of Benin is one of the most respected monarchs in the country. His subjects treat him like a deity. If for instance, the Omo N’Oba is annoyed by an act of anyone, he is expected to maintain his stoic disposition. He cannot betray emotions in the public; he cannot lose…
Mr. Ross: be not uneasy, your son, Charley Bruster, …we got him and no powers on earth can deliver out of our hand.” This was one of the letters sent to a distraught father, Christian Ross, whose son, Charley Ross, was kidnapped on July 1, 1874, in Philadelphia, United States of America, by two unknown fellas. The felons were said to have written about 23 different letters of ransom demands to the Ross family. The kidnappers, according to the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, demanded the sum of $20,000 for the release of Charley, an amount of money the family…
“President Bola Tinubu will embark on a trip to France on Monday, August 19, departing from Abuja, the nation’s capital. The President will return to the country after his brief work stay in France.” I read this terse statement by Chief Ajuri Ngelale, Special Adviser to the President (Media & Publicity), early Monday morning, and my heart skipped. Some people are bold! Why France of all places this time around? Has the presidency forgotten that it was in France that a Chinese company seized our presidential jets? Are those who planned the president’s trip not aware that also owe China…
At the very beginning of time when the deities lived among human beings, Òrúnmìlà, the father of Divination, occupied a prominent space. He attracted many people to himself, friends and foes alike. He assisted many people to achieve their ambitions. Òrúnmìlà was instrumental to many becoming wealthy. He made nobles of not a few. He crowned and assisted in dethroning kings. He was powerful, influential and generous. But he has hubris. He was always ruthless whenever he saw any obstacle to his ambition. A time came when Òrúnmìlà wanted to take the highest title among the deities. Of course, many…
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should count himself lucky. What he feared most has happened to him. What his predecessors in office could not do, he has done effortlessly. What others before him, including him, had used in the past to deceive Nigerians, while campaigning, but would never do when they got to the office, God has made it happen for Tinubu, seamlessly! Nobody can use it for political sloganeering anymore. Nigeria is ‘restructured’ without anyone calling for a roundtable discussion. Nature abhors vacuum. The cosmic has taken care of our desires. We can no longer live under the pretence of…
This blind man trusted no one because he knew the circumstances that led to his blindness. So, he kept on employing servants after servants to help him in his house chores. The blind man loved roast-yam. But he also found faults with his servants over the yam issue. He believed that while scraping the burnt back of the roast-yam, the servants helped themselves to some bits. That was why he fired them frequently, as they came. One day, however, a vulpine was engaged as the servant of the blind man. Before taking the appointment, the would-be servant asked questions on…
I would have agreed that protests would happen on August 1, 2024, if the graph had been plotted by Godfather Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But he is the sitting president, not the opposition leader he used to be. You can’t ride a goat to intimidate a master horseman. The media can cry themselves hoarse, the street can cry and weep. Nothing is happening. The powerful dey kampe. “This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk fluently, debate forcefully and…
Every home has at least one spoilt child. Such a child is known as an Àkébàjé among my people. The Àkébàjé Omo cries for meat when his mates are asking for food – Àkébàjé únsunkún eran, elegbé e rè únsunkún oúnje. When eventually given what he craves, he complains that the pieces of meat in the plate will not allow him access to the stew (wón fun léran tán, ó tún ni eran ò jé kí òhun run obè). The elders of my place have a descriptive name for such a child: Omo gede aróde tò súlé (an over-pampered brat…
I danced on Sunday when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was re-elected as Chairman of ECOWAS. I rejoiced because his re-election will give him an opportunity to correct one of his errors that has made life miserable for Nigerians. And that was the way he handled the Niger Republic crisis of last year. In his acceptance speech, Tinubu asked President Bassirou Faye of Senegal and President Faure Gnassingbe of Togo, to go and appeal to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Republic to return to ECOWAS. I give it to Tinubu on this. This is what we say in our street lingo…
“Kabiyesi, the message which I bring you today is the message of all the women who have left their stalls, their homes and children, their farms, and petty affairs to come and visit you today. They are the suffering crowd who are gathered on your front lawn… they are all the womanhood of Egba, and they have come to say – Enough is Enough” (Soyinka 1981, 208). There is a trending trailer of a film titled “Funmilayo Ransome Kuti”. I have not watched the film, but I know the event that gave birth to the epochal event which forms the…
“Good morning, sir, what do you think about the southwest governors’ forum and their recent collaboration efforts? Let’s leave Tinubu for a week or two and discuss other things. Man shall not write about Tinubu alone nah! Variety, they say, is the spice of life.” That came from my cousin a few days ago. It was his response to my last week’s piece, “Between our Govt and New York Times.” My cousin, a namesake, and a dyed- in-the -wool Emilokan, gave the ‘directive’. But I am going to disappoint him. Bí iná kò tán lórí, èjè kii tán leekáná (as…
The New York Times in its June 11, 2024, edition described Nigeria as a nation of 200 million citizens who are skilled at filling the gap for government. Let me quote it directly: “A nation of entrepreneurs, Nigeria’s more than 200 million citizens are skilled at managing in tough circumstances, without the services states usually provide. They generate their own electricity and source their own water. They take up arms and defend their communities when the armed forces cannot. They negotiate with kidnappers when family members are abducted. But right now, their resourcefulness is being stretched to the limit.” For…
As the sitting president in 2016, General Muhammadu Buhari told the Emir of Katsina that “It would be foolhardy for someone to just say he would chase us away. So where do we go” He uttered those words in reaction to the clamour for killer herdsmen to leave the forest of the South. When the language of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is as discriminatory as what we had in his eight years, we should not wonder why those herders became audacious under his watch! Last Wednesday, and for the first time since he became the Senate President, Godswill…
Marcus Brutus, the villain of William Shakespear’s epic drama, Julius Caesar, poetically defines the emergence of dictators thus: …But ‘tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend (Julius Caesar, Act II, sc.1) To Brutus, the lead conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar on March 15, 44 BC, dictatorship begins with emotional appeal to the conscience of the masses by a latent oppressor.…
There can be only one Oba (king) in a palace. That was how our forebears arranged our traditional settings. The saying in Yoruba that Oba kìí pé méjì láàfin, sùgbón ìjòyè lè pé méfà láàfin (there can be no two kings in a palace but there can be six chiefs), underscores the wisdom of our forebears. Modernity has since changed that. The Nigerian political class has further bastardised the setting. Nowadays, kings sleep as kings and wake up as commoners. Palaces used to be sacred in the days of our fathers. They are no more today! Nothing is sacrosanct anymore…
Lagos does not have restraints when it comes to spending money. His first name is Nínál’owó (Money is meant to be spent). His middle name is Gbogbo ejò jíjeni (All snakes are edible). But I won’t keep quiet while he puts my future in the incinerator of his ways. Lagos is like an agbara ojo (erosion). Yoruba elders say àgbàrá òjò ò’lóhun ò nílé wó, onílé ni ò nì gbà fun (the mission of erosion is to destroy the building; it is the owner that will resist it). The Yoruba word for spendthrift is àpà. There is Arungún (ruiner of…
“Could you ‘please, possibly, perhaps’, send me to Kano?” I told my editor last Wednesday. “You will meet me there” was his response. I laughed. A moment later, a friend added his voice: “Why did the Kano government do such a thing under the table? They should have called for an expression of interest.” We laughed again. I further suggested that the Kano State correspondent “should be penalised for concealing the info!” A friend extended the penalty: “Very well. His Bureau Chief too.” The Bureau Chief came begging: “Oga mi sir. I am sorry sir. Help me appeal to them…
Oluwafemi Ositade is a 17-year-old student of the Ambassadors College, Ota, Ogun State. He is a child every parent would want, and every nation would adore and celebrate. The boy broke the internet recently when the news broke that the prodigy gained scholarships to 14 different universities outside the shores of Nigeria. According to the news, little Ositade who participated in the popular Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), scored a total of 760 marks out of 800 with a Cumulative Grade Points Aggregate (CGPA) of 4.04/4.0. The performance earned him full scholarships to many Ivy League universities such as Harvard in…
