What happened to the Nigerian judiciary under the now retired Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Tanko Muhammad, is a symptom of an ailing nation. We must all come to admit that Nigeria is a country that needs moral transplant. Who will be the donor is what we don’t know. That the aeroplane-driving CJN retired after his “brother justices” accused him of being light-fingered is never news to celebrate. The resignation itself is never a part of the diagnosis of what ails the country. And I sincerely do hope that the General Muhammadu Buhari administration will not because of the…
Author: Ayodele Suyi
In chapter one of their 2018 book, “How Democracies Die”, Steven Levistsky and Daniel Ziblatt, both professors of Political Science, Harvard University, USA, gave an anecdote of how elected leaders can subvert democracy and increase personal power. The book, which is described as “comparative politics”, narrates how people, all over the world, give out their liberties to tyrants, who disguise themselves as democrats and helpers. The tale, which opens the chapter titled, “Fateful Alliances”, is adapted from an Aesop’s Fable tagged: “The Horse, the Stag and the Hunter”. It goes thus: “A quarrel had arisen between the Horse and the…
Aristotle said: “Choice, not chance, determines your destiny”. But can Nigerians say sincerely that there is a choice among the fossilised beings the parties are presenting to us as candidates? The choice we made in 2015 has pushed the Naira from N197 per Dollar to N600 per Dollar, while wellness has gone down south. Many in Katsina and Zamfara, who in 2019, chorused ‘Sai Baba’ (meaning only Baba Buhari can do it) are buried today in unmarked graves dug by bandits. Choice, not chance, will determine if we will live to see beyond 2023. Unfortunately, what faces Nigerians in the…
Every normal person has not been himself since the videos of the horrendous killings at St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, went viral, last Sunday, June 5. I worked the phones for the major part of the day trying to get across to friends and relations who live in the once peaceful town of Owo. Everybody I spoke with, though not physically affected by the killings, was hysterical. My mind raced through a lot of theories. I tried to imagine what could have informed the attack on the worshippers in the sanctuary of the Lord. Why Owo of all places? Why…
That former Vice president Atiku Abubakar won the PDP primaries held last Saturday in Abuja, I will concur, is not out of place. The way and manner he won is my concern here. On more than two occasions on this page, I had in the past expressed my worries about the division among the southern political class. I noticed very early enough the lack of unity of purpose among the politicians down south. I knew that when push comes to shove, the North can easily rally its men on the field together and get the result that will be beneficial…
The first time I heard the adjective, ‘acephalous’, was in my secondary Form Four Government class. The teacher, Mr. Abayomi Oduntan, a youth corps member, was teaching the topic: “Pre-colonial System of Government in Igboland”. His introduction: “the Igbo society is generally referred to as an acephalous society”, rings a bell till date because of the pendantic pomposity of the adjective, ‘acephalous’, to the hearings of native Ekiti school children in my old Araromi High School (now Odo Oro High School). We tee-heed at the sound of the word because the teacher had in earlier classes given us some words…
Some weeks ago, I got into a simple analysis with a very senior journalist. I was complaining about the increasing number of northern children in alms begging down South. I told him I was worried that the leaders of the region would allow the number of “out-of-school” children to increase by the day. The man corrected the semantic implication of the phrase, “out-of-school”. It was a simple exercise in semantic analysis. He said those children I talked about “are not out-of-school children but “not-in-school children”. That is novel. He explained further: “The out-of-school children were probably in school before they…
The Yoruba leaders of the All Progressive Congress, APC, met in Lagos last week Friday with presidential aspirants of Yoruba stock. While the South-West APC leaders were busy with their prank they called a meeting, the APC at the national level, which in the last seven years of President Muhammadu Buhari presidency has become the nemesis of the nation, put a lie to one of the basic elementary Governmental principles we were taught years back. I was tempted to ask my former secondary school Government teacher if he made a mistake, when he told us then that one of the…
“Mr. Giwa is a trader. He has a shop in David’s village. His store is full of things to sell…”. This is the opening of one of the comprehensive passages in our New Oxford English Course, NOEC, books of yore. The legendary Mr. Giwa sells all manner of items from the edible to solid materials. He has no limits to what he sells. Mr. Giwa has soulmates in our politicians; especially southern politicians, who trade off southern political aspirations to the highest bidders from up north. These political traders, unlike Mr. Giwa, have no modicum of shame in them. They…
On Friday, April 22, 2022, a big Iroko fell in Yorubaland. That fateful Friday, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, the Alaafin of Oyo, joined his forebears. In the African culture, customs and traditions, Obas don’t’ die. They simply sleep. They merely exchange mortality for immortality. So it was with Iku Baba Yeye. There is no doubt that the passing of the Oyo monarch, after 52 years on the throne of his ancestors is like a library that goes ablaze. Oba Adeyemi III was more than a library. He was a walking encyclopedia of Yoruba cultures, customs, traditions, norms and the…
LONG before the ‘civilisation’ of DNA, Africans had their own ways of determining the paternity of any child. Among the Yoruba people of South-West Nigeria, proverbs and strains are employed to confirm or deny paternity. When, for instance, the Yoruba people tell you: “Abijo laa mo iran” – striking resemblance links genealogy – they are simply telling you that a mere look at a child tells you who his father is. And when they talk about looks, the Yoruba are not talking about the physical appearance alone. The concept of “abijo” is an all-encompassing phenomenon. It entails the entire being…
