There are two insects in Yoruba cosmology that are similar. But they are very distinct. One is oyin (Bee). The other is agbon (Wasp). Both equally sting in their unique ways. Oyin, for instance, is less aggressive and stings only when it is threatened or comes under immediate danger. It is an insect that is naturally defensive; it stings once. On the other hand, agbon is very aggressive, territorial, domineering and controls its space. It suffers no incursion and intrusion into its space. While oyin and agbon live in almost similar nests (with oyin’s own a bit concealed), agbon openly…
Author: Ayodele Suyi
In our elementary History classes, we were told of three different Attas. One of them is Atta of Ayede Ekiti. The second is Atta of Igala. The third is Atta Ebira. Shame on those who hacked History off our school shelves! The Oba of my town was once known as Oloja Ara. We changed the title to Onise of Odo Oro-Ekiti. At a time, we were known as Ara, then we became Araromi Ekiti and by consensus, we changed to Odo-Oro Ekiti. The people remain the same. If the present Oba decides to go back to Oloja Ara, so be…
Naira Marley. Where is he now? For those who don’t know him; Naira Marley is one of the best street lingo crooners of the contemporary jargons, this generation calls music. But if you do not love his person, you must love his beats. His real name is Azeez Adeshina Fashola. How he came about the Naira Marley of a name is known to him and his generation. He is also very educated and street wise. His Wikipedia entry says he graduated with Distinction in Business from Peckham Academy and also studied Business Law at the Crossways College, both in England.…
There was a funeral ceremony in the neighbourhood. Guests came from Lagos and other big cities. One of the guests, a randy fellow, saw a woman and approached her for a relationship. While the party was underway, the two sneaked into a room for a quickie. Done, the man got ready to dress up. Then he gave a shrill cry and landed on the floor with a thud. Thankfully enough, the woman had traditional sense enough to know that something was wrong, and she buried her shame. She shouted for help. Neighbours rushed in and pinned down the Lagos boy.…
By Suyi Ayodele Olusegun Obasanjo publicly endorsed Peter Obi for president on New Year’s Day and the Emi Lokan people dismissed what the former president has done as “worthless”. What does that mean? Now, a bit of academic exercise. Dictionary.com defines ‘Worth’ as a preposition, to be: “Good or important enough to justify; having value of, or equal in value to, as in money”. As a noun, the dictionary enters ‘Worth’ as; “Excellence of character or quality as commanding esteem”. In both definitions, the word has positive connotative and denotative meanings. There is a story of an old farmer and…
By Suyi Ayodele On his death bed in 2009, when Bola Ahmed Tinubu visited him, the late human rights activist and lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, pleaded with Tinubu to “forgive” Ayodele Akele and “assist” him by talking to his liegeman, who was the governor of Lagos State then, Raji Fashola, to pay Akele his entitlements. That plea of a dying man was rebuffed. Akele died on June 23, 2020, a poor man. In 2002, Akele led the workers in the employ of the Lagos State Government to protest the refusal of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration to pay the minimum…
By Suyi Ayodele Mothers are unique beings. The Benin people say of mothers: Iye-N’gie – mothers are precious. In my Yoruba heritage, mothers are gold (Ìyá ni Wúrà). They are special beings. In this part of the world, Africans regard the womenfolk as pillars or backbones of the family setting. The importance of a woman in an African home is well illustrated in the part of a chicken shared to a mother and the parts given to the other members of the family. In a typical African setting, when a fowl is used either for sacrifice or during festive periods,…
A man in search of good fortune once approached the village diviner for directions. After casting the divination seeds, the diviner told the man that the oracle predicted that he should offer a snail as sacrifice for his bad headedness to be reversed. The man looked at the diviner and shook his head. Confused, the diviner asked what was amiss. The client responded: “if the snail is good-headed himself, will he be living in the bush”? That is the question we should be asking our Chatham House attendee politicians. Charity, they say, should begin at home; but for Nigerian politicians,…
My first beat, in 1999, as a reporter in the Nigerian Tribune, was the office of the wife of Oyo State Governor. The woman then had a pet project called “Ilera Loro” (Health is Wealth). I did not last on that beat. Peter Onoche, who was assigned to replace me, lasted only three days on the beat. The two of us were new recruits of The Imalefalaafia School of Journalism (Tribune’s Head Office) and “our blood too dey hot’. We covered the beat as independent journalists and Madam Excellency never liked our “attitudes”. Within the two weeks or so I…
Olodumare, the Almighty, sent Obatala down to Earth to create land from the water that filled everywhere. Obatala set to work, assisted by toad, hen, a calabash filled with sand and a pigeon. He successfully created land from the water and returned to the one who sent him. Satisfied by the beautiful work done by Obatala as confirmed by Alagemo (chameleon), Olodumare sent Obatala back to the earth to make human beings, who would fill the land he had earlier created. Obatala came back to do the assignment and he worked his heart out creating human beings in different shapes.…
There was a Second Republic politician, a stark illiterate, who played a prominent role in helping a particular government to power. He was duly compensated with the post of a commissioner in the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs. As time went by, the man had irreconcilable issues with the appointing authority, the governor, and he was fired. The commissioner boasted that nobody would ever occupy the office he left. Nobody took the boast of an illiterate seriously. The governor went ahead and appointed a replacement. When the sacked commissioner heard about the appointment, he approached the new appointee…
I was at Saint Andrew’s Cathedral Church, Owo, Ondo State, last Friday, November 11, 2022. The last time I was at the Anglican church was on Saturday, November 15, 1997. Today makes it exactly 25 years that I first stepped into that holy land. I was at the Cathedral to attend a family function, the wedding ceremony of a daughter of one of my childhood friends. Immediately I entered the premises, memories of my first and last visit to the place rushed through my mind. I looked to my right hand and I saw the imposing mausoleum, where one of…
Lord Henry Peter Brougham lived between September 19, 1778 and May 7, 1868. As a British statesman, Brougham was involved in the transformation of Great Britain. He participated actively in the birth of the 1832 Reform Act and the 1833 Slave Abolition Act. His greatest weapon in abolishing slavery was education. His most memorable quote: “Education makes a people easy to lead but difficult to drive, easy to govern but difficult to enslave”, remains evergreen. He followed his principle about the invaluable importance of education all through his political careers. The greatest of his achievements was the establishment of the…
“Like the biblical joy among the Angels in heaven over a sinner that repents, the arrest of Mr. Emmanuel Ovie Edafe Thomas, or Edafe Thomas, for the man changes his name the way the chameleon changes its colour, elicited joy and celebration in all the security agencies in Edo State that fateful Friday, July 16, 2004”. This quotation is the introductory paragraph of the story titled: “Question Over the Mysterious Killing of A Pipeline Vandal”, published in the Saturday Tribune of July 31, 2004 on pages 6 and 25; written by yours sincerely. My old secondary school principal, Chief A.E…
Senator Ibikunle Amosun was governor of Ogun State between 2011 to 2019. Before then, he was a Nigerian senator for four years between 2003 and 2007, where he represented Ogun Central Senatorial District. At the completion of his eight-year two terms as the governor of the state in 2019, Amosun was again elected senator, a position he occupies till date. His political trajectory, ordinarily, profiles him as a gentleman. A simple definition of the noun, gentleman, says whoever is qualified for such is “a chivalrous, courteous, or honourable man”. I pick “honourable” as my definition of gentleman for the purpose…
Nigeria today is one of the poorest countries in the world. Our leaders, however, are the most flamboyant in the world. They are like the Nigerian lead character, Captain, in “Lonely Londoners” a 1956 novel by the Trinidadian author, Samuel Selvon. Captain is described as “a man constantly asking his friends if he can borrow money”. He smokes the most expensive cigar; he does nothing else. When you think he is done for, he survives and bounces back. The character, in his description of the peoples of the world, says: “It have some men in this world, they don’t do…
I love how Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, described our present situation. He was very clear in his assessment of our circumstances in Nigeria. He declared, matter-of-factly: “We are in a war situation, let no one deceive you”, in his October 2, 2022 message to his congregants. He illustrated the parlous sitch of our security with the impunity with which felons, known as kidnappers, operate in the country. The clergy man said even the inner recesses of our palaces are not spared. Monarchs are kidnapped with their full paraphernalia on…
If everyone is killing their mothers, must you kill yours too? I will answer this question by drawing strength from a folklore, I believe, most readers are familiar with. The late iconoclast and creator of Afrobeat genre of music, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, popularised the story in his 1973 album, “Afrodisiac”, where he sang the track: “Alu Jon Jonkijan”. The season of famine is never the best of times for humanity. So it was with the animal kingdom. In the tale, the famine was so severe that all animals started to kill their mothers for food. But the Dog had a…
Edward Mendlowitz, known as Emeritus Partner in “The Partners Network”, an American company supporting accounting practices in the God’s Own Country, wrote a piece titled: “The Evil Men Do”. The November 3, 2020 publication adapted Mark Anthony’s (Caesar’s best friend and one of the Roman nobles during the reign of Julius Caesar) speech at the funeral of Julius Caesar to wit “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. Mendlowitz, in that piece, counsels thus: “Regardless of who you are or what you do, there will always be someone that will say…
“And who is my neighbour”? This interrogation came from a lawyer, who came to tempt the wisdom of Jesus Christ on the issue of love. The entire encounter is recorded in the Gospel according to Saint Luke 10: 25-37. We shall come to that story later. But now, let me tell you a personal story that gave me a very pragmatic definition of neighbourliness. Some years ago, I was in my hotel room in one of the states in the South-East on an official assignment. My mobile phone rang around 2.00 a.m. I struggled out of sleep to check who…
Ògún, the god of iron, approached Òrúnmìlà (Father of Divination) to be initiated into the cult of Ifá. Ògún came empty handed and Òrúnmìlà noted that if Ògún was too poor to be able to raise the fee for his initiation, he should not be too wretched to afford the materials for the sacrificial offering that will precede his initiation. Yet Ògún had nothing to offer. When it dawned on him that he would not be initiated into the Ifá inner council, Ògún offered Òrúnmìlà the only thing he had; his sword. There was an offer and acceptance and Ògún…
Something terrible is happening in General Muhammadu Buhari’s Northern Nigeria. The slave trade, abolished some 215 years ago is back there. This is no exaggeration. It is real. And like in most real unfortunate situations that have been our lot since the inception of the Buhari presidency in 2015, the Daura-born retired General is absent. He has no solution to the slave trade happening at his backyard; as the trade has returned to his Katsina home state. Beyond the return of slave trade to Katsina State, another despicable act is daily perpetrated there. Bandits now go to towns and villages…
Nigeria is a huge crime scene. It has at all strata A-List criminals holding court. And these are very ingenious people, who routinely stun the world even in yarning stupid excuses for their felony. Before I proceed, can I be permitted to serve a particular folk song (you may have heard it before if you are Yoruba). Here is the song: Kí’ledún gbé – what did Edun steal? Owó, owó l’édún gbé -it was money that Edun stole Kí ló fi se – what did he do with it? Àso, àso ló fi rà – he used it to buy…
In Yoruba family sociology, children are categorised into three broad groups. The stratification is determined by the character portraiture of the child. The first category is called Omo Ojú – a child who requires just a glance from the parents to do the right thing. Omo Ojú is the ideal child any parent would wish for. He is the disciplined one who takes redress by the mere look of the parents. Most often than not, an Omo Ojú does not even require the presence of the parents before he or she behaves very well. A typical Omo Ojú is that…
Former human rights activist, Mr. Festus Keyamo is from Effurun in Uwvie Local Government Area of Delta State. I passed through Effurun on Saturday, July 30, 2022, on my way to Omadino, an Itsekiri town. Keyamo has been in government for seven years. I did not see any positive impact of his being a minister of the Federal Republic in his hometown. The roads are still very deplorable. The traffic by the popular Effurun roundabout snarled as usual. So, I was not surprised, when I saw him on national television last Friday, approving the closure of our universities, since February…
“Was your widowed mother counted?” That sounds crude. Yeah! But those were the words of a woman who had been pushed to the wall. Desperate situations require desperate remedy, so says the axiom. When the widow, Nwanyereuwa, uttered those words on November 18, 1929, she meant every syllable of the sentence. That rhetorical question marked the beginning of what is known in history as the Aba Women’s Riot, which claimed the lives of 51 women and one man. Nwanyereuwa, it was recorded, was minding her palm fruits processing business when Mark Emereuwa, the agent of the newly imposed Warrant Chief,…
“The Presidency, in the meantime, wishes to reassure the public that the President has done all, and even more than what is expected of him as Commander-in-Chief by way of morale, material and equipment support to the military and expects nothing short of good results in the immediate”. The above is part of the statement issued on Sunday, July 24, 2022, by Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to General Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity in reaction to the threat by the terrorists who abducted the Abuja-Kaduna train travellers, to kidnap General Buhari, our President, and Governor Nasir El-Rufai of…
My Ekiti people say: “Hun ko ba Ado hi je hi loho omo Ewi” (what is destroying Ado (Ekiti) lies in the hands of Omo Ewi). Ewi is the paramount king of Ado-Ekiti. His princes are called Omo Ewi. History has it that the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti and the Omo N’Oba N’Edo, Oba of Benin, are children of the same father. Their father was said to have established two different kingdoms for them – the Ado-Ekiti, (also known as Ado Ewi) and the Benin Kingdom. The two kingdoms were thriving almost at the same level. While Agbigboniaran was the legend…
“I am disappointed with the intelligence system. How can terrorists organise, have weapons, attack a security installation and get away with it?” This opening quote is taken from President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement during his visit to Kuje Prison, where terrorists, in their hundreds, operated for close to three hours and set free, 64 of their colleague terrorists. The bandits, who stormed the Minimum Security Correctional Centre unhindered, gave uncommon liberty to hundreds of other inmates kept in that facility. On his visit to the facility, the quickest ever since disasters of the Kuje Prison magnitude have become the signposts of…
Lack of shame kills Oba Àdó (Ainitiju lo pa Oba Àdó) is a common saying among my Yoruba people. Àdó here is not the present Adó-Ekiti, but an ancient Yoruba town that has since gone into extinction like Àpá (the ancestral home of Ogun, the god of iron) and Ìjàyè (the very birthplace of Aare Ona Kakanfo, Kurunmi). However, the legend of Oba Àdó remains till date as a reference for lack of integrity. Oba Àdó, the story tells us, was the most shameless of all creatures. He harboured neither scruple nor an iota of sense of personal dignity. He…
