DO NOT

DIE
IN THEIR WAR

(A treatise on Nigeria's contemporary

Political trajectories)

‘Dele Farotimi
 Do not
Die
in their
War…

‘Dele Farotimi
 (C) DELE FAROTIMI 2019

Published by:
Dele Farotimi Publishers
Lekki Phase 1, Lagos

ISBN: 978-107-118-451-6

First published as first in a series of treatise on the

Nigeria politics

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced, stored in any retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form/by any means -
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise - without the prior permission
of the publishers.

Printed in Nigeria
 DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to the Almighty God who gave me the burden
to speak, and wouldn't let me be, until I had fulfilled my purpose
in Him.
I have been blessed to be loved by Iya Olu, I dedicate this book to
her memory. To the woman who taught me how to be a man, Iya
Wale, and to Olufunmilola, the one that loves me in spite of me.
Thank you for your love.

My Credo

Not much to pack in truth

It's either one way, or it be the other
Restrained by fetters
Or to the hearth returned
My choice must not be tolerated

If to the gaols my path directs

If by a file, I shall be defined
My luggage is spare
My conscience even sparser
The gaoler’s keep, a place of rest

If to the hearth, I be returned

Another victim of the land that devours Just remember
the truths I have told Allow the blood a cure for
blindness
That has held down the children of Ham

When these generations are gone

When the legends are spun, of this shore
Only the truth shall endure, lies exposed
In dying for truth is immortality assured To live for
truth elevates a people

'Dele Farotimi
February 2019
 04
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My true blessings are the women God had positioned in my life from
the beginning of my sojourn. My late grandmother who raised me, my
mother who fathered me, and my darling wife, who loves me in spite
of me, and tolerates my many excesses and idiosyncrasies. Thank you
all for the love.
My brothers, born of my mother Adewale, found in Okokomaiko
- Taiwo, Bayo, Afo, Dele - and several others too numerous to be
mentioned, God bless you all for accepting me as I am.
The midwives who ensured that this book was written, Femi, the
quintessential neighbour; Jahman, my tireless and long suffering
editor; Liz Jay who encouraged me when I flagged; Omalicha, who
helped clarify my thoughts, and my children for whom I write that
they might know that I wasn't amongst those that stole the future.
I have been blessed to sit under the ministrations of a man through
whom God has spoken to me several times to clarify my thoughts, and
direct me. Pastor Paul, I thank you for your faithfulness to the truth,
and the word of God.
To the unmentioned friends, families, and well-wishers. Thank
you for your help, prayers, and encouragement. May God's grace and
mercies abide with you all. Amen.

Note to Readers:
Most of the materials in this volume have already been exposed on the
author's social media platforms, particularly Facebook, where they appeared as
free commentaries on events happening around; and shaping the polity.
Some of the articles were written at different times before the elections of
2015, and 2019.
 CONTENTS

Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
Preface
Introduction Prologue
Why Now?
Silence No Longer an Option

Part 1: Section 1: Truth & Polity (I)

Chapter One
Living A Lie
(I) An Insincere System
(II) The Burdened System
(III) A Skewed Nationhood
(IV) Rule of Violence
(V) Injustice + Inequality = Conflicts + Insurgencies
(VI) Crooked System = Bad Leadership
(VII) The Constitution as a Burden
(VIII) The Nigerian State and the Rule of Law

Chapter Two
The Burden of Being
(I) Collapse of Public Institutions
(II) The Normalisation of Madness
(III) The Untouchable Thieves
(IV) A Criminal Justice System
(V) Dubious Provenance, Questionable Quality
(VI) Awkward Fight against Corruption
(VII) A compromised Middle Class
 06
Chapter Three
Self-Immolation
(I) The Subjectivisation of Truth
(II) The Weaponisation of Poverty and Ignorance
(III) Dialogues of Ventriloquists
(IV) The Thinking Thieves
(V) Yeye Rolling… Thinking Thieves Vs Unthinking Thieves
(VI) Mythicising 'The North'

Chapter Four
The Buhari Metaphor
(I) A Virus Unleashed
(II) I Love Buhari
(III) Buhari is not to Blame? Really?
(IV) Letter to the Buharideens

Part 1, Section 2: Citizenship & the Polity Fore-note

Citizenship in Nigeria

Part 11, Section 1: Sundry Other Items; Truth & Polity II

(I) Corruption of the News
(II) Idiocy of the Middle Class
(III) Truth as the Silver Bullet
(IV) The Stubborn and Unpalatable Truth (V) Power Corrupts...
(VI) Up to the Oppressed to throw off the Oppressor
(VII) The Power of Memorials
(VIII) June 12 and the Aborted Nationhood... (IX) The Arrogance of
Foolish Knowledge...

Part 11, Section 2: Sundry Other Items; Characters &

Metaphors
(I) Principalities and Powers (II) A
Lost People...

07
(III) The Righteous Few
(IV) The Super Eagles and Nigerian Unity (V)
Obasanjo, the Tortoise, and His In-Laws...
(VI) The Genius, the Liar, and the Teleprompter...
(VII) IITA… Reminder to a Wasteland
(VIII) 'Aremu the Lion Cub'…
(IX) The Thieves and the Maddening Broom...
(X) The Rape of Lekki: A Personal Reflection (X): It's Just A Penny?
(XII) Heroes and the Wasted

Part 11, Section 3: Sundry Other Items; Purgation & Resolve Nigeria,
the Way Forward...
Epilogue
Do Not Die in Their Wars The
Lazy Youth...

Index
 PREFACE

Do not Die in their War

here comes a time in the life of a nation when it must
have its own soul-searching conversations, examining
its peculiarities as an independent entity with a duty to
define and defend its identity and take its place among other
countries of the world.
Such conversations cannot be left to the whims of the
masses. Someone has to take the lead. Someone has to make
the call. Someone has to bell the cat. Someone has to be the
voice crying in the wilderness, clearing the pathway of the
nation to Justice, Equity and Fair Play, which are the
foundations of nationhood or statehood.
For this not to be an exercise in futility, it must be a well-
articulated exercise, aimed at providing direction to the
majority of the people living in a Third World country like
Nigeria.
The conversation will also require boldness, social and
political street knowledge and, above all, clarity and sincerity
of purpose, emanating from the 'deep' of the initiator, which
will not rest until it finds a settlement with the 'deep' of the
receptor. According to the book that I read, 'the deep calls to
the deep.'
This is the onerous task Mr. Dele Farotimi has taken
responsibility for at a time when many have been cowed into
awkward and resounding silence through the
instrumentality of ignorance, poverty and self-preservation.
This is a book that is grounded in ideology and strategies on
how to build and sustain an egalitarian society with clearly
defined role of the governed and the governing body; looking
through the past to evaluate the present and looking through
the present to predict the future.
Permit me to however note that this book as rich in
analysis and reasoning as it is an appetizer in the pool of
knowledge that must be available to us today in the area of
nation-building and holding government and its
functionaries accountable to the people in the fulfilment of
their primary obligations to the people, the welfare and the
security of the people, the backbone of the social contract, the
departure from the state of nature to the state of civilization.
Once again I salute Mr. Dele Farotimi, I urge you to read and
become an evangelist and ambassador of the message
because bigger than the book is its message of social, political
and economic emancipation of the most populous black
nation on earth and bigger than the author is the message that
must become an independent entity able to find its way into
the society and fulfil the purpose for which it is sent. Long
Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

-Taiwo Akinlami

09
 INTRODUCTION

I
Laugh Through the Tears...

STARTED writing this book sometime back in 2011. Bola

Ahmed Tinubu's appropriation of the Lekki-Epe
Expressway was the trigger for the release of the
pain that has been the main motivation for my literary
exertions. I wrote to protest, I wrote to mobilize, and then I
wrote in frustration, as I watched the truncation of conscious
attempts by the citizens to protest the injustice.
As I watched the Fuel Subsidy uprisings of December 31,
2011-January 1, 2012, and saw the cooperation and
coordination between the Action Congress (AC) government
of Lagos State and the People's Democratic Party (PDP)
federal government -- both in the timing of the
commencement of tolling on the road, just days before the
removal of subsidies were announced, and during the process
leading up to the issuance of the sovereign guarantees the
federal government had issued on behalf of Lagos State -- one
that discountenanced the obvious rape of the citizens; I
became convinced that the dividing lines between the parties
were illusory, and existed only in the well-stocked
imagination of the people.
I began to write down my thoughts on the Nigerian State,
and to query some old lies and assumptions about the
country of my birth, the structures, systems, events, and
persons that had shaped her trajectories and decline. By 2014,
my “editors”, be they friends and family members, or my
long-suffering editor, believed the book was ready, but I

11
demurred. That was where I was, when I wrote the chapter
titled “Do not Die in their War,” which was given to the press
for publication, but which only The Guardian found the
courage to publish on the 7th of February 2015.
With the unexpected refusal of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
to develop a spine, Buhari and the APC came to power, and
the full ramifications of the hubristic error of the Nigerian
system were evident to me. I began to re-evaluate known facts
in the light of the newly emerging realities. The book became
my refuge, and I began to examine the subjects of citizenship,
and
Nigerian nationality, and structures of political governance.
I have done enough to believe the book sufficiently ready
to be inflicted on others, and for both the informed and the
rabbles to dissect my thoughts. I enjoy debate, and it is my
intention to provoke the same, but I will not consider my job
done if I fail to beam my light ahead. It has pleased the
Almighty God, by whatever name you call Him, to grant me
a prophetic insight into the land of my birth, and you may go
and reread “Do Not Die in Their War” or argue with yourself.
It is time to arm you for what is coming, and the season we
are about to enter, but will live through, survive, and thrive
in.

***
Nigeria is heavily pregnant. She is not a she, and nobody's
mother, but Nigeria is pregnant, and birth she will. What
Nigeria will birth is yet unknown, but when she will birth is

12
painfully imminent. She is already in the throes of her labour
pains.
To be rid of Jonathan in 2015, the Nigeria system in a bid
to survive, assembled a coalition of interests, and Obasanjo,
IBB, Tinubu, Atiku, Saraki, et al. found the grace to work
together for the Buhari project. Tinubu required a national
platform to divert attention away from the failings of his
political franchises in the Southwest, and the somewhat
unpleasant fumes of the Buhari illusion were euphoric
enough to do the job. Winning the presidency was a non-
factored boon, and the lack of influence on Buhari's choice of
ministers evidenced this. Each went into the project for his
selfish reasons, and has stayed or moved on based on the
return on his investments.
As we have come back to where we started out, my
counsel is that you just learn to laugh through the tears. There
are reasons enough to weep for Nigeria, but the coming
weeks and months will offer up some more. The true weight,
quality, and very integrity of men shall be tested in the
extreme, but I urge you to find, and then retain the grace to
smile through the tears.
You will hear men pronounce the wicked innocent, and
condemn truth as lies. Subjectivised truths have gained
currency in our land, and men look up to their fellow men
God in telling the truth. Poison has become the elixir for
stomach aches; decapitation is the cure for migraine. Buhari's
disregard for the rule of law and burgeoning fascism has
become the cure for the fake anti-corruption wars. But in the
midst of the tears, be hopeful. Buhari is the one that shall

13
unwittingly slay the evil system that has held Nigeria bound,
but he must not be allowed to erect his own evil system in its
place.
***
The Buhari of 2015 was the creation of the cooperation
between the military oligarchs that designed the criminal
enterprise called the Federal Republic of Nigeria -- chief of
them were Obasanjo, Danjuma, IBB and Abdusallami; the
Jagaban political machinery; and the civilian partners of the
military oligarchs in the PDP, represented by the Saraki N-
PDP. This coalition assured that the Buhari brand narrative
was sold virtually unchallenged by the orphaned government
of GEJ, mostly through the use of Tinubu's immense powers
in the Nigerian press. Tinubu's corruptive reaches into the
Nigerian judiciary were equally vital, and this was fully
deployed in Buhari's service. But this is 2019, and the
objective realities have changed.
The generals have left as they had been compelled to do in
1985. Buhari has done his thing again. He does not know how
to play the game, not for him the collegiate need for consensus
to be built; he must always have his way, and if you're not
Hausa-Fulani, you have to queue. Buhari ignores the
foundational lies that have been perpetuated, maintained and
serviced in order to preserve the unjust state of Nigeria. For
the suffocating illusion of a united and indivisible Nigerian
State, the myth of a single monolithic northern Nigeria must
be maintained.
Buhari has destroyed this illusion irreparably.

14
 Buhari is an ethnic irredentist, and a religious bigot. He
does not consciously act out his prejudices, but his reflexes
are undeniably jaundiced by his bigotry and ethnicity. These
are the impulses that have always guided his choices, and
they have also coloured his perspectives and world view.
Buhari abhors corruption and corrupt people; this has
been the story since his emergence in national politics and
governance in Nigeria, and he does have the protestations
and record to back up the claims at least until you looked just
a little closer.
Buhari defines corruption much differently from the
chorus of his hypnotized followers, and sees the fight against
corruption through extremely subjective prisms. You cannot
be corrupt when you are his own: and his own are identified
through very narrow spectra. If you speak Fulfulde, you are
blood; if you are Muslim, you are kith; if you are a native
speaker of the Hausa or Kanuri languages, you are kin. Every
other person queue behind. The order of these ones is also
dependent on need and usefulness in a transactional way.
And you cannot be corrupt if you are his. “Join the APC and
your sins would be forgiven” -- those are the undeniable
words of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole (national chairman of
Buhari's political party, APC). This is what the reality
advertises.
Buhari has lost the support and patronage of the power
concentric that facilitated his return to power, and of his
original sponsors, only the Jagaban remains, and; the stage is
set for a battle royale. The lies of old have come home to roost,
and the definitive battle for the soul of Nigeria is about to be

15
joined. The war predicted in “Do not Die in their Wars,” has
commenced in earnest, and it will get much worse before it
begins to get better.
The PDP is the APC, and the APC is the PDP. The two are
Siamese twins, joined at the hip, and inseparable. There is
nothing to choose between them, and the true victims are the
hapless citizens caught in their middle. They trade in hope,
and offer nothing but despair; the citizens' lots have become
progressive only in pain and hard toil; hope has become a
scarce commodity in the Promised Land that has been turned
into hell, and; it will get worse before it may be turned
around.
With the loss of the middle belt and the northern
minorities as a consequence of the revelation of Buhari as the
ethnic irredentist and religious bigot that he is, and the loss of
the support of the traditional power brokers of the military
oligarchy, Buhari's path to power does not lie with the people.
This is because in the absence of an illusion to market, and the
undeniably bad record of governance, Buhari has no choice
but to resort to the reflexive position of his true nature. Thus,
the real Buhari is again emerging from behind the mask
enforced by his earlier need for pretence.

***
Once upon a time, the Nigerian press was a critical force for
good. It queried assumptions and demanded account. You
could count on the courage and essential honesty of our
pressmen and women. Our media was the envy of Africa, and
a veritable bulwark against the forces of tyranny in our

16
country. But today, as with every other sector of Nigeria, the
press is irredeemably lost. In place of truth, our press has
become purveyors of falsehood. Truth has become subjective,
and coloured, and you needn't read, listen, or watch a news
piece for long; it's very easy to tell who has paid for what
piece of news. The oppressed have lost the capacity to tell
their stories, and when they would dare; the platforms are
owned by beneficiaries of the oppressive system, or the
oppressors, be that by proxy or in the full glare of the people.

***
The results of the coming elections have been predetermined!
For the pedantic, I point to Ekiti, and I say look to Osun. The
Yoruba people were once the bellwethers of progressive
politics in Nigeria. Thanks to Awolowo and his crew; the
people were armed against the identified threats of
feudalism, and religious fundamentalism. The Yoruba
political, sociocultural, and economic leadership pursued
education and knowledge as an article of faith. They knew
that a people intellectually liberated are impossible to
enslave. The remotest hamlets were furnished with schools.
Knowledge was the building block against feudalistic
designs. The foothold gained by the forces of feudalism and
religious fundamentalism is a function of the loss of the
knowledge industries built by the visions of our fathers. The
Yoruba of old would not have fallen preys to the twin evils
identifiable in the two charades that I have mentioned above.
The average Yoruba person has become intellectually
disengaged from the process of leadership emergence over

17
the years of relying on first Awolowo, and then the Awoists,
to point where to go. The NADECO struggles led to the
emergence of a younger crop of Yoruba men and women who
were never members of the Awolowo political family;
amongst these were the like of Wahab Dosumu, who was an
NPN man in the 2nd Republic; Ademola Adeniji-Adele, Bola
Tinubu, and a host of others. These men fused to varying
degrees with the Awoists in the Afenifere and the Alliance for
Democracy, AD. The inherent contradiction of the uneasy
marriage is one of the identifiable reasons for the death of the
AD, and the intractably irreconcilable crises that have
rendered Afenifere irrelevant.
Bola Tinubu is the inheritor of the powers once wielded
by first, Awolowo; then the ones branded as Awoists after the
sage's demise, and then, Afenifere before the death of Chief
Abraham Adesanya and Uncle Bola Ige – who was
gruesomely murdered by the Nigeria State. The Jagaban of
Borgu is the de facto leader of the Yoruba race, and he has
been so since he somehow survived the Obasanjo tsunami of
2003. The Jagaban has not only survived the Ebora of Owu, he
has built a political juggernaut that is bred on the steroids of
alleged extreme corruption, and an iron grip on the levers of
coercive violence and state-backed intimidation of political
opponents and dissenting opinions. The Jagaban has ably
exploited the corruption of the Nigerian press. The closest
leader in our history in this corruptive effect is Babangida.
The core Awoists disliked Bola Tinubu with a passion. I
began to notice this intense dislike for Tinubu in the days
before the death of Uncle Bola, and during the crisis that

18
rocked Afenifere and the AD. I watched as the dislike
morphed into an implacable hatred of the man as he went
about methodically dismantling the powers and influence of
the Awoists upon the demise of Adesanya and Ige. I was
initially baffled by their hatred of the man, but I have come to
understand why. The Jagaban exercises the same unrestrained
powers once held by the sage, and later by them, but nobody
could be more unlike Awolowo.
Awolowo was a man far ahead of his time, and most
definitely ahead of the current crop of afflictions disguised as
leaders. He had an impenetrable moral anchor, and was
spartan in his consumptions. Not for Awolowo the sybaritic
lifestyle of our new-age sage. Awolowo never owned a
private jet, and if he had one, he was sensitive and sensible
enough not to advertise it. Awolowo was not famed for his
wealth, and nobody ever defined him in terms of his material
wealth. Awolowo lived a disciplined and ordered life. He was
cerebral and given to studying and meditation. Even his
enemies would not be heard denying his sagacity, and
prodigious capacities.
Awolowo's disciples were easy to identify in Nigerian
politics. They were the men of ideas and; were distinguished
by their temperance and sobriety. The story was once told to
me of Chief Ganiyu Dawodu, the late warhorse of Awoist
politics on the island of Lagos. A neighbourhood wag had
made a mental note of the old man's penchant for wearing
what appeared to be the same clothes throughout the week in
which they had been together at one political event after
another. Rascally wag came up with mischief on the

19
campaign trail and burnt a hole in the old man's buba. Lo and
behold, the very same buba and sokoto the very next day: only
thing is, the buba appeared miraculously shorn of the
previous day's hole. Disciplined Awoist that he was, the old
man simply wore clothes made of the same material as did
his entire cadre and their legendary leader. Egba n to line, it
was called.
Not for them the luxuries of these age.
Tinubu is to the Awoists, Akintola reborn, and to a very
large extent, they are very correct in my humble opinion.
Even as I had hoped and prayed that the old men and I were
completely wrong and mistaken in our conclusions, events
leading up to Tinubu's collaborations and leadership of
critical aspects of the Buhari project, has shown that Tinubu
is the true inheritor of Akintola's mantle in Yorubaland.

***
The Nigeria State is built on a basic lie that has birthed a
fundamental assumption that has no correlation with either
the truth, and or reality: that the Northern part of Nigeria is
one monolithic, homogeneous, and single entity. Nigeria was
designed from inception with a “veto” vested in the hands of
this North. Lugard and his successors built a country that was
easiest to rule in the northern part because of the colonial
powers that had preceded them in the territory: the twin
Islamic empires of Kanem Bornu, and the Sokoto Caliphate.
I have dealt at length with the origins and consequences of
this lie; I shall now show the relevance within the context of
the objective realities confronting Nigeria at this time.

20
 The Buhari project was an attempt by the owners of the
Nigerian State that emerged out of the civil war of 1967-1970
to wrest back control of the criminal empire that was lost in
the flames of Obasanjo's 3rd Term hubris. Nigeria had been
ruled since the death of the First Republic -- and particularly
since the installation of the Gowon regime after the murder of
Ironsi -- by an unspoken agreement. This agreement has the
acquiescence of the political “North”. This north had nothing
to do with geography; it is a north of political interests. This
north comprised the entirety of Nigeria, north of the River
Niger; which includes the totality of what used to be known
as the Northern Region of Nigeria. It had room for the Jukun
of T.Y. Danjuma, the Angas…
The Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello was aware of the
delicate construct that the British had bequeathed to their
favoured consort's children, and he painstakingly worked to
integrate the entire northern Nigeria. Whilst the pecking
orders in the northern part was firmly established; the least in
the feudalistic order was superior to the best of the South,
particularly the hated Igbo, who was feared as much as he
was hated. The Arthur Richards (Nigerian) constitution of
1946 established the veto and the myth with the allocation of
legislative seats to the regions. Subsequent constitutions of
Nigeria have followed this trend. This is the reason -- aside
from the criminal revenue allocation formula -- that has
rendered a credible population census impossible to achieve
in Nigeria till date.
The awakening of the middle belt and the northern
minorities in the 1960s, fruits of the political bravery of

21
southern Nigerian politicians working in concert with the
new leaders of the long oppressed peoples of northern
Nigerian minority groups, led to a situation where the NPC
under the Sardauna had to find political alliances outside of
the region in order to retain power at the federal level. The
guarantee of a monopoly of power within the northern region
had been seriously damaged by the several uprisings
amongst the restive ethnic and religious minorities in the
region. The Tiv uprisings were in full swing, as were several
other historical grievances against the feudalistic chokehold
of the Hausa-
Fulani ruling class.
The strategic realignment that saw the NPC government
drive a schism between Obafemi Awolowo and his erstwhile
deputy, Ladoke Akintola, was precipitated by the twin need
to cripple the Action Group (AG) and its leader, Awolowo.
The uprising in the north was being fanned and encouraged
by the ideological and material assistance that the AG and
Awolowo were providing to the leaders of the peoples in
revolt. The like of Chief Ige were deployed to provide legal
services to the beleaguered peoples fighting the northern
hegemonies, and the different political platforms that were
poised to benefit from the political awakening were aligned
with the AG ideologically, and politically.
With the alliance found with him, the NPC at the federal
level granted Akintola and his unpopular government the
leeway to crack down on voices of dissent, and Awolowo and
his lieutenants were herded into prison on treason charges.
The West boiled, and Nigeria fumbled its way into the civil

22
war. Let me be clear; the Nigeria Civil War has its roots in the
inability to manage the illusions of a monolithic north, and
the discovery of an amoral alliance with the forces of reaction
in Yorubaland. Without Akintola, the NPC would have lost
its veto in the federal parliament, and Obafemi Awolowo
looked poised to wrest the Prime Ministership from Tafawa
Balewa.

***
Against the clear agreement and expectations of the collegiate
that brought him to power in 2015, Buhari, true to character,
abandoned his pretence of having learnt from the errors of
1985, and reverted to the ethnic irredentism of his earlier
tenure, and his religious bigotry became more and more
evident. The people that brought him to power were
alienated one after the other, He began to undermine the very
foundations of the Nigerian power brokers. He has not
hidden his preference for his Fulani blood, and, he, more than
any other contemporary driver of the Nigerian contraption,
has shown a complete lack of sensitivity to the diversity of
Nigeria, and the complexities of the lies that have bound it
together.
The first of the power brokers to be rudely awakened to
the readiness of Buhari to be unfettered by democratic rules
was Bukola Saraki. In an audacious power grab that his late
father would have applauded, Bukola plotted a coup against
the party, and schemed himself into the senate presidency.
Buhari's response was swift, amoral, and a foretaste of what
were to come as his presidency unfolded. Saraki was dragged

23
through the Code of Conduct Tribunal, which is run from the
presidency; he gamely fought back using his knowledge of
the irredeemably corrupt judiciary. Onnoghen's sins are
considered unforgivable because of his perceived role in the
judicial reprieve granted Saraki.
As Buhari has become hostage to the ones with whom he
had corralled himself, the people that brought him to power
were firmly pushed away and alienated. Aisha's public
denunciations of the Aso Rock cabal and several facts in the
public domain support this position. Senator Remi Tinubu
wasn't shy about speaking to the issue when she publicly
complained of the abandonment of her husband and the other
persons who had worked to bring the Buhari government
into power. Tinubu was made an orphan of power, and
persons considered to be of political value in his spheres of
influence, were encouraged to rebel against his authority.
Persons were promoted in spite of him, and his influence
was brutally whittled down in the southwest. His preferred
candidate for the Ondo gubernatorial election, held in the
immediate aftermath of Buhari's assumption of office, was
sidelined with the active connivance of the party chairman,
Chief John Oyegun, whom he had installed in the assumption
that he'd be pliable, and the brutality of the Kogi coup against
his man, Abiodun Faleke, was the ultimate slap in the face.
Tinubu was orphaned, and began to stay more in London
than his homes in Lagos.
The Buhari project is the only time -- to the knowledge of
the public -- Obasanjo and Tinubu have ever been known to
agree on any issue. I have dealt with the issue of how alike

24
the two men are; I will not bother to rehash the point. But the
truth is that their political fates are linked, and since 2003, the
fate of the one has been intricately linked to the other.
When Obasanjo failed to complete the tsunami of 2003, he
allowed a wily customer to survive. And where Obasanjo
failed to be effective in his succession planning, Tinubu was a
resounding success with his. With Obasanjo leaving the
Buhari project, and the realization that the 2019 elections were
around the corner, Tinubu was restored to influence, and the
Jagaban of Borgu was reborn.
Bola Tinubu has for long craved the influence, fanatical
following, and acceptance of the sort enjoyed by the late sage,
Obafemi Awolowo; so much so, that he once had billboards
erected around Lagos bearing images and representations of
himself, Ghandi, and Awolowo. And he has built up a
carefully cultivated image of a progressive populist leader,
when the reality shows that he is the exact opposite. Tinubu
is unmoored to any moral anchor; he has a rabidly acquisitive
spirit; he is sybaritic in the extreme, and lacks both the
intellectual and spiritual discipline of Awolowo, the man that
he wants to be seen as.
***
With the foundational lies of a monolithic north exposed by
Buhari's careless ethnic irredentism, which ignores the need
to be circumspect in dealing with the middle belt and other
ethnic minorities in the northern part of Nigeria, the Fulani
herdsmen menace, which had always been there before his
coming, became a national embarrassment, and multiplied
exponentially, even as the security architecture of the country

25
became suspected accomplices in some of the worst atrocities
in the Benue trough. T. Y. Danjuma, the golden boy of
northern hegemony, began to speak of a “northern Nigerian
Army”. He characterized the skirmishes in the Mambilla as
genocidal, and urged his kinsmen to arm themselves.
The entire North Central, and middle belt zones have
become quagmires for Buhari in his re-election calculus, and
nothing of beneficial consequence may be expected from the
South-south, or Southeast. The electoral map does not look
good for Buhari, and just as with the NPC and Ahmadu Bello
in 1962, the Buhari cabal is in need of Akintola to deliver the
Southwest however the task may be achieved. In Tinubu, they
have found the true inheritor of the Akintola mantle, and;
with the current state of Yorubaland, Tinubu could not have
asked for a more vulnerable people.

***
Awolowo built his political empire on the foundation of
knowledge. He weaponized knowledge amongst the Yoruba
people. The Yoruba pursued knowledge wherever it was to
be found. Schools were built on the cooperative efforts of
villages; primary school education was made universally free,
and compulsory in the entirety of the western region. He built
the very first TV station in Africa, he owned a newspaper, and
he wrote copiously. The Yoruba, more than any other
Nigerian tribe or ethnicity, looked to eradicate illiteracy in all
of its
forms.

26
 A person free of ignorance is rarely found in penury, and
it is not a matter of accident that the Ekiti Province of the old
western region, was the richest of all of the provinces, even as
it is today, the poorest of all of the states carved out of the old
West. Awolowo's government assured fair prices for the
produce farmers, gave them agricultural credits; provided
supports and offered targeted subsidies in needed areas. Built
roads into the hinterland and opened up the region for
agricultural production and trade.
Awolowo encouraged industrialization in a reasoned
manner; emphasis was placed on the localization of
industries, and the goals were to ensure that there was a value
chain created to ensure that the raw materials that were being
exported without more were used by the locals to produce
replacements for the imported goods the people were
consuming. His government built industrial parks, and
invested in strategic industries and initiatives. Obafemi
Awolowo was a man unlike any that has lived in this clime
before or after. He was a man ruled by his fecund visions, and
he grasped at a future we in the future have failed to see.
To compare Tinubu to Awolowo is to compare day and
night - darkness and light! Please, do not require me to say
who is which. The testaments remain for all to behold.
Tinubu is Akintola-reborn. He has taken on the same role
as the Akintola of old.

***
The election in Ekiti pointed out Buhari's intended path to a
second term. The people are ripe for the harvest to be reaped

27
from the weaponized poverty of the last decades, and the
gubernatorial election went the way of the highest bidder.
Votes were openly bought and sold, and an impoverished
electorate, who are wiser than their abusers, and knew from
bitter experience that they were caught between the rock and
a hard place, simply grabbed the opportunity to get some of
the bread for themselves.
“Alaaru to n'jeburedi”
The Osun format shows Tinubu in full flow. It was in
Osun that he boasted in the palace of a traditional ruler how
he is much richer than the impoverished state, and how the
gubernatorial candidate was in the race as a favour to the
people. He was clearly power drunk, and the reason for his
swagger was soon made evident. Tinubu is a good student of
power; he is in a class all by himself, when it comes to the
subject of the usage of power. That he is unmoored to morals
makes him even more corruptive in his use of power.
I recommend a study of the Osun election to anyone in
need of further evidence.
The powers deployed in pursuit of the Kogi Agenda of
2016, which led to the emergence of Yahaya Bello as governor,
is what Buhari and his possessing spirits seek to control. That
is the battle that has birthed the Onnoghen debacle. Buhari
has no interest in fighting corruption. Were that his purpose,
Onnoghen should never have been confirmed, and practically
the entire judiciary should be in jail. Buhari is only seeking to
ensure that the fascist regime he is about to unleash would be
above the law.

28
 ***
In 2019, do not die in their wars. Choose your own battles,
and fight in them. If it pleases God, you may die in them, but
fight for the truth, and you toy with fame, bleed for the truth,
and become a hero. Nigeria hasn't been blessed with too
many recognized martyrs, and few names have risen to the
level of nationalist heroes.

29
 PROLOGUE

WHY NOW?
Silence no Longer an Option

I cannot find peace in keeping quiet… it has

pleased God to burden me with the

I
knowledge of the truth…

HAVE always had a social conscience; I believe this to be

a by-product of my childhood; the society in which I spent
my formative years; and on a God-given sensitivity
to the sufferings of the poor masses of the Nigerian people.
I was born to a civil servant father, and a mother who, in
order to raise her children, sold everything except her body.
My parents were divorced before my second birthday, and I
grew up with my grandmother in my grandparents' home at
Inalende in Ibadan.
I come from humble beginnings. We were not poor, but I
never went hungry and there was never any form of
deprivation, nor were there any hints of creditors lurking
around to collect a debt. Mine was a happy, contended
childhood, spent cocooned in my grandmother's love.
There were no nursery schools for anyone in my
neighbourhood; we all attended what were called “Jẹ'́ lẹ́ ó
sin'mi” loosely translated as “let those at home have peace”.
These were the forerunners of today's crèches and
playgroups. We went equipped with our slates and chalks.
Mine was at the basement of what I remember as 'Church
Eleja' in Adamasingba quarters of Ibadan. We would walk in
a single file from Inalende to Adamasingba and back; lunch
was served at the school and the days were spent learning the
alphabets and numbers.
They were happy days.
I graduated to St. Stephen's Primary School at Inalende.
This was just across the road from my grandfather's house,
where I lived. In my youth, you got to play the postcode
lottery when it was time to go to school. The state would place
you in the school closest to your home. It did not matter who
your parents were, or how much money they had or did not
have; the system ensured that you went to the school closest
to your home; and thanks to the government, primary school
education was compulsory and free.
In 1977, my mother returned to Nigeria from the United
States of America, and I left my grandmother's care to live
with my mother. She had rented a house at Ojoo, in the
outskirts of Ibadan, and I was transferred to Abadina Primary
School. Abadina was built by the management of the
University of Ibadan to cater primarily for the children of the
junior staff who lived mostly in Abadina Village. I flowered
in this rustic bucolic environment, and developed a love for
books and comics. I read for the sheer pleasure of reading and
became a fixture in the children's library next to the
Conference Centre. I was a happy child.
In 1978, I wrote the entrance examination into Fiditi
Grammar School located in Fiditi, my maternal grandparent's
ancestral home, whilst yet in Primary five, and was admitted.

31
 I was ten years old when I left the cocoon of home to
embrace my future.
The years went by in a blur and upon graduating in 1983;
I passed enough papers to enter Olivet Grammar School in
Oyo for Advance Levels, but not enough to enter the
university. A further sojourn to Oyo State College of Arts and
Sciences (OSCAS) in in Ile Ife a year later and I was in 1985
offered admission into Lagos State University (LASU) to read
English Language and Linguistics. I would graduate in 1997
- 12 years later - with a degree in Law.
The biographical exercise is necessary in order to provide
context for how I have come to arrive where I am today. I
cannot find peace with continuing to keep quiet, because it
has pleased God to burden me with the knowledge of the
truth. Nigeria was better than this, and can be much better
than it has become.
My biography mirrors that of most others from my
generation. Our parents did not have to be rich, and, or
educated, in order for us to get good education. The system
worked to deliver value to everybody, and class mobility was
a declared goal of government. You may be born to
economically disadvantaged parents, but your capacity for
upward mobility was not constrained by this; your trajectory
was a function of your own willingness to work, and your
individual aptitude.
Today, the goal of government appears to be aimed at the
segregation of citizens along class lines, and opportunities for
class mobility have been strangulated. Nigeria has become a

32
feudalistic entity where the circumstances of a man's birth
determine his future.
Why am I speaking out today?
What do I hope to achieve by raising my voice at a time
when the majority appears to be celebrating the Eldorado we
had announced upon the coming of our latest set of Messiahs,
led by the agent of change himself, President Muhammadu
Buhari?
Mine is a generation defined by cowardice. Once upon a time
in this country, we had the like of Gani Fawehinmi, Beko
Ransome-Kuti, Tai Solarin and a plethora of others with social
consciences. These men and women spoke for those without
voices; they did not do so for personal gains; some did it at
the cost of personal liberty and lost economic benefits because
of their commitment to the betterment of the society. Many
were jailed, assaulted several times, physically and
emotionally, and their means of livelihood were destroyed.
They spoke truth to power in the ages of the 'unknown'
soldiers, and were physically brutalized with impunity.
Of the tribe of these men and women of conscience, only
very few remain, and to witness what age has done to the like
of Wole Soyinka; to be confronted with the guilt I feel at my
anger over his inability to continue to speak for my cowardly
generation, left me no choice but to free myself of the burden
of silence, enforced by the cowardly need to blend into the
scenery.
I have watched as Professor Soyinka rightly manned the
barricades, my entire lifetime. I have observed the many
sacrifices and prices he has paid for daring to speak truth to

33
power. He has been imprisoned for being true to his
conscience. He has suffered exile and forced separations from
his loved ones and several other deprivations that only he can
talk about. He has paid a very high price for the ideals he has
lived for. He has not taken the easy roads.
But in recent years, I have found myself becoming
increasingly alarmed at the convenient and Wengerian
(Arsene) dimensions of his selective criticisms of our political
elite. I have applauded as Soyinka took on Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan and his co-travellers, Obasanjo and of course,
Babangida, and I have waited in vain to hear him say
something about the serial malfeasance of the thieves closer
to home. I have waited in vain.
For a reason, I was angry with the hero of my youth, but I
have since come to the point of realization. Professor is now
an old man, he has fought for over 60 years. He is entitled to
live out his dotage on his own terms, and it is up to us to
embrace our own truths, and speak up as he has eloquently
spoken up for our entire lifetimes.
Is it accidental that nobody in my generation has acquired
the capacity to speak as the men in my hero's generation? I
think not. I believe that we are all products of the
environment that nurtures us, and Professor's generation was
imbued with a sense of purpose that seems completely
obliterated in my own generation. Professor's generation had
a surplus of men with the capacity to dream, idealists who
had big dreams for the Nigeria State.
The first coupists, Kaduna Nzeogwu et al., Fela Anikulapo,
Gani Fawehinmi -- that generation had several dreamers and

34
original thinkers. My own generation on the other hand, is
replete with survivalists; peopled with men and women who
have become experts in existential living; the art of
compromises, even with their own consciences, and the
pursuit of personal wealth at the expense of corporate
poverty.
My generation has no vision of the Nigeria State; we grew
up during and after the Civil War. We were either Hausa,
Yoruba, Igbo, Edo and so on; we were anything but
Nigerians, and not believing in the Nigeria State, we pursued
individual and personal aggrandizements.
There were periodic and episodic identifications with the
Nigeria State, but being unfortunate to have lived as young
adults under the several kleptocratic regimes headed by the
military, we had no high ideals to live up to, no windmills to
charge, and idealistic dreams died quickly in the economic
maelstrom that witnessed our youthful years. We are the
worst that the Nigeria State has thrown up, existential in
outlook, bankrupt in morals.
We are raising children who cannot survive in the country
that we will bequeath to them, if things are not quickly
reversed. It is this harsh reality that has now loosened my
tongue and woken me from inertia. My purpose is to sound
the alarm in the hope that we have not travelled too far down
this road towards national destruction and we can do a course
correction before it is too late.
Silence is no longer an option.

35
 PART 1

TRUTH
&
POLITY (1)
CHAPTER ONE

LIVING A LIE

(I)

An Insincere System

…what you see in our system today

are mere manifestations of the
problems that we have admitted

36
M Y people have a proverb “wón̩ ní amúkùń er̩ù é̩ wó̩, ó
l'ókè l'ew̩ ò, e ̩ ò wò'sàlè̩” - loosely interpreted, this
means: “you queried why the load placed on the
head of the knock-kneed fellow is askew; and he retorted:
why not appraise the shape of the load from the shape of my
leg?”
Definitely, it is inevitable that we are going to have the
kind of caricature of a system that we have in Nigeria.
If we have agreed that there are foundational problems,
what you see in our system today are mere manifestations of
the problems that we have admitted. We are treating
symptoms instead of the root cause, which is why everybody
that has ever led Nigeria, has always resisted attempts at
restructuring. When you say you want to restructure, what
you are saying in effect is that you want to re-examine the
imbalances that are functions of historical robberies.
Every time the Nigeria State has been restructured after
independence, it has been by sheer force of military arms. The
1963 constitution birthed the Midwest and this came about at
the instance of Obafemi Awolowo, who assumed that the
North and the East needed to allay the fears of the minority
groups within their territories. Out of the East, the Oil States
were supposed to come out, and out of the North, the Middle
Belt was to have been carved out.
If Awolowo's suggestion had been followed, the
foundation for Nigeria's unity and true federalism would
have become stronger, but Awo's advice was not adhered to.
Rivers State was created in 1967 on the eve of the Nigerian
Civil war; the intentions behind its creation were not pure: it

37
was to Balkanize the Igbo. But it wasn't the only state created
at the time. Gowon created twelve states in all. Some other
states within Eastern region were carved out in order to gain
the support of the Eastern minorities and to dilute the powers
of the Igbo states.
The Willink Commission was set up in 1957-58 to address
the fear of the minorities in Nigeria, but the only region that
implemented the recommendations of the commission was
the Western Region. The other two regions remained uniform
until after the coup. What then happened after the coup was
that, the federal structure was broken up and Nigeria became
a unitary state, bearing federal only in name.
That is the fraud.
Nigeria is only federal in name. In reality, it has become
more centralized in keeping with the military structure than
anything else, which is why it is the federal government that
is imposing Local Governments; why the local governments
exist only in name as well. The Governors simply appropriate
the allocations.

****

38
 (II)

The Burdened System

…the system itself encourages

everything ailing our society

I REPEAT: every system produces what it has been

designed to produce. If you want to change Nigeria, change
the system! Without tackling the systemic preconditions for
madness, you cannot cure it. The people are merely
responding to the realities of their environment. Why would
you pursue merit in an environment that does not value or
reward merit? Of course, except you are designed stupidly to
pursue it -- which has left the like of me in frustration --
because we are pursuing ideals that don't exist; a mirage.
So, you go to the passport office and make sure you are
first on the queue; the officer who is meant to attend to you
strolls in lackadaisically, and whilst you are on the queue, he
is calling in applicants who had bribed him and his seniors!
In the end, he might probably call three of you on the line.
And voila, he is done for the day!
You cannot plant Okra and expect to harvest cocoa. It is
garbage in, garbage out. Why would I want to read and kill
myself if I can simply cut corners without ramifications?
Assuming my name is Philip Shuaibu from Edo State, for
instance; and I know that if I could remove Philip and call
myself Mohammadu Shuaibu, I would pass easily for a
Northerner, which means I wouldn't need to score as high as

39
the Edo indigene in national examinations; I then choose to
become a citizen of Kano State so I can gain admission to the
Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA) quicker.
The point is this: the system itself, for any discerning
person, encourages everything ailing our society. It actually
promotes and creates the room for these ills to flourish and
then we still turn around and flay the same things we have
enabled, including the spate of violence currently
reverberating across the nation.

****

40
 (III)

A Skewed Nationhood

When the overarching intention of the

State is not the common good, all
kinds of madness become normalised

H ABAKKUK 2: 2-3 says “Then the Lord answered me and

said:
“write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who
reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end,
it will speak, and will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because
it will surely come….”
In the absence of visionary leadership, profligacy takes the
place of vision.
As a young man, if you don't have a clear-cut purpose for
your life and you are given huge amount of money by a
wealthy person, say N15million; if care is not taken, the
money will kill you for the reason that it will lead you into
buying mundane things like fast cars and misleading women;
you will be fascinated by a purposeless life.
This is the same in the life of a nation.
The nation is the aggregation of citizens.
If as a nation you are working at cross purposes without
clarity of vision;
If as a nation, you do not understand that the national gas
reserves are in the Niger Delta so, we should build our power
plants in the Niger Delta and simply build transmission lines
all over Nigeria;
41
 If as a nation you are busy building power plants in the
Plateau and Kaduna and other inappropriate places and
piping natural gas across vast distances in order to power
those places -- Egbin Power Plant is in Ikorodu -- where you
don't have any natural gas; it is powered by natural gas which
has to be piped all the way from the Niger Delta multiplying
the cost of the energy that you are seeking to supply, thereby
increasing the inefficiencies in the system…, how does this
benefit Nigeria?
When the overarching intention of the state is not the
common good, all kinds of madness become normalized. It
becomes completely normal for madness to thrive. That is
why we are where we are in Nigeria.
The commonplace anomies simply make it impossible to
democratize the political space. If the political space were
democratized, it would mean that the will of the people
would emerge and be supreme. So, the governing hegemony
has no interest in promoting the democratization of the
political space. In fact, the most dangerous thing that can
happen to them would be the democratization of the political
space.
It is why it would be difficult to have independent
candidacy in Nigeria. Regardless of any noise they might be
making today, they cannot afford to have it. If you have an
independent candidacy, then people of all hues can come out
and challenge the powers that be.
Let me give you a case in point: Obasanjo came out
recently and was pushing some coalition to fight APC! What
did the emergence of APC do to the emerging oppositions in

42
Yorubaland, for example?
Somebody like Jimi Agbaje would never have run on the
platform of PDP if APC had not emerged. But with the
emergence of APC, all the platforms on which he could have
conceivably run for governorship in Lagos State had been
taken over by the APC, and handed over to Bola Ahmed
Tinubu. Jimi was thus marooned into PDP.
All of a sudden, beheading a man became the cure for his
headache.
Now you have a situation where everybody who wants to
fight the APC is now being marooned again into whatever
name they elect to call the emerging coalition party that
Obasanjo is chaperoning; or one of the serial smaller parties
newly registered and muted by INEC.
The system is designed to produce exactly what it is meant
to produce and you cannot find a cure to the problem fighting
from within the system.
***
In 2015, as I watched the emergence of the APC, I became
increasingly disillusioned with the political system; and I
resolved that I would have nothing to do with it. In February
same year, I wrote a piece titled 'Do Not Die in Their Wars' and
felt it was urgent enough to be published by any of the
national dailies. That piece made it clear I wasn't going to vote
in the coming presidential elections, and I didn't. I could see
clearly where it was going to end up.
This was me who used to vote consistently. I voted Buhari
in every election except in 2015. I couldn't vote for Buhari in
2015 because it was the year Buhari was unmasked. Having

43
seen him in all his nudity, I was unimpressed and walked
away. Then earlier in 2018, I started toying with the idea of
running for the political presidency. Not because I believed I
stood any chance of winning, but because I thought it would
be an opportunity to draw attention to the madness of Nigeria
and thereby forcing the system to debate issues that I believe
are critical and in need of urgent address.
Not long after, an acquaintance came to see me and
revealed his intention to run for the presidency. I informed
him while we discussed that I was definitely interested in the
elections of 2019 unlike in 2015, when I kept quiet even when
prevailing circumstances were nauseating enough to provoke
reactions. I told him that in not-too-distant future our paths
would converge. Thereafter, I saw Omoyele Sowore making
presidential noises as well and all these issues consecrated my
mind and got me to the point where it became much easier
for me to draw my conclusions.
These were the conclusions I drew:
As a matter of fact, we cannot change the Nigerian system
working within the same system because the system is
producing exactly what it has been designed to produce. The
people seeking engagement with the system are either going
to conform to the system or the system would deny them the
space required to ventilate their grievances or articulate their
visions.
That said, I also became quickly aware that the only way
to change the narrative is not to continually seek to engage
this system at the level we are, presently, going about it.
Rather, it will be to construct an alternative vision and, while

44
at this, present to the Nigerian people a clear picture of what
is possible and then show them a way to get there.
Anger is not a governing system. Bellyaching also changes
nothing. But if we can articulate an alternative vision behind
which we can galvanize the people, the existing reality will
change. This alternative vision I have meticulously pieced
together after due consultation and deliberation with a circle
of friends. Without reservations, it is presented in the latter
part of this book without which the entire endeavour would
be sterile.
Every tree produces fruits. If you have a situation where
the system doesn't promote merit, it becomes impossible to
demand diligence and merit or meritorious pursuits from
members of such society. If all I have to do to succeed is not
something that I do but an accident of birth, why should I do
anything more. If knowing someone in government office is
sufficient to make me rich without the society asking
questions about the source of my stupendous wealth, why
should I contrive to make personal efforts when in fact, the
society doesn't reward diligence?
Take the travails of the Finance Minister Mrs. Kemi
Adeosun, for example. The woman didn't do her compulsory
one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). Having been
vetoed two or three times, and the State Security Service
endorsed her; how did she beat the system? She isn't the only
person, however, that we have to focus on. The Senate passed
her. How did they do so? Though the entire NYSC scheme is
completely flawed, there ought to be strict measures for
enforcing sanity. Go to the NYSC camp and see how the corps

45
members are poorly kitted. This is an indication that
something is fundamentally wrong with the system that
demands the youths spend one year of their life living a lie.
People sit down in Lagos and someone else is signing the
register on their behalf.
I had initially assumed only the poor serve Nigeria but at
the moment, even they have found ways around it.
All these effects are directly traceable to the shambolic
system.

****

46
 (IV)

Rule of Violence

If a man can speak to you at an intellectual level,

chances are that he will not resort to
physical expression of his frustration

V IOLENCE is a creation of injustice. People find different

outlets for their frustrations. If you shut off every avenue
for legitimate ventilation of grievances, what you find
eventually is that, there will be combustion and implosions.
The violent activities you see are not necessarily the first
choice of the culprits of the violence but in most cases, they
are actually coming from an abundance of stifled frustrations
-- when the person feels there are no other ways of resolving
the situation as it were.
Let me give an example: A stutterer's inability to vocalize
his thoughts can push him into violence. His frustration
would lead to an outburst and just as we have linguistic
violence, we also have physical violence.
In fact, the lower the class of the discussants the more
likely you would hear expletives feature in the discussion. If
a man has enough words in his vocabulary with which to
express himself in the language of communication, he is
unlikely to use swearwords. But, the lesser the words he has
in his cache or the more basic the use of the language is, the
most likely he will resort to curses and swear words.
It is not fortuitous that the first words we learn in a foreign
language are almost always the expletives. It is because these
47
are the most basic expressions of feelings. You find that when
wannabes learn to speak English Language, it is the cuss
words you hear them voice for a start because they are easier
to communicate; they are the basic denomination of
emotions.
The analogy is to draw attention to physical violence.
If a man can speak to you at an intellectual level, chances
are that he will not resort to physical expression of his
frustration. He would speak or articulate his point. But when
he is incapable of doing so, he may descend to the lowest form
of communicating his grievances, which is almost always
physical violence.
When you find yourself in a system that perpetually offers
simple answers to complex questions: the Hausa man is the
cause of your problem; oh, the Igbo man is the reason you are
not progressing; oh, the Yoruba man is the problem, ah, the
Christians are the people taking all your jobs etc…. It is
always the person who looks the least like you or who speaks
the least like you that is almost always the cause of your
problems.
That is why the violence is almost always targeted at that
class.
If you go to the North, the foreigners more often than not
live in Sabon Gari, and at every time the Northern peasantries
feel the pangs of hunger or frustration, the convenient targets
are frequently the inhabitants of Sabon Gari areas.

****

48
 (V)

Injustice + Inequality = Conflicts + Insurgencies

…violence has flourished because the system has enabled it,

nurtured it and ignored the criminalities it has engendered

D ISTINCTION has to be made about the reality that

Nigeria has a staggering population approaching 200
million people. Our resources are not infinite. Every society,
no matter how small, and no matter how rich, exists to
regulate the conflicts that arise out of the competition for the
allocation of resources. When Nigeria's resources were
abundant in relation to demands for those resources, it was
easy to maintain the myth of one Nigeria and within the
ambit of this myth; it was also easy to maintain the illusion of
one North.
But as the resources began to deplete, competitions
became fiercer. And the fault lines became easier to exploit.
What we see today in Nigeria, the incessant conflicts all over
the land, are not in any way or shape unique to Nigeria. What
is unique to Nigeria are the institutional frameworks that
promote the very same things about which we are
complaining and that which guarantees that those things are
not going to be addressed. Yet without addressing the
demands for justice and equity, what happens is the
promotion of violence even when that is not necessarily the
original intention of the perpetrators.
For reference, let's consider the violence in the Niger Delta.

49
 The violence in this area has its root in systemic inequality
and injustice.
The Nigeria State has denied space for legitimate
grievances and agitations.
I was privileged to be at the Nigeian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) sometimes ago. I went to see a minister
of state for petroleum. While there in his waiting room, there
were some militants who had also come to see him. At some
point, they were talking loudly and abusing one another,
describing their exploits. It struck me that the same country
that could not find accommodation for Ken Saro-
Wiwa has learnt to tolerate miscreants.
At some point, I was compelled to start asking myself:
“how did we get here?” A Ken Saro-Wiwa was not in a quest
for the self. He presumed to engage the system and asked
questions of the system. He wasn't asking questions for
himself but asking the system to look at itself and, in doing
so, decide whether it was not in need of reforms.
Saro-Wiwa spoke for the Ogoni people, and; in his fight
for his people, there were Ogoni people siding against him
and his group. Four of them were killed in the battle against
themselves and Ken and nine others were held responsible
for their murder. For the state to punish Ken, it had to resort
to illegalities. Whether Ken was culpable in the murder or not;
somebody killed those people.
The Nigeria State that I know is capable of having done
the killings, turned around to prosecute the innocent or it
could very well be that Ken was in some way culpable. I have

50
no way of knowing but I am sure that Ken's killing was
judicial murder.
But having killed Ken, did the problems stop? It certainly
did not. Then the civilians came in; and the likes of Peter Odili
proceeded to use the miscreants as political thugs, who then
transmuted to militants in the Greeks.
Some of these people killed Sokari Harry Marshal, former.
national Vice-Chairman of All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP)
on March 5, 2003. This was the beginning of militancy, and it
grew to become malignant.
What I am advancing is that Militancy in the Creek has its
root in political thuggery. The boys who were political thugs
became the militants. Who are these militants? They are
kidnappers, notorious cultists and oil “bunkerers” who had
state protection because of their values to the powers-that-be.
Under the wings of illegitimate governments --
illegitimate because of their disconnect from the people they
purport to rule -- militancy rankled and became the hydra-
headed monster that it has become today.
Let's look at Boko Haram.
A former commissioner in Borno State, Alhaji Buji Fai was
nominated by Boko Haram. He too was killed alongside
Mohammed Yusuf. Both of them were Bunu Sherif Musa's
political militants. That was the genesis of Boko Haram in
Nigeria. Today, Boko Haram has morphed into one of the
deadliest terrorists organizations in the world.
What about the Fulani Herdsmen terrorist group?
It is ranked the fourth deadliest terrorist organization in
the world, yet we don't address them by that epithet in

51
Nigeria, where the bulk of their killings takes place. Why? It
is convenient for some people to pretend that these are not
terrorists. Truth is: they are enjoying the supports of people
in power.
Fulani Herdsmen didn't start killing under Buhari; they
have always been there. However, this is the one time they
have enjoyed complete impunity in their nefarious
operations. They carry out onslaughts for hours
unchallenged. Entire villages and local government areas
have been displaced and taken over -- these are within the
territory of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and we are
supposed to be praying?
The minister of defence came out and said it is because of
the anti-grazing laws. The president would enjoin the victims
to be their brothers' keepers. The presidential spokesman
would counsel that you give up your land in order to live;
and, we pretend that everything is alright!
Yes, violence has proliferated in Nigeria, but it has not
exacerbated because we suddenly became violent overnight.
It has flourished simply due to the incontrovertible truth that
the system has enabled it, nurtured it, and has ignored it and
the criminalities that it has engendered.

****

52
 (VI)

Crooked System = Bad Leadership

…Nepotism as foundation

Nigeria is blighted by bad leadership…

product of a bad system

I T all goes back to the same underlining questions: Who is

the Nigerian citizen? What is the content of his citizenship?
How equal are our destinies and how common are these
destinies? It is in the answers to these questions that the
solutions are embedded. And without answering these
questions, we are just beginning; we are on the way to
Mogadishu.
It is inevitable that we talk about some individuals in the
ruling echelon who have played damning key roles in our
unimaginable leadership recklessness and irresponsibility.
Individuals run system. But in talking about the Nigerian
individuals, the danger is always that we focus on the
individuals and, subsequently forget the system that created
them. Systems make it possible for certain individuals to
become whatever they have become.
For anybody to even presume to lead others, he must be
egotistic. There is an egotistic content to leadership in which
you believe you are better than the others and have the
capacity to hold the reins. That is what actually qualifies you
to lead.
An Obasanjo in another environment would probably
have been a visionary leader because he would have been
53
constrained by the system. You cannot birth anything
without having a huge ego. Obasanjo has a planet-size ego.
The unfortunate thing is that his ego is unrestrained by an
enabling system. The system allows him to feed his it without
limitation.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu would have been miles ahead of an
Awolowo but regrettably, he is unconstrained by the moral
code and discipline that Awolowo had in abundance. It is the
same powers that Awolowo exercised that Bola Ahmed
Tinubu is exercising today. The only difference being that
Awolowo was a man who had massive self-discipline,
humongous and unbelievable self-discipline and he could
take his eyes away from personal gains, which unfortunately
is something that Tinubu seemingly lacks in totality. He is
completely, and utterly appears incapable of anything that
you may define as self-discipline. Visionary in his thoughts
but not so in most things he touches. Yes, he births ideas
almost per second; he nurtures disciples but allows them to
be corrupted.
All these are possible because there is no overarching
vision that has created a system that would have streamlined
these men and made them fall in line. Instead of visionary
leaders, you have robber barons, who are acting like
frontiersmen because there are no rules guiding them.
Nigeria is blighted by bad leadership but that bad
leadership, as I have repeatedly said, is a product of a bad
system.
In order for you to realize how skin-tight this is, all you
need to do is look at Donald Trump and America.

54
 If Donald Trump were to be Nigerian, he would be an
Obasanjo and would have succeeded beyond your wildest
imaginations. Situate him in Nigeria and he would have
decimated the National Assembly. The Legislature would be
gone for good; the Judiciary would be in his pocket; the
people would be eating out of his hands. But, a system has
constrained him for the fact that there is one in place with an
overarching vision or a system that is built on a principal
structure; which are both absent in Nigeria.
The problem is not in our stars. It is actually to be found
and located in our system.
What is the underlining vision that has birthed that
system? Simple: Nepotism!

****

55
 (VII)

The Constitution as a Burden

… the overarching vision behind the constitution

is not for national but sectional and parochial interest

W HEN nepotistic intentions give birth to anything, you

cannot see beyond the immediate gratifications.
Consequently, we have a system that is not futuristic in
outlooks, we lack vision and, in the absence of it, the people
perish. This is exactly what we see.
The Book of Habakkuk 2:2-3 referenced earlier is very much
important in deciphering the context I am talking from. In
order for you to understand this properly, I would like to
break it down into fragments. By so doing, I would first of all
cite
Montesquieu's Theory of the Evolution of States.
His argument was that States emerged out of a social
compact theory. In the original State, he said, life was short,
brutish, and men were competing against one another and
killing themselves because it was the rule of the jungle
premised on the survival of the fittest. The man with the
biggest gun ruled the streets. Because life was so short and
brutish, people were just dying and killing one another; men
said look, “let's come together and form a society; we would
all donate our rights to the society and the society becomes
sovereign and would now enforce the rules we have all
agreed over individual self.”
56
 These rules, we may liken to a constitution.
If we can now come back to the Book of Habakkuk 2: 2-3;
what it is asking to be written down is the vision. Every
constitution is actually a vision. When you “write it down and
make it plain that those who read it may run with it,” it means
that, it is not everything you are writing down, and if it is a
vision, you are not writing what is happening now but what
may happen tomorrow that has governed what is happening.
And as you are writing the constitution, you are conscious of
the fact that it may not necessarily meet with approval from
all of us but it is written for all of our good to which we have
all acceded and agreed to the need to have it written down, to
make plain but ultimately, for our collective good.
That is the assumption and those are the ideals.
But when you are writing a constitution and it is not
necessarily propelled by common interest and common good,
but driven by sectional interest and sectional good; it is in this
Nigeria that we are told some State capitals were determined
on the basis of individual convenience and nepotism – whose
village is where, and who married who?
Asaba is today the capital of Delta State because the wife
of the then Head of State hailed from there. Some states as we
have known were created specifically for certain Generals
and not necessarily because of their economic viability.
Anytime Nigerians have sat down together to deliberate on
how they wish to be governed, one common thread has been
the preponderant opinion that says we should have six
regional federating units. Whether it is pre-Independence or
post-Independence, every time that the Nigerian people have

57
sat down together, the majority have always asked for six
regions.
The basis for this request has always been the confidence
in the economic viability of those regions. How many of the
36 States of Nigeria today can survive on their own without
subvention from the Federal purse, and the Federal purse in
question, how is it funded?
How equitable is it, that the wine I am drinking in Lagos,
you take the VAT from it and share; take the majority of it and
give it to a State that has criminalised alcohol? If I drink this
same alcohol in Zamfara State, I am a criminal liable to
imprisonment and fine; yet, you take the VAT to buy the
machete with which to execute the amputation of an offender!
As I had written earlier, when the overarching vision
behind the constitution in question is not for the common
good or for national interest, but for sectional and parochial
interest, how do you in good conscience enforce such a
constitution, and even when you are enforcing it, can you
truly do so uniformly?
A Nigerian citizen is guaranteed the right of association,
or worship. How easy is it for me to set up a church in Sokoto
State? I am guaranteed the freedom of movement; but how
well has the state stood behind that right to protect it in
certain parts of this country? And in seeking to avoid a
common enforcement of those rights, how complicit has the
State become; and how has the State promoted the divisions
or enabled the promotion of disunions because of its inability
to be even-handed in dealing with its own citizens? So yes,
we do have a constitution but the constitution doesn't flow

58
from the people. It is not constrained by any vision and it is
why it has birthed the madness that we see on a daily basis.

****

59
 (VIII)

The State and the Rule of Law

… preservation of the State and the governing

system for the benefits of the beneficiaries have
assured that the law cannot rule in Nigeria

WAS called to the Nigerian Bar in 1999. For me, Law might

I as well have been a calling. Whatever else I was going to

be, being a lawyer was the foundation. I was born to be a
lawyer.
Today's reflections have been provoked by a distraction
raised by the elevation of the doctrine of the Rule of Law into
the trending topic of discussions that have ranged from the
sublime to the ridiculous, and now seeks to benumb brains
already assailed by existential preoccupations.
The Law does not rule in Nigeria.
The Nigeria State cannot afford for the law to rule. Nigeria
is a criminal State, and if it were to be accountable for its own
actions, Obasanjo, Babangida, Abdusallami, each of the
people you would call Nigerian statesman would either be in
prisons, or would have been executed for high crimes and
treason against the State.
If the Law were to rule in Nigeria, Jonathan and his entire
gang would be in jails; stripped of their loots; and we would
have been spared the cackling of vultures that the PDP
current gatherings truly represent. If the law were to rule in
Nigeria, the APC would not be the Laundromat of crooks

60
relaunched as saints, by the Ali Baba with the legions of
thieves.
If the law shall rule in Nigeria, the president would not
presume to harbour the blighted pension man Maina; the
flawed executive secretary/CEO of the Health Insurance
agency Usman Yusuf would not be back on the job; the
indicted secretary of state Babachir would be in jail, and
NNPC's compromised Baru would be busy explaining when,
how and why the petroleum subsidy has reappeared.
If the Law rules in Nigeria, we would not be hearing the
abomination of Professor Sagay justifying crimes allegedly
committed by the finance minister; El Zaky-Zaky would be in
his own bed; Dasuki would be answering for his own crimes,
his fate determined by a justice system that is anchored on the
rule of law. We would not behold the gathering of crooks the
Council of State meeting represents.
L'etat C'est Moi.
The Nigeria State is designed without any intention of
allowing the Law to rule. The powers required to keep the
system as it is currently structured and governed from
collapsing cannot be subsumed beneath the rule of Law. The
Nigeria State endures exactly because the Law does not rule;
men rule in these parts. It is why we do not have institutions.
It is why we have strong men.
***
The EFCC has served three presidents before Buhari. It has
been blessed with the overwhelming goodwill of the Nigerian
people. I cannot remember when that agency ever acted
without reading the body language of the president in power.
The EFCC has not fared any better under the reign of the

61
'Saint.' The harvest of crooks promised the victims never
managed to move beyond media convictions. The system that
allowed the ascension of their current patron ensured that
they had been defanged at creation.
I am grateful to Buhari for his honesty, candour, and boldness
in declaring before the gathering of liars, sorry, lawyers, that
the security of the State takes pre-eminence over and above
any impotent protestations and, or pretence about the rule of
some imaginary law.
Where was the rule of law when the assembly elected its
own leaders?
Where was the rule of law in Benue, Kogi, Taraba,
Plateau?
Has the rule of law been on vacation in the Niger Delta?
National Security has always been more important than
the rule of law in Nigeria. The problem is that the hapless
citizens confuse it for the security of their own lives, and
properties. The preservation of the State and the governing
system for the benefits of the beneficiaries, and not the non-
existent citizens, have assured that the law cannot rule in the
Nigeria State as currently constituted.
Buhari's second term will bring to the fore his fascist
tendencies. It is the only way he knows, and it is the easiest
route for him. I expect him to take the easy road.
When the hour comes, I am certain that the man, long
dead in men, shall arise, and we will find the grace to not only
speak the truth without fear; but to envision and birth the
nation where the law, and the law alone, will not only rule,
but shall suffice for the protection and promotion of National
Security.

62
 CHAPTER TWO

THE BURDEN OF BEING

(I)

Collapse of Public Institutions

…the state has failed to the point that we do

not believe in its capacity to care for our

I
lives.

N unequivocal terms, the system has failed in all facets.

The education sector is among the worst hit. Today,
nobody wants to send their children to government-
owned schools across the country because the system is in
dire limbo. It is only the poorest of the poor who still send
their children to government schools. Almost everyone takes
their children to private schools no matter how rundown they
are. Even gatekeepers these days send their children to
private schools. Already, we have conceded that we don't or
no longer expect anything civilized from the Government,
whereas, I had attended a government school in my time.
Similarly, the same hex has smeared the health sector that
most people no longer consult public hospitals. What
happens nowadays? People are hesitant visiting government-
owned hospitals for the reason that they see more fatalities in
such hospitals in comparison to privately managed ones.
From the time of conception, you do not send your wife to
government hospitals. When you do, it is chiefly because you
are considering that they are used to battling complications
at the stage of delivery, and you are seeking to benefit from
their experience, even as you oil the system to make it work
for you. Most people would send their wives to General
Hospitals because of this, but when you do, you are
constrained by the system to purchase everything that you
would need.
You pay for practically everything, and maybe the private
hospital might have charged a N100,000 for delivery but you
are spending like N50,000 in Government hospital which you
are happy to spend on assumption, which is rightly so, in
most cases, that the doctors have experienced all hues of
complications peculiar to labour.
When a doctor handles about 20 births in a day, unlike
private hospitals with barely fewer than five in a week, he is,
therefore, adjudged to have seen all sorts of conditions and
deemed adequately equipped to handle most daunting
likelihoods as far as pregnancy is concerned.
You take your wife there but the moment she gives birth,
other than for the child in most cases to go back and get
immunization, that child is taken away from the public health
sector and taken into private hospitals for every healthcare
requirement. Except for the most serious ailments, nobody
goes back to the government hospitals. When people go back,
it is on the impression that the public hospitals have seen

64
more varieties of serious illnesses given the volume of
desperate poor patients that they treat on a daily basis.
When it comes to security, every street has its own
arrangement. If they are not paying Mobile Police personnel,
they are paying Olode or OPC (Odu'a Peoples' Congress). We
have all sorts of arrangements, and we erect barricades on the
road to restrict movement. In the most basic expression of the
State, there is failure; recognized failure. And this is also
evident in Lagos; an urban area far away from Fulani
herdsmen.
Security is the basis for the formation of the State, but the
State has failed to the point that we have no expectations and
do not believe in its capacity to care for our lives.
For water, you sink your own borehole. If you don't sink
yours, you either depend on a most erratic public water
corporation if it exists in your area; or simply get water tanks
and you store water.
****

65
 (II)

The Normalisation of Madness

… Nigeria is living on borrowed

time; its demise is a tragedy
foretold, a self-fulfilling prophecy

O N Monday the 14th of April 2014, I woke up to the news

of a twin-bomb blasts at a crowded bus station in
Nyanya, a town in Nasarawa State, but very close to Federal
Capital, Abuja. At least 88 souls were slaughtered by official
accounts, and over 200 commuters were maimed. It wasn't
the first time I had heard was one bombing or the other, and
such news was becoming a routine, even at the time. But I
was scheduled to be in Abuja on the 15th, and the news had
me worried.
I called up a dear friend, who has always taken care of me
in the strange land of Abuja, and he assured my safety, and
that I should keep my appointment at the Federal Ministry of
Housing.
My friend picked me up at the airport; he reassured I had
no need to be worried; everything was fine. I, coming from
the relative sanity and safety of Lagos, found his reassurances
rather curious, but having survived the turbulent politics of
student unionism at the Lagos State University LASU
together, I figured he knew what he was talking about.
Driving into Abuja city from the airport we ran into a
couple of checkpoints manned by fierce-looking soldiers.
Aside from these, however, everything appeared completely
66
normal. The streets were packed with commuters heading to
their offices and going about their businesses. I was taken
aback by the normalcy I found on the streets as we drove into
Abuja.
My friend gave me the local gist of how the bulk of the
casualties were junior civil servants waiting for buses for
their morning commute to work in the Federal Capital, and
how the official death toll had been deliberately reduced to
limit the impact of the terror. The news only served to
increase my astonishment, at the normalcy of the streets I was
seeing all around me.
As we drove into the Ministry of Housing, I was troubled
by the normalcy of the environment I saw all around. The
workers -- junior, senior, everyone -- were going around
doing their thing. You wouldn't have known that any
dastardly event had happened in their town just the day
before.
The director I was scheduled to see was in a meeting with
the minister, and I was to wait until he was done. The wait
increased my awe, and confirmed my worst fears. I was
ensconced in a room with the personal staff of the director I
went to see, and I was an unwilling witness to their day as it
evolved. They carried on as if nothing had happened the day
before. I witnessed deals being cut, bribes being offered,
demanded, and given. It was business as usual.
When they talked about the bombing, it was as if they
were uninvolved. The victims for them were just numbers!
There was a detachment from the event that just happened to
their fellow citizens. It was something that happened to

67
people that might as well not have been citizens like them. I
left Abuja amazed at the complete lack of empathy for the
victims, by the survivors. The survivors had become
desensitised to the madness all around them.
I have watched this process of desensitisation move across
Nigeria as the bombings have proliferated. I have read
accounts of our Air Force bombing and killing civilians in
their hundreds. The lives of Nigerians have become cheap
and precarious, and the living have carried on, seemingly
without a care for the dead.
I had cause to reflect on our collective disdain for
memorials; and I wrote provoked by the events held in
commemoration of the first anniversary of the Finsbury Park
terror attack. A Muslim man of Asian origin was mowed
down in the attack and, a year later, London stood still in
memory of the dead. I admonished Nigerians to emulate the
British respect for the dead; emulate their examples.
Over a hundred citizens were brutally slaughtered in
Plateau State at a time in 2018. The news of slaughters has
become mundane; we have become completely desensitised
to news of death. The World Cup has been even more of a
welcomed distraction, and the news of the genocide
struggled for space with the exploits of the Eagles, fresh from
their conquest of the minnows of Iceland.
As news filtered in from the Plateau, my despair and
despondency with events in my country grew, and as the
soccer match against Argentina approached, I struggled to
find the enthusiasm for the mundane business of football.
Pictures of butchered women and children filled me with

68
horror, and I found peace the only way I know how. I wrote
from the depth of my pains.
***
As the Eagles took to the field in the last world cup
qualifying round, I looked for the black armbands in memory
of the dead. But there was nothing of the sort in sight. I was
so pained by this most flippant act of indifference, that I
posted my disappointment as the match got underway. I
edited out the part where I prayed that the Eagles should lose.
I am glad that my unpublished prayer was answered.
Imagine for a second that there was a similar case of mass
casualties in the UK; could you have seen the English take to
the field without any attempt to honour the dead? I think not.
My conspiratorial mindset tells me that the powers-that-be
wouldn't want attention drawn to the madness in Nigeria,
and then the man in me asked -- assuming that there was any
such injunction, what would have happened had the players
refused to abide by what would have been an unconscionable
order?
The Albanian players in the Swiss team did not ask
permission before electing to show their solidarity with the
victims of the Serbian genocide; and their solidarity with the
victims spoke for the ones who had been silenced in the wars
that ended over a decade before.
The powers that be in Aso Rock might very well have
issued a fatwa against the adornment of black armbands; the
minister of sports, a man from the Plateau, might very well
have decided to stifle any such move, believing that such a
protest might imperil his job; but evil only thrives when good

69
people elect to be silent. John Mikel Obi grew up on the
Plateau, did it occur to him to speak for the silenced? What
about the others?
***
The man shall not prosper who covereth his sins. How is
a nation to prosper when it routinely buries its sins? Nigeria
is living on borrowed time, and its demise is a tragedy
foretold, and a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, the referee was
unjust? Yeah right! How much justice exists in our country?
The dead are gone, and black armbands or not, they are
beyond our collective amnesia, it is the living in need of
memory, for as they are today, so shall we also be, one day.

***

70
 (III)

The Untouchable Thieves

…The Nigeria system is incapable of delivering justice…

never designed to produce justice

A HOUSE divided against itself will fall. It is on the

foundation of the foregoing I ask: why would the system
as currently structured want to probe those the public
perceive to have robbed the state blind? The system has
produced a swarm of thieving children, on its very own; the
system that birthed them is not complaining. However, only
the suffering masses are bellyaching.
Notwithstanding, when it suits the system to use them as
scapegoats or use them to whip up the frenzy of the
uninformed mob, it trots them out and you will hear tales of
how much Diezani Alison-Madueke has stolen. The system
will never try her; if it does, it would lift the putrefying lid
and expose every member of its family who has benefited
from stewardship in power.
Diezani took off to London and was the person everyone
was chorusing as being at the pinnacle of all the heists of the
previous administration. A few months after she had left
upon Buhari's emergence in power, I remember the Ovation
magazine publisher, Dele Momodu -- a faithful child of the
system -- trolled out on the cover page of his then new
tabloid, Boss. We could see Diezani all made up and looking

71
as if she was close to death and ready to give up the ghost at
any second.
There was a full page dedicated to how she was terminally
ill with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. Up till today,
I have known this as the fact that the Federal Government has
never sought the repatriation of Diezani from the UK
Government and until the Nigerian Government begins
extradition proceedings against Diezani, I will prefer to be
spared the stories of her stealing.
If they were truly interested in making her stand trial for
all the serial crimes of unimaginable embezzlement for which
they have convicted her on the pages of all the newspapers,
they would have asked for her extradition. But why would
they ask for her extradition when members of the current
government are using the same playbook that Diezani used
in her time at NNPC? If you try her, how do you exonerate
your own people involved in similar crime? How do you
exactly put her to trial without exposing how much rot is
rampant in the oil sector?
Today, Buhari is the oil minister, and he is superintending
the sector that is spending about three times as much on
petroleum subsidy as was spent in the Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan years. The same events that he termed corrupt when
he was the presidential aspirant, the same process everyone
in his cabinet today vilified and labelled extremely corrupt, is
still in vogue. All they have done is to have dusted up the
playbook, improved on it a bit and the beat goes on. How
would such a system presume to deal with something that
benefits the entire members of its class?

72
 What I do know is that we can spend as much time as we
can, critiquing, vilifying and examining the fruits but until
you have dealt with the tree, you are merely wasting your
time.
Diezani was merely a faithful servant of the system, and I will
go as far as to say that in a few years' time, she will be back
within the system, duly restored to her place, and
rehabilitated. You will be pardoned if you thought she was
some sort of saint that had merely been scapegoated by a very
dictatorial, hypocritical and wicked Buhari. They would have
done a fantastic job. The man in charge would have given
more than enough ammunition with which to wash her clean.
Thus, I am baffled why people talk about dealing with people
who have gamed the system. The system is designed to be
gamed and will be gamed by other people as far as the system
remains intact.
Nigerians call them criminals but I don't.
In the case of James Ibori, which I adequately thrashed in
one of my writings, he was never extradited to Nigeria. What
happened was that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan outsourced the
punishment. It was a personal thing. The Nigerian system is
incapable of delivering justice. It was never designed to
produce justice.
A Yoruba proverb says “kòsí amúni abèrè wò lówà, ènìyàn
tódẹ̀ bèrèwò, òhun náà fẹ́ jẹ tiẹ̀ ni,” which means “nobody is
interested in catching a thief; they are only interested in
making enquiries, and the person making enquiries is not
even interested in catching the thief but in having his own
share of the cake. Ibori offended persons and his ego made it

73
impossible for him to be ignored. He also didn't hang around
in Nigeria; he would rather take off.
If Ibori wasn't injudicious and had really stayed his
grounds, I am sure nothing would have happened to him;
worst-case scenario is; they would have called Chief Edwin
Kiagbodo Clark to help him beg Jonathan, but he didn't see
the need for this. His ego was overblown. He left for Dubai
and the people tailing him saw that as an opportunity; a very
convenient way to deal with him. The same facts that were
used to jail Ibori were readily available to the Metropolitan
Police, the one relating to Econet transaction, which also
indicted the Obong Attah as and the Tinubus of this world.
The Metropolitan Police had never seen it fit to touch any
of these other persons because nobody had committed a
crime against the British government. It was a crime against
the Nigerian government and the only reason Ibori was dealt
with was because he no longer enjoyed the protection of the
Nigeria State and the system, and was thus left to be dealt
with by the
British judicial system.
If we talk about the prosecution of criminals amongst the
elite class, we cannot really hold Ibori up as an example of
how justice has caught up with any member of our thieving
politicians. That was never the case. All that happened to
Ibori was that, he felt too big for his panties, his ego was too
large and was abusing a sitting president. Consequently, he
was hounded out of the country, because he was stupid, he
could have stayed and negotiated. Nothing would have
happened to him; after all, Bola Ahmed Tinubu stayed

74
behind after Obasanjo's days and nothing has happened to
him. If anything, his image was laundered through the Code
of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) and he was given a clean bill of
health. This, I believe, was part of the agreement for the 2011
elections.
When we reflect on these cases, let's be clear: the Nigerian
system doesn't have the capacity to prosecute or punish
anyone who has not offended the powers-that-be.
When you look at the cases of Jolly Nyame, former
governor of Taraba State, and that of Jonah Jang, former
governor of Plateau State, you will see very clearly there were
mere situations where the system was dealing with people
who had fallen foul of its standard. Don't forget that Sule
Lamido, former governor of Jigawa State, variously indicted
by all kinds of panels and EFCC is still walking free till date.
Bafarawa, who is on record for having collected about NI.1
billion or so from Jonathan for prayers, is walking free.
None of these people has been touched. Jolly Nyame is a
Christian from Taraba who became governor against all
odds. The former Governor of Adamawa, Murtala Nyako, is
walking free today. The one that succeeded him that was
convicted was given a clean bill pending appeal and is
walking free as well. We may find occasional victims to be
fed to the lions in the circus of anticorruption crusade, which
happens from time to time but, be assured of one thing: none
of the victims you will see Federal Government feed to the
lions remains useful to the system. If they were useful, the
system would have found ways to rehabilitate them.
Understand clearly that the system is never ever
interested in truly delivering justice because justice - as

75
interpreted by the system - is only for the poor and those who
have run afoul of the system. If justice were to prevail in
Nigeria, why did Kemi Adeosun remain minister for finance
after the fact of her national service certificate forgery? The
obvious is, either she had been an accessory before and was
compensated for a job well done.
What kind of justice are we really talking about?
In the case of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, he simply ran his
mouth in the wrong place, at the wrong time, against a man
who is exceedingly vindictive. A good student of power,
Obasanjo knows how to deploy power. I think in Bayelsa, at
the time, we had about six House of Assembly members
impeaching a sitting governor. To know everything that
transpired against him was a State conspiracy, when he snuck
back, he would have been sent back to the British
Government to further stand trials. It must have dawned on
his persecutors that the humiliations had been satisfactory.
Upon the emergence of Jonathan's administration,
Alamieyeseigha was pardoned. Not only was he pardoned;
he became an aspiring senator before his untimely demise.
He was “our thief”. The only reason he could be “our thief
and not your thief” is because everybody is stealing.
Everybody has his or her own thief and the more the person
democratises the stealing process, the more he assures his
own utility.
Ibori was in jail and was enthroning governors. He made
two governors from jail. You couldn't say he was a thief
considering this feat. He was “our thief” and not “your thief”.
At the expiration of his prison sentence, he came back to a

76
rousing welcome from his people. The Delta State governor
himself, a protégé of Ibori's thievery, organised a red-carpet
reception for Ibori, his godfather!
To understand the phenomenon of “it is our thief and not
your thief,” you would need to drill down to the granular of
the disconnect between the governed and the government.
In the first place, the purpose of government has been lost.
For the average citizen, there is nothing expected of the
people in power. When the man in power dignifies the
members of his constituency with some measure of
recognition, as exemplified in the Ayodele Fayose populist
style of sitting down to eat Boli, or helping to fry Akara by the
roadside, it is because the government is ordinarily distant
from the people.
The people find it captivating that this 'big' guy
demystifies the government; he sits down and eats with
them, a method that removes all bubbles or air around such
exalted offices. Imagine a woman whose entire wares in a day
-- all the Akara she is frying for a day -- cannot give her N2000
profit and then; the governor comes around to her stall, with
his retinue of aides and followers, eats all her wares valued
at less than
N2000!
Afterwards, she is rewarded beyond her wildest
imagination. Of course, the governor has endeared himself to
the woman. The one who didn't eat Akara with her, what did
she ever gain from him? The dilapidated school that her
children attend remains same but, at least, this one governor
dines with her. The moribund healthcare remains same as it

77
has always been. So, there is relativity and, hence a sense of
solidarity from the masses that is not really based on actual
performance. This is a function of the common touch.
The guy sits down with them, goes to the Amala joint and
eats with them, behaves like one of them and accords them
the recognition they never got from the one who was always
speaking big English and so distant from the governed.
Likewise, Alamieyeseigha would sit down and blend with his
own people. He would eat kpokpo Garri with them and drink
Akpeteshie with them; he had the common touch and, maybe,
would also sit down and eat fish with his people. In reality,
the guy had done nothing for the people but he had brought
government closer to their doorsteps!
In Ekiti, Fayose called it 'stomach infrastructure' on the
evidence that those who were really shouting “infrastructural
developments” never really did anything tangible for the
masses. Fayose was busy with 'stomach infrastructure',
where others were sitting down in their elitist offices doing
nothing yet criticizing those doing 'stomach infrastructure'
instead of building infrastructure.
The guy adopted what they used as a term of denigration
and turned it into a populist slogan. All these anomalies have
flourished as stated earlier simply because citizens do not
expect anything from the government any longer, having
been disillusioned for so many years.

****

78
 (IV)

A warped Criminal Justice System

The real criminals sit in judgment over

the victims…those pushed into life of crime

A NATION perennially ruled by visionless liars and

crooks, rarely elevates good men and women as judges;
and as corruption has taken root over the last 30-40 years, this
tendency has become entrenched, and has come to define the
appointive processes to the judiciary and the criteria for
elevation to the superior courts. Once at the Supreme Court,
however, elevation is based on turn-by-turn; and turn is
taken on the basis of seniority on the court's bench. It is Mr.
Onnoghen's turn.
Except it be in error, or the person develops the
inconvenience of a conscience; the most intelligent crooks
decorate the pinnacles of the hierarchy of our judiciary,
mirroring the society itself and just as hypocritical in its
posturing as the generality of Nigerians. The real criminals sit
in judgment over the victims and those pushed into life of
crime get sent to the finishing schools for aspiring criminals,
our prisons.
We have the judiciary we deserve...
Whatever becomes of Onnoghen, let nobody deny him his
seat on account of unproven allegations of corruption. If he is
deemed kwarapt, by all means, prosecute him. Not on the

79
pages of newspapers or blogosphere, the courts do not exist
solely for the victims populating our cells; jails have hosted
saints and martyrs for eons.
A trial and perhaps conviction of no less than a Supreme
Court justice will restore confidence in our judiciary and will
go a long way to instil discipline in the judiciary and reduce,
if not eliminate, the impunity with which injustice has been
allowed to reign in that temple. The spectacle of Babachir
Lawal in the next court or cell, as the case may be, will only
strengthen the government's hands in its crusade against
corruption. The deodorant must become Otapiapia with
automatic alacrity.
Diezani has been repeatedly convicted on countless
counts of stealing and we have been shown pictorial and
documented evidences of her manifest corruption. What I
find curious is: till date, neither the EFCC nor any other
Nigerian investigative and/or prosecutorial agency or body,
has sought her extradition from the cold comforts of Mama
Charley.
If you truly believe that this government is serious about
fighting corruption, please build your snowman in Tinubu
Square. Until then, please look well, any time you hear them
sing the corruption song in justification of some dodgy
actions and/or inactions. Let someone invent some other
excuse; after all, aircraft maintenance metamorphosed into a
lever to the senate.
In the absence of a clear legal basis for denial of his
elevation, the delay in the substantive appointment of Mr.
Onnoghen adds to the unnecessary and unhelpful

80
atmosphere of dishonour that has enveloped the judiciary in
recent times. This stinks, and will further undermine an
already compromised system. Nobody wins.

****

81
 (V)

Dubious Provenance, Questionable Quality

Nigeria constantly inflicts pains; the only time it

decides to offer you water… you are eternally grateful.

W HEN it comes to power, you have multiple generators;

you have inverter, solar and so on. At some point in
my life, I had three generators that were running an eight-
hour shift. I had to plan without NEPA; presume electricity
wouldn't be restored for a long time and this is not far from
the reality on ground.
There is a presumption that the State is not going to give
you any of these things so you go ahead and prepare yourself
to replace the State. Constantly even when it is unexpressed,
every Nigerian lives with the assumption that the State
doesn't add any relevance to his or her life.
When you have conditioned yourself to expect nothing
from the State, it is not too far a leap from the point where the
State becomes immaterial to you.
Let's use the metaphor of an abusive husband. Say the
Nigerian State is an abusive husband; the few occasions
where he (abusive husband) appears to take the direction of
the abused wife -- because she is already conditioned not to
expect anything good from him -- she grabs the little that is
thrown at her with both hands.

82
 That is the relationship of Nigerian citizens to the State. It
is not that Nigerian citizens naturally are imbued with a sense
of refusal to accept that the State owes them something, but
consistently, he has learnt to expect nothing. Nigeria
constantly inflicts pains. The few times when it decides to
offer you iced water or even water of whatever colouration at
all, whether hot or cold, you are eternally grateful.
And that is what may explain the phenomenon of the like
of Ibori, Alamieyeseigha, Tinubu to a large extent; their ilk
thrive given that nobody expects anything tangible from the
state.

****

83
 (VI)

Awkward Fight against Corruption

Our educational system is deteriorating....

Unemployment figures are embarrassing

VARIOUS commentators on the Nigerian project, from

iconoclastic musicians, such as Fela, to professional activists,
military apologists and rationalists -- all concerned Nigerians
have come to agree that corruption is a major problem
responsible for the retrogression of the Nigeria State. Former
President Jonathan took it a step further, when he said we
have mischaracterised the problem and that what we
generally refer to as corruption, should instead be referred to
as
'stealing'.
They were all right, yet they were also all wrong.
In my university days, we used to sing a song at the
Students Union Congress and, or, at rallies when seeking to
mobilize ourselves for one of the many protests that defined
our times on campus. It goes thus: Gbogbo wọ́n ní wọn lọ́wọ́
ńbẹ /2ce
Bí Nigeria ti ṣe n'bàjẹ́
Gbogbo wọ́n ní wọn lọ́wọ́ ńbẹ
We would then proceed to mention the names of the different
persons, whom in our idealistic views, have contributed to

84
the rape of our commonwealth and the consequential
abortion of our collective future and dreams for Nigeria.
Buhari nà l'ọ́wọ́ ńbẹ
Babangida nà l'ọ́wo ńbẹ
Obasanjo nà l'ọ́wọ́ ńbẹ
Bí Nigeria ti ṣe n'bàjẹ́
Gbogbo wọ́n ní wọn lọ́wọ́ ńbẹ

We had a laundry list of serving and past leaders of the

Nigerian government, whom we held liable for the damage
we were witnessing, and we sang this dirge to indict them; to
mourn what we saw as the wanton, crude and thoughtless
destruction of our future.
I left the university system in 1997. Some of my
contemporaries have gone on to become ministers,
commissioners, legislators, judges, and several others have
graduated to become members of the Nigerian elite,
professional, economic and political. I have since changed my
song in recognition of the glaring reality of our situation:

Gbogbo wa lá l'ọ́wọ́ ńbẹ 2ce

Bí Nigeria ti ṣe n'bàjẹ́
Gbogbo wa lá l'ọ́wọ́ ńbẹ
Amofin, nà l'ọ́wọ́ ńbẹ
Tailor nà l'ọ́wo ńbẹ
Awon Teacher nà l'ọ́wọ́ ńbẹ
Driver nà l'ọ́wo ńbẹ
Bí Nigeria ti ṣe n'bàjẹ́
Gbogbo wọ́n ní wọn lọ́wọ́ ńbẹ

85
We have all made compromises that have implicated us in the
continuing pillage and degradation of the Nigeria project. We
are all just as guilty as those whose names we, as youthful
idealists, lustily sang about. We have all lost our innocence
and became the very things we railed against, and in some
cases, we are even worse than them.
I have seen comrades who became legislators, or
commissioners rapidly transformed to join the senseless race
for personal aggrandizement, and the pursuit of private
wealth at the expense of the commonwealth. We have all
made one compromise or the other, and gradually become
the men that we once condemned.
The problem with Nigeria goes beyond corruption; I will
even go as far as to suggest that corruption is not the problem.
The problem is impunity, and immunity that comes with the
sporadic circuses of corruption that have plagued our
country from ages past.
There have been four distinct circuses of anti-corruption
in my lifetime: first was during the Murtala Muhammed
regime, and before the emergence of Obasanjo after Murtala's
death; second was when Buhari came on board after the
Shagari government was ousted; third was during Obasanjo's
second coming, while the fourth and latest is Buhari's current
crusade. All of these crusades against corruption share the
common characteristics of being selective, sensational and,
ultimately, ineffectual and: failures.
I will not dwell too long on the first. I was not old enough
to fully understand Murtala's motivation, and his regime was
too short to be objectively analysed as it relates to the

86
effectiveness or otherwise of his anti-corruption postulations
and exertions. But the fact that one of the publicly perceived
most corrupt Nigerians succeeded him, possibly doomed
whatever Murtala might have set out to achieve.
It would, however, help in the furtherance of this
discourse to examine some of the tokenism of the Murtala
regime.
One of the earliest actions of the regime was to scrap the
badly rigged 1973 census, which seemed to have favoured the
North, and was deemed by southerners to have been rigged
by the northern politicians in apparent preparation for the
proposed civil elections, which was being touted by the
ousted General Gowon's regime. This tokenistic gesture won
General Murtala Muhammed popular southern support.
Nigerians in their honest desire for a messiah celebrated the
seeming emergence of one in Murtala.
The next stop of General Muhammad's anti-corruption
spectacle was the dismissal of top federal and state civil
servants and public officials in an apparent attempt to cut off
all links with the ousted regime of General Yakubu Gowon,
which had been demonised as ineffectual and corrupt. The
people, in dire need for assurances, were entertained by the
public spectacle whilst the underlining infection that
bedevilled our nation festered. This spectacle continued with
trials of some public officials, but all these were short lived
because General Muhammed in his naivety and exaggerated
faith in his public acceptance and confidence, breached
security protocols, which eventually resulted in his brutal
murder on the streets of Lagos.

87
 As usual, it was said that corruption fought back.
The demonised General Gowon was fingered in the
murder of General Muhammed, an apparent evidence that
the seeming purge of the military and public service was
cosmetic. The intrinsic system and network responsible for
corruption were still very much in place and, remained part
of our substructure.
The tokenisms of the General Murtala Muhammed's era
was totally reversed in the subsequent eras of General
Obasanjo and the kleptomaniac Second Republic government
of President Shagari, which was subsequently removed by
coup d'état and replaced by the Buhari-Idiagbon regime.
The Buhari-Idiagbon regime followed the abortion of the
democratic experiment of the Second Republic, and in an
irony of history, the coup was announced by the then
Brigadier Sani Abacha, who railed against the corruption of
the civilian government being ousted.
In his take-over speech, Brigadier Sani Abacha, as he then
was, said:
“You are all living witnesses to the great economic
predicament and uncertainty, which an inept and corrupt
leadership has imposed on our beloved nation for the past
four years. I am referring to the harsh, intolerable conditions
under which we are now living. Our economy has been
hopelessly mismanaged; we have become a debtor and
beggar nation.
There is inadequacy of food at reasonable prices for our
people who are now fed up with endless announcements of
importation of foodstuff; health services are in a shambles as

88
our hospitals are reduced to mere consulting clinics without
drugs, water and equipment.
“Our educational system is deteriorating at an alarming
rate. Unemployment figures, including the undergraduates,
have reached embarrassing and unacceptable proportions.
“In some states, workers are being owed salary arrears of
eight to twelve months and in others there are threats of
salary cuts. Yet our leaders revel in squander-mania,
corruption and indiscipline, and continue to proliferate
public appointments in complete disregard of our stark
economic realities.”
This speech signalled the commencement of a new circus
of anti-corruption. That government went on to try key
functionaries of the ousted civilian government, and several
were hauled into jail upon arrest and subsequent trial and
convictions for corruption.
The regime was ousted after a few months by General
Ibrahim Babangida with full collaboration of General Sani
Abacha who, incidentally, announced the Buhari-Idiagbon
regime. The Babangida regime thoroughly discredited the
anti-corruption credentials of the Buhari-Idiagbon regime,
and the inherent contradiction occasioned by the selective
nature of its exertions lent itself to those interested in
discrediting them.
Corruption came out of its hiding place during the
Babangida era. In fact, the face of corruption as we now know
it was birthed during the rule of the one that came to be
known as the “evil genius”. Before Babangida, corruption
was mostly limited to the inflation of contract prices, the

89
receipt by government functionaries of percentages of the
contract sums, and sundry acts of malfeasance. But new
facets of corruption were introduced into the polity during
the Babangida years.
Millionaires sprang up overnight as a rental economy was
foisted on the nation. A booming market emerged for
privileges and access. Men and women became millionaires
because of whom they know in the corridors of powers, and
a pervasive culture of corruption was birthed. It became
unimportant to work before reward and quite unrewarding,
frustrating, and defeatist to follow the old path to success.
The third attempt at fighting corruption came with the
coming of Obasanjo in 1999. By the time he came to power,
corruption had become part and parcel of our national
psyche. It had become normal after surviving Babangida and
Abacha, 12 years of exposure to rabid looting, the decimation
and pauperisation of the professional and middle classes and
the resultant elevation of existential living had lowered the
moral bar, destroyed the societal capacity to rail against
corruption and made making a fast buck the norm.
Obasanjo pontificated against corruption and promoted
anti-corruption measures. But more than anyone before him,
he promoted corrupt practices.
Chinua Achebe of blessed memory told the story of
Akweke in his seminal novel, “Things Fall Apart”. Akweke
was asked to lend his knife to those interested in butchering
a dog, he protested that he could not, seeing as dog meat was
a taboo to him; he, however, volunteered to help them divide
the meat with his teeth!

90
 Obasanjo came out of Abacha's gulag mouthing
protestations of Christian conversion and a message of
national rebirth and redirection. He set up the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent
and Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC); he appeared
serious about fighting corruption and strengthened his anti-
corruptions credentials early on by taking the fight to his
erstwhile jailer's family. He made the Abacha family pay back
the monies stolen from the commonwealth. The people were
regaled with stories of stupendous amounts stolen by the
dark-goggled and now departed dictator. In true Roman
style, the circus of anti-corruption was well-stocked with
spectacles and the occasional hapless victims were fed to the
lions.
Sunday M. Afolabi was thrown into the mix to
demonstrate how there was not going to be any sacred cows
in the fight against corruption. The naïve head of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu
Ribadu, was emboldened and encouraged to go after those
deemed corrupt by the person of Obasanjo.
But it was all a farce.
Nobody did more to corrupt the system than Obasanjo. In
an attempt to have his way, he brazenly bribed the legislative
arms of government with all manner of inducements,
monetary and otherwise, and corruption was defined solely
by what he deemed his own interest.
Under Obasanjo's watch, a minority number of legislators
impeached governors deemed unfriendly to his imperial
ambitions, and corruption wars were clearly based on the

91
subjective interpretations of the imperator of Aso Rock.
Corruption grew wings under Obasanjo and the
anticorruption crusade became a veritable tool for political
propaganda. It was thus devalued in the public
consciousness.
Obasanjo's anti-corruption circus was better-stocked and
managed than Buhari's shop.
Whilst Obasanjo pretended to fight corruption, the
Yar'Adua government, itself a product of the corruption of
the Obasanjo years, was held hostage by the forces of
corruption, as evidenced by the manner it dealt with the
master of the Obasanjo circus of anti-corruption, Nuhu
Ribadu. The EFCC chairman was hounded into exile when
corruption fought back. The Attorney General, Andoakaa,
became the Chief interpreter of the “Rule of Law” mantra that
defined that government. Full protection was given to some
of those the citizens deemed the most corrupt amongst the
gubernatorial class of '99.
The rest they say is history.
Jonathan did not pretend to fight corruption. He knew his
own moral limits, and corruption grew exponentially during
his regime! It must be noted that the gale of prosecution of
functionaries of Jonathan's government was not indicative of
his own personal propensity for corruption, it was more a
result of two facts: the first being the emergence in power of
a class that had hitherto been deprived access to the
commonwealth at the federal level, and being succeeded in
power by a government headed by a man with anti-
corruption pretentions.

92
 Jonathan came into power on the back of deals made with
the several power blocs in Nigeria upon the demise of
Yar'Adua. By the accounts of those who were privy to these
arrangements, Jonathan was to stay only one term in office
and subsequently vacate to allow a northern member of the
PDP power circuit to succeed him. Upon being sworn in, the
man “saw reasons” in Aso Rock, (apologies to the departed
Oniirisa of Ile Ife) and desired a second term. Thus, began a
realignment of forces committed to ousting him from Office.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu was a key factor in the actualisation
of Jonathan's removal. The success of the plot owes a lot to
his organisational capacities and political sagacity, but his
involvement also belies the hypocrisy of the anti-corruption
posture of the President Muhammadu Buhari regime. How
do you fight corruption whilst at the same time embracing,
allegedly, the most corrupt face of the republic?
Because of the contemporaneous nature of the Buhari
regime's anti-corruption war, the reader has an opportunity
to observe in real time the positions being canvassed by this
writer, and then form his/her opinion thereto.
President Muhammadu Buhari, the ascetic Fulani general,
the one in whom most Nigerians invested their hopes for a
new nation, whilst getting rid of the Jonathan government,
started his own anti-corruption crusade, but like those that
went before him, it's another circus of anti-corruption, and
the reasons are quite varied.
I will set out why the war was dead on arrival and what
the solutions are in my own view.
The Akweke story is just as relevant to President Buhari as

93
it was to Obasanjo. President Buhari must of necessity be
selective in his anti-corruption war. He owes his emergence
to forces quite steeped in corruption and a house divided
against itself would fall. Buhari was supported to emerge by
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the man who is claimed as defining
institutional corruption more than any politician of his
generation, and his campaign was funded by the loots of
many who today hold critical offices in his government. What
assurances were they given to allay their fears of prosecution
and subsequent inclusion in his government?
A popular fuji musician once sang “Báwo lọ̀ 'bọ ṣ'orí… tí
'nàkí ò ṣè?” How is the monkey's head different from gorilla's?
How is the corruption of the PDP apparatchiks different from
that of APC? How come none of the APC foot-soldiers have
been deserving of the Economic and Financial Crime --
Commission's attention? How did Amaechi, Fashola, Fayemi,
etc., become immune from the attention of the anti-
corruption agencies? How can President Buhari claim to be
waging a war on corruption and still find accommodation for
these men who were not any different from their brothers and
sisters that inhabited the People's Democratic Party?
What is corruption? It is important to define what
constitutes corruption in order to appreciate the current
dialectics of corruption in Nigeria, and the wars being waged
against same.
Corruption is to have been a member of the PDP federal
government under Jonathan; to have worked for his
emergence as the candidate and to have canvassed support
for him. To be corrupt, you must have had some role in the

94
sustenance of Jonathan in government, and must have
worked on his re-election campaign.
The politicians in President Buhari's government, those
who have held office before, either as governors or anything
else, are very much part and parcel of the endemic corruption
tearing our nation apart and the only thing that today
differentiates them, from those being persecuted in the
ongoing circus, is that having participated in the Buhari
project, they have acquired immunity from prosecution.

****

95
 (VII)

A compromised Middle Class

The Nigerian middle class has found refuge in the pursuit

of private wealth by all means

T HE middle class in any progressive society is the engine

room for the developmental initiatives that propel the
growth of such societies. The middle class, almost always, is
peopled by the segment of societies that have had the benefit
of formal education and exposure through travels. They are
the incubators of ideas and ideals.
Unfortunately, none of the above is true about the
Nigerian middle class. It is an amalgamation of poorly
educated men and women, traders of anything but ideas,
political opportunists, pleasure seekers, visionless pursuers
of transient pleasures and aspiring thieves.
Years of seeking to survive a hostile economic
environment that is unforgiving in its capacity to impoverish
those who dare to stand out, have honed survival instincts in
a class that should have its fair share of idealists; and have
ensured that the mindset of the Nigerian middle class is not
any different from that of the lower class. The only difference
is that whilst the lower classes are mostly financially
impoverished; the poverty of the middle class goes beyond
material poverty.
They are mostly intellectually bankrupt and spiritually
impoverished.

96
The Nigerian middle class has come to accept the abnormality
of the Nigerian situation, and has found refuge in the pursuit
of private wealth by any, and, all, means. The middle class
has all but given up on the sort of ideas that have propelled
other nations. Upon seeing the failing educational system, the
middle class was not moved to demand a renewal of the
system or its rejuvenation; it simply, as a class, sought
succour outside the existing system. This is evidenced by the
surge in the numbers of private schools in the last two
decades.
Lagos State is a good example of a national malaise. There
are over 20,000 private schools in the state, and less than 2000
public (government) schools. The key reason for the growth
of private schools is the failure of the state to provide schools
for the teeming population of the state's citizens. But in other
climes, the citizens would have made demands of their
government, and changes would have been made to ensure
that the slide was arrested, but in our uniquely Nigerian way,
we solved the problem by looking beyond the government.
The business-minded built schools to fill in the gap, and the
rest of us send our children to private schools, where they are
mostly acquiring ignorance in place of knowledge.
When the political and economic elite fall ill, as is the way
of men, they flee to the United States of America, United
Kingdom, Germany, Dubai, etc., but the middle class runs to
the private hospitals dotting our cities and hamlets. The
public healthcare system has all but collapsed and depending
on the financial capacities of the sick person, private hospitals
have become the first port of call. Only the poorest of the

97
poor, or those too ill to have a say in their care, end up in our
public hospitals.
In the choices we have made as a class, the Nigerian
middle class has reflected a complete lack of faith in the State
but our choices have also reflected the serial errors of
judgment that have contributed greatly to the paucity of ideas
plaguing us as a nation, and that is responsible for the sorry
state of our country.
The middle-class man sends his wife abroad to have
children carrying foreign passports, buys homes in foreign
lands, educates his children in private and, or, foreign
schools, gets medical care abroad…
The moment we can afford to render the state irrelevant
in our lives, we jump at the opportunity. So, every man
confronted with the reality of a non-existent water
corporation in his neighbourhood promptly sinks a borehole
complete with a treatment plant, and becomes his own
waterworks. The failure of the state to meet the most basic of
its duties to its citizens is thus unarticulated, and nobody is
taken to account. If you have 30 houses on a street, you have
30 industrial boreholes -- all glaring indictments of the failure
of the State.
The most basic function of the State is the security of the
citizen's lives and property. In Nigeria the State has failed
woefully at meeting this basic needs, and in some cases, has
been complicit in undermining the sanctity of lives and
properties. This rise in parallel capacity for securing lives,
and properties, evidenced by the fact that every middle class
home has one form of private security arrangement, or the

98
other -- ranging from “maiguards” to uniformed private
security companies, to privately arranged “mobile police
guards” -- bears testament to how the individuals have
sought solutions without waiting for the State.
Wherever you turn in our nation, what readily confront
you are the glaring evidences of state failures. The failure to
provide security, to provide pipe-borne water, good roads,
healthcare, schools, electricity…. name anything that should
signpost good governance; they are almost all absent without
exception. These are, however, not unique to Nigeria; they
are the same problems facing every nation that must develop
its potential. What is uniquely Nigerian is the way we have
chosen to deal with these challenges.
The middle class has to find the capacity to move beyond
existential considerations if we are to ever fulfil our promises
as a nation. We must imagine a new and better Nigeria, and
we must do so, knowing that the foundation of the State must
be the commonality and equality of citizenship.

****

99
 (VIII)

Chop Dodo!
Of silence and abdication

…the tribes of men who speak truth to power,

and seek to elevate thoughts have dwindled…
their voices silenced

O NE of our politicians was asked to voice an opinion on

the government of the day, and his retort was that “you
don't talk when you are eating”. When Uncle Bola presumed to
have opinions at variance with that of the Obasanjo
government in which he was a minister, Chief Sunday
Afolabi reminded him that he had been invited to “come and
eat”. The Nigerian way is to have your conscience bought,
and your acquiescence secured in your own defilement and
rape.
As I have aged, and our unique democracy has been
deepened, more and more critical voices have disappeared
and; the market of ideas rendered defunct. The vicious battles
citizens have to fight on a day-to-day basis just to find their
daily bread, shelter -- just to live another day -- have
conspired to rob us of the capacity for introspective
engagement. Reflective analyses of deep issues requiring
intellectual exertions have been lost.
In my youth, the newspapers were replete with columnists
who forced us to think beyond the obvious; men who
invested in finding and disseminating knowledge. There

100
were news magazines that treated deep issues and were
comparable in journalistic ethos with the best from other
parts of the world.
We had periodicals, and there were several writers
competing for space in the marketplace of ideas.
The Nigerian press has succumbed and surrendered to the
system. You can get practically anything published, or not
published, depending on your fancy, and your readiness to
dispense with the proverbial 'brown envelope'. I once asked
a journalist friend what had become of his newspaper. He
looked at me and laughed. His retort, “why do you expect that
the press can be immune from a societal affliction?” He told me
the story of one of the principalities afflicting Nigeria: this
man runs a chain of media outfits, will not pay salaries; his
expectation is that having given you a page as a columnist,
you will earn your living from the largesse received by those
to whom the columnist checks to prostitute himself, and sell
his conscience! I was also told of the systematic corruption of
the editorial corps by political godfathers. The press has
surrendered its freedom and received its mess of pottage.
They have chopped dodo.
***
As I entered teenage years and my character was taking
shape, I was heavily influenced in my world view by the
music of my environment; the culture, and the values
promoted by these artistic expressions. Popular musicians
addressed moral issues, they railed against societal ills. Even
though the military was in power, popular musicians --
including Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, Kollington Ayinla and

101
others -- who promoted the pursuit of fun, also addressed
social issues extensively. The people were kept informed,
intellectually challenged, and ultimately enlightened and
liberated, even with the military jackboots marching around.
Fela found a music genre all because he lent his gift to
liberating the people. With very few exceptions, our current
artistes are products of their time, completely focused on
money and the easy life. All you hear when they sing is how
much champagne they are going to pop, the size of the girl's
physical attributes, and the big cars they drive. When you
watch the movies, you are mostly seeing a retreat from critical
thinking, and an embrace of idiocy. The Philistines are in full
flow, and practically every form of artistic and cultural
expressions have been similarly contaminated by the painful
loss of introspective capacities. As I watched with despair the
reality of our descent into crass materialism, I also saw that
religious and traditional leaders have been similarly afflicted
and spiritual businessmen and women have become God's
spokesmen! The rulers have no need to worry about too many
of them ever telling truth to power. The religious and
traditional leadership of the country requires just as much
reformation as every other aspect of our sick society.

***
In my youth, and as my views were being formed, I was
blessed with a voracious reading habit. I read practically
anything in print. I was to be found buying newspaper before
I was out of primary school. I was thirsty for knowledge, and
everything about the society I grew up in encouraged a quest
for knowledge and elaborated it. There were role models in
102
practically every corner of Nigeria. There was Aminu Kano
championing the cause of the poor in Kano. There was Tai
Solarin, the irrepressible Khaki-wearing socialist that
harboured no fears for any of the brutal dictators he lived
through. Beko Ransome-Kuti, frail in frame, but with one of
the strongest moral voices of his generation. Gani Fawehinmi,
fearless and courageous. These and many more men and
women that elevated our society with the strength of their
convictions, and inspired society to be better than it was, and
to aspire for more than mere existence.
In my lifetime, Nigeria has never been more imperilled than
it is at this point in its history. But the tribe of men who speak
truth to power and seek to elevate thoughts has dwindled;
their voices silenced. The painful thing, however, is that the
silences have not been enforced by the brutal dictatorships of
old, and finding myself increasingly unhappy with our
national direction or lack thereof, it became an increasingly
difficult proposition to hold my tongue, and pretend that
everything is fine. So, I began several conversations over
time, hence my inevitable conclusion that silence in no longer
an option.

***
When the scale of our national problem began to multiply
dangerously during the Goodluck Ebele Jonathan years, I
watched as the Human Rights community, the professional
activist class, and the old warhorse, Wole Soyinka took him
on, called him out for his incompetence and the pervasive
corruption of his reign. I watched as an army of keyboard

103
warriors assailed him and whittled down whatever was left
of his claims to legitimacy.
Wole Soyinka was particularly dogged in his trenchant
criticisms of the worst excesses of Patience and her husband,
he pulled no punches in defining the clueless one and his
band of thieving brothers. The People's Democratic Party and
its leadership were thoroughly and rightly flayed for their
excesses. But I heard no one say a word about the glaring
excesses of the Alaafin of Bourdillon. The more trenchant the
criticisms of Jonathan and People's Democracy Party, the
more I waited for someone to take critical look at the Jagaban
and his own excesses, but I heard not a word from expected
sources that were waxing lyrical about the other band of
thieves.
A friend of mine was particularly pained by Soyinka's
perceived silence, especially his rumoured closeness to the
person of the Jagaban. He despairingly concluded that
Soyinka has chopped dodo! He would not believe that there
was any other explanation for the seeming double standard
being employed in the analysis of the two sets of thieves. He
was heartbroken at what he labelled the ultimate betrayal. I
disagreed with him and still do. I have my own theory for
Soyinka's silence, or shall we say selective amnesia, and it has
nothing to do with dodo.
Wole Soyinka rails against injustices and our failings as a
people. He has been at the forefront of all the liberation
tendencies in Nigeria from before I was born. He worked
with governments when given the opportunity to work
within the system to effect some of the changes he preached.

104
He found the Roads Safety commission in then Oyo state,
and; established the one that still endures today of the Federal
level. When he could he worked collaboratively, and even
when he worked with the one who elevated corruption into
a statecraft in Nigeria, nobody ever accused him of
corruption. He has always lived above board. Blaming
Soyinka's silence on his having sold out would be lazy,
intellectually indolent, and plain wrong, I have another
theory for his seeming silence.
“Ina ku, a fi eni bo oju, ogede ku, a fi omo re ro'po”.
The fire is survived by the ashes and when the banana tree
falls, it is replaced with a new shoot coming from the stump.
At over 80 years, after several battles fought for almost 60
years, Soyinka has earned the right to pick his fights and to
pick his friends. He might not have talked in public about the
issues some would wish he critiqued, but he also never
defended any of these things. He has not stopped others from
talking. It is up to each generation to find own voice.
I have come to realise that the capacity to identify a
problem is correlative to one's capacity to bring about the
changes required. If you don't see the problem, you cannot
have its solution. To see the problems, have ideas that resolve
them, and keep quiet in the expectation that someone else
will speak on your behalf is the very definition of moral
cowardice.
Painful as it is to admit, mine is a generation of cowards.
The tribe of those who speak truth to power has dwindled
almost to the point of extinction. It is relative to the societal
loss of critical thinking.

105
 Instead of waiting for Wole Soyinka, the last of the moral
voices, to speak for us, my generation has to find its voice,
and become the moral and intellectual compass of this nation
that is already becoming clouded by very dark and evil
influences. The foundation of a State in which our own
children will not survive because they have been raised with
ideals that are unachievable in the real world they will
inherit, is being laid before our very eyes, with our
acquiescence and, sadly in most cases, collusion. And we wait
for Wole Soyinka to speak for us!
Cowardice is the defining characteristic of my generation,
and that cowardice is diagnosed in many manners:
The will of God. Our propensity to blame our failings on God
is unrivalled by any other people. We have retreated into
vacuous religiosity in place of Godliness. Where the
scriptures clearly show the place of work, and that of
worship, we have abdicated former, and in most cases, even
the capacity to envision what needs to be done. We then cry
that the tragic outcome of our failure is the sovereign will of
our ever-merciful God. When we see situations where things
have gone wrong, and are clearly the products of failed
systems, we shirk our duties to speak; we blame it on God,
and insult ourselves more, and then define their elective
silence as signs of dodolisation of the gods we raised because
we would not rise up to our own generational calls to
immortality.
Oluwole Soyinka, my apologies for daring to wander about
you. You have earned your right to pick your battles and its
timing.

106
 CHAPTER THREE

SELF-IMMOLATION

(I)

The Subjectivisation of Truth

…some people cannot accept they have to help

remove the messiah they helped enthrone in 2015

T HE process of the subjectivisation of truth in Nigeria

didn't really fully begin until around 2013/2014. During
this period, what is now the APC propaganda machine
was unleashed on Nigerians and it gained traction with the
creation of a cult of personality. This cult was originally
centred on the person of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It is on record
that the Yoruba have always idolised good leaders. This is
one of the flaws of the Yoruba leadership system. It started
actually with Awolowo but because he was an extremely
disciplined man who lived an exemplary life, who was also
an extremely intelligent person with a track record of
achievements, every subsequent person who presumed to
lead the Yoruba always sought to call himself the “Awolowo
Reincarnate.”
When Tinubu started to assume a larger than life status
upon the death of Bola Ige in 2003, what we saw happen
almost immediately was that, given Obasanjo was never liked
by the Yoruba, his battle against Tinubu deified Tinubu in the
eyes of an average Yoruba person. The fact that Tinubu was
the Governor of Lagos State -- the centre of Nigeria's media
activities -- and also press savvy, having mastered how to use
the Nigerian press since his days as a NADECO chieftain,
made it a cinch for him to presume to wear Awolowo's cap,
and he began to build a cult of personality around himself.
That became entrenched between 2005 and 2011 when it
attained its apogee. At the time the Buhari project started,
Tinubu's propaganda machine was deployed behind Buhari;
and in order to sell Buhari in the Southwest, his messianic
following had to be translated outside the Northwest and
Northeast. It had to be brought to the South and that was how
we started seeing new pictures of a trendy Buhari.
The propaganda machine unstiffened his image; they
started holding him up as the pinnacle of accountability. He
was easy to sell. Here was the frugal, ascetic, honest,
corruption-free, and stainless Buhari running against a man
labelled as sybaritic, kleptomaniacal, clueless, and an
incompetent drunkard. We had two identikits. This was the
beginning of the construction of the personality cult around
Buhari. Over the period of the electioneering, Buhari was
repackaged. A cult was sold and you must remember that the
people were hungry for change.
We are in a circle in Nigeria. We are back where we were
in 2014. There is a desire for change at the moment. The only
thing that has not happened is that nobody has harnessed that
desire the way it was hitched -- hijacked -- and harvested in
2014. In 2014, the Tinubu machine was available to harness
108
the desire of the people and it was packaged on the change
mantra. If they had adopted Abubakar Atiku, he might not
have been so easy for them to sell the change agenda. Atiku,
having been part of the system for so long, couldn't deny
putting hands in the cookie jar. Buhari was the ultimate
outsider and it was easy to rebrand him.
The problem with the clamour for change in 2018 was that
the disgruntled political class didn't have an outsider to
package. They were faced with a choice between Atiku,
Kwankwaso, perhaps Tambuwal, who had left APC and
became part of the new coalition CUPP. If they had found an
outsider to package, we would have been back exactly where
we were in 2014. It is a vicious circle considering you cannot
sustain a lie for too long.
Truth, as distinguished from fact, is hallmarked by its
constancy. The truth-teller has no need of a good memory.
Buhari of 2018 is a repudiation of the Buhari of 2014/2015.
The messiah of 2014 is today's Judas.
But there are some people who cannot bring themselves to
accept, they are not beneficiaries of this system and are not
stupid. They cannot bring themselves to accept that they were
so wrong and that things are so bad that anyone of the people
they know to be thieves must be supported to remove the
messiah they helped enthrone in 2015.
This reasoning ultimately produced Atiku's candidacy.

****

109
 (II)

The Weaponisation of
Poverty and Ignorance

Every government interested in the prosperity of its

people seek to eradicate ignorance and poverty

F EUDALISM is dependent for its sustenance on

ignorance, and every feudal system is predicated on
ignorance and poverty. When you tackle poverty and tackle
ignorance, it becomes impossible to hold a people in an
oppressive system. In order to maintain an oppressive hold
on a people, the first thing to do is deny them access to
knowledge because knowledge is power. This explains the
manifest under-education and denial of access to education
for a vast majority of people, for as far as you can imagine, in
the Northern part of Nigeria. This mindset has now been
imported into the West.
While I was growing up with my grandparents in Ibadan,
I started my primary school education at Saint Stephen's
Primary School, Inalende. You didn't need to know anyone to
be placed in a primary school. It was based on your locality.
Children were assigned to schools closest to their homes so
the school is within walking distance. There were no school
buses. Saint Stephen's Primary School was directly across the
road from my grandparents' house but the quality of
instruction that I received in this school is comparable to what

110
anyone in any of the Montessori schools of today had, or even
better off.
When it was time to proceed to secondary school, I wrote a
merit-based test -- the Common Entrance -- and; was elevated
to Fiditi Grammar School in my mother's village. I gained
admission into this school on my performance at the
Common Entrance examination. I had also been given
admission to Federal Government College Ilorin, but I chose
Fiditi Grammar School because my family had a history of
attendance in the school. My two uncles had been there before
I. Some of my teachers in Fiditi came from as far away as
Canada, Ghana and other interesting places.
This was a provincial school in the village!
At the school, we had recreational and sporting facilities
such as soccer pitch, hockey ground, basketball and lawn
tennis courts. There were more Boarding house students than
Day students. The school itself was set on vast hectares of
land and, that was the typical standard of most schools within
and outside of Ibadan metropolis. The quality of the teaching
staff was better than what obtains in the expensive schools
my children attend today.
There were expectations and students didn't need to beg
the government for admission or provision of enabling
environment. The standards were high and strict and
everyone had to adhere exactingly to the requirements.
Afterwards, I left for Olivet Baptist Grammar School for my
A levels. These were all public schools and I received good
education from them.
Instead of us improving, we have regressed.

111
 If a man went through that kind of rigour and was taught
and instructed by qualitative teachers, how can the mind be
anything but ready to raise questions and demand answers
from those who presume to lead?
The situation is no longer the same.
When you have taught a man to think and have equipped him
with knowledge, it is unlikely that he will be poor. Today, I'm
a lawyer and a farmer. The only reason I have gone into
farming is because my formative schools were situated in
rural areas and I could see the value in farming because I have
been educated to create values.
As long as you are not stealing, create values and by so
doing, you create wealth.
An educated man is freed from poverty.

***
In my time at school, people were taught plumbing, metal
works, carpentry; there were technical colleges. Where are
these facilities in today's public schools? They are all gone. It
is all because the system is weaponising poverty. The same
schools I attended in those days, how many of my type can
they produce again? Who is teaching the students there now?
Obviously, the best teachers are not going to be found in those
schools.

***
We have created a system that doesn't impart knowledge,
and that is the beginning of the weaponisation of ignorance.
Furthermore, we weaponise ignorance when the press is
compromised. A tarnished press will only print the news
112
sanctioned by its patron. The censorship is not even one that
would need to come from a censor's board; it could just be
that the editor has received the infamous 'brown envelope'
and consequently, wouldn't bring himself to publish
anything injurious to his paymaster.
This is the beginning of the danger of the one-sided
narrative, an adjunct of the weaponisation of ignorance. If
you have corrupted the news pool; the one-sided narrative
comes in full glare. When it comes in, ignorance is enabled.
At this point, you see people sharing lies and broadcasting
falsehood on WhatsApp, sharing lies on Facebook and all
sorts of untruths and abuse. There are social media groups
that boast of thousands of membership but only a handful of
such members are ever active. The administrator of such
groups becomes the ultimate warrior, who decides what to be
posted to the group and whatnot.
This is the process of the weaponisation of ignorance.
Weaponisation of poverty will be touched, in a way, when
I briefly talk about my driver from Meiran in one of the
upcoming chapters.
Poverty is weaponised the moment avenues for the
creation of values are closed up to those who are not part and
parcel of a system. It becomes a potent weapon in a rentier
economy that empowers only those who are part of your
system. If I am not part of your system I am constantly
struggling just to exist; struggling to find what to eat, what to
drink, struggle to pay rent and school fees, struggle to get to
work, struggle to get back home, struggle to stay alive and all
manner of existential preoccupations.

113
 You cannot create wealth if you are constantly struggling
to survive.
When I speak about weaponised poverty and ignorance it
suggests that both were always there but have been turned
weapons in a class war.
Every government that is truly interested in the prosperity
of its people seeks to eradicate ignorance and poverty. These
are cardinal principles for any true government. But when a
government does not exist for the people its quest is not for
the eradication of any of those above, but for their
enthronement and enhancement; when your policies
constantly increase the poverty level of the people. It is
incontestable that poverty has been turned into a veritable
weapon for limiting the capacity of the citizenry.
Again, when programmes of the government do not seek
to liberate its people from the shackles of ignorance, but
instead foist it on them, it is weaponised. So, when I speak of
those two, I am speaking from the viewpoint of aggregating
the net effects of the policies of successive governments in
Nigeria.
It is in an atmosphere where the people are uninformed
that someone like Bola Tinubu can continue to succeed. If the
people were not ignorant, they would have demanded
accountability from him by now. Ignorant people are not
ready to engage or subject a key decision to rational debate.
Anything they are told is just fine.
Napoleon is always right.
Stomach infrastructure can only thrive in an atmosphere
of ignorance and poverty. When we talk about stomach

114
infrastructure as presently deployed, we speak about giving
the people food; the most basic of needs. It shouldn't be the
responsibility of government to give people food. The
government is meant to create the enabling environment for
the people to seek their daily bread. They shouldn't be
perceived as being in a giant orphanage with a need to be
spoon-fed on a daily basis.
This approach is vastly counterproductive.

****

115
 (III)

Dialogues of Ventriloquists

… the pursuit of existential living has decimated the

intellectual capabilities of the middle class.

V
ENTRILOQUISM is the science by which an artiste
projects his voice through an inanimate doll.
Whilst the knowing and conscious adults are fully
aware of the ventriloquist's shenanigans, the children
laughing at the oft-outlandish actions and words of the
ventriloquist's dolls are, by the simplicity of their thoughts,
mostly blissfully unbothered by the questions of what is real
and what is fantastical. As far as they are concerned the doll
is the one talking; the ventriloquist uninvolved.
The Nigerian ventriloquists are a breed apart; they are
male and female; they are the very humanization of the
biblical "principalities and powers". They speak all of our
nation's languages, and come from all of her tribes. They
utilize living dolls, fellow citizens that they have weaponised
with poverty, which is itself layered upon ignorance.
Poverty of the sort incurable by money, and ignorance of
the specie certified by diplomas and degrees!
A rather dangerous game is being played by the
ventriloquists in our midst, and whilst I have avoided
speaking before the completion of my tomes, I am compelled
116
by the urgency of the moment, to help the generality of our
people, who appear as toddlers at the ventriloquist's show;
hypnotised and unable to differentiate between the
ventriloquist and his dolls. Some of the contributions that I
have read online tell me that otherwise intelligent men and
women are also becoming stupefied by the ventriloquists.
Some ventriloquists were at work at the Arewa House in
Kaduna recently. They purported to issue a Quit Notice to the
Igbo living and eking out livelihoods in the northern part of
Nigeria! The dolls speaking for the ventriloquists are humans,
they are visible, they are Nigerians, they are not "unknown
Fulani herdsmen", and the crimes they have committed are
not unknown to the State and its law enforcement agencies.
Immediately after the dolls had their says in the hallowed
chambers of Arewa House, the 'golden boy' who would be
president in the future, made his first move; he became more
Catholic than the Pope. He was issuing orders for the arrest
of the ventriloquist's dolls, and the hapless victims of the
ventriloquist's shenanigans, began to hail the Daniel that
came to judgment in Kaduna. Abi, una think say na only Fayose
recognise the political capital of supporting Ndigbo? It doesn't hurt
El Rufai, who cannot protect Southern Kaduna indigenes, to
make righteous noises condemning messengers and, in the
process, cloak himself in borrowed garbs.
All hail the defender of Igbo interests and rights!
Professor Ango Abdullahi, eminently qualified to be
referred to as an elder statesman (Nigerian style), has
laboured to take credit as the masterful ventriloquist for
whom the credits for the Kaduna show is due. But I ask that

117
we look beyond the old degenerate in search of the real
ventriloquists, and in this search, I ask that the following be
factored into the equation:
Some months ago, when the 'disappearing Saint's illness
began to take its toll; and in the absence of credible
information as to what ails the old man, a dangerous rumour
began to gain currency in the northern part of the country. It
was to the effect that the saintly one had been poisoned by a
variety of persons and interests. It is just as well, that God
spared him to return to the country alive; for only God knows
what might have become of southerners living and working
in parts of the north, and the extent of the retaliatory attacks
that would have followed.
At a point in 2018, there were talks of politicians trying to
get soldiers to stage a coup; and of arrests of soldiers,
followed by denials and exhortations to perish any thoughts
of coups, delivered by no less than the Jagaban himself, his
imperial majesty, the Alaafin of Bourdillon!
When you take the fact that in none of the several
situations highlighted above has anyone been held
accountable for their words and actions; and you add the fact
that the same State that contrived Nnamdi Kanu's definitely
draconian bail conditions, has stood aside and watched as he
(Kanu) has flagrantly flouted these same conditions -- calling
for a successful shutdown of economic activities in the East,
and is now being responded to by the ventriloquists up
North, you must wonder what exactly the ventriloquists have
planned for us, the hapless audience; and if they coordinate
their acts?

118
 I am of the firm opinion that the Nigeria State is worth
saving: that I would rather be a Nigerian than a citizen of the
'Republic of Oodua'; that the Nigeria State, as currently
structured can deliver nothing good to those trapped within
its borders; that the nepotistic foundations of the current
structure assure its eventual collapse, and, finally, that it is
easier and more profitable to work for a redefinition of the
Nigeria State than to acquiesce to the inanities of the
ventriloquist's games.
The Nigerian middle class may be likened to the adults at
the ventriloquist's show. The assumption is that this class
represents the most conscious stratum of society -- better
educated, more informed by reasons of travels and
exposures, and consequently better empowered to reason.
Unfortunately, whilst poverty and ignorance have been
weaponised to silence the lower classes, the pursuit of
existential living has decimated the intellectual capabilities of
the middle class. Nobody is telling the children the truth.

****

119
 (IV)
The Thinking Thieves

…a lot of people assume offices…and never had any

need hold themselves accountable to the people

T HE foundational nature of our problem has conditioned

leadership to be a function of thoughts, reflections and, or
reflexes. Reflexively, we have had a lot of people assume
offices just to steal and never had any need to account for their
responsibilities; or hold themselves accountable to the people.
The people do not reflexively hold them (office holders) to
account for their dealings.
Thus, over time, we have evolved two principal sets of
leadership in Nigeria. There is the leadership of the western
part, which is predicated on the philosopher-king type like
Awolowo, who derived the legitimacy of his rule from
relevance of his policies and governance style in the life of the
people. The people themselves crowned him king more or
less; and whether it was in Action Group (AG) or United
Party of Nigeria (UPN), or even the Alliance for Democracy
(AD); for those who inherited his mantle, the validity of their
rules has always been established on the relevance of
government to the life of the people.
In this part of the treatise, I am not really keen on focusing
on what transpired in the First Republic. My interest would
rather touch upon the formation of the AD. When the
APP/ANPP was being formed in September 1998, I was at the

120
Eagle Square, where I was counselling a friend, Prince
Ademola Adeniji Adele (deceased), that wherever the Babas
were going, he should follow suit because, they -- the Babas -
- would inevitably determine the political future of the
Yoruba nation. Whatever they would tell the Yoruba people
is what the Yoruba people would do, and that the Yoruba are
not going to follow any party that doesn't have the supports
of the Babas.
When I said Babas, I speak definitely of the Afenifere
leaders. The AD evolved out of the old Awoist hegemony,
and when you trace its evolution you will find that it
specifically canvassed for votes in Yorubaland based on the
track record of the Awolowo political dynasty. They were the
ones who legitimised the aspirations of those who ran on the
AD platform.
Between 1999 and 2003, given the fallout of what had
happened at Ibadan during the presidential primaries where
Chief Bola Ige lost to Chief Olu Falae, fault lines developed
within the AD, and, in the course of what happened, most of
the governors sided with Bola Ige. With Ige's murder in 2002,
and the rout of the AD in the elections of 2003, Bola Ahmed
Tinubu (BAT) inherited what was left of the Alliance for
Democracy and created his Action Congress.
When I speak of the “thinking thieves” and the
“unthinking thieves”, the foregoing, I believe, sheds ample
light on when we can begin to track the trajectories of the
“thinking thieves” in the country.
Under Tinubu's leadership, a culture of “thinking thieves”
evolved in Yorubaland where people under the pretext of

121
Awoism, raped the commonwealth in an unprecedented
manner -- under a so-called progressive governance!
Between 2003 and 2007, Tinubu developed a political
platform that was only progressive in protestation but
mirrored the worst of pilfering that was visible under the PDP
leadership.
I call them the “thinking thieves” and the “unthinking
thieves”.
Whereas, the PDP never claimed to be anything other than
what it is: a political association of people who are in politics
solely for self-aggrandizement; the AC/ACN under the
leadership of Tinubu pretended that it was a progressive
socialist, welfarist and egalitarian platform. However, this
was only so in name.

****

122
 (V)

Yeye Rolling…
Thinking Thieves vs Unthinking Thieves

…same people that have betrayed the dreams

are usually same we ask to define the
revolution that we seek

T HERE is absolutely nothing original about the caption

above. It became part of Nigerian linguistic landscape
since Abami Eda (Fela Kuti) made it a refrain to one of his
compositions. I recently happened upon an epiphany as to
why Fela might have come to the painful conclusions that he
obviously did, at the height of the frustrations that must have
led him to pen the lines of the song.
The more things appear to change in Nigeria, the more it
remains the same. The unfortunate thing is that the quest for
survival -- materialistic, and existential living -- has reduced
the tribe of those capable of telling themselves the truth, and
society has become the worse for it.
Upon the realisation that Sani Abacha could not be
allowed to continue in power, and Abiola too loose a canon
because of the radicalisation born of incarceration, and at a
point by which the system had become manifestly
unsustainable, forces that had possibly never cooperated
were forced into strange alliances. The product of that
alliance, with varying levels of complicity and knowledge,
was the convenient death of
123
Abacha followed in quick succession by that of MKO.
Other manifestations include: the speedy, nay, hasty
transition programme of the Abdulsallami Abubakar regime,
the predetermined registration of Alliance for Democracy and
the “Power Shift” arrangement that produced Obasanjo.
The common thread in this story has been the sickening
predictability of the cycles. The same people, who have done
more than most to betray the very dreams that we always
profess to seek to birth, are usually the same to whom we
hand the task of defining the content of the revolution that we
talk about but always outsource to others to bring to pass.
Unfortunately, you cannot outsource labour pains if the child
to be birthed is to come from your matrix and be your own.
'Project Change' brought the Buhari regime. The obvious
colourlessness of the Jonathan years, the determination of the
traditional power elite to retake the hems of power, the
embarrassing levels of governmental incompetence and drift,
alongside myriads of other issues made up in propaganda or
truly earned, had made it impossible for Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan to win a credible election. But 'Project Change'
meant different things to the different parties to the project.
The Nigerian people know that their country had been
hijacked by a bunch of shameless, clueless, thieves -- the very
worst of the class. They would vote anything but Jonathan;
but more than most, Obasanjo and Tinubu realised the need
for a candidate that would have the moral authority to make
it impossible for Jonathan to rig without the risk of a popular
revolt. Buhari as the candidate of 'Project Change' is probably
the only thing about which these two men have ever agreed.

124
 Because of our penchant for seeking to outsource the
painful part of any process, however, not enough people
bothered to ask the crucial questions; and those of us that
asked were largely ignored. Why would Obasanjo or Tinubu
seek the kind of changes the Nigerian people were seeking?
Could these changes be accommodated within the system as
it is? Exactly what about these promisers of change -- their
known history -- should have made anyone believe that they
share the aspirations for change borne by the average
Nigerian?
The undertaker cannot be the healer. And the allegory of
the Axe as the king of the trees comes to mind.
When asked to comment on the political parties before the
implosion of the People's Democratic Party, I was fond of
describing them as the “Thinking Thieves” and the
“Unthinking Thieves”. No prize for guessing which is which.
The thinking thieves had arrogated sainthood to themselves
whilst being just as corrupt as their unthinking cousins; but
their deft management of the press and intellect capacities
against the manifest kleptocratic incompetence of the public
faces of the unthinking thieves, reinforced their progressive
pretensions.
The “Thinking Thieves” and “Unthinking Thieves” have
common purpose, and it is agreeable to each other; hence the
speed and ease of “carpet-crossing” in our polity. It is the
Nigerian people, whose declared visions for their country,
stand at variance with the known dearth of vision of both sets
of thieves that ceded the path to the change it requires to the
known godfathers of both sets of thieves.

125
 ***
Obasanjo and Tinubu -- very strange bedfellows!
This strange alliance of weird bedfellows: Obasanjo and
his gang -- an amalgam of interests ranging from his military
constituency to the traditional power elite that lost power in
the Jonathan years, Tinubu and his gang -- the shareholders
of Action Congress of Nigeria plc and President
Muhammadu Buhari, was inevitable because the system has
constrained it so. For Jonathan to be pushed out of office, the
people must be sold nothing less than the revolution that was
marketed to them, and a mass-based movement must be
simulated. The public narrative and discourse were expertly
crafted, shaped and driven.
President Buhari, the ascetic soldier, whose public
persona is of a strict disciplinarian with zero tolerance for the
sybaritic lifestyle of the Nigerian elite; who had ruled Nigeria,
and had run thrice before in the face of the obvious hostility
of the power elite and maniacal support of a maddening
crowd of Nigerians -- ranging from the uninformed to the
romantic; was press-ganged into the race to take out the
ambitious Atiku. The Nigerian people were left with the clear
choice between an incompetent Jonathan, and the Messianic
Buhari.

***

126
 “Blessed are those, who do not hope
for they shall not be disappointed.”

Chief Bola Ige, of blessed memory, offered the aphorism

above, I believe in response to a question regarding some
policy of the Abacha government. Taken outside context, it
would stand in antithesis to the Christian profession of faith,
but when viewed in context against the known antecedents of
that government, the otherwise heretical words are infused
with profound wisdom Obasanjo, Tinubu and the bulk of
those who promoted 'Project Change' were always aware that
nothing would truly change.
Recall, we started this talking about Fela's obvious
frustrations with the system. I also got to the same point I was
frustrated with the obvious predictability of the sequence and
outcomes, and it was in that frustration that I elected to stay
out of the madness being whipped up by the change
exponents in 2015. But unlike the frustrations that inspired
Fela's song and Ige's response, mine has only led me to
examine the fundamental basis of the Nigeria State, the
presumptions of democracy and the guiding principles and
visions of the states.

****

127
 (VI)

Mythicising 'The North'

Caught up in the web of existential living…

no one bothers to think beyond the moment…

T HE greatest lie in Nigerian political lexicon is the phrase,

"Northern Interest". Southern Nigerians have bought
into this lie, and with the lazy acceptance of this facile thesis
of a homogeneous North, we have held millions of our fellow
citizens captive in the hands of the common enemies of our
motherland.
Pray, are the Kataf of Southern Kaduna -- the same ones
being slaughtered like dogs under the watchful eyes of the
able governor, and likely Caliph of the Nigeria State -- part of
this motley crew that speak in the name of "Northern Nigeria?
What about the Berom and Angas of Plateau, the Tiv, the
Egbira, the Jukun, the Tafawa Balewa of Bauchi… -- are they
part of that North?
To bring this home, I'll share a factual anecdote. Some
young politicians of Northern Nigeria extraction were with a
friend of mine at a point, and they were teasing one another.
The gentlemen ribbed my friend; they reminded him that if
the day came when a discussion would be had concerning
Nigeria, it would be the like of Gani Adams that would speak
for the Yoruba nation, and not my friend, with his dogo
turenchi!

128
 As Gani Adams presumes to speak for me, and the Jagaban
leads my people; Nnamdi Kanu speaks for the Igbo.
The abdication of the duty of leadership is the greatest of
the flaws that have come to define the Nigerian middle class.
Caught up in the web of existential living demanded by the
rat race into which we've all become locked, not many bother
to think beyond the moment; and unconscionable powers
have become absolutely corrupted by the collective silence of
those who should be demanding an account.
I am sure that there are men and women of goodwill in the
Northern part of our blessed nation. It is time that they found
their voices. As for those of us in the South, the time has come
to free ourselves of the handicap imposed by our wilful and
collective ignorance. There is no Northern Nigeria, except as
defined by geography. The vast majority of what we know as
the North would rather stay Nigerian. And they would prefer
a true federation in which all the citizens are equal. There is
nothing that the silent supporters of the Biafran ideals desire
that is not beneficial to the Gwari of Central Nigeria.
Southerners do not know what it means to be 2nd class
citizens. The Northern minorities are acquainted with being
dehumanised. Only a few seem aware that slavery remained
legal in the Northern part of Nigeria until 1946. When they
hear the Gani Adams and Nnamdi Kanus of this world speak
asinine about the Balkanisation of Nigeria along the indolent
and simplistic tribal lines that they are wont to do, they must
wonder how long the fetters would abide, even as they are
forced to cling to the superiority they hold over their
Southern kinsmen, who are in truth, the third layer of

129
citizenship in a nation not unlike a sinking ship. It is time to
silence the ventriloquists by wising up to their crafts.
For how long will Jacob speak in the voice of Esau?
I'm asking you to awaken from your slumber. Silence the
ventriloquists speaking for us all, and let us commence the
dialogue that should redefine our blighted land.
Nigeria is worth saving.

****

130
 CHAPTER FOUR

THE BUHARI METAPHOR

(I)

A Virus Unleashed

Corruption festered because the system was

always designed to promote corruption...

M UHAMMADU Buhari had run for the presidency

of Nigeria three times before eventually winning it
at his fourth trial. I voted for him when he ran
against Obasanjo; I voted for him when he ran against
Yar'Adua; and I voted for him when he ran against Goodluck
Ebele Jonathan, the first time. I could not bring myself to vote
for him in his last race, which he ultimately won.
Buhari ran on the premise of anti-corruption and national
reformation in his first three races. He was uncompromising
in his speech against corruption, and he offered hope that a
government led by him would not be business as usual. He
was radical in his refusal to find political accommodation for
the many evil men who had run this country at several levels;
he appeared to understand the extreme poverty of ideals that
has kept our country down. And in spite of the knowledge
that he failed to connect with the populace because of his
demeanour and lack of communication skills; the likelihood
of his failure and the quixotic simplicity of his views did not
stop me from voting for him.
By the time Muhammadu Buhari was running in 2015 he
had evolved as a politician. He found accommodation for the
same evil he had hitherto railed against. Akweke not only
offered his teeth to divide the dog meat, he would even
masticate the meat for those whose teeth were too weak to
effectively chew it.
Buhari is the Ali Baba in the fable, and just as I always
wondered as a child, I wonder more, even now: show me
your friends, and I I'll show you the kind of person you are;
OK. If Ali Baba is not a thief, what fellowship does he enjoy
with forty thieves?
By 2012, not too long after Goodluck Ebele Jonathan won
the presidency in his own right, the man without shoes began
to alienate the very forces that coalesced to bring him into
power. He, lacking political intelligence, dared to hold
opinions at variance with that of 'St. Mathews of Owu', the all-
knowing Ebora of Owu with the monopoly of wisdom.
Jonathan became the hostage of his crew from the Niger
Delta, brought the like of Alamieyeseigha, Clark and others
whom Obasanjo had little time or love for, within the power
vortex of Aso Rock; and began to discount the political
wisdom of 'St. Mathew'. God turned the wisdom of
Ahithophel Obasanjo into foolishness before Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan.
That was the end of the second term he sought.
If Obasanjo was in Jonathan's corner, the Ebora of Owu
would have begun planning his re-election almost before his
132
swearing-in ceremony. Obasanjo has superintended the
manipulation of some of the most fraudulent elections in the
history of Nigeria. He plays to win, lacks the finesse to care
whose ox is gored, understands the powers of the Nigerian
presidency better than any living Nigerian, and would have
guaranteed Goodluck Jonathan's re-election. But those the
gods would destroy they first make mad.
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan lost the election the minute he
lost his patron saint.
The people of the Niger Delta were always the pawns in
the power games played by the power and economic elite of
the Nigerian State. They produce the bulk of the nation's
wealth, see very little of that wealth as a people, and have
very few genuine voices of concerns speaking for the
impoverished mass of the people who call the Delta home.
More than most of the other regions in Nigeria, the
political actors of the Delta are mostly self-serving,
avaricious, and intellectually indolent, and this explains why
you will find the best examples of the Nigeria contradictions
in the Delta: the poverty of private wealth stares you in the
face all over the Delta. Extreme poverty juxtaposed against
obscene wealth. With Jonathan's ascension to power the
worst that the Delta has to offer moved into Abuja, and the
traditional power concentric were left out in the cold.
Power changed hands, and the orphans of power began to
plot their comeback.
By late 2012, the spate of bombings by Boko Haram had
intensified, and the process of defining Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan as incompetent had begun in earnest. With the
alienation of the traditional power elite, Jonathan began to fill
133
the vacuum with those who had no understanding of how the
system works. A system designed for the benefit of a
particular class had fallen into the hands of people outside of
that class, and who had little understanding of how to operate
the system they had happened upon.
Corruption festered because the system was always
designed to promote corruption, but the capacity to keep up
appearances had been lost with the ouster of those familiar
with how the system works. The situation is not unlike one in
which a loaded gun is given to a toddler as a play thing!
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and his merry gang proceeded to
pull the trigger on several occasions.
The first “credible” voice against Jonathan was Tinubu,
the Jagaban of Borgu, and de facto leader of the then
opposition in Nigeria. Tinubu inherited the rump of the
Alliance for Democracy, which had been routed ruthlessly by
the Ebora of Owu in 2003. He is a pragmatic dealmaker,
unrestrained by morals and, or ideology; he has emotive
intelligence beyond the comprehension of most of his peers,
and courage and street smarts unrivalled by anyone of them.
***
I was told a story concerning the Ebora of Owu, which I
am inclined to believe is true. Though I cannot verify the
truth, it bears testimony to the brilliance of his political
instinct. At the peak of his problem with the Ebora; Tinubu
was prevailed upon to make peace with the then emperor at
his Ota farm; he was told that all he had to do was play the
Yoruba game of deferring to the elder; that once Obasanjo

134
had been pacified, and peace reigned between them, the
withheld local government funds would be released.
Tinubu, I was told, played along and did travel to Ota, but
that once at the meeting, and in front of the gathered
conclaves including revered Obas and elders of the Yoruba
race, he (Tinubu) proceeded to upbraid the Ebora in very
strong terms, calling him all manners of unprintable names,
and walked away from the meeting! I was told Tinubu later
called or visited most of these peacemakers to explain why he
did what was contrary to the assurances he had given. He
believed that making peace with 'St. Mathew' would portend
great dangers to his person!
Obasanjo is defined by his incapacity to forgive, and those
who presumed to make peace with him in the past have
mostly lived to regret it. Ask Atiku; talk to Audu Ogbe; the
Oyi (Chuba Okadigbo) is no longer around to tell the tale.
Tinubu survived him.
****
Bola Ahmed Tinubu had built a monstrous franchise in
Lagos, and after cutting the different deals with
Yar'Adua first, and then Jonathan in 2011, coupled with the
extension of his franchise into other Southwest states and
Edo; and, his narrow loss of Ondo State, he was the major
opposition leader of the Nigeria State. It was a role he revelled
and grew into with gusto.
With the 2015 elections looming, a political realignment
began to take shape towards the end of 2012, and the Action
People's Congress was born in February 2013. It is a child
born of opportunity and convenience. Tinubu was faced with

135
the task of retaining his hold on the Southwest states, and
easy as this would now seem in the rear view of time, it was
not such an easy task at the time. Years of Tinubu's
sovereignty over the affairs of Lagos State have birthed little
by the way of substantive or tangible progress. The state that
laid the golden egg had become rotten to its very core with
abounding examples of prebendal initiatives and burgeoning
corruption.
The Bola Ahmed Tinubu franchise operates on a principle
not unlike a limited liability company. There are wheels
within wheels, and the governors are branch managers
ultimately responsible to the Alaafin of Bourdillon.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Lagos State, where
because of proximity to the seat of power at Bourdillon, the
governor is even worse than a branch manager. Fashola
functioned not unlike a senior prefect, and his cabinet was not
his own to run. There were different levels of shareholding in
the Bola Ahmed Tinubu franchise, and the citizens were the
least important part of the system. Stupendous patronage
occurred to those in the inner circle, and sybaritic living
became the exclusive preserve of members of the inner circle.
***
The Nigerian press, not being immune to the economic
realities of the Nigerian condition, embraced the fact of
existential living; and the massive corruption being marketed
as progressive governance did not attract the attention of any
of the many critical journals domiciled in Lagos. Stories
abound of editors on the payroll of the Tinubu franchise,
whose brief it is to kill stories that may be deemed

136
embarrassing to the franchise. Several glaring cases of
governmental malfeasances were ignored and the manifold
failings of the corruption went unreported.
Self-censorship became the order of the day.
The Bola Ahmed Tinubu franchise became the model of
progressive governance in Nigeria. In the country of the
blind, the one-eyed became king. Tinubu and his acolytes
preached about progressive governance, and pontificated
about democracy whilst pursuing several anti-people policies
that do not deliver any benefits to the people, and the Alaafin
of Bourdillon brooking no opposition to his dictations within
the empire he built.

***

137
 (II)

Buhari is Not to Blame? Really?

… the State has become impotent, complicit;

incapable of ensuring the protection of the people.

M Y heart is heavy. I would have loved to be able to shed

some tears, self-indulgent as this may sound; perhaps,
it would have afforded me some relief. But the tears have
refused to come.
In the absence of tears, I resorted to doing the only thing I
know how to do; the only thing that has offered me some
measures of peace. Writing.
I have always been blessed with the gift of the writing, but
I did not know how therapeutic I could make my gift until
the dying days of GEJ, and Buhari's emergence left me so
constantly traumatised that I began to write; from the depth
of my pains.
Several events in recent days have left me even more
traumatised than usual. I have been to the precipice of
depression, and I have stared down despair. I lashed out with
blurbs, little captions that pushed out thoughts, and demand
for the readers to use their God-given brains to think about
the path along which our country is headed.
The slaughter on the Jos Plateau is the most recent of the
events threatening my sanity at this point in time. Senseless
slaughter of our fellow Nigerians is nothing new in our
country. These killings have been going on for over 10 years.

138
The killings did not start with the ascension of Buhari to
power.
What has happened with Buhari's ascension is the defence
of these killings, either wittingly or unwittingly by
functionaries of the state.

***
The single most damaging consequence of the alliances that
created the APC is the concession of the Tinubu propaganda
machine in the service of the Buhari project. The Nigerian
press is just as corrupt as the police, and just as corrupt as
every other expression of our national life. With Tinubu's
patronage, the institutionalised corruption and putrefaction
in Lagos State has for years been deodorised, and Lagos has
been held up as the model of good governance.
This propaganda machine today works for the Buhari
government.
Let us imagine that Buhari does not have access to
Tinubu's network of compromised press, we would have
been reminded of his well-documented utterances during his
visit to Lam Adesina at the Government House in Ibadan in
the wake of the farmers/ herdsmen clash in Oke-Ogun. The
government would have had to explain the unsavoury and
patently callous remarks of the Minister of Defence, and
Buhari would have had to explain his impotent and
provocative demands that the people of Benue be their
brothers' keepers!
The Inspector General of 'Politics', sorry, Police (Ibrahim
Idris) would have had to explain why he did not obey the
presidential directive to relocate to Benue; the service chiefs
139
would have long been rightly excoriated for what was either
their snivelling complicity, incompetence, or both.
But today, I witness a country where the State has become
impotent, complicit, and totally incapable of ensuring the
protection of the peoples trapped within her territories.
I have no empirical basis for the conclusions I have drawn
as to the complicity of Buhari and his government in these
killings. But the circumstantial evidences are humongous,
and the buck really must stop somewhere. We were told in
the early days of Buhari's government to read his body
language. Well, I have read his body language, his utterances,
those of his appointees, the actions and inactions of them all,
and the inescapable conclusion is that our president is
responsible for these killings. He is the president, and the
chief security officer of Nigeria. He owns this.
I hold Buhari responsible for these killings.
May the blood of the innocents haunt their killers, the
supporters of their killers, and the ones, who by their silence,
energise and enable the continuation of this madness. Amen!

****

140
 (III)

I love Buhari

…the ruling class, as long suspected, is

mostly peopled by a bunch of reprobate
thieves…

.UST for the sake of clarity and in order to place the point
in perspective, I did not vote for PMB in 2015; I didn't
buy into the illusion of his messianic purpose. His signals
were clear for the discerning; regardless of the posturing. It
was going to be business as usual. What kind of changes or
crusades against corruption could you reasonably expect
when the compromises made to gain power had already
ensured that nothing would change?
Every system is designed to produce a desired end, and
the only thing systemic in our country is blindness and, its
many fruits, corruption merely being one of several. The
system coalesced around the person of Buhari because he was
the only way for the “shitstem” to replicate itself; even as he
was the very candidate that the system had worked the
hardest to prevent from getting into office.
Without Buhari what could they have done? Another four
years of GEJ would have led to economic collapse, and
possible popular revolt. The people would not have
discriminated between the different bands of rogues. But I
love Buhari.
Without Buhari, the illusions would not have been
shattered. We wouldn't have known that Tinubu and
141
Obasanjo are capable of agreeing on any subject, and the lie
that corruption is the culprit for our national
underdevelopment and atrophy would not have been
revealed.
I love Buhari.
The hypocrisy of the ruling class, and its double standards
would not have been revealed without Buhari. I see the moral
somersaults of a government struggling to explain to the
citizens: how come some people have immunity from
corruption, and some are the very definition of corruption.
Yet I ask, "báwo lọ̀bọ ti ṣe orí, tí 'Nàkí kò ṣe?" How is the ape's
skull different from the gorilla's?
Because of Buhari, I now know that the ruling class, as
long suspected, is mostly peopled by a bunch of reprobate
thieves, and the military brass are no different from armed
robbers.
When will Buhari probe Buratai's Dubai holdings?
I love Buhari.
I see otherwise eloquent men and women struggling to
explain the difference between six and half a dozen; striving
to explain the double standard that has always been the
hallmark of governance in Nigeria. How many of our
politicians, whatever party they may belong to, haven't done
exactly what Saraki has been prosecuted, and is his
prosecution really about fighting corruption?
I love Buhari.
Because of Buhari, the glaring contradictions of a corrupt
system that preaches anti-corruption, whilst in the grip of the
most vile of corrupt persons is daily played out in the full

142
glare of our people, and illusions are shattered. Because of
Buhari, it is becoming increasingly clear, that there isn't a
magic bullet for Nigerian problems.
I love Buhari.
You can tell me all the reasons why you love PMB and his
merry band of reformed and unreformed looters, but be
assured that I loved them all before you fell in love with them.

****

143
 (IV)

To my Buharist Kindreds…

The challenge of the revolutionary, is to find the

key to the mobilisation of the indifferent…

I POSTED the quote above some time ago. Facebook, the

unrelenting gatekeeper of a fading memory, by-product of
my existential life as a Nigerian, and a very natural
consequence of the years I have lived, brought back the
memory, and I reposted the quote, but I have also matured in
my thoughts on the subject to the point where I must
reexamine my original hypothesis.
The would-be revolutionary wastes time if he focuses on
the indifferent. It is unengaged, and the revolutionary wastes
valuable time in a venture that guarantees only meagre
return. The would-be revolutionary is ordinarily a believer in
a cause, and wisdom demands that he should go after fellow
believers. A believer converted with truth is not only a
believer; he is a zealot.
I want to convert the Buharist. Zealots are required for the
task ahead.
The Buharist is a patriot. He is a true believer in Nigeria.
He is not a tribalist, not a religionist. Pastor Tunde Bakare
illustrates this point. You will find Igbo Buharist but the
Yoruba
 137
ones are the intellectual mouthpieces of the movement. The
Bucharest is disgusted by the serial failings of the Nigeria
State, and he wants radical changes to the way the country
has been run by the unthinking and sybaritic thieves of the
PDP.
The Buharist is, however, to be distinguished from the
Buharideen. This distinction is of extreme importance, if the
reader is to grasp the truth of my current exertions. For the
Buharist, Buhari is the best way out of the mess we are in as a
country, but he is not the only way. For the Buharideen, Buhari
is the article of their faith. You cannot reason with the
Buharideen, he is incapable of rationality, once the person of
Buhari is involved in the equation.
To the Buharideen, Muhammadu is infallible, a god to be
worshipped. His support for Buhari is birthed in the cauldron
of ignorance, religion, hatred, and fear. He is the essential akiń
diǹ diǹ riǹ -akiń danidań í of Yoruba folklore. Whilst he is a
zealot, he believes in nothing. He is little different from a
zombie, and a sane person forfeits his sanity, the moment he
presumes to reason with the Buharideen.
The Buharist is ordinarily a thinking being. His position is
mostly informed by his desperation. He sees the State
struggling to survive; he had watched the country recklessly
asphyxiated by the myopic gathering of thieves in the PDP;
he heard as Buhari railed relentlessly against corruption; he
remembered the War Against Indiscipline of his youth, or
was told the tales, and he watched as Buhari became more
puritanical and Spartan, even as the PDP carried on with an
undisciplined orgy of vile consumption, and contemptuous
disregard for the people.
145
 The Buharist's resolve is strengthened by the systemic
closure of every other avenue for the ventilation, and
articulation of the grievances of the oppressed citizenry, and
the garrisoning of opinions into two farcical schools -- one the
same as the other, even as they pretend to be different.
Buhari became the only avenue for an imaginary change,
and the conscious outsourced the revolution that their
visionary clamours for change truly represents.
The APC, a product of an unholy alliance of the political
franchise owned by Bola Tinubu, the Buhari rabble, and the
traditional power levers of the original PDP became the party
of the long disenchanted dreamers, who had for long held the
belief that a Buhari presidency would cure the problems of
Nigeria, which in their considered view, is directly linked to
the cancer of corruption. Buhari will fight the evil of
corruption that is hobbling Nigeria, and we would all live
together happily ever after!
The worst thing that has befallen Buhari is the electoral
victory of 2015. With that victory the capacity to rhapsodize
is lost, and the lies told in pursuit of victory have only served
to show that Buhari is no different from any of the other
persons that have either sought or sat in the office before him.
Buhari is just another Nigerian politician, what is different
with him is the wilful self-hypnotism of the Buharist.
How has Nigeria changed under Buhari? I do recall that
the current regime was marketed to the Nigerian people as a
departure from the ugly and wicked past. Change was the
mantra, and the product was Candidate Buhari. He was the
new old broom, and he was going to sweep the Augean
stables clean. Kwarapshon would be fought to a standstill, and
kwarapt people would be jailed.
146
Naira was to be placed on steroids, and petroleum subsidies
were fraudulent diversion of public funds. The question that
the Buharist has to answer for himself is: what has changed?
This is the point where the Buharist is stumped and left
floundering. Intellectual indolence, and weaponised
ignorance -- the sort that feeds the unaware and stupefied,
with the fallacy of a lack of choice -- conspire to narrow the
Buharist's view, and thus constrain his options to a false
choice between six, and half a dozen.
The disingenuous and defeatist argument about the
difference between the APC and the PDP would then
commence, and the presence of 'Saint Buhari' in the APC
would be the reason for their continuing refusal to believe the
evidence of their own senses. They would even theorise,
rationalise, and explain Buhari's serial beatification of crooks
such as Musiliu Obanikoro, Godswill Akpabio, and many
others.
And yes, Buhari will fight his friends in his second term.
You'll see Obasanjo and the other thieves in jail in Buhari's
second term, they would rhapsodise. What they have refused
to acknowledge is that the APC is the PDP, and the PDP is the
APC.
The Buharist is a believer in a false god.
But there is nothing to be gained in victim shaming. The
Buharist is a victim above every other consideration, and a
failure to take this fact into cognisance robs every analyst of
the critical fact that must be part of any objective analysis of
the Buharist's complicity.
The true Buharist desires a truly accountable, equitable,
and just Nigeria; he has ideals that he desires for his country;
he wants the good of the majority of
147
our country men and women. He is angry at the sleaze and
malfeasance that undergirds the governing systems of our
country. The problem is the person in whom they have
invested their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for Nigeria does
not share their passions and, or, dreams.

***
For Buhari, the purposes of power are less altruistic. For a clue
into Buhari's real purpose for seeking power, find pictures of
his visit to Dapchi, in the immediate aftermath of the mass
kidnap of the girls, and you will understand how the man
who sought power so assiduously has been completely bereft
of any purpose to his exertions after almost four years in
power! It is the pomp and circumstance of the office that has
bewitched Buhari since his days as the military imperator. It
is why Buhari is in, truth, a hostage of power. It is why it was
the Buhari-Idiagbon regime, and it is why Aisha (his wife)
should be taken seriously when she speaks of, and, points at,
the cabal in the presidency.
Buhari left office in 1985. He came back in 2015. I was 17
years old at Buhari's first coming, and 47 at his reincarnation.
I voted for Buhari in every election he contested since the
beginning of this demon-cratic experiment, except the 2015
election. I believed in the myth and was a card-carrying
member of the Buharist brigade. I barely escaped co-option
into the cult of the Buharideens!
Such was the rabidity of my support for the illusion that is
Buhari.
The Buharideen is a zealot. He shares his zealotry in
common with the Buharist, but that is the only point of
commonality between the two set

148
of Buhari supporters. You may have an intelligent discourse
with the Buharist, he might conclude by refusing to consider
the possibility of another person doing it better; the Buharists
might even agree with you on the basis of superior argument
that Buhari has made avoidable errors, but you have assigned
yourself a Sisyphean task if you seek to reason with the
Buharideen. He had divested himself of the capacity for
thought, and critical analysis the day he joined the personality
cult of Bubu and was required to donate his brains. Buhari can
do no wrong, and nobody aside from Muhammadu Buhari
has the integrity to save Nigeria.

***
As we approach the dawn of the 2019 elections, the Buhari
presidency is no longer an unknown proposition. Buhari's
capacity for governance, his integrity, and incorruptibility, or
otherwise, are also not to be presumed; the records may be
brought to light, and a dispassionate, truthful, and fact-based
analysis made by anyone in pursuit of the truth.

***
This now is the purpose of my evangelistic treatise to my
Bucharest brethren.
I seek to expose the fallacious basis of your faith in an
unfaithful man, and to thereafter ask you to join in the real
task of imagining, envisioning, and then birthing the Nigeria
that you truly desire, and which desire has led you into
believing the lie that is Buhari, and then proceeding to
disbelief the serial evidences of your own eyes and senses in
order to continue to preserve the illusions of a Buhari

149
messianic purpose for a state that has stopped making sense.
The central plank of Buharism is the oft-repeated lie that
corruption lies at the root of Nigeria's retardation. Buhari's
public persona, and his entire political life, and brand are built
on a carefully cultivated reputation and image for probity,
and personal discipline. Not for Buhari the excesses of his
predecessors in office on his two appearances in power.
He had been preceded in office on both occasions, by
uncommonly avaricious regimes, and he was removed at his
first coming by a man, whose tenure did more than any other
to normalize, and then institutionalise stealing as a Nigerian
way of life. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida -- the 'Evil Genius'.
Buhari's second coming was preceded by the reign of
locusts.
It is easy to blame Jonathan for the systemic normalisation
of a man whose records, in and out of office, should have
alarmed any thinking person, but the truth is that it is easy to
forget that what the APC marketed was a civilian coup, an
illusion of change, fuelled by the general frustrations with the
untamed stealing of the federal government under the PDP,
and the propagandistic powers of the AC, which has
corrupted practically every critical medium of information,
and whose malfeasance had been largely ignored.
The Tinubu political machine consists of the thinking
thieves, and the flagship of the franchise, Lagos State, a gilded
sepulchre, next to the incredible and obvious rots in the other
states. Tinubu is the progressive, and all other thieves and
crooks. Tinubu and his cronies in the press, and from the press
shaped the narrative, and Tinubu was dressed in Awolowo's
oversized clothes and shoes. To worsen matters, they wore for
him, the late sage's spectacles but the
150
problem is, he is incapable of sight with his borrowed glasses.
Corruption is the blinker that has limited his vision.

***
At the dawn of the 2015 elections, every progressive minded
politician in Yorubaland had been corralled into the smaller
and insignificant parties, or as with the like of Jimi Agbaje,
forced into the PDP, a platform that had been damaged
beyond repair in the Southwest since the days of Obasanjo,
and the 2003 political tsunami that installed PDP governors in
all states in the zone, except Lagos. Tinubu's political
machinery, and his stranglehold on the Nigerian press
worked to normalise what when examined, is an incredibly
silly lie: Buhari as the change agent.

***
Buhari's alliance with Tinubu and the resultant APC cured me
of any illusions I had invested in Buhari as a change agent.
The years spent in power by the PDP, after the halcyon days
of Obasanjo had shown me the limitations of the Nigerian
system and revealed to me the existential danger that
Tinubu's hegemony represents to the progressive politics of
the Southwest in particular, and the entire country in general.
I could see the prebendal nature of his politics, the
corruptive nature of the powers he wields, and the way in
which he was moving the Yoruba farthest from the
progressive principles that had laid the very foundations of
our existence and interactions with the Nigeria State. This
alliance made me take a second look at Buhari. I have laid out
my thoughts on the point of departure in 'Do not Die in their
Wars'.

151
 ***
I will close by asking my Buharist friends: to which Buhari are
you looking for hope, the one you know is physically and
mentally infirm, and who looks to Osinbajo for painful
guidance, and help in public, or the one that Osinbajo defers
to, after the ones Aisha referred to as the Aso Rock “cabal”?
The Buhari pre-2015 would not have had anything to do with
the Maina mess; nobody would have linked him with a
Babachir Lawal; there's no way that you would have
imagined Buhari endorsing and advertising Gandollar-Bank.
The many sickening examples of stealing under this post-2015
Buhari, without even considering the entirety of the report
card, should be enough to alarm any thinking being.

152
 PART 1

SECTION 2

CITIZENSHIP
&
THE POLITY

FORENOTE

Are the Citizens Complicit?

Today's church and mosque in Nigeria…

I
nobody is preaching justice anymore…

N the course of my sojourn over the years, I realised to a

very large extent that saying the Nigerian citizens are
complicit in the prevailing structural breakdown would
be tantamount to victim blaming.

153
Just as we must learn to master the truism in the expression
that things are not always what they seem; I enjoin we have
in abundance an inquisitive mind with which to probe
beyond the apparent. However, to make progress in this
direction, there are two ways to look at the issues: One, we
need to examine the implication of the word “complicity,”
which in effect is consciously electing to be part of something
or a system as the case maybe, in this context. Complicity can
be active or passive.
Active complicity: when you strive to become a part of the
beneficiaries of the corrupt system, which aptly can explain
the cliché “if you cannot beat them, join them”. What often
happens is, the person joins in order to benefit from the
corrupt system.
Passive complicity: a person becomes complicit by his
passive acceptance of the situation. For instance, a man who
passively accepts his lot simply because he has accepted
religion. The religious system is also complicit in the suffering
of the people. If the church is preaching compliance with
government rules and obedience to the ruler without
preaching justice, it means, as obvious as it seems, the church
is helping to condition the minds of the oppressed to accept
his oppression almost as if saying, “God is the one who has
brought the oppression”. They preach and tell people that every
government is ordained by God and, it is right that we must
obey our rulers without qualifying the fact that we, the
masses, also have a duty to resist bad and unjust rulers.
You could sometimes be excused if you began to imagine
that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a Baptist Minister. His
resistance had its roots in the Baptist Church. The Southern
Baptist Leaders' network was
154
available as platform from where he launched out to the
whole of the
United States.
Today's church in Nigeria is complicit in the emasculation
and enslavement of the Nigerian people; so also is the
Mosque. Nobody is preaching justice anymore. Everybody is
preaching obedience.
When we talk of complicity, we should understand that it
has different levels.
Before you can make an informed choice as to whether to
accept or refute something, you must have the information
and must have reasoned it out in one way or the other. But
when a man has been robbed of the capacity to critically
evaluate the situation and then take a stand as to whether or
not he accepts that situation based on objective reasoning,
then, we cannot say he has accepted the situation or that he is
complicit in the outcomes.
Here is a typical example. I once had a driver, and this is
the reality of everybody in his class. He was living at Meiran,
somewhere after Abule-Egba on the outskirts of Lagos. I was
staying at Chevron on the Lekki Peninsula at the time. The
driver would leave his house by 4:45am- 5:00am to be at the
bus stop. If this schedule was not adhered to, he would fail to
show up at work for the day. He closed at 6:00pm but would
not get home before 11:00. He worked Mondays to Saturdays.
What time did this person have in which he could ponder his
situation; and then, educate himself as to what choice to
make?
It becomes easier to tell him what to think.

155
 Instinctively, we have always trusted our press. People
forget that the Nigerian press is just as corrupt as the Nigerian
Police, Judiciary and the Nigerian artisan class.
He turns on his radio and they are telling him that: the best
thing since slice bread is Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Tomorrow,
Tinubu comes out and says: “vote APC.” You think he (my
driver) will argue? How can he argue and with what? Not
only has he been impoverished, the system has also taken
away his capacity for objective thinking. He cannot think on
his own, the system helps him think and tells him what to
think. He adopts and takes it hook line and sinker. That is all.

****

156
 (I)

CITIZENSHIP IN NIGERIA

Until we are capable of producing a template, an

identity of who a Nigerian is regardless of his tribe,
ethnicity or religion, we can never birth a true Nigerian
nation

E VERY time we speak of citizenships, we are essentially

dealing with nations. Looking at the Nigerian situation, I
have always had a problem with the usage of the word
“citizens” in relation to a State like ours. Citizenship strictly
so defined within a nation or nationality in order to be a little
clearer, cannot exist on multiple levels.
When there are multiplicities of citizenship, what it
implies in effect is that one citizenship is better weighted than
the others. It becomes more or less membership or ownership
of a company, where you have preferential shareholders and
ordinary shareholders. The man with the preferential shares
obviously takes precedence in terms of voting and privilege
as members of the company.
If you look at the Nigerian state and its very origin, you
will discover that we cannot have anything like citizenship.
In fact, what we do have is membership.
Each person trapped within the geographical enclave
called Nigeria is a member of the Nigeria space. That is as far
as the commonality of our destinies is concerned. When it
comes to the specificity of the content of citizenship -- now, I
am using the word advisably -- you

157
will find very quickly that some citizens are better weighted
than the others. The Nigerian member from Katsina has
preferential treatments guaranteed under the constitution
when compared to the citizen from
Akwa Ibom, for instance.
This is why a Buhari without his school certificate would
be admitted into the army, and promoted ahead of his better
qualified peers, who come from other parts of Nigeria!
The Nigerian citizen of Osun has his membership of the
State or citizenship as it might become different and distinct
from the man from Bauchi. Whilst we are all generally
referred to as Nigerians, the reality on ground is that our fates
and destinies are not the same.
This has agitated my mind for some time and has
compelled me to take a second look at the origin of the Nigeria
State.

***
The British founded Nigeria and certainly didn't found the
Yoruba nation, or the Igbo nation. They had nothing to say
about the Tangale or the Ibibio or the Berom or the Fulani.
They met all these nationalities already present in what is
today referred to as Nigeria. But if we are going to extend the
analogy, we can say that Nigeria is essentially the product of
a polygamous father.
Let us take a British man as the father.
The British man like almost all polygamous men has his
preferred wife, his favourite wife, and his concubines. For the
sake of this comparison, it is apposite to say that the Fulani
was the favoured wife. There were other wives.

158
 We must expand our imagination in order to appreciate
this argument. You have the Yoruba wife; the Igbo wife; the
Ibibio wife.
For the purpose of clarity again, we must extend our mind
a little further. Just as there were wives who might be said to
be representatives of the major tribes, there were also
concubines. These concubines came in different classes; some
from the minority part of the South.
When you go up North (another concept to be defined) –
because of the past history of internal colonialism and slavery,
by the time the British came, there was an existing colonial
power in the Northern part of Nigeria. That colonial power
was the Fulani Empire.
So, you had the Sokoto Caliphate which consistently
raided the Middle Belt region of Nigeria for slaves. There is a
long history of enslavement of the Northern minorities by the
Sokoto Caliphate. The Caliphate was founded on Islamic
principles and as such, it could not in Islamic laws enslave
fellow Muslims. The Caliphate was never interested in
proselytising or converting what the British called the “pagan
tribes'' of the Middle Belt -- the Berom, the Tangale, the
Idoma, the Tiv, the Jukun and others. As a matter of fact, the
“pagan tribes” populated a vast swathe of modern North
Central. These tribes became part of the Nigeria State; and by
assuming such status without ever becoming part of the
Fulani Empire, retained their distinct identities but acquired
citizenship on levels lower than the one given to the Fulani.
It was a situation whereby, the 'North' essentially dealt
with other parts as if it were one. The myth of a homogenous
North has been propagated for almost a century and has only
taken the emergence of
159
Buhari to begin to show very clearly that the North is not
necessarily one.
Like other parts of Nigeria, the North also has other levels
of citizenship. Before now, when the North dealt with the
South, the latter never made any distinction between the Tiv,
the Idoma and the Fulani. The average Yoruba, Igbo or any
other Southerner could only see a single advantaged North,
and even though most of these people that came in contact
with them were from the Middle Belt, the advantaged North
never took any pain to explain their identity to the rest of
Nigeria because it was beneficial to be so identified. To be a
'Northerner' in the 70s to early 2000 was to be privileged and
advantaged.
In dealing with fellow Nigerians, particularly of Southern
extraction, the Middle Belt people, including the Christians
amongst them, realising it was valuable to be a 'Northerner',
helped to perpetuate the myth of a monolithic North. In
perpetuating the myth, the advantages accruable to the North
as against the South got to them as well. But in recent times,
it has become clearer that when that North is alone and, with
him/herself, each person understands his/her place in the
pecking order.
I refer to the Middle Belt and Northern minorities
essentially as children of concubines. It is not unknown that
owners of slaves sometimes give their slaves as concubines to
their husbands. So, it may be said for the sake of this same
analogy, that the Northern minorities -- children of a
polygamous father -- were actually children of the slave
concubines of the favourite wife.
When you have a nation where each person or member
understands that rights are not equal,
160
privileges are not even, you have a battle for equalisation of
rights. This fight for equalisation of rights is what has given
rise to the original sin of corruption in Nigeria. The Nigeria
State has nepotistic origin, and in preservation of these
nepotistic advantages garnered at independence or pre-
independence, what you find is that a man from Osun State,
for instance, would rather identify himself as coming from
Kwara State in order to acquire some of the constitutionally
guaranteed privileges available to the Kwara man by virtue
of his membership of the 'Northern' part of Nigeria.
Demand for patriotism is predicated on an assumption of
citizenship. If a man isn't a citizen, you cannot ask him to be
patriotic for the fact that, it is only a citizen that can offer true
patriotism to a nation that has offered him citizenship. But if
my primary battle as a member of the Nigeria State is a
continuous fight for equalisation of my citizenship with that
of other members of the State, it then becomes anomalous to
demand citizenship from me.
Why should I serve a nation with my life when the same
nation has guaranteed for me only disadvantages by reason
of my ethnicity and place of birth? It is only in Nigeria that
you consistently see, while filling out forms, requests for
'State of Origin' and 'Local Government of Origin'. The
question to ask is: of what importance are these requests? For
your information, these requirements are made simply to
allocate historical privileges, historical rights and historical
disadvantages and advantages, as it were.
So, if you have reserved privileges for someone who is
said to be an equal member of the state, you have by the same
token reserved and preserved disadvantages to others. Thus,
you have constitutional
161
provisions like: educationally disadvantaged, quota system,
federal character, etc. The nation is not propelled by
meritorious considerations but by nepotistic intentions.
That is the bane of Nigeria and it began from the root.
Every state only transmutes to becoming a nation when
destinies are common and equal. But Nigeria is a collection of
nations that have refused to transform into a nation. People
retain their tribal identities; and guard them jealously simply
because it is the root of everything they get.
Some people obscure their tribal identity in order to lessen
the disadvantages already guaranteed to their tribe. As a
result, it is not impossible you see an Igbo man born in the
North adopting a Muslim name and refusing his true origin.
It is not by accident that you have several Igbo ethnic groups
located in places like Rivers, Delta and other places, who will
deny their 'Igboship' because an acceptance of their
nationality only guarantees them pains. It is not unknown
that Yoruba people trapped in Kogi and Kwara States
routinely deny their Yoruba ancestry because it only assures
them pains and disadvantages.
Until the question of Nigeria nationality is clarified, which
can only be answered when we are capable of producing a
template, an identity of who a Nigerian is regardless of his
tribe, ethnicity or religion, we can never birth a true Nigerian
nation.

***

Let me share an experience with you. I was in Abuja with a

friend; a gentleman came to see me in my hotel room with a
friend of his who happened to be a

162
policeman serving in Kogi State; somewhere in, or around the
Okene axis. There had been a spate of kidnapping, armed
robbery and general gun crimes around the area, and a special
taskforce was set up to investigate the proliferation of guns.
Not long after, the taskforce had a lucky break. They arrested
a group of people with guns. On interrogating them, they
confessed they didn't bother carrying the arms across state
lines themselves.
They simply hand the guns over to Dangote truck drivers
who cross state lines with impunity and without having
policemen check them. They then meet up at the trailer park
in Obajana, and retrieve the weapons that have been ferried
across the state lines for them!
The incident set me thinking, and I asked myself: Dangote
would certainly not have intended for his trucks to become
courier servicemen for armed robbers and kidnappers. He has
certainly, even if only at corporate levels, fallen victim serially
of these nefarious activities. But because the Nigeria State has
enabled an environment where the man you pay less than
N50,000 in some cases is armed and on the road, a secondary
economy has sprung up; one in which official roadblocks
have been erected on all our major highways. These official
roadblocks operate not to detect or prevent any crime, but
essentially for policemen to augment their meagre salaries.
In looking at the state of the Nigerian police or state within
a State, we must not look at it in isolation. We have to examine
it holistically, taking cognisance of the totality of the State
itself, and how several layers have evolved simply because
the environment has enabled them. If you pay a person as
poorly as you pay the Nigeria policemen, and thereby tolerate
the corruption in that entity, you
163
have directly or indirectly enabled the existence of the
madness itself.
The Nigeria police personnel are not different from the
Nigeria Custom Services and the Nigeria Immigration
Service. Nobody goes to the Immigration office without
“shaking body”. It is a function of the need to preserve
advantages, and in preserving those advantages, there is also
the need to equalise them. If Dangote, for instance, a child of
the favoured wife must run his business without interference
by the police, it simply means that you cannot stop his trucks
as you deem fit on the roads because doing so would infringe
on his advantages. If I am a Dangote truck driver and I know
that I am immune to the checkpoints on the roads, of course,
I will seek to augment my income. Whether that was the
intention of the person to whom the advantage has been
preserved is immaterial. Everybody is seeking to amplify.
Dangote gets his own advantages and I become collateral
beneficiary of the advantages that have been preserved for
him, and we all become collateral damages in the
maintenance of these advantages and disadvantages.

***
I think the usage of the word 'citizenship' in describing the
members of the Nigeria State will continue to generate some
confusion. For you to talk about citizenship there must be
equality of citizenship.
You cannot have true citizenship in an environment where
some citizens are more equal than the others. If a citizen is
more equal than the others either by reason of his tribal or
ethnic affiliation or by reason of his association with certain
persons, what it simply means is

164
that you have reduced the opportunities of some other
persons.
It is in the quest to equalise the disadvantages that
corruption festers. This is why I continually talk about the
nepotistic origin of Nigerian corruption. If the roads are even
for all, then it becomes easy to enforce the rules. But when the
enforcements are not equal, you must always look at the
equality of the citizenship itself.
Another case in point: let's forget whether or not the
people doing the killings in the Benue, Plateau trough and
Taraba, etc. are Fulani herdsmen; let's forget that they are
perhaps, 'Libyan importees' as President Buhari would have
us believe; let us deal with the issue of criminality. If the
people in these areas of incessant violence are truly citizens of
Nigeria to whom the president has sworn an oath to protect
and defend, why has it been impossible to prevent their
killings? Some people are occupying the space vacated by
those being killed. Who are they? Are they superior citizens
and are the dead inferior citizens?
Therefore, whether there is contestation of space or not,
the question to be asked is, why is one competing against the
other if the rules are equal, and if the rights are the same?
I reiterate that the reason you see all the madness
around today, is because there is no equality of either of
citizenship or of membership -- as I would prefer to put it, and
because that equality isn't there; the rules cannot be equally
applied.
As often happens: over 300 people have been killed in a
town; the police would parade about a dozen people, who
purportedly carried out the carnage, but you soon found out
that those being paraded are
165
actually members of the same ethnic group that have just been
slaughtered; people who themselves might have lost family
members in the killings, and who ultimately were actually
seeking reprisals by the time they were rounded up!
Taraba State represents one of the clearest tragedies of our
nation today. One of its eminent sons, General T.Y. Danjuma
came out and was shouting “oh, the Nigerian Army is
compromised and is actually facilitating the killings of my Jukun
people” in that part of the country! What is conveniently
forgotten is that: T. Y. Danjuma is one of the architects of the
new Nigeria State that has morphed into what it has become
today. He was there at the murder of Aguiyi Ironsi. They were
the people shouting “Areba! One North!” They were the ones
who believed more in the Northern part of Nigeria than in
Nigeria itself.

***
Dealing with persons would obscure the truth, but it is very
important that we go back a little in history.
At the dawn of Independence in Nigeria, particularly the
events leading to the 1950 constitutional conference in Ibadan,
the British officials such as the last Governor of Northern
Nigeria, Sir Bryan Sherwood Smith, advised the merging of
Northern political clans. There were constitutional guarantees
demanded by the North -- (But always as Friends; Northern
Nigeria and the Cameroon 1921-1957).
One of them was that the number of legislatures to come
to the Central legislative body must be equal in number to the
combined number of both Eastern and Western
representatives. At that period in time, efforts were made by
successive Northern leaders,

166
particularly of Fulani stock, to ensure that the minority
groups in the North never saw themselves as anything but
Northerners. They fostered this illusion and it remained in
place largely so in spite of the different problems that existed
during the years.
During the military years, we witnessed meetings of
Northern State Governors of Nigeria. Everything was done to
ensure that the North saw itself as a single monolithic entity.
Now, in all of these, you will find that in the years preceding
the Civil War, and particularly during the war, the core of
officers from the Northern part of Nigeria were mostly made
up of Middle Belt people. Officers in the like of Joseph
Nanven Garba, Yakubu Gowon, T. Y Danjuma, Atom Perra,
Ibrahim Babangida and a whole lot saw themselves first as
Northerners.
They didn't see themselves as Fulani, Hausa, Manga,
Berom but as Northerners. And they helped to perpetuate the
myth of a single North. Some of the most notorious and
genocidal killers during the civil war were Middle Belt
officers. They were particularly violent and visceral in their
hatred of the Igbo.
It was almost as if they were out to prove to their Fulani
masters that they were loyal to the Northern cause. It was an
exercise in attesting their worth and they did everything
unspeakable to earn their “Northerner-ness”.
The Asaba massacre springs to mind.
It was an opportunity for them to acquire their
membership of the Northern clan, more of an opportunity to
prove that they were indeed Northerners. T. Y Danjuma never
saw the Nigerian Army as being anything but Nigerian even
though that might be a euphemism for
167
'Northern' until his people became the recipients of the
brutality of the Nigerian Army. It was then he began to
remember that even though he might be called a Northerner,
he is a Jukun. For T.Y Danjuma, one of the greatest
beneficiaries of the Nigerian Army to suddenly recall that the
Army is not after all Nigerian but Fulani, shows how the circle
has finally come back in full swing.

***
One of the errors we have made as a people, especially the
Southern part of Nigeria, is that we have always perpetuated
the myth of the “stupid Hausa/Fulani man”.
To understand the emergence of Yakubu Gowon as Head
of State, you would have to go back to the events in the
immediate aftermath of the 1966 coup.
Yakubu Gowon had just returned to Nigeria when
Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, the most senior army officer
from the North, had just been killed in the coup. This must be
viewed in the contexts the myth that was being perpetuated
and developed at this time was of a “One North”.
An indissoluble North!
In his book, The Siege of a Nation, General Chris Ali
recounted an experience he had with the late Sardauna of
Sokoto.
Ali had finished school and needed a job, and the Sardauna
had asked one of the ministers to get him one. Now, this
minister kept Chris Ali on a string and made him to keep
coming back repeatedly for the job, which he never got. Chris
Ali made it clear that he was discriminated against on the
basis of his Christian background and the fact that he was

168
from an ethnic minority in the North.
When the second coup happened, one of the spearheads,
Murtala Muhammed, didn't have seniority over Yakubu
Gowon. His goal was secession ab initio. Yakubu Gowon was
a middle-of-the-road solution by the Northern groups that
were actually the ones that carried out the coup. Having killed
Aguiyi-Ironsi and having decided to stay within the Nigeria
Federation, there was the need to preserve the order of
military hierarchy at least, as far as it related to the North.
Yakubu Gowon, being the most senior surviving military
officer of Northern extraction, superseded his seniors such as
Vice Admiral Joseph Edet Akinwale Wey and became the
Head of
State!
He didn't become the Head of State without a plan.
It was of strategic importance that the illusion of a united
Nigeria or at least, a united army could be preserved, and that
could not be sustained if they brought a Murtala Muhammed.
It was bad enough the Southern senior army officers were
bypassed after the murder of Ironsi. Northern officer corps
was effectively in charge of Nigeria. In order to preserve
Northern unity and maintain esprit de corps, it had to be the
most senior of Northern officers that would succeed the late
General J.T.U Aguiyi-Ironsi.
Let us also revisit the assassination of Murtala
Muhammed. By the time he died, the most senior officer of
Northern extraction didn't become Obasanjo's deputy. They
had to promote a Northern officer of Fulani stock. He was
given a double promotion from being a lieutenant colonel
and, thus, was pushed two ranks ahead of his peers so he

169
became qualified to serve as Obasanjo's deputy.
In fact, all accounts of that time show that it was T.Y
Danjuma who insisted that Obasanjo must become the Head
of State -- being the most senior officer, and the second in
command to the assassinated Head of State. The illusion that
Gowon somehow represented evidence of Northern unity,
nothing could be farther from the truth. It was real politics at
work.

***
Nations are founded on citizenships and are cemented by the
blood and sweat of patriots. This I said deliberately earlier to
attempt to break the enigma of citizenship into simple bites so
it becomes easier to digest. Allied to this is my cautious
distinction between a State and a Nation. We use the words
interchangeably but they must be understood in context.
A Nation may exist within a State but when a State exists
within the State, then, you are dealing with a failed or failing
State. I also explained earlier that there must be a distinction
made between membership of a State and citizenship of that
State, and I broke it down further to explain that you really
cannot speak of patriotism or demand patriotism from a man
to whom you have not given citizenship.
Now, the existence of multiple levels of citizenship
denotes inequality within a State. If you have multiplicity of
citizenship, which denotes inequality within the State, it
becomes impossible to demand patriotism from a man to
whom you have denied citizenship.
If we may, let us step briefly away from Nigeria. Let's take
a visit to apartheid South Africa. The Black South African
didn't have the same rights as the

170
white South African. How just could it be to demand
patriotism from the Black South Africans whom you have
denied citizenship rights?
Back to Nigeria. If a citizen of Osun State extraction is
denied admission into a university having scored 250, and
another Nigerian from Kano or Kwara State, as the case may
be, gains admission into the same university having scored as
low as 180 or less -- even though they went to the same
Primary and Secondary Schools, probably sat close to each
other in that exam -- yet, he is admitted while the other is
denied admission, how then do you turn around and demand
patriotism from the disfavoured citizen?
When it comes to the time to be employed, because of
quota system, he, who scored low in the examination, is
employed by practically all the preferred federal government
organisations in Nigeria and the other is not to be employed
simply because he comes from a different state! Yet, they are
both citizens of Nigeria!
Or they joined the army on the same day and because of
quota system, he, who scored lowest mark gets accelerated
promotion; gets preferred assignments; while the other has
patriotism demanded of him!
When it comes to battlefield assignments, the
disadvantaged citizen is preferred but for JTF assignments
and positions to go and “chop,” the Northerner is chosen
ahead of others! Yet you are asking patriotism of the
disfavoured -- when memberships of citizenship are not equal
either in context or reality.
***

171
The issues undermining the advancement of the Nigeria State
are directly traceable to the quest for equalisation of
citizenship as earlier observed.
In the same breath, recall that during Obasanjo's years
when Bola Ahmed Tinubu created the Local Council
Development Authorities (LCDAs) in Lagos State, and there
was so much brouhaha about Obasanjo refusing to recognise
these entities, the general belief was that, this was Obasanjo
in his true element. A lot of political commentators said as
much. Tinubu himself did a fantastic job of laying the blame
at Obasanjo's doorstep. Without presuming to hold brief for
Aremu, I prod you to remember that today, Tinubu is one of
the people who facilitated the emergence of Buhari.
Buhari is in power today but those LCDAs remain LCDAs
and have not become Local Government Areas. The reasons
are simple. Allocation of funds takes its origin from Local
government. Therefore, Kano State which has had Jigawa
taken out of it has more Local Government Areas than Lagos
State. Jigawa that came out from Kano has more Local
Government Areas than Lagos State, yet, the population of
Lagos State keeps growing on a daily basis. The Nigeria State
-- in order to preserve the advantages that have been reserved
for a section of the country – has made it impossible for states
like Lagos to create Local Government Areas so that it doesn't
take away the advantages that have hitherto been preserved
for that section.
I don't hear Tinubu making noise again about those
LCDAs because today, it is the same APC government at the
centre that is in power in Lagos State. Obviously, you have a
situation where there is a self-perpetuating system that is
designed not necessarily to
172
liberate or to in any way, shape or form, do anything for the
people.
The system perpetuates itself by disseminating lies and
perpetuating myths. If the people begin to deal with the
specificity of their problems and stop chasing shadows,
therein lies the destruction of the very system that we are
operating today. If Tinubu would spend as much time talking
about the inequalities in the system that have made it
impossible for Lagos State to have 51 LCDAs recognised,
what would Buhari say? The same Tinubu today cannot find
his voice now that the APC government he helped to enthrone
is talking about complete aversion for restructuring. But it is
easy to blame the PDP for everything that ails Nigeria.

***
As Fela would say “the reason for our suffer e don dey show im
face to us....”
If the nature of our suffering is to ever become glaring to
us, one of the things that must happen is equality of
citizenship.
When there is equality of citizenship, you will have less of
a situation where there are more Barcelona supporters in
Nigeria than Nigerians. When you say Nigerians, it implies
the people that have a shared and common destiny. You will
have less Catholics in Nigeria than Nigerians.
What the ruling class has done is that they have broken us
into smithereens so you have sectional interest rather than
national interest. Today, we have people who are prepared to
die for Yoruba interest. We have people prepared to die for
Hausa/Fulani interest. We have people prepared to die for
Igbo interest or Edo interest or

173
Christian interest or Muslim interest because they have
Balkanised the people into tiny fragments.
The fact that there is no commonality of destiny and
interest, what you constantly see is the minuscule sects and
sections into which we have been broken as a people. And
these are self-perpetuating myths. We often speak ignorantly
of Fulani domination! Which Fulani is dominating who? Is it
the poor Fulani man who doesn't have a roof over his head;
whose children are not in any school, and whose future is just
as precarious as the children of the ordinary Southerners?
The ruling elite purport to speak on his behalf, yet he is
just as disadvantaged as the other poor person who is of
Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Berom or Idoma ethnic stocks. Is David
Mark a Fulani man? Is Tinubu a Fulani man? But when it is
convenient for them to turn around and blame the Fulani for
the plights of Nigeria, they do so and will not be incorrect
because those who have appropriated the commonwealth
have done so in the name of the Fulani man as well.

***
The problem of Nigeria begins and ends with the crises of
citizenship. Take away all the tribal, ethnic or religious
subsets and have an identikit of who a Nigerian is, so that the
interests are the same, and the destinies are the same; you will
find that the bulk of the problems would have disappeared.
Citizenship strictly so defined cannot be parasitic! You can
have parasitic membership but not parasitic citizenship,
which can only be symbiotic in nature. It is only membership
that can be parasitic as a result of the existence of multiple
layers of such membership. If we are indeed citizens, it means
that one is as dependent on the

174
other as the other. But when you have parasitic membership,
which is typified by the multiplicity of citizenship levels, you
can then speak directly to parasitic citizenship.
Parasitic membership is a situation where one party
produces and another party consumes, or, at least, a class
appropriates on behalf of the other. The Edo man, the Delta
man, the Ijaw man… produce the wealth of the nation and
then the man who produces nothing takes the lion share, and,
even, he is the one sharing the meat. That is purely parasitic
but you cannot speak of citizenship in those contexts.
What you can speak of would be membership because
citizenship has been denied. If there were indeed citizenship
rights in that space, then, you would not ever have the
situation where one would have to appropriate when he has
not produced. Every time you see the rights of acquisition and
appropriation in the absence of production; it is parasitic and
indicative of the absence of citizenship.

175
 PART 11

SECTION 1

SUNDRY
OTHER ITEMS

TRUTH
&
POLITY (II)

176
 (I)
Corruption of the News

…no one would use the health facilities in

the State where private hospitals have
mushroomed and private schools multiplied

B ECAUSE of an effective ownership, and, or, platforms

for information dissemination, there were few people
able or willing to challenge the claims of Bola Ahmed Tinubu
(BAT) to progressivism. When you juxtaposed his platform
against that of the PDP, which was manifestly and
unashamedly corrupt, and whose excesses were being daily
called out by the propaganda machine and the press outlets
owned directly or indirectly by BAT, it became very easy to
brand the PDP as thieves and the AC/ACN as progressives.
The record doesn't bear this out.
Nineteen years of Tinubu's hegemony in Lagos State
hasn't birthed anything beyond noise, propaganda and
poverty. The educational system in Lagos State hasn't got any
better, if anything, it has got worse. His reign has brought
increasing privatisation of commonwealth. Tolls have sprung
up on roads that are barely motorable; private schools have
taken the place of public schools; the health sector has all but
collapsed, and I very much doubt if anybody who has a choice
would use the health facilities in the State where private
hospitals have mushroomed and private schools multiplied.
Yet, the constant claims are those of being progressive. But
you may then begin to ask yourself: exactly what is
progressive beyond the stealing?

177
Therefore, when I talk of the “thinking thieves” and the
“unthinking thieves”, I speak essentially to the realities that
both sides are undeniably bedfellows. It is just that, when you
look at the Tinubu system and mode of stealing, you will find
out that, in fact, the loot would be budgeted clearly and then,
they would go ahead and rake it into private pockets without
doing the work.
The PDP on the other hand, would not even bother to
pretend to have budgeted for it. They would sit down and
share the loots.
Lagos State has a thousand and one ideas, but they all are
geared towards the actualisation of stealing; not necessarily
motivated by any egalitarian intentions, or to better the life of
the people.
The line between the “thinking thieves” and the
“unthinking thieves” became blurred in 2014 when the latter
became fragmented. Those of them that abandoned ship,
simply found a new abode in the coalition formed between
the most conservative arms of Nigeria -- the Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC). The few thinking ones amongst
the PDP thieves, who for reason of self-preservation, jumped
ship and the “thinking thieves” of the AC/ACN under the
headship of Tinubu, gave rise to a coalition of “thinking
thieves” and ethnic irredentists, coming together under the
All Progressive Congress (APC).
The situation has not radically changed. The reason you
will find out that it was very easy for some people who had
hitherto left the PDP to simply go back. None of these political
parties is ideologically driven. It is all about self-interest. The
man who left the PDP simply went back to the party because
there was, is, and, no material
178
difference in terms of ideological framework. They are all
thieves; it is just a function of which one is the thinking one
and which is unthinking and boorish in its approach to self-
serving leadership.
In retrospect, APC and PDP are two hands of a leper. Chief
Bola Ige it was who spoke about the “five fingers of a leprous
hand” and I remember vividly this was at a time we had five
political parties during the regime of General Sani Abacha. As
leprous as the five fingers could be, the only thing that unified
them was basically, their common romance with the Abacha
dictatorship. What we, however, have at the moment is that,
the two political parties dominating the landscape are barely
different from each other. The two hands of a leper herewith,
refer to the reality of lack of differentiation between the two
political parties. They are mirror images, six and half a dozen
and are Siamese twins, principally inseparable.

****

179
 (II)

Idiocy of the Middle Class

When you are focused on the mundane,

you are very unlikely to consider
higher ideals of nation building…

W HAT might baffle my reader is the realisation that

Nigeria, unlike most nations of the world, does
not essentially have a middle class, or, if ever in existence is
outright idiotic. It is just that we like to lie to ourselves since
we are often accustomed to adopting foreign terminologies
wholesale. There is essentially a Pendulum Class in Nigeria,
which implies that, you are either rich or poor or you are
constantly oscillating between the two classes.
Even those who are materially wealthy are intellectually
poor. The reason you will find that even a minister who has
stolen enough to last him ten lifetimes is still motivated into
action by poverty. When I speak of the idiocy of the middle
class, though it could be extended to include the existential
choices that we all constantly make, which are not always
influenced by higher ideals, it is almost always about: 'how
will I live;' 'how do I ensure that I don't become poor; 'how do
I guarantee that I remain economically relevant?'
'How do I survive?'
When this becomes systemic, you find that people who
ordinarily shouldn't have existential considerations impede
their decision-making processes are unable to help
themselves and are still locked into that existential mode of
reasoning.

180
 ***
Looking at the Ekiti gubernatorial elections of 2018 as case in
point, an appalling situation which will soon be replicated
across Nigeria, you will discover how an entire state decided
who governs it. Of course, I am sure there would inevitably
be some pockets of resistance or opposition, but when you
have the majority approaching 80 per cent, it is safe to
generalise in this proportion.
An entire state made a choice based on existential
considerations. Five Thousand Naira! I am told in some Local
Government Areas, as much as N20, 000 exchanged hands.
Those were the considerations that shaped the choice the
people made.
Amongst the people making these choices were those we
would typically refer to as the middle class. There were
professionals amongst them; there were teachers; there must
have been some mechanics -- these constitute the
professionals. But, when the people have been pauperised,
and the constant preoccupation is “how do I survive?” as a
friend once said to me while quoting someone, “rationality
ends when hunger begins”. As basic as this statement might
seem, it is not simplistic when you begin to deconstruct and
examine its veracity.
How rational can a hungry man possibly be? And the
reality is that this is the ever-present state of the Nigerian
middle class. If he is not intellectually destitute or impoverish,
he is, in fact, living with the spectre of hunger constantly on
his back. We may sit down and be chattering about the
logicality and illogicality of the citizens' actions but how
reasonable do we indeed expect the
181
citizen to be when he is regularly in a state of hunger? The
middle class is idiotic, yet we have to examine who exactly is
the member of that middle class.
When I use the word “middle class”, I am using it
advisedly knowing that it doesn't seem like the one you will
find in advanced society.
In Nigeria, you are either rich or you are poor.

****

182
 (III)

Truth as the Silver Bullet

…if a man is capable of weaponising poverty,

weaponising ignorance, the truth
may also be weaponised

I T is often said that “when you want to kill a vampire, use a

silver bullet”. Actually, when you understand that the
Nigeria State is as bloodthirsty as a vampire, you will then
begin to question in your good conscience, how to destroy
such evil in our midst. It was at this juncture of truth it
dawned on me that the only way we can truly confront and
overcome the evil is to tell the unadulterated truth; because,
the truth remains the only imperishable weapon the
ubiquitous social ills can neither destroy nor withstand.
Long after the truth-teller is dead, the truth told by him
lives on. I once had a debate with a friend; it happened that
we were both listening to a song by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, and
I quipped, “Fela is a prophet”. My friend, Taiwo Akinlami,
refuted this; revealing that “Fela was not a prophet but a truth-
teller”. When I prodded him further to shed light, he rightly
pointed out the difference.
A prophet says what will happen in the future based on
irrational truth; he examines the situation and says, “Oh, that
person is going to become the president of Nigeria”. Though, such
a person might never even have joined any political party
before, might not even have been born yet; the prophet
foresees the future and reveals it in the present. What this
means is that, Fela constantly told the

183
prevalent truth but the society about whom he was telling the
truth was impervious to change. Therefore, what he said
about the society remains the truth and, because the society
has refused to change, Fela's words now acquires colouration
of the prophetic when ordinarily it was simply the truth.
After my friend expanded his point thus, I began to have
a second view of the man, Fela; and I started to take another
look at him.
I have found that Taiwo was completely correct. There is
nothing prophetic about Fela. He was just a courageous man
who told the truth. Now, if Fela's truth over the years has not
changed Nigeria, how would the truth told by any other
person, including me, be able to change Nigeria? This is a
logical question to ask. My own view is that, Fela told the
truth without an agenda. Basically, he said what he saw and,
was in most cases, merely reacting to the system.
Evil systems have always thrived on reactions because it
is all well and good to rant that: the system is corrupt, Buhari
is no difference from a crook, Obasanjo is a thief, and Tinubu
is a looter. All of those could be said but are they true?
Emphatically yes! What does it change? Nothing!
For every one of you that are calling them thieves, know
there are ten others hailing them as messiahs. And, it is the
survivor who tells the stories. But if you weaponise the truth,
it becomes a weapon the very moment you tell it while
showing an alternative to the falsehood it negates.
Accordingly, if a man is capable of weaponising poverty,
weaponising ignorance; the truth may also be weaponised.
Hence, when I speak of the truth as the silver bullet, it is
the weaponised truth as distinct from the reactionary truth.
The weaponised truth is when you
184
stand in a place and say: you know what -- the myth of one
Nigeria is a lie, and the myth of a monolithic North is a fat lie.
Afterwards, you then begin to weaponise the truth by
breaking your assertion into bits.
***
All of a sudden, Samuel Ortom was going to be impeached by
a minority number of lawmakers. The people threatening to
unseat him were not from Zamfara, or Katsina; they were also
Benue indigenes. Ortom, for those who sympathised with
him, is a victim of a most rapacious APC government under
the leadership of Buhari.
But, here is the point: Buhari didn't take legislators from
Katsina to chase after Ortom. It was the legislators in Ortom's
own state, right there, that were recruited to do the dirty job.
And if Ortom was indeed, fighting for Benue people, would
they have found the space to do what they were doing to him?
Thus, if you are going to weaponise the truth in such
environment, you should look at the nuances and request to
decipher the reason such people have gained a foothold. What
are the agenda that they are pursuing? Whose script are they
acting? What lessons have we learnt from the
impeachments in Plateau, in Bayelsa, in Ekiti, and in Oyo
State? All under the same Obasanjo.
You will now find that when certain scripts are being acted
out, they are not new however spectacular, if you look at them
critically.
Something made the condition favourable for those things
to be done and until the underlining issue is adequately dealt
with, it is like using Panadol for a malaria-induced headache
without treating the actual cause. What you get is a palliative;
it is only a matter of time, it will
185
reinforce. The magic bullet, I repeat for emphasis, is the
weaponised truth and not just any genus of truth, as anyone
would have you believe. The silver bullet, with which one
may slay the evil system governing Nigeria, is the truth.

****

186
 (IV)

The Stubborn and Unpalatable Truth

…some person or persons intent on mischief have

bewitched the witch hunters of Aso Rock

I N the immediate aftermath of the Plateau massacre, the

news wave and blogosphere were abuzz with statements
credited to a man named Danladi Ciroma. He was said to
have ascribed the carnage to retaliation for the loss of 300
herds of cattle allegedly rustled in the community where the
massacre took place. He was further alleged to have said that
the equation remained unbalanced until there are equal
numbers of human deaths, for the lost cattle.
A couple of days later, I watched Usman Baba Ngelzerma,
the National Secretary of Miyetti Allah on Channels TV as he
strenuously denied and dissociated his association from the
statement purportedly issued by the Plateau Zonal chairman
of the association. He declared that Ciroma lacked the
capacity to speak for the association; that he spoke what had
to be deemed his own mind.
The Channels presenters delivered a coup de grace, they
called him on the phone, and the hapless Ciroma was given
the opportunity to clarify his alleged statement. I heard him
admit talking to the journalist. I also heard him denying that
he said the words that were credited to him. The clearly
annoyed National Secretary disowned Ciroma on national
television, even as Ciroma laboured to deny the statement.
Ngelzerma was on other news channels for days, thereafter,
diligently disowning Ciroma.

187
 The corrigendum published by Premium Times, the
original platform that broke the news, silenced the critical
mass of Nigerians perturbed by the brazenness of Ciroma's
then denied outburst, and the truth became clouded, if not
lost, in the noise generated by the deliberate and vociferous
campaign to discredit and obfuscate the issues raised. That
was where we were.

***
Amongst the Yoruba, there's a tree credited with mythical
powers; it is known as Ọ̀bọ̀. It is said that when the bark of this
tree is soaked in water, any Àjẹ,́ (witch, our local airforce) that
drinks the water will begin to involuntarily and
spontaneously, confess her witchcraft, and recount her
exploits as a member of the coven.
It is my humble submission that some person or persons
intent on mischief have bewitched the witch-hunters of Aso
Rock. The bark of Obo, has found its way into the water
sources of seat of power.
First it was the Defence Minister, who told Nigerians that
the terrorist herdsmen would cease killing the very people he
swore to protect, if the anti-grazing laws of the states of
Taraba and Benue are abrogated. The Inspector General of
Police soon echoed the defence minister, and not long after,
our incorruptible president was quoted as asking that the
mourning people of Benue should be their brothers' keepers'.
If Danladi Ciroma was indeed misquoted, pray, was Femi
Adesina also misquoted? Femi speaks for the government
and Buhari; what he said was thematically linked to what
each of the others had said: Give up your ancestral home and
land, that you may preserve your lives!

188
The rights of the cows and their owners are superior to those
of the Nigerians that they are pretending to serve.
Let those who will be confused by the evidence of their
own senses continue in their solidarity with the lies of Buhari,
but let those with ears, digest the truths being told by this
government. Time was when all we had to go with was the
body language of Buhari and his men. These days, they're
speaking loudly, and the truth is coming out unfiltered.

****

189
 (V)

Power Corrupts...

… the very first step is to constrain powers

of the State byraising institutions;
and diminish powers of individuals…

I FIRST came into contact with Lord Acton's quote, I believe

during my father's spectacularly failed attempt at
remediation of my insufficient O' Level credits, when he sent
me to Olivet Baptist Grammar School in Oyo to study for my
A 'Levels, whilst also rewriting my O' Levels. A story for
another day.
How I made an A1 in Government at O' Levels remains a
mystery, but I somehow convinced WAEC I was worthy of an
A. So, Government it was, and a couple of other Art subjects
for A Level. At some point, Lord Acton's quote stuck in my
head. “Power corrupts… Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Nigeria has proved this declaration beyond even the most
liberal of doubts; and Acton's declaration was a truism for me,
until I was schooled by a man with an even heavier burden
for Nigeria.
“Power Corrupts!” he said the words quietly, but they were
loud in my ears. He argued that the entire quote by Lord
Acton could be thus summarised with these two words. The
primary purpose of power, he argued, is to corrupt; and that
consequently, the madness of the Nigerian environment is
directly traceable to the very foundation of the State. The
powers of the Nigeria State are not subject to the rule of any
law; they are designed to be the

190
diktats of men. The law was never meant to rule the Nigeria
State as is, rather it is to be ruled by men; we concluded.
The president in his speech at a recent NBA conference
wasn't saying anything we did not know already. What he did
was to count aloud the digits of an amputee. For those of you
making noise about Rule of Law in knee-jerk reaction, check
with your conscience; what did you say when your favourite
crooks sat in Bubu's chair?
As I have watched the Trump Presidential Reality Show,
the concept of the rule of law as a bulwark against the rule of
men, is being tested out in real time. The president that the
architects of the American State, her founding fathers, feared
the most, and who the State was originally designed to
withstand, is in office!
America's national Interests, however urgent the executive
might assert, remain firmly subsumed beneath the rule of law.
Nigeria's national Interests, by comparison, remain whatever
the president or his appointee says they are. Or so they'd love
for it to be, and so it would be; if we kept the peace of the
graveyard.
The challenge before the Nigerian is to curb the corrosive
and corruptive impulses of the State and its functionaries, but
the very first step is to constrain the powers of the State by
raising institutions, even as we diminish the unaccountable
powers of individual functionaries of the government and its
agencies.
****

191
 (VI)

Truth in the Age of Fake News...

We treat ourselves worse than they treat us, and what

they do to us, humane in comparison to how we daily
de-humanise ourselves.

T RUTH is the easiest of the definitions I must attempt in

the task that I have set for myself. And while the
emotional, the unwise and, or, mischievous might have
multiple meanings for what the truth is, the divinity of truth
demands that if the thing were true, it must be definitive in
nature, and unambiguous in clarity.
Constance, hallmarks truth.
The term, Fake News, came into mainstream usage in the
age of Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States of
America. It is the name by which politicians and world
leaders, everyday people, and State actors have come to
define any piece of news item, be it based on facts, or not, that
they consider incompatible with the alternative facts, that
they would prefer to have the public believe.
President Trump has elevated the obfuscation of truth into
an art form.
The challenge for those who thirst for truth in the age of
Trump, the emerging world order, and who would be wise is
to embrace the truth wherever we might have found it.
Observe the truth, even as a mirror, and learn the lessons it
teaches. Do this, even when the truth comes with pain, and is

192
told by entities or persons unmotivated by love.
The truth remains the truth, regardless of the vessel of its
dissemination.
Shithole countries! That was attributed to Donald Trump
by the way. And you guessed right: Fake News, he declared.
Our very own stainless 'Saint', standing in the Rose Garden at
the White House, declared him guiltless, and our own youth,
Buhari labelled as “entitled” and “spoilt”. Sai Baba! Trump
must have halla-ed, just before he tagged Bubu “lifeless”, but
for all that we know, just another fake news. We kukuma treat
ourselves worse than they treat us, and what they do to us is
humane in comparison to how we daily de-humanise
ourselves.

***
I was the recipient of a quote attributed to Vladimir Putin, and
I was in so much pain, that I had to switch off my brain for a
while, so that I might dull the pains I felt.

“When an African becomes rich,

his bank accounts are in Switzerland.
He travels to France for Medical treatment.
He invests in Germany.
He buys from Dubai.
He consumes Chinese.
He prays in Rome or Mecca.
His children study in Europe.
He travels to Canada, USA, Europe for tourism.
If he dies, he will be buried in his native country of Africa.
Africa is just a cemetery for Africans.

193
 How could a cemetery be developed?”

I expect Putin to decline ownership of this quote; after all, he

has refused to own his ultimate victories over the West.
Behold Agent Orange, and the unfolding carnage that is
Brexit. Putin has won strategic advantages, and his vision for
Russia, very close to fulfilment, and successful beyond his
own best expectations. But he has been reticent about owning
the works he did in the dark. He might just declare the quote
to be fake news; it would be impolitic to own the words,
rather like the Vanguard man, and his “sophisticated morons.”

***
Let us forget the provenance of the quote for a while. Let us
accept that it doesn't matter who uttered the words. Let us
together, as rational beings, ponder the message, and forget
the messenger. Are these words true? Do they reflect the
realities of our lives as a race? These are the questions that
should agitate the minds of every conscious person of African
origin.
In the world of Putin, Trump, Brexit, and the obviously
evolving new world order, the rise of Chinese hegemony, and
the conscienceless nudity of Saudi and Arab power, what are
the motivations behind the exertions of the black race? Where
are our original thoughts? What are the overarching goals of
the black race?
It doesn't matter if Trump said it. Putin might very well
have been credited with the words of another man, and
Buhari might very well be full of life, and not quite the
'lifeless' cadaver of Trump and Kanu's imaginations. But the

194
search for the authors must not detract from the validity of
the truths that they have spoken.
Patrick Wilmot once spoke of the hand holding up the
mirror. It doesn't matter if the beholder enjoys the reflection
he sees, cutting off the hand that holds the mirror, matters
little; the mirror reflects only what it sees. Is our country truly
a shithole? And is our continent any different from the
cemetery? These are the truthful words to ponder, and the
true measures of our tragedies.
Ponder the truth, in the age of Fake News....

****

195
 (VII)

Big Blind Vision

Nigeria's primary problem is to have been cursed

with the leadership of very ambitious men,
with little or no vision.

Wó̩n fi è̩tè̩ sí'lè̩, wó̩n ń'pa làpá làpá.

T
HEY ignore the leprosy; and pursue the cure for
ringworm.
One of the enduring words in the political lexicon of
the Nigerian nation is “corruption”. I first started having
my senses and life serially assaulted by this word while yet in
my early teenage years. The politician of the Second Republic
tossed the word around liberally, and so did those who
galvanised public opinion against bad governance. Everyone,
from the corrupt leaders to the Rights crusaders railed against
corruption, and; the unanimity of opinions, private and
public, is that corruption is the reason our country has been
in a suicidal dash for State failure and the Stone Age. I could
not disagree more.
I was taught the English language, and I am still a student
of the language. But I was born a Yoruba man, and that is the
language of my thoughts, and my dreams. I think in Yoruba,
and translate or transliterate depending in the circumstances,
into the English Language. The Yoruba language does not
have a word that may be translated to mean 'corruption'. Yet
some of the most corrupt leaders of Nigeria have come from
my home… Yorubaland is just

196
as afflicted as the rest of the country. Every language is a
reflector of the people's customs and mores, and I make bold
to say that corruption is alien to the Yoruba culture. That is
why we never evolved a word for what is today called
corruption in our country.
There have been several anti-corruption crusades, wars
and circuses and yet the situation has grown empirically
worse. Corruption has become the biggest industry in
Nigeria. Every aspect of our national life is corrupt and
evidences of the putrefaction caused by corruption abound all
around us, and confront our daily existence. We rank pretty
high in all indexes adopted for the measurement of
corruption. Even David Cameron (former Prime Minister of
United Kingdom), also became affected with the intellectual
indolence that has led to the mischaracterisation of the
Nigeria problem.
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, a man distinguished by his
happiness with simple thoughts, came close when he said that
our problem is not corruption, but stealing. He was excoriated
without attention being paid to his words, or any critical
analysis being undertaken. He was right up to a point.
The single reason for our national malaise is
visionlessness. A cliché: “The eyes are useless, when the mind is
blind”. We have for too long been blinded as a nation,
forgotten who we are, and oblivious to whom we can be. Our
blindness is multi-dimensional and total darkness has
enveloped our nation for too long.
Spiritual blindness has replaced Godliness in our nation,
and vacuous religiosity has taken the place of true faith and
worship. We love God, and our beautiful churches and
mosques are altar to the depth and breadth of our love for the
Almighty creator of heaven and
197
earth, but we hate his creation to the point of appointing
ourselves God's deputies, and we kill in His holy name.
We profess the one living God in public but in dark places,
we worship at altars that we condemn by day. Some play God
and presume to have the powers of promotion and demotion,
evil exercises of powers, without authority. Men forget the
day of death.
***
The Yoruba say “Olówó kan láàárín òtòs̩ ì mé̩ta, òtòs̩ ì ni gbogbo
wo̩ n”. We have in our blind pursuit of private wealth,
impoverished ourselves. Let me use a well-known example,
Operation Feed the Nation (OFN).
Baba Aremu came to power in 1976, I was eight years old
at the time, memories of those years have started fading, but
I remember Operation Feed the Nation. It was always being
yelled at you from the transistor radios everyone seemed to
have at the ready in those days and when the television comes
on for the day around 4.30pm, Uncle Sege, in his khaki shorts
with his hoe nestling on his shoulder, was there to remind you
of the virtues of farming. We know how that ended, or has
continued till date.
I am now 51 years old (being born in 1968). Operation Feed
the Nation is arguably the largest and most profitable farm
holding in Nigeria, if not in Africa -- mostly retired generals,
former governors and foreigners own the closest to it. The
Nigerian farmer remains an endangered species, because of a
national vision for a true agricultural revolution; what we
have had over the years has been a visionless pursuit of
private ambitions and greed.
Today, we remain a nation that cannot feed itself.
We import practically everything we eat. I am not talking
about the criminal importation of
198
expired frozen or embalmed chicken. I speak of basic things
like tomatoes, tatashe, potatoes, different peppers and
vegetables of all types. More than 70 per cent of the protein
consumed in our nation is purchased with scarce foreign
exchange.
Trillions of Naira. The evidence of the visionlessness of our
agricultural exertions is clear for all to see.
***
I started my education at the Jeleosinmi at Church Eleja around
Queen Elizabeth Road, Mokola in Ibadan. The Jeleosinmis --
roughly translated as “Let the household have some rest” -- are
the precursors and forerunners of today's Nursery schools. I
must have been around 30 to 36 months old when I was
enrolled. I would walk with my slate held in one hand, and a
bag or sack made of khaki, containing my rag for cleaning the
slate and my chalks.
All of us, the 'disturbers' of different households, would
walk in a single file, the approximately three kilometres, to
the basement of the church where the school was situated. We
learnt our alphabets and we began the clumsy journey to
whatever laid ahead of us. We all remained there until we
were qualified by age to enter primary school.
Primary education was governed by the Free Universal
primary Education policy.
The result today is that we have an army of uneducated
graduates, products of a system built on blindness, and they
are already passing on the same ignorance to the generation
they are teaching and impacting.
Òdo tó ń gbé òdo rá, ignorance is breading ignorance, and
the blind are leading the blind.
Our army evolved as an army of occupation. Its roots and
history are not different from that
199
of the Nigerian Railways and, or the Nigeria State itself. The
railway tracks are the same inherited from the colonial
masters, designed primarily to serve the colonial purpose of
exploitation, and exportation of the wealth and substance of
the colonised. The rail tracks end at the ports and are devoted
to the carriage of raw materials thereto.
The State found its amalgamation in 1914, never the
expression of the will of its blighted and stunted citizens.

***
The British, nay the West, wrote the book on corruption. The
corruption in the western world is built into the system, and
criminologists will tell you that a certain amount of crime is
beneficial to the system.
Before howls of derision from Whitehall, and Albany
begin to greet my broad assertion, I invite you, my reader to
review the live of Mr. Mark Thatcher, son of the late Baroness,
Thatcher, iron lady of the British Realm, conqueror of
delinquent Labour leaders and the epoch defining Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom.
Mark made his first significant wealth from Britain's single
largest sale of arms; a contract to sell arms to the Saudis
signed by his mother in 1985. The al-Yamamah deal. He made
a rumoured 12 million pounds sterling for what Sir Dick
Evans, then head of British Aerospace Companies (BAC) later
described in his book as “…nothing that could be helpful or
useful'. Twenty years later the Tory government has refused
to allow request for papers that might have shown the clear
abuse of office, in defiance and abuse of its own stated
guidelines.
The several Wall Street convictions for corruption, the
success of Bernie Sanders in
200
attacking Hillary Clinton, for her closeness to Wall Street, and
the several political scandals that have engulfed America,
from the Watergate scandal to the Whitewater enquiries are
eloquent testaments to the fact that Nigeria has no patent on
corruption. What we appear to have monopolised is collective
blindness.
Ambition is not to be confused with vision. Ambition
promotes the limited self, and does not see beyond the self.
Vision benefits beyond the person because it always
transcends the self. Nigeria's primary problem and, or,
disease, is to have been cursed with the leadership of very
ambitious men, with little or no vision.
If the future of our children, and our nation is to be
guaranteed, we must begin to envision what future we see for
our children, and our nation; we must move beyond the
narrow prism and pursuit of the self to the articulation and
pursuit of a national vision built on the promotion of the
commonwealth above the interests of the persons, and a
subjugation of personal interest beneath identified national
interest.
Vision is not to be confused with sight; one within the
conquest of human sociology and interactions, vision talks
about purpose, about goals, it is the vehicle with which the
intangible become tangible, and the strength of the vision
channels the powers, resources and capabilities of the
visionary, to the point where the realisation of the vision
becomes an all-encompassing vision for the visionary.
There are clear identifying characteristics of visionary and
vision, and the presence of these identifiers, generally,
signposts the presence of visionary leadership.
I was watching one of the foreign news channels recently,
Sky, I believe and a news item caught
201
my attention. The National Health Service (NHS), the clear
fruit of the visionary leadership of the British people, had
determined that it requires thousands of new doctors and
nurses in the coming decade and, as a result, a debate rooted
in ideology but constrained by vision, had led to a
government policy which was being announced with support
from all sides of the political divide; they would see a spike in
the numbers of student Nurses and Doctors being admitted
with a glow of incentives to encourage young men and
women to consider careers in the health sector.
You will find the same evidence of forward thinking in all
spheres of life, where visionary leadership exists, be it in a
home, a corporate body, or a nation-State. But forward
thinking, which is unaligned to an overarching vision of a
better life for the citizenry only, produces the sad corruption
that we see all around us.

****

202
 (VIII)

Up to the Oppressed to throw off the Oppressor

…this political class must not be trusted to

determine the content and spirit of the restructuring…

H UMAN history is replete with tales of how nations rose

above the limitations of their environments, and,
sometimes, their circumstances, to attain their manifest
destinies. We are not without options, and our oppressors'
greatest weapon is the intellectual indolence occasioned by
the all-encompassing poverty that has become our lot in
Nigeria.
Material poverty predisposes man to predatory
leadership, what dooms him, however, is intellectual
impoverishment. We are only truly imprisoned when our
minds are bound by existential pursuits such as the rat race
the Nigerian is forced to run by reason of our very citizenship.
This awakening is crucial because those who have long
held us bound have begun the groundwork for the next phase
of our total enslavement, and; if we are not to acquiesce and
become complicit to our own rape, we must wake up; arm
ourselves with knowledge, and be prepared before they
come.
The political and economic elite have all come to agree that
the system is broken, and in need of a fix. You would be hard
pressed to find any sane Nigerian who would disagree with
these conclusions, but this is as far as the agreements go. The
substance of the change sought by
203
the political and economic leadership of our country differs
significantly from the one being sought by the citizens.
***
"I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, yet
assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten
his load by all means possible... except by getting off his back."
Leo Tolstoy could very well have been discussing the
Nigerian situation. Indeed, it is up to the oppressed to throw
off the oppressor. In the pursuit of our emancipation as a
people, it is important that we understand the issues, educate
those who may not know, be open to unlearning the lies and
assumptions we have long been fed; and be prepared to
embrace new ideas.
We voted to birth a new country in 1993. The possibilities
of that new country were so scary to the beneficiaries of the
old State that they, without regard to the wishes of Nigerians
of all tribes and creeds, killed it at birth. 'St' Matthews’ of Owu
was deployed to explain how Nigerians in their millions
mistook the signs, and how Abiola wasn't the messiah. He
might very well have been right, but we also are comfortable
in the knowledge that the Ebora of Owu was anything but the
saviour.
In place of a new nation, we were short-changed, and
“power shift" was foisted on us with the unique incongruity
of an unrepentant OBJ -- the main beneficiary of that
wuruwuru.
We know how that went.
When OBJ realised that he had wasted eight years and
achieved nothing enduring, he initiated his moribund tenure
elongation games, and it only ended after he was defeated by
the will of the people and the
204
resolute opposition of the victims of his imperial presidency.
Power did not shift from where it has always resided; it
remains in the hands of whoever the shitstem elects to entrust
it with, and the unfortunate truth that Buhari's ascent to
power should prove is that until the system is changed, a
mere change in personnel will not deliver us to the promised
land.
Buhari's candidacy was marketed as the antidote to the
madness(es) afflicting our land, and you would have been
pardoned if you thought that the messiah had come. After all,
'St' Matthews' joined forces with the Jagaban to endorse his
candidacy to a people starved of hope by the years endured
under GEJ. Only the naive would be surprised that nothing
has changed, except the ongoing circuses of anti-corruption
that serve no purpose beyond the distraction of our people.
I make bold to say that what the Buhari government is
doing is a selective pursuit of perceived enemies; and the
selective nature of his exertions belie their true intentions. A
ringworm curing exercise at the expense of the leprosy that
continues to fester!

***
That the system has become unsustainable should be glaring
to all thinking beings, and the capacity of the Nigerian elite
for self-preservation, is unrivalled. The new mantra in our
nation is restructuring. The stark choices we have to make in
the face of the obvious unsustainability of our current system
have made seeming radicals of otherwise sedate and
conservative voices. Atiku has talked, Gen. Alani Akinrinade
has railed, the brain in Aso Rock has had his say; it is my belief

205
that the citizens also need to be heard.
Every system is designed to achieve set goals and
objectives. The Nigerian system was not designed for the
greater good of the greater number of her citizens; it is a
system designed to maximize the powers and advantages of
a few over the most; colonial in its outlook and in its quest for
the exploitation of the masses for the benefits and advantages
of a few. Its beneficiaries are Nigerians, and that is why it
cannot be called colonialism. Its membership cuts across tribal
and religious lines. Tribal affiliations and religion are only
dredged up when our colonists wish to divide us in order to
conquer us.
The restructuring we must seek is the one that places the
rights and interests of the citizens over and above the narrow
interests of our political overlords. It is obvious that in the
coming winter, we cannot have a governmental structure as
unwieldy as the one we currently operate. 36 states, 36
imperial governors, 36 state legislative houses, 36 set of
commissioners, and 36 different levels of madness! That
Nigeria cannot go on in our current fashion is a self-fulfilling
prophecy; but that this political class must not be trusted to
determine the content and spirit of that restructuring is also
imperative. Indeed, it is the duty of the oppressed to seek his
liberation, not the obligation of the oppressor to loosen the
chains.

****

206
 (IX)

The power of Memorials

…the government has been chief culprit in

enforcement of selective amnesia…

S
.
O I was watching Sky News one morning, and I got caught
up in the memorial service being held in commemoration
of the first anniversary of the Finsbury Park terrorist attack.
In case you missed it, or perhaps do not understand or recall
it; that was the attack by a white supremacist on a Muslim
crowd as they were exiting the mosque at Finsbury Park --
after the evening prayers during the Ramadan fast.
The hateful man drove a van through the crowd, injured
12 Muslim faithful, and killed a father and grandfather. The
dead man was named Makram Ali. I have his name ingrained
into my consciousness because the living refused to allow us
to forget. They have built memorials in his honour, and a
plaque has been unveiled at the local playground where he
played with his children and grandchildren.
I watched the Mayor of London, the leader of the
opposition Labour Party, and other functionaries of
government pay tribute to the memories of the dead, and the
courage of the living. The British refused to forget. The French
president honoured the memory of the policeman who gave
his life to save others in the terrorist attack outside Paris; the
very day we buried murdered soldiers unsung in Kaduna,
whilst the president and governors partied away in Kano.
I have been privileged to travel in the Western world, and this
refusal to forget would appear to

207
hallmark their civilization. Today, however, our own
manifest inability and, or, refusal to remember became even
more painful than usual.
Why have we become a people stripped of the capacity to
remember? I posit that it is because memories are liabilities,
when the lessons taught by the memories are at variance with
the aims of those in power; and threaten the legitimacy of the
powers they wield.
The declaration of June 12 as the authentic Democracy Day
has rightly silenced the “liar of Owu”, and the “devil of
Minna”. It was designed to do exactly that, and whilst I still
believe Buhari to be playing politics, I cannot be happier at
the politics that has provided the opportunity to remember
because we lose everything that should be gained when we
forget, as they had planned that we should.
Selective amnesia has become a national affliction, and the
government has been the chief culprit in the enforcement of
this national malaise. We forget the dead, we forget their
sacrifices, we obfuscate their purposes, we denigrate their
memories; the living in their refusal to remember, jettison the
lessons that should guide the future.
How many remember the thousands killed in the never-
ending terrorist attacks? Why have we no memorials for the
innocents bombed to death and handicapped by the Nigerian
Airforce in Bama? The several victims of the Nyaya bombing;
who remembers them? Why do we always seem in a hurry to
forget?
We have become a people that remember nothing but we
also forget nothing. The Igbo who were not born until years
after the war will regale you with legends of Yoruba betrayal

208
of their forbearers; the Yoruba will tell tales of Northern
oppression; and the beat goes on inexorably.
Lost in the midst of these refusals to forget is the refusal to
remember.
Buhari would love that we remember June 12 for
Obasanjo's egocentric refusal to remember, and for
Babangida's loss of any credibility to speak as a statesman. I
am happy to accommodate him on both counts. But I also
urge that we remember the day and the struggle for reasons
that the powers-that-be would prefer that we forget. The
powers of a people united, the unconscionable powers of a
rogue State that murdered its own citizens in pursuit of
narrow interests; the limits of the repressive powers of the
gun in the face of a people determined to be free, and the
possibilities promised by a united Nigeria.

***
Makram Ali died at 51 years, a victim of hate, but his society
has immortalised his memory, and retained the lessons taught
by his death. What was intended to divide, and a tragedy, has
today become a cause for optimism because the people have
refused to forget. How many such opportunities have we lost;
to remember the lessons taught by events that we have
contrived to forget?
The labours of our heroes past have remained obscured in
the attempt not to amplify the obvious incapacities of our
current dotards, and it is in the obfuscation of this truth that
our current retardation festers.
We have a duty to remember.

****

209
210
 (X)

June 12 and the aborted Nationhood

June 12 is not about a holiday; it is about

the birth of a nation out of the hotchpotch of
the people held bound by the Nigeria State

I WAS resident at Adanla Close, just down the road from

Cassidy Bus Stop at Okokomaiko. IBB had exhausted
the patience of myself and everyone else in my immediate
world, we just wanted him gone; tired of his ceaseless
schemes and experiments.
He had banned and disqualified all the usual suspects, and
up until Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola (MKO) joined
the race, the race had become tedious, repetitive, and
generally boring. MKO's entry into the race changed all that.
He electrified the race, captured the imagination of my
generation, and unleashed the latent energy of a people long
held bound by a leadership devoid of imagination.
MKO fired our imagination with his common touch; his
grass to grace story; his immense capacity for visioning; his
unbridled enthusiasm, and his empathy for the common men
and women of Nigeria. He lived without limits, and we were
enthralled by the strength of his vision. He made us believe
that a better Nigeria wasn't a mirage; his personal story was
evidence of what could be.
Abiola made believers of us, and we believed.
Moshood Kashimawo Abiola was courageous. We were
not unaware of his limitations as a man, we knew he was a
beneficiary of the same system that had kept the country
hobbled, but unlike his friends,

211
he retained his common touch, and whilst his Ali Baba
befriended all the thieves he had also been the Robin Hood that
gave unsparingly to the people. We loved him warts and all,
and when the day came, we were ready to live the dream that
he promised.
In June 12 1993, we awoke to a beautiful sunny day, and I
together with other inmates of Adanla Hostel went out to cast
our votes. Option A4 was the adopted system. We queued
behind our choices, were counted; handed our ballot papers,
and I along with a lot of my friends voted for the very first
time in our lifetime. The day was a beautiful one, it was
peaceful all over the country.
I will not rehash the shenanigans that followed the epochal
events of that day. I have dealt at length with the aftermath in
my memoirs, and I am also aware that the bulk of what really
happened remains shrouded in the many lies that the Nigeria
State has spawned to cover the truth. But IBB and his gang
did more than the annulling of an election; they killed a
nation.
In the battle to enforce the freely expressed will of the
hapless inmates of the Nigeria State, I wasn't an onlooker. We
were the foot soldiers of the ragtag army of romantics; we
were the ones killed in our hundreds by the Nigeria State; it
was my generation that the State used as cannon fodders.
Abacha was the fall guy for a generation of visionless idiots
that, yes, began with IBB, but that number includes the OBJs
of this world in its ranks. Uche Chukwumerije must not be
forgotten, we must remember the Ernest Shonekans…, the list
is long, but our stories must be told.
***

212
 Some have stood on June 12; others have eaten on June 12;
the demagogue of Owu has wiped his dirty yansh on June 12;
saints have been canonised on June 12, political empires have
been built on June 12, and a people have been held captive by
June 12. May the spirit of June 12, continue to haunt the killers
of June 12, and may Obasanjo, the one who knows who is and
who isn't the messiah, become the sacrificial lamb to cleanse
the injustices of June 12, and may its ghost never cease to
haunt him until his dying day. Amen.
June 12 is not about a holiday; it is about the birth of a
nation out of the hotchpotch of the people held bound by the
Nigeria State. We remain in limbo because we continue to
deny the truth of our reality.
Nigeria is a state that has denied citizenship to her inmates,
a denial predicated on a refusal to be just and equitable to all,
regardless of ethnicity and or religious affiliations. This is
why snakes may dance in Igboland, but the same State will
tolerate the pogrom and genocide in the Benue trough and
Southern
Kaduna.
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than the
others.
No Nigerian head of state has done more to undermine the
ideals of June 12 better than Buhari, and whilst I thank him
for his farcical declaration of the holiday, I assure him that we
are not fooled. MKO wasn't elected to rule the Yoruba nation;
he remains the only president to have been elected with a
national mandate, and the chances of nationhood might very
well have been interred with his remains.
I honour the memory of those who died in the struggles to
revive the aborted vision. I salute the

213
spirit of “Emuke Moshudi”(one of Abiola’s monikers) and the
many buried in unmarked graves, victims of a most wicked
and vile State, and I ask the living to spare thoughts for the
families who lost sons and daughters in the struggle, but
whose losses remain unacknowledged. They can take solace
in the knowledge that Nigeria will not achieve nationhood
without acknowledging their sacrifices. On June 12, I remain
standing...

****

214
 (XI)

The arrogance of Foolish Knowledge

The middle class has been conditioned to focus

on existential issues, to the exclusion of
any other preoccupations…

I GOT your attention with the oxymoronic heading for my

essay now, didn't I? I enjoy showing off. But the thing is,
even as I clown I am also being dead serious. A man may be
truly knowledgeable but be unbelievably foolish, all at the
same time. Wisdom after all, is to be found in the application
of knowledge, not in its acquisition.
I am not blind to the very real and original sin of the like
of me, who in spite of knowing the truth, and sometimes
living truthfully in their private space, assume their false
pulpits -- religious and secular -- rail against the system, but
fall short of articulating viable alternatives behind which the
people may be united and galvanized.
Guilty as charged.
My current bug-bear however, is to be found with the
arrogance of foolish knowledge. I plead guilty to this most
foul of idiocy myself, and I urge that you hold yourself guilty
in advance. It makes the task of repentance that much easier.
If you are a member of the asphyxiating Nigerian middle
class, raise your hand.

***
How can these Ekiti people sell their votes? Shut up! Do you
know what it means to be

215
hungry? If you once were, do you remember how it felt now?
Do you remember the stomach-churning pains? The ones that
come from the seeming absence of anything for the worms in
your stomach, and being hungry they have decided to
manage your innards?
Do you remember?
If you have ever felt, or you can use your privileged
education in some elitist past that had included stints in the
boarding schools, and hostels of my youth, be that in Nigeria,
or abroad, and which must have acquainted you with
transient hunger, imagine a father going to bed hungry,
assured that his children are even hungrier, and that he'll be
happy to pimp his dear hungry wife, a civil servant, just as
himself, and neither of whom have been paid their wages in
months!
How can the dancing buffoon become the governor of
Osun? The guy's certificate is looking even faker than
Buhari's, Kemi's, àti bẹé ḅ̀ ẹé ̣̀ lọ. Sèbí Jagaban gave assurances that
their treasury is too lean to be of interest to his busy eyes?
Why would they reject the 'genius 'from Iragbiji, the anointed
one and favourite of the smiling devil? Can they not see the
change that APC would bring? The very same they'd
experienced? The years devoured by the smiling locust.
Ebi kì ẃ ọ'nú, kí ọ̀rọ̀ míì wọ̀ọ́! Rationality ends where
hunger begins.
The long-forgotten Nigerians -- the really poor and the
truly wretched -- are increasing in number. Their fathers and
mothers are training them. They are here, watching,
learning… They're learning how to sell their worthless votes.
Votes they've learnt bring no changes to the abject misery of
their daily existence. They are

216
learning about their country in real time, and with hunger as
a tool for concentration.
One of them cleaned your windscreen for a token the other
day. You exasperatedly shooed one away. And gosh, the
snotty-nosed ones pushing themselves against the windows?
They're here, they're watching, and they're learning. They'll
be better prepared than your kids and mine to survive in the
jungle we're building for them.
Are the people masochists to behave as they currently
have done? I believe not. I believe that we are actually
watching in real life, clear evidence of the resounding success
of the weaponised poverty that has been the lot of the
Nigerian people, even as legitimate opportunities for class
migration are sealed off to the poor, and poverty assured.
The middle class has been conditioned to focus on
existential issues to the exclusion of any other preoccupations.
In the absence of a national vision, vacuous religiosity
abounds. As the State failed in healthcare delivery, schools,
security, name it, the middle class has struggled to provide
alternatives, and the ones that were schooled in government-
owned schools cannot now afford to allow their children in a
school system that imparts anything but knowledge.
The poor can see. In the absolute simplicity of their
knowledge, they have found the wisdom to be bought. I am
sure they'll accept the best price that their impotent votes will
fetch in the market. They will do this without the liability of
foolish knowledge. They are clear and certain about what
they see.
Irú ìró, ni Ìborùn. One is not different from the other; APC
oh, PDP oh, all na one, and all na same. Six, and half a dozen.
Your middle class cocoon insulates
217
you from the painful realities of the failed State, but while you
can afford to believe the lies you have helped entrenched; he
lives the truth of the lies you are telling.
Here, an invitation to ponder just a thought. Your darling
children, or be it for your selfish self, that you pretend to live;
how great does it look, when you behold the future that today
foretells? All right; just one more; just how well would your
precious ones compete in the Nigeria State, the one they will
inherit from you?

****

218
 (XII)

The Hirsute Revolution

…the Nigerian political terrain is a contestation

between the
“thinking thieves” and the “unthinking thieves.

NOW I know you're probably thinking of reaching for one

form of dictionary or the other, allow me to save you the
trouble. The word about to send you on the fool's errand is no
other than “hirsute”. That's what happens when you have
persuaded yourself to read the writings of a man that enjoys
playing with words. It's just another word for hairy.
I grew up conscious of some demand that my head could
not be touched with a razor, and I was not to be shaved with
any such object. The legend has something about my having
been a Rasta, either at birth, or because my paternal
grandmother owned a Cherubim church, and I was born into
the Aladura denomination. What happened before I became
conscious, I cannot tell, but the barber, “Ijebu” at Omitowoju
never dared to repeat the error, after Maami had made sure to
let him know how his age, obviously, hadn't conferred much
by way of wisdom on him.
I believe that the restrictions on razor usage was relaxed
or lifted when I turned 10 years old, but with a mother such
as the one who fathered me, there was only one hairstyle:
Marine cut. Yep! You read that right. The barber's job is
simple and easy to execute. Run the clippers through the
head, take off all the hair on the

219
head, save for a fuzzy down that usually remain on the head,
except it be shaved clean with the aid of razors.
I speak of a time when all the barbers needed were manual
clippers, scissors, and blades. Our parents were pretty much
telepathic in communicating the requirement of baldness for
all youngsters of my youth in attendance at the barbershop.

***

It was in late 1984 or early in 1985. I know this because I was

enrolled at OSCAS in Ile-Ife at the time. I had asked Gboyega
for a haircut, and perhaps foretelling the tragedy he would
bring, he somehow contrived to pretty much give me what
we used to call the “Akobeje” haircut. This is the case when the
scalp ends up with an uneven, and unfinished look, and the
sole remedy available was to leave the pate, completely bald.
And that was what I did, save for the cross!
I was all of 16 years old, or thereabout. I was rebellious,
deeply conscious, and happy to be seen as the rebel that I was
by all, except by “Iya Wale”.
Iya Wale, the mother of Wale, was my father.
Don't worry I have not taken leave of my senses. She
birthed me, and, then, she fathered me. My mother it was,
who taught me to be a man. I learnt to fear her, and grew to
respect her. She is a father unlike any, and I thank God for the
man that she is.
We were going back to Ife that day. It was a Sunday; of
that I am certain. Gboyega and I were returning to OSCAS,
and the haircut was the last act before our departure from
Ibadan, where we were neighbours, when he made the skin
cut inevitable with his incompetent

220
attempt at barbering. I had asked him to etch a cross across
the back of my head, then I went back home to pick my
luggage to head back to Ife. What I did not count on was the
unscheduled and early return of Iya
Wale from her outing. I was meant to be gone before her
return.
Now she hated the skin cuts I had defiantly begun to sport
in that season and had moaned a few times about how much
I resembled a street urchin with my head shorn of hair. But
she couldn't do anything about it; after all, I hadn't done
anything other than to cut my hair, and Maami was always
on hand to defend my demand to be allowed some say in how
I elected to wear my hair. I am certain that the first thing that
she saw was the clean-shaven head, and tried as I did, the
cross was soon revealed. I shall spare you the story of the
haircut she gave. Ig̀ bat́ í, Ig̀ baḿ ú, and the Koboko were in
attendance, and the need for a blade, almost negligible.
“You will not become a Hare Krishna, under my roof”!
That was the day that the hair on my head became more
than an adornment but an assertion of my independence, and
the foundation for my latter-day employment of the Afro as
an article of protest. Liberated from my mother's strict regime
by my entry into LASU in 1985; a stricture further loosened
by the economic exile to which my mother was compelled by
the pauperising policies of the Buhari/Idiagbon and
Babangida regimes of the day, I began to shave my head clean
whenever I could be bothered to visit the barbers.
After a period of indifference, and perhaps as a concession
to the opinion of whatever girl I was besotted with, I began to
keep my hair closely cropped, but never completely bare.

221
 With time, electric clippers became increasingly popular,
cheaper, and more readily available, and as barber's shops
began to proliferate in the 1990s -- a time that coincided with
my return to Nigeria and to LASU. I began to have my hair
cut much closer to the scalp. But I rarely shaved my head. I
never could forget the old injunction not to shave.
By the time I acquired my own clippers, shaving my head
as clean as can be with those clippers, became a routine. This
was the case through my days in the Law School, and through
my early days of marriage. My wife met me bald and married
me bald. My children grew up without seeing any hair on my
head.
You can thank Obasanjo for my Afro.

***
At the dawn of this Republic, I was just exiting the Nigerian
Law School, Bwari. I am not from moneyed stock, and already
having spent 12 years in the university system and being
under pressure to begin to earn a living, I along with several
of my generation abandoned the political space. I faced the
practice of law to the total exclusion of any interest in the
political process.
It took the murder of Chief Bola Ige, and the Obasanjo
tsunami of 2003 to reawaken my consciousness, and to begin
the journey to where I am today.
With the AD and Afenifere in power in the South West, and
with Bola Tinubu making the right noises in Lagos, my state
of residence, and economic prospects, I had very simple views
of right and wrong. The good guys were in the AD, and the
PDP lot were the crooks. We knew the crooks, and yes,
Afenifere and its members were the

222
saints. Life was that simple at a point in time. But then, Ige
was killed by the Nigeria State, and as the shepherd was
stricken, the sheep were scattered. For all his flaws, Chief Ige
was a man with a moral anchor; he was not blind to the truth
of Nigeria. A man unfettered by a poverty-driven quest for
riches.
“Òjò tó rò̩, ò hun ló kó e̩ ye̩ lé pò̩ má'dìye̩ ”.
Ige's death has had the effect of leaving the Yoruba
without a conscious rallying point, and the correctness of the
political calculus that must have fed the decision to kill Ige
has been validated several times by the events that began to
unfold after his death. Obasanjo's engineered moon-slide
victory at the 2003 polls with the accompanying capture of the
southwest states, except Lagos, set the stage for today's
shenanigans. But I digress.
By the time Obasanjo's second term began, I had been
shaken out of my stupor by the brutality of Ige's murder, and
the brazen nature of the PDP takeover of gubernatorial
powers in the southwest. I became more interested in the
political machinations, but I contented myself with the
illusion of a democracy that would eventually correct its own
imperfections. Other than to se le for the lesser evil, I was not
given to any participation beyond the ritual of private and
impotent wailings at the tragedy that was clearly unfolding
before my eyes.
Obasanjo's 3rd term agenda changed all that.
It began with whispers. Then the whispers were picked up
by that peculiarly Nigerian political invention: the
ventriloquist dolls. The ventriloquists are the men in the
corridors of power. But as with the ventriloquist, they speak
without opening their mouths. They
223
fly kites. Or they speak with the aid of dummies. The
dummies are sometimes “elder statesmen”, and it is not
unknown that the dolls are pastors, traditional rulers, or any
of the lot devoid of conscience, who are dependent upon
government patronage for sustenance.
A million impoverished youth once earnestly yearned for
Abacha.
***

Obasanjo wanted a 3rd term.

The wanton nature of Obasanjo's power grab, the brazen
subjugation of institutions and systems in pursuit of the 3rd
term agenda awakened me to the reality of the Nigerian
conundrum. We are not a nation of laws; we are not designed
to be ruled by laws. The Nigeria State, as it stands, is
manifestly unsustainable. The man in me was reawakened at
this point, and the urge to rebel was strong, and almost
unbearable.
In silent protest, I left the hair on my head to grow, and I
declared that I shall not be having my hair cut, until Obasanjo
vacated the office.
As I watched Obasanjo diminished himself with his
Sisyphean quest for a 3rd term in office, I chafed at the
impotence of my anger, and contented myself by telling all
enquirers that the strange mop on my head was my silent
protest against the 'hypocrite of Owu'. None that knew me
was unaware of my angst at the shenanigans playing out in
the corridors of power. Obasanjo and Atiku lifted the veil that
once covered the impunity, and cancerous corruption that
permeates the corridors of Nigerian power.

224
 Obasanjo wobbled and fumbled his way to the 27th of May
2007, and the day arrived, when I might again shave my head.
As I watched Yar'Adua being sworn in, I bid my wife
goodbye, drove to Thistle Bar in Victoria Island to get myself
a haircut.
This was before the only road, in and out of my
neighbourhood, was stolen by Tinubu and his gang, and
Lekki was a sleepy suburb of VI with her denizens driving
into VI for every of their daily needs. VI to Chevron was a 15-
20-minute drive.
The toll gates have today enforced the rapid expansion of
commercial activities within Lekki itself, a human response to
the inhumanity of the rulers.
But I digress.
With the Yar'Adua swearing-in ceremony showing on the
TV, the barber asked how I'd like my haircut. A low cut I
decreed, and that was what I got. Low, but with enough hair
left to require a small comb. I guess I wasn't ready for the
extreme of the old pate, shorn of hair. My kids were 4, 2, and
a few months old, and I didn't want to be shocking them too
much. I looked up to behold a stranger; I looked too much like
an uncle I didn't particularly care for.
“Daddy, is that you?” quipped my eldest. She couldn't
remember me without my Afro! I'd worn my hair full since
she was just a couple of years old. The younger brother didn't
have much to say; he just looked at me in a way that mirrors
the look I'd give when I believe that someone had just been
silly. He had never seen me without the Afro! I must have
appeared quite a sight to his curious young eyes.
I went into the bathroom to use the mirror, and I decided
I didn't much fancy the image I
225
saw. I looked too much like that uncle of mine, a similarity
sealed by the hairstyle on my head. I whipped out the
clippers; and returned to my roots. I shaved the head clean, as
I would have done before. Job done, I looked again, and I
beheld “Black Moses”. Good enough, I crowed to the mirror.
I knew the man reflected back at me. Samson died, and Moses
was born. Again.

***

With Obasanjo gone, and Fashola in Lagos, I returned again

to my private life. I shunned all things political; and focused
on the business of Law. What was my business with politics,
I thought? I failed to heed the advice of the wise: when the
wise abandon politics to the foolish, they must of necessity
suffer the reign of fools. I had known Fashola before his
corruption by the master he served. The man I knew and
worked for was a scrupulously honest man; not the avaricious
man he has today become. I trusted that Lagos was in good
hands. I was dead wrong.
The first action of the Jagaban crew that announced their
rapacity to me was the brazen theft of the Lekki-Epe
expressway. I watched as my former oga, a man that I not only
voted for but campaigned for, and for whose personal
integrity I had vouched, laboured to explain and justify the
theft. I watched as Fashola spent an outrageous amount of
public funds to build the Lekki-Ikoyi Bridge, and then
proceeded to toll the bridge as well. The personal nature of
these pains opened my eyes to the emergence of a most
wicked, rapacious, and dangerous hegemony that was
growing out of Lagos,

226
superintended by Bola Tinubu, whose influence I began to
fear more than the bumbling idiots at the federal level.

***
I was going to tell you about the hirsute revolution, but as it
is with the old, I have again digressed.
Fast forward to the formation of the APC, and the
emergence of Buhari as its presidential flagbearer, my worst
fears about Bola Tinubu came to pass. I had voted for Buhari
in his previous attempts at the presidency. He was the 'Saint'
amongst the crooks. I had concluded since immediately after
the end of the Obasanjo tenure, and the beginning of Fashola's
reign in Lagos that the Nigerian political terrain is a
contestation between the “thinking thieves” of Jagaban plc, at
the time known as the AC, and the PDP at the federal level,
which I labelled the “unthinking thieves”.
Now, I saw a conglomeration of the 'thinking thieves 'of
the AC joining ranks with the ousted rump of the 'unthinking
thieves' and joined by the presumed 'Saint ' of the CPC. I
smelled the fraud, and I decided not to vote in the election. I
captured the decision in the chapter known as “Do not Die in
their Wars”. The pains I endured with my burden and the
resultant passion for Nigeria awakened a dormant gift, and I
started writing as a way to be relieved of my pains.
Writing is what has given birth to my overgrown facial
hair.
***
As the Yar'Adua days melded into Jonathan's, and the pains
of Tinubu's Lagos bit deeper, I began to find relief from the
pains in writing down my thoughts. I did not set out to write
a book. I began by typing out my
227
opinions and broadcasting them on my blackberry phone.
This reached its apogee in the days before and after the
January 2012 fuel subsidy rallies. As the different events
unfolded on the national scene, and in my state of residence,
I began to write more and more.
My thoughts became more refined as I wrote.
By the end of 2014, my editor believed he had enough of
my works for the publication of a book. But I insisted that I
had much more that remained unwritten, and without which
the book remained unfinished. That was where I was at the
beginning of 2015. As a peace offering, I allowed the
publication of the chapter I entitled “Do not Die In their Wars”
and assured everyone that I would be done with the book
before Buhari's inauguration a few months from thence.
Fast forward to December 2015. I had not done any
appreciable work on the book; I was no closer to finishing it.
This was six months after I had set Buhari's inauguration as a
deadline for the completion of the task. I told my editor, wife,
partners and friends that I would be staying at home during
my usual Christmas break, and would be certain to finish the
book before resuming at work in January 2016. I also added a
rider that I would not be shaving until the book is done.
Hard as I tried, I failed to keep my word, and wasn't any
closer to finishing the book before resuming at work in
January of 2016. Problem is, I have never been blessed with
either facial, or body hairs. I have enjoyed teasing my brother
and friends who have been blessed with the gift of permanent
skinheads, but the hair on my chin did not receive the same
anointing as the one on my head, and the uncooperative and
scattered tuft on my chin drew queries. I was forced to tell my

228
questioners of how I'd failed to keep my word.
Three years after I made my vow, and kept the beard as a
reminder of my failure to do what I believe urgent and
purposed, I finally earned the right to have my shave, but as
with the Afro, I have come to love the beard on my face. They
both remind me of who I am, and who I can be, and that the
greatest challenge is to rule the self.
I have a sneaky suspicion it would soon be either the
dreadlocks, or the skinhead and a clean shave, perhaps. Time
and the struggles ahead shall reveal the course of the hirsute
revolution.

****

229
 PART 11

SECTION 2

SUNDRY OTHER ITEMS

CHARACTERS
&
METAPHORS
 (I)

Principalities and Powers

… over-spiritualisation of our sad realities

is the reason churches are always busy
praying and fasting and binding...

W HEN the Bible talks about principalities and

powers, we are generally inclined to look for
winged creatures with cloven hoofs and forked
tails, but nothing can be farther from the truth. Reality is the
principalities and powers are actually, completely human,
they live, dine and abide with us here on earth. Mostly, they
are to be found in our government lodges, GRAs and
presidential villa…
What makes them principalities and powers, however, are
the existential facts of their being alive, and the net effects that
they exert on the citizens. Notwithstanding, when this
definition is intended, you should agree and without
protestation, that the like of Bola Tinubu, Obasanjo, Saraki,
Ganduje, and anyone of our political actors that you may care
to reference, are in real sense, principalities and powers.
The very power of their action leads to loss of human lives;
brings about pauperisation of the people, and these are all the
things you would expect from their spiritual counterparts,
whose perplexing duties they execute with swagger, as
worthy ambassadors. As a matter of fact, we must learn to
take our eyes away from the sky in looking for the fabled
231
winged creatures and witches flying all over the place; the
civil servants sit pretty amongst these peers, and some
employees could as well assume this position under your
nose doing everything indescribable to ruin businesses.
Whenever you pray against some principalities and
powers, remove your eyes from the sky and don't think you
are praying against some spiritual entities. You are, in fact,
squaring up against physical beings that you can see, yes they
are in flesh and blood.
Therefore, when I speak of principalities and powers I am
only trying to draw a clear nexus between our physical
realities and the bodily manifestation of spiritual cognomens.
There is this over spiritualisation of our sad realities in
Nigeria; the reason the churches and mosques are always
filled to capacity -- always busy praying and fasting and
binding when the real principalities against which they pray
are actually human beings like them, who presume to be god
and speak and decree things as God.
Satan has gone on a long holiday in Nigeria, apparently
busy elsewhere. He has, probably, outsourced his
responsibilities, not just to the politicians because, practically,
nearly, every Nigerian works for Satan:
> the Danfo driver who would not wait for the traffic
light before he zooms off;
> the Councillor who will not spend the council's money
to do what it is
appropriated for;
> the legislator who collects money to rubberstamp every
piece of legislation that

232
 is brought before the House;
> the judge who would take money to pervert justice;
> the police officer who will persecute an innocent
person;
> the EFCC man who will work as a debt recovery
agent;
> the medical doctor who will prescribe a surgery that is
unrequired by the
patient;
> the mechanic who will collect money for what is not
wrong with your car….

These are principalities and powers. And they are all

functioning at different levels to serve their master, Satan,
who is on holidays elsewhere. He is no longer around here
but gone away to other climes where tasks are much harder
to accomplish. Nonetheless, his employees and cohorts are
doing fantastic jobs.
Satan's job is more difficult in a place like America where
he has to constantly reassure them that it is okay for a man to
date a fellow man; some of them, he even convinces to go
after cows. He would say: “look at that cow, buddy; you don't
even need to woo her; that is the one you should be procreating
with.” In Nigeria, Satan is securely satisfied to subcontract his
works, and is permanently holidaying.

***
Wherever you look, the reality is, you can change Nigerian
rulers for all you care, but until you change the mindset of the

233
people themselves, you will find no difference in the
outcome. As a result, it is a waste of time to expect any change
in the outcome given that the people themselves have been
compromised beyond belief.
Is it government that is responsible for the actions of the
mechanics? What does Buhari have to do with the doctor who
is prescribing an unneeded surgery? Was it Buhari that asked
the doctor to inject patients with ordinary saline water and
claim he just treated him for typhoid?
We are a lost people who have got to that point where
there is need for a moral revolution; when people get to sit
down and look themselves in the mirror, and, then, agree that
where we are going is a journey to nowhere. We need to find
a different route to travel.
In the main, when you are talking about principalities and
powers, it is not just the ones in government houses alone;
they are but just the microcosm of what has become a
generalised problem.
In this country today, you will be hard-pressed to find one
honest man out of a thousand, who is not in one way or the
other cheating another man to survive. It is worse when
honesty has become a liability in a society that is predicated
on rogues. And if you don't find someone to cheat, to defraud,
you will be punished for that.
Sanity is an impediment in Nigeria; a handicap.

****

234
 (II)

A Lost People...

Nigeria must be fundamentally restructured,

if we are not to continue travelling around
the same mountain

T HERE'S a story I've heard told, dramatised, and read in

different variants, with different characters and media
employed to drive home the message. I am sure we have all
come across it at some point in our lives.
A man and his wife and children often feature in this tale.
They would appear to be on a journey to some destination.
The husband is almost always the driver, the wife would sit
beside him in front -- in most variants of the tale. The children
would be in the rear seats, quarrelling as juveniles are wont
to. In some, the kids do not feature.
The husband would be driving around lost, his wife, and
sometimes, the man himself would be consulting a map. For
some reason, Google map never features in this cautionary
tale; and for comic relief, husband and wife almost always
argue about the direction to take. It usually takes serial
identification of an undeniable landmark to convince the
driver, he's lost; and that is usually the point, where sanity is
restored; and a path charted out of the quagmire.
Nigerians; the driver represents our political leadership.
We have been here before.
235
In the events leading up to the 2015 elections, and beginning
in the year before; an amalgam of strange bedfellows came
together and formed the APC; it was the vehicle to save
Nigeria from the “16 years of PDP misrule”. Problem is, all
that happened, was that the “Thinking Thieves” of ACN, the
“Ali Baba” of CPC, and the “Smart Thieves” of PDP came
together to wrestle power from the clueless thieves led by
Jonathan.
Aremu of Ota, the Ebora of Owu, is on yet another rescue
mission leading another coalition. Our cyclical and farcical
gyrations have again commenced. The true victims are the
peoples trapped in the 'shithole' called Nigeria.
Those who should know have become, stupefied either
into complicit silence, or active complicity. But as with the
passenger in the front seat, some of us must again refuse to
be silent. We have been here before. We have seen this before.
Nothing has changed. Until, and unless we change our
system, throw away the map, and rig up a GPS, we will
continue to go round and round in circles.
Nigeria must be fundamentally restructured if we are not
to continue travelling around the same mountain. Names
may change, the dramatis personae might revolve, but it is all
motion without movement.
We are on a journey to nowhere.

****

236
 (III)

The Righteous Few

…when the State becomes as criminal,

it is the constructive engagement of the
moral
majority that has the capacity to change it

A S I have grown more comfortable writing, I have noticed

the preponderance of what may be referred to as the
Righteous Few. These are the men and women who have
become convinced that Nigeria can be much better than it is;
and is beyond redemption. Such is the depth of their
disillusionment with the system that they have mostly
separated themselves from society, even while seeking
survival within the society thus condemned. I used to be a
card-carrying member of this cadre, and my track record
speaks for me.
But I have found that this thinking is fundamentally
flawed, and self-defeatist in the extreme. Those of us who
desire change, redefinition, and national rebirth are actually
the moral majority, and we defeat ourselves and what should
be our purpose when we myopically separate ourselves as we
have. There wouldn't be a better time to change Nigeria, and
we are not as isolated as we might imagine ourselves to be.
But we have a duty to talk.
237
 The emergence of Muhammadu Buhari is the best thing
that has happened to the moral majority. They were the ones
mobilised to propel him into office, and while some of them
might continue to hope against hope, and cling to the illusion
of change, the reality is that, that illusion has been mostly
dispelled, and have largely evaporated. We have all been
short-changed. But it was a tragedy foretold, and a self-
fulfilling prophecy.
What kind of change did we expect from a government
that emerged with the support of the traditional levers of
powers, ably represented by its pope, 'Saint' Matthew’ of
Owu, and its enforcer, the 'sage 'of Bourdillon?
Talking on social media is not an invitation to beer parlour
banter, and yes, it's fine to talk in beer parlours; it's an
invitation to move beyond elitist bellyaching on social media
to engaging those with whom you will come into contact in
your daily lives. The economic and political ills and injustices
that you suffer, and, or, see on a daily basis, affect almost
everyone you interact with, in your daily life.
But talking must only be a prelude to action.
The purpose of talking must be to inform; to challenge the
lies and dogmas that have long imprisoned our people; to
educate the uninformed who have been kept ignorant of what
may be achieved by thinking men and women, and,
ultimately, to mobilise the 99 per cent into a critical mass that
is capable of truly changing our society; and propelling it
onto the desired path.
Power has never given up anything happily, and when the
State becomes as criminal as ours have become, it is the

238
constructive engagement of the moral majority that has the
capacity to change it, not the self-righteous indignation of a
few.
The Righteous Few have a duty to engage society, and
cannot continue to separate itself, while stupidly hoping that
society will somehow reform itself. If you are blessed to see a
problem, it is because you either are the solution, or a part of
the solution. Let's start talking to ourselves; the very future of
our children and our country may depend on it. We are more
than they!

****

239
 (IV)

The Super Eagles and Nigerian Unity

…for greatness on and off the football pitch,

a true team of our very best must be built

S INCE the victory of the Eagles I have read posts online,

where diverse writers celebrating our somewhat
unexpected victory, have wondered why we have been
unable to translate the nationalist fervour experienced as a
result of our footballing success into the strengthening of our
national cohesion and unity.
On the football pitch you win or lose as a team. In real life
Nigeria, there are systemic advantages and disadvantages
reserved for the individuals based on religious, ethnic, and
other affiliations.
When real life Nigeria mimics the principles of football,
when citizens are treated equally, and extraneous
considerations are not factored into the calculus of
citizenship, the commonality will engender the unity we
briefly witnessed during football matches.
The true strength of Nigeria, her diversity, is what our
unimaginative dealers have turned into her albatross. The
typical football team is comprised of several skill sets. The
striker's tasks are different from the goalkeeper's; the
midfielder's job is different from the defender's… Successful
teams are dependent on the capacity to synthesise the

240
different skill sets; the synergies, thereby created, determine
the level of success achievable on the pitch.
Our wicked rulers have never grasped this reality; they
have sought to build a nation that excludes the very best of
us. Imagine how less successful the Nigerian team would
have been had it been comprised only of strikers, and devoid
of defenders! A team is the aggregate of the individuals
making it up, and a nation will evolve only on the basis of a
shared destiny and the commonality of interests.
Nigeria's problems are rooted in her crises of citizenship.
This is evidenced by the multiple levels of citizenship
available to the peoples trapped within her borders. When we
have managed to evolve a composite identikit of the
Nigerian; one that is unchanged regardless of ethnicity, and,
or, religious considerations, we'll transit from a failed State to
the Promised
Land.
The Nigeria State is founded on a nepotistic foundation;
the result is the multiplicity of citizenship levels. The
Nigerian citizen of Imo State origin is treated differently from
the one from Bauchi; the man from Lagos is different from the
one from Akwa Ibom, and the reservation of privileges for
one guarantees disadvantages to the other. In the quests to
equalise this anomalous state of affairs, corruption has been
normalised.
Congratulations to the Super Eagles, let us enjoy the
illusions of nationhood engendered by the interlude of
footballing success. Keep in mind that the population of
Iceland is less than that of Surulere, yet it has more facilities

241
for the development of football than the Giant of Africa. Let
that knowledge temper your crows of invincibility. Nigeria is
a State, not a Nation, and for greatness on and off the football
pitch, a true team of our very best must be built.

***
The election of June 12, 1993 is the reason I cannot give up on
the possibilities of a nation emerging from the ruins of the
Nigeria State. Abiola picked a Muslim running mate; he won
in his opponent's home state; he won across the length and
breadth of Nigeria, and the people for a period, however
brief, and before the exertions of Uche Chukwumerije paid
off, shared a common destiny and hope.
The election did not cure the afflictions of Nigeria, but it
did set us on the path to nationhood. Abacha, Obasanjo, and
co., obliterated the bridge built on that day.
What footballing success does for the Nigeria State is to
mimic the spirit of national cohesion promised and typified
by the events of June 12. But as the drunk must face the sorry
reality of his daily existence, Nigerians must wake up from
the drunken stupor of our ephemeral football victory over
Iceland. But, no, my opinion would remain the same, even if
the 'pig' (Mystic Marcus) proves to be truly prophetic, and we
somehow defeat the messy Argentines.
Now for some bacons and pork chops....
Up Super Eagles!

****

242
 (V)

Obasanjo, the Tortoise, and His In-laws...

Eebu alo ni ti Ahun, abo ni ti Ana eh

I HEARD my grandparents and several Yoruba elders use

this proverbial saying multiple times in my youth. For the
benefit of the non-Yoruba speaking readers who aren't able to
speak Yoruba, or who speak the language without the benefit
of an appreciation of our idioms, I shall offer a transliteration
at some point in this narrative.
In my opinion, apart from the racist Lord Frederick
Lugard, nobody is more responsible for the failure of the
Nigerian State than Obasanjo, the 'hypocrite of Owu', and
whilst few are more conscious of the judgment of history,
Aremu's presumption that he has the capacity to write his
own history borders on self-delusion.
As I have written elsewhere, Obasanjo's chief legacy is the
emergence of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as the president of
Nigeria. In spite of his many disingenuous and fraudulent
attempts at denying his protégé, GEJ remains the apogee of
Obasanjo's achievements as the builder of the moribund
Nigeria State. It is to the credit of Obasanjo that his decision
to abandon his protégé was essentially the beginning of the
end of Jonathan's reign.
But I digress.

243
 Obasanjo knows Buhari better than anyone of the many
gullible megaphones trumpeting the 'Saint of Daura.' The
association goes back over 50 years. Obasanjo knew at the
time he found common purpose with Tinubu, the Alaafin of
Bourdillon, that Buhari might very well come after him, but
his ego, the motivation behind his every exertions, blinded
him to the truth he knew: Jonathan must be disgraced out of
office by fair or foul means.
Buhari can make all the noise in the world about
Obasanjo's corruption; his 'Inspector General of Politics' can
dust up any number of cold case files; the Bucharest
propaganda machine can abuse and malign Obasanjo all they
like, but Buhari will never dare to touch Obasanjo.
All na politics.
Is Obasanjo guilty of the several charges being laid against
him? Undoubtedly. He is probably the single most
responsible person for the failings of the Nigeria State. But
Buhari was not unaware of these crimes, when the man was
being feted, courted, wined, and dined. Obasanjo's current
travails are merely payback for his refusal to support the
Buhari 2nd term agenda.

***
Now for the transliteration: The tortoise stole from his in-
law's farm overnight; and was caught in the act. In anger and
retribution, the in-law tied him up, and made a spectacle of
him. Those heading to the farm in the morning ridiculed the
tortoise and properly labelled him as the thief he was; he was
the butt of the jokes but as the people returned from farms by
evening time, the tortoise's fate attracted a different view. The
244
new sentiment was about the harshness of the treatment he
was receiving, and the perceived wickedness of his in-law. If
he would deal so harshly with his brother-in-law, how then
would he deal with a thief unrelated to him?
If Buhari would prosecute Obasanjo for his many crimes,
I will be the first to shout eureka! But I know that Buhari lacks
the moral courage to dare. I am getting increasingly turned
off by the impotent lynch mob, baying in self-flagellation at
the wily Ebora of Owu. I am even more disappointed to see
men who should know be er, getting caught up in the circus.
Is Obasanjo a thief? Yes, he is perceived so. Is Obasanjo
complicit in the murder of Ige et al., I am happy to bet on it?
Will the Nigeria State, as currently constituted, ever touches
him? Wake me up when they dare. The State is just as
criminal as the man, and there's nothing he did that they
aren't doing today. What Buhari has done is to privatise
corruption, and; only the unaware and the complicit
beneficiaries are clapping in applause. He was speaking
mostly of the 1970s. We shall be returning from the farm soon.

****

245
 (VI)

The Genius, the Liar, and the TelePrompTer...

Àgùtàn tó bá Ajá rìn, yí ò jẹ ìgbẹ́

– the lamb that fraternises with dogs
shall growto eat the faeces favoured by dogs

I HAVE been privileged to learn my trade as a lawyer from

diverse sources. My grandmother nurtured and enabled
what I love believing is an analytical mind. In fact, as I have
written elsewhere; there's something to be said for allowing
grandparents, who are healthy, active and willing, play roles
in raising children. They are infinitely more patient, better
equipped, and retain mental and physical strength for much
longer, especially because of the need to keep up with the
children in their care.
But as usual, I digress from my purpose.
I want to tell you of the men and women who trained me
as a lawyer.
Lagos State University, LASU, has a long and
distinguished history of training lawyers. But that faculty
was arguably at its very best when I was a student of Law.
Having been founded in 1984, the university's law faculty did
not stand on its own until perhaps, a couple of years later. It
started life as part of the humanities faculty; hence, L&H for
those who know.

246
 The story shall yet be told… I refuse to digress.
By the time I was admitted to read law in 1991, the LASU
law faculty was an excellent place to study Law. It was
blessed with a teaching staff that could rival any to be found
anywhere in Nigeria, and beyond.
I was privileged.
My lecturers were mostly youthful and undeniably
brilliant. The older heads were also men who thought outside
boxes, and encouraged scholarship.
We had Baba Yerokun; Professor Adaramola; Mama Susu
- they were the older ones. Steady hands, strict, but parental
in their guidance of the students.
There were the Ikhariales, Hogans, Ogboyes, et al. And
then you had the geniuses… there was, 1.0. Smith… yes, I
know I did type 1.0, but if you were in LASULAWS, you will
understand. We had Fagbohun, he's today the VC of LASU.
We had Emiri, he was everybody's dad or brother. And then
there was Osinbajo -- Professor Yemi Osinbajo.

***
Professor Osinbajo taught the Law of Evidence. I believe I
have heard some people mention that he taught them Land
and Property Law. That might have been during his time at
UNILAG, or after my time in LASU.
I shall be eternally grateful to God for the great privilege
it was to have learnt one of the most difficult and important
areas of the profession from a true professor, who was not
only a gentleman, but a genius; if I have ever seen one.
Yemi Osinbajo's class was one that you started looking
forward to from your first year, even though you would not
247
enjoy the privilege until your fourth level of a five-tiered
system. The seniors whispered his name with awe. He was
the one that cometh shorn of all, but chalks, a duster, and a
bottle of coke. If you were lucky, you saw a dapper man,
immaculately clad in striped or dark suit, well-coiffed, with a
rakish parting in the middle of his pate. He had a piercing
gaze, and he left you in no doubt that he sees; and will
remember you.
When Osinbajo taught me, his was the only lecture I
attended religiously. Much as the fear of Smith competed
with my awe for his mental acuity, I cannot warrant that I was
as faithful in attendance at his lectures as I was with
Osinbajo's. The genius of the man was a magnet that drew me
inexorably to his classes. His genius cured an innate, and
perhaps, congenital tendency for academic truancy. From
primary through law school, I was legendary for cutting
classes. But I cannot now remember ever missing Osinbajo's
class.
The faculty timetable for the Law of Evidence classes were
basically provisional in my time. Professor Osinbajo was an
incredibly busy man. In a land long enveloped in darkness,
his incredible genius must have brought him to the attention
of a lot of important people, and the faculty in recognition of
his, perhaps, unpredictable schedule, allowed him to, more
or less, set his own lecture schedule as he saw fit. Most of our
lectures with him were on Saturdays, and he possessed of
unbelievable stamina, would sometimes lecture for as long as
3-4 hours at a time.

248
 Osinbajo taught without the aid of notes, texts, or even
scraps of papers. He gave lectures, taught, and would dictate
as many as 6-8 pages of lesson notes. He would give cases
with their full citations, and pages; quote entire sections of the
Evidence Act and would do so with great élan and panache.
He was a spellbinder.
Professor Yemi Osinbajo is possibly the most intelligent
human being that I have ever met. He demystified the Law of
Evidence; his class must have had a pass rate in the higher
90s.
He was an excellent teacher.
***
I have, however, never fully understood his politics. I had
always thought it odd that he had found the grace to serve as
the Jagaban's consigliore, whilst also serving as an ordained
minister in the house of God. The two are seemingly
contradictory in my view. But being a recipient of grace
myself, and taking seriously the injunction not to judge so
that I might not be judged myself, I came to simply view him
as wasted in the roles he had accepted in service of his
political overlord. And so, it was, until I saw the genius and
his TelePrompTer, and I was reminded that the truth teller has
no need for a good memory.
Professor Osinbajo represented his legal principal
(Buhari) at the graduation ceremony of the Nigerian Defence
Academy, and as is the usual tradition at such ceremonies,
the commander-in-chief gave an address. I watched as my
genius teacher stumbled through the address he was reading

249
off the teleprompter, and I was pained by the spectacle I
beheld.
Yemi Osinbajo did not believe what he was reading. The
speech was not saying anything of substance, just more of the
ruling party's steady drivel, inanities, and mind-numbing
lies. I saw my Oga reduced by an evil system, and perhaps
compromised beyond help. The Yemi Osinbajo that taught
me would not have required a teleprompter if he believed in
what he was saying.

****
I have taken the time to write this piece, not in condemnation
of the man that I once knew, and admired, but as a warning
to all who continue to believe that the Nigerian system is
amenable to reasoned reforms and changes. It is not. And
what's more; I have seen with Osinbajo the proof of the
Yoruba proverb: Àgùtàn tó bá Ajá rìn, yí ò jẹ ìgbẹ́ -- the lamb
that fraternises with dogs shall grow to eat the faeces
favoured by dogs.
The Nigeria State is a contagion.

****

250
 (VII)

IITA…
Reminding of a Lost Paradise

…Why do the men who have ruled Nigeria

allow the given paradise to become a hell?

I HAVE been known to say in various ways that knowledge

is a burden. That knowing confers a burden on you to act
on what you know. If you do not know, you feel no pressure
to effect a change. When you do know, the pressure comes on
you to do something to bring about the vision of the good that
you have been given, save and except when you are
quintessentially evil, and you wilfully ignore to do the right
thing.
The burden of knowledge is not easily carried in a country
like Nigeria, where you know that you don't know much
better than those who have ruled, or are ruling the country;
but who, in spite of the knowledge of what is right, continue
to do the wrong thing, and continually hold the country
down, conscious of the evil of their ways.
So, knowledge in Nigeria is indeed a burden. But the
burden is particularly heightened, because you know you are
not the only one who knows. Every sane person ought to
know the exact same thing that you know because these are
not facts open to debate. These are truths.
***

251
When I was growing up attending Fiditi Grammar School in
my mother's hometown, I would invariably pass right in front
of the IITA at Idi-Ose in order to go to Fiditi. When I was
home on holidays and my mother needed meat, it was mostly
my duty to go to the butchers at Moniya to pick up the slab
of meat or any choice part my mother would want.
But after I left Ibadan to become a student of Lagos State
University, LASU in 1985, my visit towards that axis needing
to drive by IITA had become less. Since 1983 when I left Fiditi
Grammar School, I couldn't have driven past IITA more than
five or six times at the maximum. In fact, I am sure I have not
driven past IITA since we buried my maternal grandfather
many years ago. So, it's been awhile.
But why do I talk of IITA?
Its green lawns as you drive past, even in my youth, we
found particularly striking. We could see the lawns through
the wire-merge fence. They were immaculate. Always green.
Always well mowed. Always like some land far away from
this place. It just didn't fit in. It stood in rebuke of the
environment in which it stood.
I didn't know what it was as a kid, but something about it
just set it apart.
It wasn't the same as every other thing that I could see in
my environment.
But I digress.
So, yeah, I remember IITA very well. I remember it only
because I drove past it and its lawns were immaculate.
Nothing else about it.

252
 As I grew older and agriculture became the propaganda it
has been turned into by successive governments, I had heard
more and more about IITA. However, I had not had any
occasion or reason to familiarise myself with what it was that
IITA was doing. But it was in the news and I saw it. White
trucks with the dainty orange branding, and it just seemed to
me another imperialist outpost in Nigeria where the West
doles out its hypocritical charity in the name of aids.
Then recently, I started hearing from friends about how
nice it was to stay at the IITA guest house in Ibadan. IITA now
runs a guest house in addition to whatever else it does! Aside
knowing it as an agricultural research institute, I knew it
initially from its lawns, and, then, as a research institute; it
became a place I might want to stay if I wanted some
seclusion.
At a point, a dear friend posted pictures of herself and her
children on holiday in Ibadan, at the IITA. Beautiful pictures!
I was intrigued. Seeing as I was already planning a getaway,
for a few days, so I do not lose my mind in the midst of the
madness of Lagos, I followed my instinct and cancelled my
initial plans to go to Le Meridian Ogeyi in Uyo, Akwa Ibom
State.
So, off to IITA I went.

***
My visit to IITA filled me with wonder. Men have found
ways to take what was a forest and built smack-bang within
it a replica of the society from whence they came. Once upon
a time, there was a jungle here, but by design, men have
turned what was a jungle into a beautiful environment. The
253
houses exist more like intrusions in gardens; every tree is
standing in its rightful place; roads are well laid out.
The lawns unbelievably green; the facilities at the
guesthouse quite Spartan. The environment is unbelievably
beautiful. As much as I loved what I saw, it also filled me with
pains.
Knowledge has not been a burden for our leaders and we
the followers need to be wondering why: there is nothing we
know that they can claim to be unaware of.
Obasanjo was part of the 50th anniversary celebration
IITA. He was the president of Nigeria in 1977. He has been a
constant in Nigeria since that time. He has held executive
office in Nigeria for over 10 years.
Nations are built by men and it takes visionary men to
build a nation.
IITA Ibadan is a product of a vision.
The same environment we have failed at taming, turning
into the paradise that they have built amidst our mess, we
have missed building because of leaders who refuse to see
what they see. Or do they? These questions plagued my mind
as I laboured to fulfil my purpose in Ibadan. Subsequent
events, however, conspired to ensure that I must return to the
lessons that the vision of IITA birthed.

***
The day before I was scheduled to depart from my IITA
redoubt, I went on a farm inspection somewhere on the
outskirts of Ibadan. I had done trial of an out-grower
programme with a farmer friend of my younger brother; and

254
having been given several reasons to suspect that I was being
conned, the visit was imperative.
I was sent forth from the farm with a few bunches of
plantain, and some other farm produce; and my car boot was
filled to its capacity. I made sure to let the security men at the
gate take notice of my packed boot and its contents. After all,
I'd seen how punctilious they were upon presenting myself
for entry on the first day. I have always abhorred the manner
in which Nigerian security personnel, at foreign
establishments, tend to treat Nigerians, even worse than their
employers. I wanted no grief from anyone when I would be
leaving at first light the following day.
Come the following morning, a Sunday I think; lo and
behold, I was stopped at the gate. The man asked from
whence I came by the plantains in the car boot. If you knew
anything about me, you would know that the question was
going to precipitate an eruption. For me, I didn’t hear any
question; I heard myself being accused of stealing from the
farms that abound within the complex I was seeking to exit. I
was cocked and loaded, but “Baba” spoke before I could pull
the trigger.
I had met Baba at the point of my arrival at the IITA. He
appeared to be the head of the security detail at the main
entrance. He looked to be in his mid- to late 60s, but might
very well be in his early to mid-70s. He probably was in some
military or paramilitary force in his youth; thus, he had what
I thought was the usual Uncle Tom airs about him. I did not
like him; and I did what I have always done with people I
don't particularly like. I was extremely polite, and respectful

255
in my brief exchanges with him, and I was similarly so treated
by him.
Baba asked that I be allowed to leave undisturbed; that he
was there when I had returned from the farm inspection the
previous day. He vouched he witnessed me drawing
attention to the cargo of farm products. I was bowled by his
intervention, particularly in the light of my original
impressions of the man. But that was when I disrespected
myself!
I, Oladele Tomilola, the son of Iya Olu, I disrespected
myself.
Moved to gratitude, wanting to encourage, and be
appreciative, I fished out all of N2000 and offered the largesse
to the old man. He turned it down rather blithely; waved me
off, for the cars behind me to come through. A wiser man
would have taken the hint and gone his way; not Oladele! If
only I knew of the “àbùkù” that awaited me!
Àbùkù is not the same thing as disrespect, but it is the
closest word in English language. The sole difference being
that, for it to be an Àbùkù, the person disrespected must have
brought the disrespect on himself.
I did.
There are two gates that must be exited before one may be
out of the precinct of the IITA. The encounter narrated above
took place by the main entrance, which houses the main
security post. I surmised as I argued with Bayo (my
companion in the car), that the several security cameras at the
gate were the real reasons Baba wouldn't take the tip. And
having peremptorily concluded as I had, I dropped the

256
squeezed princely sum of N2000 on the road, in the full
expectation of its eventual rescue by Baba.
That was the price I paid for my Àbùkù. I am not sure
which hurt the most, but in my mirrors, I saw Baba
gesticulating angrily; the men at the final gate, which is in
clear sight of the first, ordered my return in compliance with
Baba's shouted orders. I returned contrite, confused, and
thoroughly disgraced to pick up the crumpled notes -- with
Baba's stinging and strident rebukes as the backdrop of my
humiliation.
I drove away thoroughly chastened, but also intrigued.
All I did was give a tip. I was not asked for a bribe; I was just
trying to be nice. Bayo and I drove rapidly out of Ibadan,
debating what we had just experienced with some
consternation and befuddlement. But then, as we drove past
the CRIN at Idi Ayunre, I had my equilibrium restored by the
truest of
Nigerian institutions:
The Nigerian Police Force.
Anti-terror Police, their badges and truck said. Red berets on
their heads, the officer who approached my well-parked car
was courteous than most; perhaps, helped into politeness by
my obvious readiness to comply with the order to park. “Your
boys are here sir” was his beggarly greeting. I exchanged a
knowing look with Bayo; straightened the notes that had
bought me Baba's rebuke, and handed them to the grinning
officer.
My largesse received salutes, but I was left with questions
to ponder.

257
 ****

My trip to IITA was intended as a writing retreat, and I was

able to do a lot of work while there. But IITA also left me
seriously troubled.
Houston Texas is the first place I visited in America, and I
was impressed by the warm weather; how unlike
depressingly cold Britain it was. I found the weather so
welcoming that I was not too surprised by the large numbers
of my fellow countrymen, whose presence would be hard to
miss. If Houston showed me what we could be with visionary
leaders, IITA proved the absence of vision in the foundations,
structure, and governance of Nigeria.
Obasanjo's roles at the IITA anniversary celebrations
provoked another line of thought which then birthed more
thoughts. The central questions these birthed were: do the
men who have ruled Nigeria, and undoubtedly failed to
govern her with any discernible vision, know better? If they
do, why have they then wilfully allowed the paradise given
by God to become the hell that it has become?
Assuming that they know, and have merely elected a
conscious decision to assail their people and afflict them;
what have they done for themselves, even with the insane
riches that they have acquired; even as the poverty of the
people had multiplied, mutated, and, been weaponised?
I was assailed by these questions, and I resolved to visit
Obasanjo Presidential Library to gauge just how well he had
done with the crown jewel of his crooked and myopic life.
Aremu the Lion Cub, is the first instalment of that resolve.
Whilst I doubt that Obasanjo has anything of substance to
258
show me beyond my encounter with Aremu the unfortunate
cub, I shall ensure that I revisit the library to conclude my
research.

****

259
 (VIII)

'Aremu the Lion Cub'…

Metaphor for a Blighted Land

Nigeria, the giant of Africa that has

refused to learn to walk.
A fool at 58 must awaken before it's too late

I HAVE been working on a couple of ideas for books for

some time. The one I started with looks at the Nigerian
situation; the systemic collapses; the relentless march
towards
State failure, and the Nigerian situation in general.
I have looked at the issues through the eyes of my
generation; the ones born just before, during, and
immediately after the Civil War. The same one that saw the
rump of a functional Nigeria, even as we can now recognise
the moments in our youth, when the seeds of today were
consumed by average men, who bestrode a nation, and
consequently enslaved the people.
In my works and research, one name has stood above all
as one of the principal architects of the Frankenstein we have
been saddled with today. I speak of none other than
Olusegun Obasanjo, Aremu of Ota, the “Ebora of Owu,” and
one of the major principalities that have held Nigeria down,
and assured that paradise should be hell to the people that
God has blessed beyond belief.
In my quest to be fair to 'Aremu', and in fulfilment of my
promise to visit the monument Obasanjo built -- to greed -- in
260
the name of a presidential library; seeing as he not only
ignored to build a nation, he helped to destroy one; I was
curious to see what he (Obasanjo) built; so, I went visiting for
a weekend.
Oh, I must tell you of 'Aremu the Lion Cub'. The tragedy of
a blighted land; illustrated in the captivity of the king of the
jungle in the cage built by avarice.

***
Obasanjo's presidential library complex is a fitting monument
to the unbridled greed, delusions, and intellectual poverty of
the builder. It is built in the cacophonous and pretentious
image of Obasanjo, perhaps, as a salute to his youth at Ibogun
in Ifo part of Ogun State. Perhaps, envious of Soyinka's forest
sanctuary some few kilometres away in the same town,
Aremu has a “zoo” directly opposite the actual library, on top
of which I was told he, the “The Lion Cub” stays, in the
penthouse apartment.
Aremu has clear views of his kingdom, and his “zoo” has
the pride of place.
My wife, Olufunmilola, insisted that we visited the zoo.
She was traumatised by the experience. And I shall never look
at a lion the same way again!

***
Obasanjo's “zoo” comprises a warren of walkways, carved
into the rocks that were blasted before his Hilltop GRA was
built. As you walk through, you come to a complex of wire
mesh cages containing monkeys of all sorts -- in cages that I
would never allow for puppies! The monkeys showed clear
261
signs of extreme stress, and were pacing in place, without the
space to roam as intended by their Maker.
A pair of ostriches was kept in a pen that cannot measure
more than 150 square meters; they are the most fortunate of
creatures trapped in 'Aremu's nightmare. We were shocked
to the marrows to behold Aremu! If I ever doubted that
Obasanjo is wicked, the doubts evaporated at the sight of
'Aremu the Lion Cub.'
Across the lane from the ostriches were a couple of
enclosures. That was where we found 'Aremu'.
“Aremu the Lion Cub,” the sign on the wall declares.
Holding our noses, we drew closer to examine what initially
appeared to be a pair of seriously malnourished Boer-bulls,
but which upon closer inspection, proved to be a pair of
young lions. Next to them, an older lion just as begrimed, and
clearly malnourished!
No true animal lover would keep any animal in the
manner that Obasanjo has caged 'Aremu'. I have kept Boer-
bulls, and they had by far more space to run than 'Aremu;'
another unfortunate victim of the avarice of Olusegun
Obasanjo. What's more? Obasanjo's short-sightedness has led
to the reality of the cub's growth being ignored, and a
maturing male lion remains saddled with the toga of a cub.
Not much unlike Nigeria, the giant of Africa, that has refused
to learn to walk.
A fool at 58 must awaken before it's too late.

****
Nigeria may be likened to Obasanjo's zoo. We the encaged
citizens are little different from the animals in his cages. But
262
it is 'Aremu', the unfortunate cub and his cell mates that best
tell the story of the tragedy that have befallen us under the
rules of miserably ignorant, avaricious, and poverty-stricken
men of limited and pimpish imaginations.
In a state that cares little for human rights, 'Aremu' will
probably die in the filth of his cage, and the starvation in
which I found it during my visit.
But who cares about the rights of a lion, given a bad name
in order to kill it?

****

263
 (IX)

The Thieves and the Maddening Broom...

As the broom has swept, we have seen

the rotten underbelly of the Nigeria State;
we have seen wilful and treasonous subversion
of the people's will

I GREW up in Ibadan, and I am not talking of the Ibadan of

old Bodija, UI, or any of the GRAs. I speak of, yes, Inalende,
Ode-Olo, and the rest. The homes were mostly tenement
buildings with rooms arranged opposite each other; opening
onto a corridor with one main door at the front, and another
to the rear. The toilets, if they had any, were mostly at the rear
as would be the bathrooms too. The communal kitchen would
also be found to the rear of the building.
But it is on the brooms that I would like for us to focus.
The brooms are almost always smoke-stained, and rarely
long. The brooms are usually Ijabes in truth; that being the
shorter broom that is used in the preparation of Ewedu, the
accompaniment of amala, a staple food of the Yoruba. The
broom would hang at the entrance to the home, unless of
course, you were like my grandpa, a Christian who shuns the
religious syncretism of the Yoruba of the time.
Where the crosses hang today, was once for the
brooms.

264
 ***
The broom would have some charm, almost always in red
colour adorning its neck; binding together the broom itself.
The intricacies of the charm binding the broom differ from
one to the other, but the charms are almost always meant to
disarm the thieves, I was told. These brooms, I somehow
learnt, were meant for the uninvited guests that visited at
night.
Stealing did not start today, and the Ibadan of my youth
had its fair share of night marauders.
It was Baba Agbede I asked. He was one of my
grandfather's cronies, a blacksmith, and one of the geriatric
victims of my Ayo ̀Olop̩oń prowess. I must have been sent on
an errand to his forge, and as was usual with us kids, I had
talked him into allowing me to work the bellows. I was
watching the flame dance in the kiln as I listened to him tell
the tales of the good old days. At least I did, until I saw the
broom.
The broom as with the other ones I'd seen around, was
sooty from the open flames of the forge's furnaces. But black
as it was, the red rag tying the broom was still a scary looking
piece with cowries, a little horn, one that I was to learn, came
from the roe deer, believed in Yoruba myths to be the active
ingredient in the completion of the “Ase”/Afose, when
rendered in full. Ase, or Afose, properly described, as it may
not be translatable, is a charm that renders the enchanted
enthralled, and involves the loss of will, and, or, cognitive
abilities.

265
 The “owo” -- that's the Yoruba word for broom, the very
symbol of our ruling party, was a traditional security
insurance, Baba Agbede explained. But as with the aged, I got
the explanations with visual aids. The old man told me war
stories, tales of the broom, and its proud heritage.
In the days of old, when the Yoruba wars raged, Baba
Agbede said, there was a hamlet deep in the forest. An old
man lived with his equally aged wife, and for company they
had an even older cat. Theirs was a simple, idyllic life; far
from the madness of the raging civil wars, when men
enslaved their brethren for beads. They lived in peace until
trouble invited itself.
The cat heard the racket of their tiptoeing hoofs, but unlike
the dog, it lacked a bark; and meowing didn't do; the
geriatrics at sleep, practice it seems for the coming sleep. The
crash of the door awakened the dead. The old man, unruffled
from sleep, only a simple question asked: are you looking for
the brooms? A motley crew of eight beheld each other and
nodded acquiescence with coordinated alacrity. Mama
pointed them to a pile of brooms. You have never found a
cleaner hamlet, and to the farm the old man marched them
with leisure at dawn. That was the story of the broom, Baba
Agbede said.

***
I behold Nigeria, and the broom is working. I see the APC
exposing the lies. As the broom has swept, we have seen the
rotten underbelly of the Nigeria State; we have seen
“inconclusive election” enter our political lexicon; we have
seen wilful and treasonous subversion of the people's will in
266
Kogi, and, in Osun; and, we have seen that a broom
besmirched with faecal waste is incapable of cleaning the
house.
The APC broom has become an Ijabe, just as useless as the
tattered umbrella of the PDP.
But the brooms of my youth would appear to have come
to Lagos. Indiscriminate importation of brooms from outside
Lagos has brought an enchanted broom to town. The ongoing
kasala (rumble) in the ruling APC has nothing to do with the
welfare of the people of Lagos; it is an internal power struggle
between the godfather, and his boy. Na overskill wan kill the
Jagaban.
Bi í lé bá ṣì ń'tòrò, ọmọ àlè ibẹ̀ ni kò tíì dà'gbà.
The bastard in his house has fully matured, and
for now, at least, I counsel that we all grab our
popcorn, recline our seats, and watch the quarrel of
bandits for the lessons it teaches.
Àjà túká ni ti Agbarin lágbára ẹj̀ ẹ̀ Jesu o! Ase!

****

267
 (X)

The Rape of Lekki…

A personal testimony

The State and the underworld have meshed,

and now the State has become the criminal
entity

P ROVIDENCE has ordered my steps; I had the privilege

of having been in Lagos State University (LASU) and
been friends with a couple of princes from the Ojomu
Chieftaincy Family. One was Ibrahim Oluyemi Bakare, first
son of the Balogun of Ojomuland, Chief Y.O.B Bakare, who
was later assassinated in December 2005 by yet unknown
gunmen in full glare of the police checkpoint that used to exist
on Falomo bridge; another victim of a murderous system or
State.
Ibrahim's older cousin, Azeez Babajide Akinloye, currently at
the House of Representatives, was another Prince I made
friends with. These two men were instrumental in leading me
to Ajiran Lekki as far back as when Jide's father, the Ojomu,
got his coronation. My father might have lived and died an
Ijesha man, I might have grown up in Ibadan, but I consider
Lagos my state, and Ajiran and the greater Lekki, my
hometown. Bola Ahmed Tinubu oversaw a most brutal rape
of the Lekki Peninsula. I am talking about land grabs.
Though, he is not alone in such things -- practically all who
268
occupied that office had done the same; Tinubu turned it into
a science. What he did, which no one had ever done before,
was the theft of a commonwealth. He superintended the theft
of the only road in and out of the Lekki metropolis. He did so
in full glare of the cameras, in broad daylight, with aplomb,
and he was applauded for his 'foresight' and 'vision'.
A company owned by Tinubu vide his cronies was granted
a 30-year concession and lease over the 47 kilometres road to
Epe. They were to rebuild the existing road.
The Lekki Expressway scam supported a new era in the
annals of the political brigandage in Nigeria; it was brazen,
frontal. It vaporised whatever illusions I might have had
about any hope for Nigeria. I was not quite surprised by the
theft, but I was stunned by the acquiescence of the citizens in
their own rape, and the hand wringing acceptance of its
inevitability. The People's Democratic Party's federal
government was just as complicit in this most violent rape of
a people. The Federal Government facilitated that transaction
by offering a requisite sovereign guarantee; and unlike
during the Obasanjo's years, Tinubu merely cut whatever
deals are required, while the Federal Government under
Yar'Adua, gave the devil his due, and fully participated in the
rape.

***
Obviously, with foreknowledge that the fuel subsidies
were going to be removed on January 1, 2010, the Lekki
Concession Company (LCC) commenced its tolling
operations a week before! When it is necessary for their

269
interest, seeming extremes of Nigeria politics always find the
grace to work or wreck together.

***
I watched the Ojota rallies in bemusement. Paid agent of the
system and State, presumed to shape the discourse, and
channel the anger of the people! Leaders of Organised Labour
misinterpreted the mood of the people; they staged the usual
rounds of strikes before the eventual sale of their integrity
and conscience. But the people would not be pacified and the
State, be that the Action Congress of Nigeria or the People's
Democratic Party part of it, worked together to brutally put
down the putative spring.
***
In the Lekki axis, the government was concerned about
its toll gates, and it mobilised the state within the State, to do
its dirty work.

***
…A history of brigandage
Ajah had for long been a hotbed of violent gang activities, and
opportunistic robberies. Most of these crimes are the direct
result of the land grab battles by the different families with
traditional ownership rights to land. The conflicting claims
have always been there, but with the emergence of the
Olumegbon (deceased), and his decision to resign from Ajah,
a particularly brutal war of attrition was waged for the
ownership of Ajah. The first victim was the safety of the
ordinary citizens seeking their livelihood in that part of
Lagos. Local and imported thugs, and cut throats found new
270
patrons whilst the Labour strikes endured, and Ojota, and
Falomo were raging.
Ebunolu Adegboruwa, I believe it was, who attempted to
organise something in Lekki.
The thugs were deployed to prevent citizens from
venturing out of the Ajah axis. I say on my honour that
citizens were robbed at Ajah bus Stop and its environs, in
plain sight of policemen who turned blind eyes. For as long
as the strike lasted, Ajah residents lived in terror of the thugs,
stationed at the bus Stop, and who patrolled the road on
dozens of okada. I personally observed those young men at
Chevron Roundabout, which appeared to be the extent to
which they were allowed to range. I saw them exchange
greetings familiarly with the mobile police unit that was
stationed there! If you still doubt that the State and the
underworld have fused in our dear city and nation, please
take time to observe what transpires at every major bus Stop
in our beloved Centre of Excellence. You will see the Agbero
with his tab; he checks off who has paid. The policeman
keeping the tab is also there for the wary to sight, even though
they sometimes have civilian employees acting for them.
Every driver pays, and upon that payment, he practically
acquires immunity; he drives confident in the knowledge that
he is covered. The State and the underworld have meshed,
and now the State has become the criminal entity.
I saw all of these ills, and the capacity to remain silent, and
apolitical was lost.
I became involved with efforts to sensitise the people. I
wrote countless Blackberry messages that were broadcast; I

271
did bulk short message service (SMS) pieces; we formed a
group, Lambs Can Cry, and railed impatiently against what
we rightly identified as a colossal rape of our commonwealth.
I refused to pick up the Electronic pass -- the payment system
that allows one to use the less congested gates at the toll plaza.
I wanted to feel the pain of my rape each time I drove through
the gates.
By the time the 2015 election cycle came around, the full
effect of the Lekki toll gates and the unending road
construction works had become evident. Travel time on the
road, at practically all the times of the day, had increased
because of the numerous roundabouts. The comically slow
pace of the downgraded works being done, and the almost
total abandonment of previous attempts were all so clear, just
as the fact that an obviously incompetent firm had been
engaged to build such an important road. We saw tailors
masquerading as engineers on the project! The numerous
potholes already evident on the road stand as testimony to
this claim.

***

…Lekki, a brief profile

Lekki was home to a transit-based economy. Its residents,
prior to its redistricting within the tollgates, travelled to
Victoria Island and Ikoyi for practically everything. Their
work places were located outside of Lekki. Markets, schools,
hospitals, name it, we had none before our roads were stolen.

272
 Lagosians outside the Lekki corridor have a mistaken
impression of Lekki. They have been led to believe that Lekki
is a rich man's neighbourhood, and its inhabitants are
wealthy people. Nothing can be further from the truth.
Sincerely, you will find a lot of very wealthy Nigerians living
inside Lekki Phase 1, parts of Oniru Estate, and some
highbrow neighbourhood like Nigeria Insurance Corporation
of Nigeria (NICON) Town. Because of the ready availability
of mortgages to the middle class that recovered and emerged
during the Obasanjo years, the professional middle class also
fuelled a sustained development of gated estates in which a
lot of the aspirational class lives. But the vast majority of its
residents live in paro-paro, face-me-I-slap-you tenements in
Idado, Igbo-Efon, Gbara, Badore, Oke-Ira, Olugborogan,
Awoyaya, Bogije, Okun-Ajah etc.
***

…The neglected
In the eight years Bola Ahmed Tinubu spent in office, he did
not build a single school in the Lekki axis; he did not build
hospitals or health centres; he built less than 10 kilometres of
roads in the entire axis.
In twenty years of its largely unchallenged hegemony, the
Lagos State Government (LASG) has not been able to provide
additional schools for the teeming population. The only
secondary school is the one by the Mobil headquarters in
Maroko. The State has practically abandoned the provision
of basic infrastructure to the private sector. Lekki is dotted
with all manner of schools -- from the badly provisioned, but
ridiculously expensive to the shack straddling the canals.
273
Lekki's schools are many, but the state remembers them only
when it is time to get some money out of them.
Basic amenities like public waterworks are non-existent in
over 98 per cent of the entire Lekki Peninsula. In fact, the only
place where the next bane of attempt has ever been made is
inside Lekki Phase 1, and I believe that one has stopped
pretending to work. The rest of the neighbourhoods are
dependent on buying trucked water or using ever more
unsafe boreholes. Lekki's been forgotten and is only
remembered when the State seeks to milk its citizens.
The depth of Lekki's abandonment is easy to see once you
get off the main road and attempt to use the side roads.
During the rains, the roads are streams in parts, rivers in some
areas, and obstacle courses for the most parts. Lekki
developed without a drainage plan. When in the dying days
of his regime, Fashola launched the Lekki Master Plan and
awarded various contracts, the people cheered and waited
expectantly. As with every one of their corrupt gyrations, the
canals have caused more problems than they have solved.
Badly constructed and mostly higher in gradient than the
water they were meant to channel into the lagoon, most of the
canals are today water collection points, and homes to
mosquitoes and all manner of reptilian life. It was against this
backdrop that the Action People's Congress campaigned and
still won the last elections in Lekki and Lagos.
Why?

274
 (XI)

2003 Elections:
…Between the Lion and the Fox

The State and the underworld have meshed, and now the
State has become the criminal entity

T HE 2003 elections during which Obasanjo captured the

Southwest and from which Bola Ahmed Tinubu
emerged as the only Alliance for Democracy governor, after
a spirited rearguard battle, was also the beginning of the
Tinubu mystique; the capitulation of the Professional Civil
Rights group, and the end of critical opposition to Tinubu's
hegemony. He was emboldened to throw off whatever
remained of Afenifere's influence over his government and
person, and he became the rallying point for many who were
opposed to the person of Obasanjo.
The Yoruba have always been reflexively tribal in their
outlook on life without being hostile to any others; we have
always engaged the Nigerian project from a defensive
position. We hold our homeland and vote as a block for the
party with progressive leanings, which at independence was
the Action Group. Other parties had their space under the
sun, but the Yoruba have always tended to vote en masse for
the party they identified as their own. With the death of the
Action Alliance, and Tinubu's survival, something different
emerged from the ruins.

***
275
Lagos State is a home for all, a microcosm of the Nigeria State
itself. Some have argued that every Nigerian family has a
representative in the city state. I will not argue with that.
Lagos is also the centre of journalism in Nigeria; the critical
press -- print and electronic -- are mostly Lagos based; and
the owners of the various organs reside in the state. It is not
called the 'Lagos Press” for nothing. Lagos, as a state, defines
the Nigeria State, and it became the sole inheritance of the
Action Group/Unity Party of Nigeria /Alliance for
Democracy
Afenifere political family. Or so they thought.
Obasanjo is not a man to take anything less than total and
complete annihilation of his enemies. Being forced to hand
off Lagos in order to lessen the public outcry did not go down
well with him; he launched sustained and very ferocious
attacks against Tinubu. He undermined him at every
opportunity, and raised Ogunlewe and his Federal Road
Maintenance Agency (FERMA) corps to attack Tinubu's
initiatives and make the state ungovernable for him. Funsho
Williams remained in the political space, preparing for the
2007 elections and offering temperate critiques of Tinubu and
his policies. Tinubu fought valiantly against the vast array of
Federal thugs. Obasanjo made Tinubu the hero that he
became. If Obasanjo was properly defined as an uncouth
bully, Bola Ahmed Tinubu carefully branded himself the only
credible opposition leader in the country.

***
The undisputed leaders of Afenifere, both Chief Abraham
Adesanya and his deputy, Uncle Bola Ige, had died in
276
different circumstances. Chief Adesanya died of old age, but
Chief Ige was murdered by what Professor Wole Soyinka
diplomatically labelled “a nest of killers in the People's
Democratic Party (PDP)”, and which I believe acted with the
knowledge and acquiescence, if not direction, of Obasanjo
himself. People better informed than I have addressed this
issue already, but how a serving Attorney General was
brutally murdered in his home, and his killers have not been
found till date remains just another stain on Obasanjo's soiled
garment.
With the passage of Adesanya and Ige, and his prime
position as the lone survivor of the People's Democratic Party
onslaught, Tinubu inherited the mantle of leading the
opposition, which has historically always been headed by the
Yoruba, but now fell on the governor of the richest and most
viable state in Nigeria.
Obasanjo is an insufferable hypocrite, a well-practised liar
unbound by any respect for his own words; ruthless to the
point of being relieved of a conscience, and totally consumed
by his inability to brook views and opinions different from
his own conceited ones. He went after Tinubu with all the tact
of a bull in a China shop; he fought unfairly, he fought with
regard to Law, and he fought without either the moral
authority, or any altruistic pretentions. Obasanjo is defined
by his pettiness, and in his wars with Tinubu, he sank to new
lows to prove his point.
***
I respect Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his unparalleled political
instincts… his depth of understanding and street smarts were

277
deployed in the battles ranging from the withheld local
government funds, to the Federal Roads Maintenance
Agency's (FERMA) rampages. Obasanjo was properly
defined as the rampaging bully that he is, hypocritical bats
were carefully exposed, and the David and Goliath narrative
was sold to the Nigerian people by Bola Ahmed Tinubu and
his media savvy team. Tinubu was also rebranded and he
emerged as the sole hope of the Nigerian progressives in their
quest to slow down the Obasanjo train.
My enemy's enemy is my friend, or so the popular cliché
says. Bola Ahmed Tinubu acquired many new friends. Some
consciously flocked to his banner whilst yet more were
contended to simply cheer him on as he fought gamely
against the hypocrite of Ota. I was one of his quiet supporters.
I could already see disheartening signs of what has become
evident today. Much as I disliked the Obasanjo hegemony, I
was also worried about the increasing descent into the cult of
personality being built around the person of Bola Ahmed
Tinubu, and the lack of moral, financial and or political
accountability that were evident even at the beginning of this
period.
The Lagos press, the professional Human Rights crusaders,
purchased academics, the uninformed mass, anyone who
could not abide by the suffocating hypocrisy of Obasanjo,
began to clothe Tinubu in Obafemi Awolowo's gown. He
became the undisputed champion of the common man.
Tinubu was born to play the role, he has street smarts
unrivalled by any politician of his generation, but he has
something else that few identified early enough but most see,

278
only after it was too late. He is unfettered by morals; he is as
much a street fighter as Obasanjo, and anything Obasanjo
could do, Tinubu could do better.
Obasanjo is your archetypical bully; he has no problem
killing an ant with a sledgehammer. He will not waste time
in shooting a messenger if he believes that the message would
be detrimental to his own defined interest. Supporting Bola
Ahmed Tinubu became a cause célèbre for Nigerians with
progressive affiliations and pretensions. Tinubu's David had
an army of pebble carriers and Goliath's army was so tired of
Obasanjo's manifest hypocrisy that they were willing to show
David how to dance around Goliath's flailing arms. It was in
this cauldron that the Jagaban mystique was born.
As Obasanjo's hold on power weakened, and he left office,
Tinubu consolidated his own pavers by successfully
installing his successor Babatunde Raji Fashola, in office. In
the game of succession planning, Tinubu is the master of the
game, while Obasanjo has failed woefully on every occasion
that he had been given the opportunity.

***
The 2007 elections across Southwest marked a critical point in
how we got to this sorry pass, how and why the power
concentric have been thrown off balance and why we are back
where we are at this time.
Obasanjo's single defying characteristics is his hypocrisy. I
was nine years old and in primary school when he came to
power. I grew up with Operation Feed the Nation posters
defacing every corner of Inalende. I woke up to radio jingles
exhorting the populace to go back to the farm. Obasanjo was
279
always on the television pontificating about the coming
agricultural revolution. He was part and parcel of my early
consciousness, and he had a lot to say on almost every subject.
By the time the civilians came, the Unity Party of Nigeria was
the party of my grandparents with whom I grew up, and of
everyone else that I knew. It was heresy to be a National Party
of Nigeria (NPN) person in my part of town, and Obasanjo
was said to be an NPN man. What further proof was required,
seeing as he “gave power” to the Hausa? My youthful
thoughts were that simple. Obasanjo was the Yoruba
'bastard', our very own Quisling. The Broadcasting
Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) did a very effective job of
branding Obasanjo; he was a persona non grata in my youth.
As I grew into my teenage years, Obasanjo faded from
public consciousness except for his occasional and well-timed
populist pretensions that came out sporadically. But he was a
man without any constituency, and the discerning largely
ignored his protestations. But he was an enduring irritant to
Abacha, who happily clamped him in jail and from whom he
only escaped by the grace of God, with his life.
Obasanjo's stifling hypocrisy was in full array as he sought
a 3rd term, subverting the constitution in his attempts, and
squandering any goodwill his prisons years might have
bought him. I was by this time completely detached from any
form of political activism, but I grew an Afro in protest.
Indeed, it is to Obasanjo that I owe the Afro that I have grown
since 2006, with me shaving only on the 29th of May 2007, as
Obasanjo left office diminished by his hypocrisy.

280
 As Obasanjo diminished himself, Tinubu, the astute
politician that he is, built himself up, and positioned himself
as the de facto opposition leader in Nigeria.
The Action Congress of Nigeria emerged in that season and
took on board those pushed out of People's Democratic Party
by the rampaging Obasanjo. As ACN's ranks swelled, the
PDP was bleeding. But the major gains by Tinubu were
strategic, largely went unnoticed until it was too late and,
remains largely unarticulated till date.
The People's Democratic Party governors that rode to
power on Obasanjo's coat-tails in 2003, had been mostly
properly defined as crooked and incompetent; and viewed
against the backdrop of Tinubu's well-managed and oiled
public personae, the slick media coverage and propaganda
machine, they stood no chance.

***
A correct analysis of the halcyon days of Obasanjo's 3rd term
madness would show that his loss in credibility became
Tinubu's stepping stone into what he is today. The period
afforded him (Tinubu) the opportunity to decimate all forms
of internal opposition to his own hegemony, and his position
as the leader of the opposition. Dissenting voices were either
frustrated out of the political space, forced into joining yet
more ineffectual lesser parties, or corralled into the already
discredited People's Democratic Party. By the dawn of 2007
elections, Bola Ahmed Tinubu had begun to reap the
investment in his strategic decision to take the battle to his
enemies rather than wait for them to come to him.

281
 Bola Ahmed Tinubu financed opposition against the
People's Democratic Party governors of the South West states;
he kept them too busy fighting for survival in their own states
that they were of little help to the PDP in Lagos. He let
Aregbesola loose in Osun State… Aregbe was the
commissioner of works in Lagos State when he took on then
Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola with his Oranmiyan
Foundation. The PDP's internal contradictions, and
Obasanjo's insufferable hypocrisy, killed them in Oyo State;
Ondo and Ekiti State fell in much the same manner.
Oshiomhole's embrace of Action Congress of Nigeria and his
eventual victory brushed Tinubu's leadership credential but
his victory was largely thanks to Obasanjo's strategic error of
judgement, and his inability to plan a succession beyond the
illegitimate and alternately demystifying 3rd term project.
With Obasanjo out of way, and his successor largely
manoeuvred by some deft judicial pirouettes, Tinubu took
back what the crooked electoral system took, using the
instrumentality of a judiciary that is just as crooked. Ole gbe,
Ole gba -- One robber is robbed by another robber. And the
Action Congress of Nigeria numbers swelled.
The PDP began its journey towards its inevitable extinction
as a power capturing juggernaut while Tinubu began to
brand himself as the new Awolowo. He even had Ghandic
pretensions; I saw the billboard around this time.
As Yar'Adua's illness took hold, and the PDP reeled
around helplessly, without clear leadership beyond the self-
interest noises from Turai Yar'Adua (then first lady) and her
cabal, Obasanjo, ever so grateful to bury the man he had

282
single-handed riffed into power, upon the failure of his
agenda, began to promote the ascending Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan.
Jonathan is Obasanjo's legacy to Nigeria. His run to the
presidency of Nigeria is through the instrumentality of
Obasanjo. He became the 'god' of Bayelsa by the grace of God
and the instrumentality of Obasanjo. His road to the Vice
Presidency also came via the same route. We are all aware of
how he became President upon Yar'Adua's death; so, I will
not bore you with how he won in his own right in 2011.
Obasanjo was at the centre of Jonathan's political trajectory.
But Tinubu was building a monster franchise as they all
allowed themselves to be distracted.

***

283
 (XII)

A Democracy without Change

Ours is a democracy that is not anchored

on the expressed wish of the citizens

A S the 2015 elections drew near, the choices facing

Nigerians were very stark. At the centre, it was a clear
choice between Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and Muhammadu
Buhari. History will record that whilst I could not even
contemplate voting for Jonathan, I also did not believe Buhari
to be an alternative. I skipped voting in the Presidential
elections, and I was also going to skip the gubernatorial
elections as well. Such was the depth of my conviction that
none of the candidates possessed the necessary capacity. I did
not vote for any candidate in the presidential elections, but
the gubernatorial elections changed my perception of the
problem; and catalysed my current engagements in the
political space.
Prince Ademola Adeniji Adele (deceased), a man of
immense political sagacity, read the excerpt that was
published in The Guardian and called me for a meeting. I had
known Papa since I met him during the National Democratic
Coalition (NADECO) years and was drawn into his circle by
his brother-in-law, Saheed Salawe, my friend. Upon his
release from Kaduna prison in 1995, Papa and myself
disagreed strenuously on tactics and methodologies, but we
agree on a lot of conclusion we both drew about the need to
284
truly define Nigeria. At the meeting, he told me of his
association with Jimi Agbaje campaign; he shared his ideas
with me, as well as his plans for his candidate. I expressed
deep concerns about his candidate and the damaged platform
from which he sought the office and we parted, agreeing to,
as usual, disagree. As always, he was the indulgent older
brother, who would not presume to force his opinion on
anyone.
His involvement with Jimi Agbaje, and my deep dislike for
the All Progressives Congress leadership, forced me to start
considering a vote for Agbaje, in spite of the language of his
People's Democratic Party platform. The Oba of Lagos
intemperate vituperations on the Igbo population of Lagos,
finally pushed me over the top, and I made up my mind to
vote for Agbaje if only to poke my finger in the eye of the bear.
I wanted to see the Olowo Eko's candidate humbled, and his
patron demystified.
I penned a “Letter to Lagosians” and sent same to Papa for
onward transmission to Agbaje. I was convinced that the
letter would emerge and ensure that the Igbo and any other
person, who might have been turned off the gubernatorial
election by Jonathan's loss, or by the various threats, were
sufficiently mobilised and galvanised into action. The letter
was never released; and the moment passed. I hated the All
Progressives Congress platform enough to go out to vote for
Jimi Agbaje.
My wife and my mother voted Ambode.
My eyes opened at that point.
***

285
Ours is a democracy devoid of choice. My wife, mother, close
friends and colleagues at work, all largely voted for All
Progressives Congress if not unanimously. They had heard
me argue against the manifest corruption of the Tinubu
hegemony, they had equally come to me with their own
observations and frustrations with the system. They knew all
the reasons why I would not vote for Ambode, but they still
voted for him anyway. They moan in the years of endless
traffic whilst the concession games endured, and the long
queues they daily endured as they pay to be allowed to go to
the schools, hospitals, commercial enterprises that engage
their daily existence; yet they voted to continue with the same
party that has all but ghetto-rised their communities and
erected gateways for the transfer of their sweat into
avaricious pockets; men who being uncontended with
privatising the public purse, were now rifting through our
very pockets with leprous fingers.
My wife's vote for All Progressives Congress rankled, and
as I asked how she could possibly bring herself to do so, she
also asked how I could expect her not to? I got much the same
response from my mother, and my partners in the Law
offices. There were no arguments about the demerits of
retaining the Tinubu hegemony, but all asked me to name the
alternatives. This has led me into a critical examination of our
democracy; how it offers no genuine choice to the citizens
who are locked into a vicious cycle, caught between the
thinking thieves and the unthinking thieves, especially now
that the lines have been completely blurred by the emergence
of the All Progressives

286
Congress, and the implosion of the People's Democratic
Party. Assuming, but not conceding, that Mr. Jimi Agbaje
meant well, and truly desired to change Lagos State and
rescue it from the claws of the Jagaban and his merry band,
what other platforms could he have run on; how much of an
impact could he have made, and what differences, if any,
could that have made to the outcome?
Jimi Agbaje has an impeccable progressive credential. He
has served as National Treasurer of Afenifere, he was a
foundation member of Alliance for Democracy (AD). I don't
know the story, but he has refused to be tainted by association
with the Jagaban; he has dared to be his own man in an
environment where several have serially debased themselves
and eaten their own vomit. He ran in 2001 under the
relatively unknown DPA (Democratic People's Alliance), he
was beloved by several Lagosians, but most believed he lost
because he lacked a formidable platform behind him. He ran
on the People's Democracy Party platform, and he still lost.
***
This fixation on the platform is a by-product of the
kwashiokorised democracy evolving in our country. Ours is a
democracy that is not anchored on the expressed wish of the
citizens. We have an unknown number of citizens; we have
little or no way of empowering the voters to the point where
the sovereign will of the State is predicated on a clear
expression of the peoples' will, in periodic elections. The
holder of the Presidency still has too much power over the
outcome of elections at the federal levels, and so do the
governors, in the conduct of local government elections.

287
Agbaje in my view had no choice but to run on the discredited
People's Democratic Party platform. That is the consequence
of a democracy without choice.
Even I am not immune to the illogicality of a choice-less
democracy. My abstinence from voting in the Presidential
elections, and, subsequent emotive decision to vote for Jimi
Agbaje, are only reflective of the paucity of choices forced on
the Nigerian people.

****

288
 (XIII)

It's Just A Penny?

Problem is leadership, damn it!

Without a commonly accepted vision,

Nigeria will never become what it/she has
the capacity, and the destiny, to be

W HEN I pick up the average Nigerian Newspaper, I am

pretty confident that I know who paid for what story,
or news item. My knowledge of my society -- the cancerous
nature of our corruption, the pervasiveness of virulent
corruption in the press, as with all other expressions of our
lives -- helps cement this truth. I read Nigerian print and
online media with alert; a nuclear grade, bullshit filter.
To read the above, you'd be pardoned if you were left with
the impression that I had somehow left out the television and
radio journalists; nothing can be further from the truth. If you
look to either medium as the primary sources of information,
you have become a victim of weaponised ignorance. Bar an
almost negligible minority, the Nigerian television and radio
stations are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the very
oppressors of the people; persons beholden to them; men
available for sale; and, or, businesses amenable to persuasion.
They report news without forgetting to be careful not to
offend those who pay the piper.

289
 To be informed, I turn to the western and eastern press. I
listen to Al Jazeerah, CNN, BBC; I try my best to watch Fox
News, whenever I am in places where their patently American
perspectives are tolerated and broadcast. I watch and listen to
these lot, but I do so with not only my, yes, you can guess,
atomic grade, bullshit filter, I do so without ever forgetting
that they are telling me my story from their often racist,
ignorant, and jaundiced perspectives.
“It's just a penny?” Richard Quest exclaimed! If you watch
CNN, you've seen the trailer pushing Quest's show, but I will
not spare you a rehash of the story it tells. It is important for
the window it opens into how we are seen; why we are seen
like that, and what is required if we are to change the
unflattering but truthful viewpoint it communicates.
A “black” woman, the very symbol of African fecundity,
dropped a penny. Richard Quest, the very image of WASP
prudence, picked up the penny, called her attention to the
dropped coin.… It's a banking hall, you could see my
beautiful African queen dismissively asserts, “it's just a
penny”. In the banking hall, you see the Chinese, Korean, or
Japanese guy, the one with the briefcase of valuables; then the
vault into which Quest flicks the African penny, to keep the
company of his bullions. And then he delivers the master
class on why the African age may never dawn. I have always
hated this trailer.

****
Vision constrains leaders. When leadership is unrestrained by
vision, resources are wasted, and purpose is corrupted. The
central cause of retardation in Nigeria is the absence of a
290
common vision behind which the people may be united; and
in the absence of a national vision all manner of perverse, evil,
wicked, and corrupt visions are being pursued. Obasanjo
Farms Nigeria lives on, even as OFN died, The Bells Schools
thrives, even as UI decays, and Obasanjo Presidential Library
bespeaks the excellence that was once promised by the
National Theatre.
I came across a picture of Dubai in 1994, and the Dubai of
today, which looks like tomorrow on a friend's Facebook page,
and I was reminded of Quest's admonitions; and Habakkuk 2:
2-3, came to mind. If you seek knowledge, read it. It's not my
remit to evangelize.
Visionary leadership is the difference between the Dubai
of old, and the Nigeria of today, and yesteryear. Visionary
leadership is why the house of Saud no longer comes to UCH;
the very one in Ibadan as was once the case in the 1960s.
Today, our presidents and eminences are frequent guests of
foreign hospitals. Vision explains why the Malaysians export
vegetable oils to Nigeria today when it was from our shores;
they took away the seedlings.
It's just a penny? I'm sure. It explains why we would
borrow from China what we just frittered away on inanities.
Just think of all the pennies we've thrown away, and are still
throwing away.

****

291
 (XIV)

The Lazy Youth...

…yes, the youth are lazy, but it has taken

several irresponsible fathers to condition
them to be the way they are…

I WRITE this in an Uber car on my way to the Ikeja High

Court to keep a date, I'd rather be spared. We'll talk about
that some other time. I have something more urgent to share
with you, and I ask that you take off your partisan hats.
When the president made his rightly derided comments
on the indolence of our youth, he was mostly right in
describing the ailments, my grouses were with his refusal to
correctly identify the cause. That is without prejudice to my
belief that he is also guilty of victim blaming.
But back to my Uber ride.
There's nothing particularly remarkable about the young
man driving me. His car is also the usual type you'd find
'doing' Uber -- a Toyota Corolla. But the unremarkable car
smells clean. The driver doesn't smell; he is well groomed. I
hate bad odours; I value clean air.
He started driving, and he reminded me of Yakubu. If you
knew Yakubu, you'll understand that this is about as high a
praise as anyone would get off me for driving skills, but to fill
that man's shoes, he'd have to be more honest a man than
many I have met. May God rest Yakubu's soul. Amen.

292
 Intrigued by his driving capacity and assurance behind
the wheel, I began to talk to, and, with, him. At least until I
broke off the conversation to type this piece, and to allow him
concentrate on his driving. Now, we're heading out to 3rd
Mainland Bridge, out of Lekki traffic.
His name is Tunde, 31 years old. He speaks barely
passable English, even though he “passed” his GCE, and was
only denied a tertiary education because of his parents'
inability to fund the quest. He lives in Mushin; he is single
and has no 'baby mama' or mamas. I see an earnest, working
youth, I probed further.
What do you want to do with your life? I asked. His
response is what has provoked this piece.
Tunde wants to “go abroad”. To do what? He shrugged in
response; and proceeded to tell me about the huge army of
cousins he has in the US. In fact, one just got his visa last
week. I am sure with prayers and fasting, perhaps with a little
ingenuity, Tunde's miracle shall also come.
So, what are you trained to do? What trade did you learn
when you couldn't complete your education? Tunde learnt no
trade; has no skills. I looked at him with pains in my heart; I
told him the fate that awaits him, and the like of him. I have
been there. I have seen it before. I have the battle scars to
prove my cred.

***
A life of toil, misery, and pains, awaits the unskilled illegal
immigrant. That the illegal immigrant is both unskilled and
black, practically seals his fate, and it would take
unbelievable grace for him to be spared a fate dissimilar to
293
slavery, and arguably more harrowing. There's no owner to
house and feed him; those basics are virtual luxuries to the
unskilled, and illegal African immigrant.
When the system failed to provide a pathway to formal
education; what if anything has ever been done to offer
training in the trades and crafts? How are the youth meant to
find employment when they have been trained to be
indolent? There's a huge army of francophone Africans and
Ghanaian artisans earning their living in Nigeria, but you'd
be hard-pressed to find skilled Nigerian labour at any trade.
Our young men are the most hit. The few that have managed
to get trained in spite of the clear abandonment by the
dysfunctional system, what has the state done to help them
grow?
In the absence of a national vision for our youth, negative
outlets have been found by ingenious minds, and you must
wonder about what the future holds for the coming
generations. Without lofty heights to aspire to, and in an
environment shorn of heroism, the youth have become
existential in their world view; they are happy to do anything
to “make it”.

***
When I was done telling Tunde what economic exile as an
illegal African immigrant entails, he had no response to offer
me. But even as I know that I am correct in my analysis and
conclusions, I couldn't help but ask myself, the same question
several Tundes have asked of themselves before embarking
on their Saharan odyssey: what choices are left for those who
stay?
294
 Many Tundes have weighed their options; they have died
trying to get out. Yes, others made it out and are living the
nightmare I have sought to describe, yet more are working in
the army of the living dead, doing everything and anything
to survive. The vast majority have become vacuously
religious, and are daily engaged in seeking to con the God
unknown for the miracles they need to survive.
Codeine, Tramadol, Marijuana, Glue, Soakaway pits --
these offer temporary insanity as escape from the painful
realities of their hopeless existence, and the betting apps and
kiosks abound to offer illusory hope.
I have long bid Tunde goodbye, and I type this stuck in
traffic and in another Uber. My driver is another youth, also
in his prime, but this time, I'm holding my tongue. His car
stinks. He is a lazy but working youth; another victim of a
visionless state.
So, yes, the youth are lazy. But it has taken several
irresponsible fathers to condition them to be the way they are,
and a most insensitive father to call them what they have been
conditioned to become.
Knowing how lazy you have all become, and just how
difficult it is to get you to read long articles, I shall leave you
to ponder the future of a country with a huge population of
untrained, entitled, and drug-addicted youth.

****

295
 PART 11

SECTION 3

The Way Forward….

“
The route to nationhood is in the
proposed restructuring
and the change in governance system
Nigeria, the Way Forward...

296
 …our problems as a State has its root in the
governing system and the superstructure
of the state, and; whilst there are certainly
other problems to be tackled, a fix to the
system is required before we may begin
the journey of nationhood.

I WILL not bore anyone with the sad tale of how we got
here, or from where we have journeyed. We are all
painfully familiar with that story. But we all as a people, most
and generally agree, that we need to get away from where we
are and chart a different path for ourselves.
It is my belief that our problems have their roots in the
governing system and the superstructure of the State, and;
whilst there are certainly other problems to be tackled, a fix
to the system is required before we may begin the journey of
nationhood.
Nigeria must be restructured along regional lines. At the
foundation of the Nigeria State, there were three regions;
there was also the clear understanding that more regions
would be created out of the existing three. Indeed, the
Willinks Commission for the Protection of the Minorities
recommended this.
The Western Region, further to this recommendation,
duly created the Midwest in 1963; the expectations were that
297
the other two regions would have additional regions created
out of them for the minority groups trapped therein. This was
not to be until the military aborted the First Republic in the
immediate aftermath of the tragedy of the first coup of 1966.
If the first coup set back the journey towards the creation
of more regions; the second effectively destroyed the federal
structure of the State, and saw to the creation of a unitary
system, with the military command and control structure
being forced on the Nigeria State. Nigeria became a
federation only in name but has over the last 50 years plus
become steadily unitary.
With the imposition of a unitary system and the increased
centralisation of power; the parliamentary system of
government, which is what was agreed at the dawn of
Nigeria Independence and, practised before then, was
jettisoned in favour of the American Presidential system of
government. Evidence of the failure of these twin anomalies
are readily available to be seen today.
I propose that Nigeria reverts to a regional structure.
There is a general consensus that has existed before
Independence, and which has been cemented by the report of
the constitutional conferences held under the auspices of
several governments; that Nigeria should be governed by a
six-regional structure. This is my recommendation.
I propose that Nigeria should revert to the parliamentary
system of government at both the regional and federal levels
of government. I am of the firm opinion that the federal
government has no business with local government, either

298
with the delineation or creation; it should be up to the regions
to decide how to structure internally.
I believe that there should be a reversion to the revenue
allocation and revenue derivation policies in place at the
dawn of Independence; that the only tweak should be to
allow for the creation of an interventionist funds to be
available for the amelioration of the emergencies wrought by
the wars in different parts of Nigeria, to the tragedy of
environmental disasters in the Niger Delta.
These views are by no means exhaustive, and I am sure
that by the time we all might have contributed our thoughts;
we'd be closer to a more coherent and workable plan. I believe
that the key to a route to nationhood lies in the proposed
restructuring and the change in governance system.

The route to nationhood is in the

proposed restructuring
and the change in governance system

NB: Please, see the proposed new Constitution in Appendix

299
 PART 11

SECTION 4

SUNDRY OTHER ITEMS

Purgation
&
Resolve
“
The day I died was the
day I was freed of my
last vestige of fear

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 EPILOGUE

(I)

Do Not Die in their Wars

Our national penchant for talking a

revolution whilst outsourcing the sacrifices
required, has led us into a democracy
barren of choice.

I HAD resolved to watch the coming elections with some

sense of detachment for a season. There was nothing to be
excited about. I was going to vote for General Buhari if he got
on the presidential ballot; and for Jimi Agbaje as governor of
Lagos, whichever platform he chose to run on. I expected
GMB to lose, but I had hoped that Agbaje would win. So
simple were my thoughts, but they have since evolved. If I
would bother to vote, these remain my choices; but I shall not
be voting in the coming elections.
The mood of the country is depressed. Our President is an
uninspiring, dour and colourless man. He inspires no
confidence in anybody. He is surrounded by comical people
who have li le understanding of how to appear sober,
temperate; or presidential. Nobody appears to be responsible
for the ship of State, which is glaringly on course to hit a reef

301
any time from now even as it is buffeted by pirate ships and
dangerous waves.
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan presided over the current
manifestation of the corrupt system that has always produced
the political leadership of the Nigeria State.
Jonathan became the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State
under the kleptocratic regime of Alams (Alamieyeseigha).
His capacity to keep quiet; and be loyal to those who appoint
him to office not his cerebral capacity, competence, and, or
integrity, qualified him for that office.
GEJ became the Governor of Bayelsa courtesy of an
extreme perversion of democratic norms by Obasanjo, 'St. Ma
hews' of Owu — the conscienceless conscience of our ro en
nation. Our elders in Yorubaland of whom Baba Aremu,
should be an honoured member, were it not for his planet-
sized ego, and inherent selfishness, have a saying, “llé tí afi itọ́
mọ, ìrì ni yóò wo”.
Baba Aremu presumed to install a puppet government
that he would control from his crypt in Abeokuta, but he
forgot yet another one of our elders' sayings, “a fi ọba jẹ, òhun
ló ńdi ọ̀tá Oba”.
OBJ's insufferable hypocrisy, which has seen him in his
70s, begin a rabid pursuit of wealth, when he ought to have
dedicated himself to the redefinition of our country, led him
into a collision course with the puppet government he
presumed to have left behind. Yar A'dua moved early in his
regime to be rid of OBJ's influence, and GEJ has bruised his
ego the most.

***
302
GEJ is OBJ's legacy to Nigeria. The one man who has been
singularly blessed to have the opportunity to lead our nation
at two critical junctions in our history, bequeathed the GEJ
presidency to Nigerians. It is important to make this point,
because yet again, OBJ is up to his usual games, and in his
latest adventure, he has found allies in usual, but hitherto
disguised places. Common cause has occasioned strange
alliances and the darkening clouds demand this alarm.
The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria presides
over the most extensive criminal enterprise known to modern
civilization. The constitution does not derive its legitimacy
from the expressed will of its captured people, and
functionaries of the amoral State abridge citizenship rights in
the most violent way. This will remain the case when votes
would be cast on February 14.
The Inspector General would remain the Honourable
Justice Inspector General of the Nigeria Police; the men in
uniform take their cues from him, and he's the one in charge
of the guns deployed to protect us during the elections. That
man –- and it does not matter who he is, every IGP in the sad
history of our country has acted in exactly the same manner
for as long as they are products of the President's benevolence
-- will be the same on February 14.
The INEC, that same one, that has not managed to register
all eligible citizens, has already disenfranchised millions of
Nigerians, and; has shown a sad inability to conduct the most
basic of tasks… the same one peopled by the same corrupt
Nigerians, same as you and I, that will be guarded by the
same police, that will be under the same IGP, that will answer

303
to the same president, will now conduct an election, that will
announce a result, pronouncing defeat for the incumbent
president of this blighted land on February 14?
The PDP is the APC, and the APC is the PDP. The presence
of Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) and his own monster franchise
is the magnet that has unified strange bedfellows, but as our
elders would say, “ikú ńdẹ dẹd̀ ẹr̀ ẹ,̀ dẹd̀ ẹr̀ ẹ̀ náà ńdẹ ikú”.
BAT knows that GEJ would win, but he is hoping that the
popular demand for change -- mostly the mantra of the
middle class impoverished by GEJ's incompetence, and the
extreme mis-governance of states such as Lagos, which is his
cash cow… would distract attention from the 16 years of his
sovereignty over Lagos State. In the noise generated by the
GMB propaganda mouthed as “change,” nobody is asking
APC to run on its own record.
Eight years of Babatunde Raji Fashola (BRF), preceded by
eight years of BAT with the vast amounts received in taxes,
what has it birthed for Lagosians beyond the paparazzi and
razzmatazz? They have built gardens in the middle of the
expressways, and they call them Parks; they proclaim that
“Lagos is working” but the question is, for who? Who has had
the space to ask them to account for the several tollgates with
which they have imprisoned the inhabitants of Lekki? At
what costs have they pretended to rebuild the roads in Ikeja
GRA? What is the true cost of the many anti-people policies
of the APC government of Lagos State, and at what cost have
lies been deified?

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 In 2011, per his own admission, BAT cut a deal with GEJ,
and then pulled away from then AC Presidential candidate
Nuhu Ribadu. Would he be cutting a deal again?

***
GEJ, Obasanjo, Tinubu, Lamido, possibly GMB — they share
common knowledge of a fact: GEJ will win the coming
“elections! Why would Obasanjo fight GEJ if he knows he
would win? It's about his own ego, his perennial need to be
the messiah. Saint Matthew is guilty of every crime he today
accuses GEJ of, and GEJ as said before, is OBJ's legacy to us.
Or could the General have a far more sinister agenda? With
Babangida's recent declarations in Minna, could the generals
be calling out their boys?
OBJ is an extremely intelligent and self-disciplined human
being, especially in areas he has identified as being of interest
to him. He senses the mood of the nation for change, he
realises that his legacy would be indelibly destroyed if he
comes to be identified with GEJ, and he is tapping into the
discontent, in order to burnish his own sullied image and to
preserve his own vainglorious views of his legacy.
GMB! He reminds me of the folk song accompanying the
Yoruba fable of the elephant's coronation, “A ó ò m'érin jọ ba,
ẹw
̀ ẹk̀ ú ẹwẹlẹ”. GMB, a man so simple in his views of the
complex issues facing Nigeria, to the point that he presumed
to cut a deal with all manner of unsavoury characters, in his
bid to garner their endorsement in his quest to lead Nigeria.
GMB, the same one for whom I was going to vote just a few
weeks ago, is a very simple, idealistic but not adequately
informed on critical issues in today's polity.
305
 He has occupied that office before; he failed in the
simplest of his duties —to preserve himself in office. He was
so colourless that IBB did not even deem him sufficiently
deserving of death, because trust me, if he was a threat,
Ibrahim would have arranged something for him. He is so
rare a breed amongst his peers that even the kleptomaniacal
Abacha tapped him up to head the PTF in order to burnish
his own image and; his presence in that agency gave it the
semblance of temperance and probity.
GMB lacks personal conviction to the point where he
would make statements that have today become albatrosses
on his neck, and damaged him irreparably in the eyes of a
significant chunk of our citizenry. Yet he today disavows his
own words, and his records would not support the charges of
bigotry. Who is the real GMB? Will the real GMB please stand
up?
GMB has not sparked, talk less of kindling the fire of the
Nigerian spirit that chased out IBB, but was ultimately
aborted. His quest for the presidency is based on an illusory
“change” being sold to the Nigerian people, whom they
(GMB's promoters) have assumed will endure regardless of
whichever one of them “wins the election”. GMB has become
the dry cleaner, the laundryman washing away the stench of
corruption that taints all his principal sponsors.
The illusion of change is being marshalled using the
instrumentality of the social media, and the Internet. Facile
theses are piled on top of each other, and silly attempts are
made to distinguish between the two sets of dark forces that
have held our country hostage for these years. Men who until

306
recently were sworn enemies, have become compatriots
overnight, and strange bedfellows have emerged. A founding
father of the ruling party is suddenly talking about the 16
years of PDP misrule; IBB presumes to speak on our behalf,
and OBJ is suddenly the conscience of our sick nation!!!
The armies of keyboard warriors have no voter's cards
with which to vote! Majority of the ones who have will walk
away once GEJ's goons execute his agenda. Yet a good
number are Nigerians in the Diaspora, ensconced in the
uncomfortable comfort of exile, and yearning for the best for
the motherland, preaching ideals of western capitalist
democracies. The Nigerian press, is not divorced from the
people themselves, forced into the rabid rat race of existential
living and generally devoid of principles and ideals, its
conscience purchased with envelopes of varying sizes
depending on office. Our national penchant for talking a
revolution whilst outsourcing the sacrifices required, has led
us into a democracy barren of choice. How do you reconcile
a vote for Agbaje with Bode George lurking in the shadows?
A democracy devoid of choice!
From stringers to publishers, the 4th Estate is lost; were it
not lost, how come nobody is asking the pertinent questions
and shouting directions? What happened to seal the lips of
those who used to enquire? Who is watching the watchmen?
What kind of society are we building? What has made it
possible for ordinarily intelligent men and women to become
imbecilic in their intellectual capacities? How did we end up
in this sorry place, where State failure has become a real
possibility in our own lifetime? There is enough maleficence

307
to go around all parts of our sick society; our press continues
to promote lies in place of truth. Yet, the conscience is an open
wound that only the truth can heal.

***
Assuming by some miracle GMB wins the coming election,
and GEJ and his backers are somehow persuaded or
compelled to bow out to popular will, due to pressure from
internet, press and public opinion; what next? Nothing will
change. The same corrupt governors and their godfathers
would remain under the same corrupt system with the same
corrupt legislators, judiciary, police, and; same castrated
army.
The illusion of change will be for a season. Very soon,
GMB would be allowed his rants against “corruption” – as
defined by his own ultimately narrow interpretation of the
word; and his handlers would probably allow him the
occasional victim to be fed to the lions in what would soon
become the circus of anti-corruption. But in that critical battle,
all anyone needs to do is take a look at the high-table at any
political gathering of either of the major parties. The general
has lost the war against corruption before it even began.

***
The Nigerian middle class has been a resounding
disappointment, and its failure to rise above existential living,
replacing intellectual curiosity with vacuous religiosity
devoid of conviction, has accentuated the pervasive
corruption of the political class. The very best amongst us
have never aspired for political leadership, we are too good
308
to be local government councillors, and; too big to run for the
Houses of Assemblies. Only the 'corrupt' go to the House of
Reps, and the Senate; it's not for those with anything to do.
We have as a class failed ourselves, our children, and
generations yet unborn. We have abandoned governance to
the worst of us, and we have watched them move from being
councillors to assemblymen; we've seen men without desire
for service promoted to high offices because we are all too big
to serve the only nation we call home. As they did between
1982-1999, they're coming for you again.

***
Whichever of them wins, I implore Nigerians, please, do not
die in their war. Resist all invitations to violence. If you have
your voter's card, please vote, but vote knowing that it
probably wouldn't matter anyway, especially in the
presidential elections. But it is not too late to prepare to use
all the other elections across the country as barometers for the
performance of the incumbents, from State House of
Assembly to Representatives, Governors and Senators.
The problem will not be solved by a mere change of
personnel, it is the system itself that requires reformation, and
the nation itself that has to be redefined with the rights of its
citizens clearly delineated and held sacrosanct. In 1992, MKO
tapped into a national desire for change. He energised a
movement that became larger than him. He became the
symbol of a young generation of Nigerians; I was one of those
who voted in the most peaceful election ever witnessed in the
history of this potentially great nation. There was no war in

309
any of its territories, and there was not any part of its territory
ceded to a terrorist.
Some betrayed the ideals of nationhood that were sown
on that blessed day. From the minute of conception, they
knew who was, and who wasn't the messiah. Yet they often
stood on June 12, and have traded and prospered while
sitting on it. They are the same people who presume to call us
to their battles again.
I beseech you; do not die in their wars. Today they are in
PDP; if APC should assume office tomorrow, they will move
to APC; and if PDP and GEJ should win, they will remember
their PDP genes. They are one and the same.
Do not die in their war.

(First published in The Guardian newspaper, February 7, 2015)

****

310
 (II)

The Day I Died...

To die in the service and pursuit of truth,

is to become immortal.
To stand up against the amoral, wicked,
and unjust governing system of Nigeria,
and to die in the struggle to replace the
evil system with a more equitable
and just one, would be to have died well

I T'S funny, the tricks time and perspectives play on a dead

man's memory. I cannot now remember the date. But of
what use are dates, or time for that matter, to the dead? It was
the day that I died.
It was just another day at the office. It must have been late
February or early March. I know this because I remember that
I was preoccupied with thoughts of my then impending 50th
birthday, and I recall that it was a li le over a month before
that date.
I had as usual called my darling wife before leaving the
office. There was some arrangement for my favourite dish of
Egusi and pounded yam in place, and I called the wife as
much in keeping with our habit of many years, as well as to
assure that the music of the mortar and pestle would not
commence until I was safely out of the unpredictable Lekki
traffic. The

311
Ijesha blood in my veins abhors cold pounded yam!
The neatly choreographed pounded yam was delivered
by Iya Wale on schedule, and food was served as I slipped
into my Arabic gown, the jellabia.
Now you see, the passage of time has ensured that my
children have succeeded in chasing me out of the main living
room and dining section of the house, and I have become
increasingly constrained to my own room, where I have been
fighting an increasingly lost battle to retain the right to the
small writing desk/dining table, and at least a portion of my
own bed.
The pounded yam was excellent. Every visit to the plate
for a morsel invited a struggle with the mound, to follow.
Such was the smoothness and viscosity of the yam that my
spirit prayed for my mother's maid, who I knew was the
pounder, and for my mum, for her supervision, and perhaps,
personal involvement in the orchestra of the mortar. When
my cook came up with the stew; I made a point to thank him
for the Egusi soup that he contributed to the meal. I then
called my mother to thank her for the pounded yam, and to
ask that she passed on my gratitude to her maid, for the
sterling effort on the yam.
Well and thoroughly satisfied, I bellowed for my ward,
'Timileyin to come to my room and pack the dishes. I then
stood up to do something; what it was, I cannot now
remember. But the moment I stood up I knew something was
amiss. I did not feel right. I lay on my bed for what must have
been a li le under a minute. Timileyin's knocks at the door and

312
entry made me attempt to stand up. The last words I said
were “I don't feel right…”
Then I died!!!
“Daddy Igbayi!” Timileyin was yelling. I opened my eyes
to find Timileyin bent over me. I was on the floor between the
window and my bed. I was too weak to stand; I could barely
talk as I started gathering my wits about me. My upper left
hand was bruised; other than that, I appeared physically fine.
I did a quick tongue roll as prescribed by the many emails
warning about the proper thing to do in cases of a stroke, and,
concluded that I hadn't suffered a stroke.

***
When I was 31 years old, I was diagnosed as being
hypertensive, and one of the ill effects was what was at the
time said to be an “enlarged left ventricle;” I was then placed
on anti-hypertension drugs. The story of how God cured me
of the illness would be told another day; but the condition
was completely reversed; and, I was taken off the
hypertension drugs before my 35th birthday. The first thing I
did upon getting off the floor was asked that my blood
pressure monitor be brought for me.
I stood there bewildered at what had just befallen me, a
soon to be 50 years old! The fittest I have ever been in my life
though not a sports person. In my youth, my grandmother
ensured that I did not forget that every crippled beggar was
a budding footballer until they were permanently injured
playing the game. When my mates were playing football in
the agboole, Oladele would be found playing Ayo Olopon with
my grandparents and my grandfather's other wives and their
313
friends. Without having been exposed to football as a kid, it
was easier to gravitate towards books, and I grew up a couch
potato. I began to pay attention to my personal fitness as I
approached my 40th birthday, and the benefit is that I am
fitter at 50s than I was, in my 20s and 30s.
My surprise soon gave way to a mixture of annoyance
with myself, and queries for God:
How could I have died like this?
Haha! Die in my bedroom at 49?
How?
I would die happy if I would have died for some ideals;
the truth, in defence of my principles and beliefs. But to expire
in my bedroom, in my prime…?
I thanked God for sparing my life.

***

The day I died was a good day. It was the day I lost
whatever residual fear I might have had for death. It was the
very day I learnt to embrace my destiny.
When I was checked out by the doctors and the all clear
was given, I came to realise that God merely reminded me
that I wouldn't be living forever; that I am a creature in time,
and I would be dying someday; that I should make hay, and
do whatever I have been given to do, and; to quit worrying
about what mortal men might do to my physical body. Every
man would die one day or the other.
The day I died, was not the day of my death.
For those who would kill a man for the truth he tells, I ask
that they consider the words of Patrick Wilmot: ...the truth of
314
man is not dissolved in his blood. To die in the service and
pursuit of truth is to become immortal. To stand up against
the amoral, wicked, and unjust governing system of Nigeria,
and to die in the struggle to replace the evil system with a
more equitable and just one, would be to have died well.
The day I died was the day I was freed of my last vestige
of fear.

****

315
 LAST NOTE

Bury Me Like A Hero

The Nigeria State or its system has killed

be er men and women than me,
but I ask one thing of you, if they come for me,
and it pleases God to yield my life to them,
Bury Me Like A Hero

M Y generation grew up on the fictional works of James

Hardly Chase, Harold Robbins and several other
pulp fiction writers. The more desperate bookworms would
sometimes use the spy tales wri en under the by-line of Nick
Carter, and about a James Bond-like character going by the
same name.
Nick Carter's novels were considered too rich in tall tales
to appeal to more serious readers in my generation. He never
seemed to get anything wrong; the narrative was always
focused on sex; you could count on him to offer some
pornographic description of one of his many conquests of the
Soviet beauty, whom he always used, to fulfil his espionage
assignments.
Nick Carter was indestructible.
In the mid 80s, a story started doing the rounds: Nick
Carter was killed in a new novel, and the title was “Bury Me
Like A Hero.” A lot of fiction aficionados in my generation

316
searched for copies of the fictional works in a manner not
dissimilar to what the quest for the Golden Fleece must have
been. After years of searching for this fictional work, it
became clear that no such work was ever published, but the
title would serve me just true, for the purpose of this part of
my narrative.

Obafemi Awolowo
May 9th, 1987, whilst on exile at the University of Ibadan
campus, squatting with Adeyinka Aderinto, an Abadina
Primary school classmate, now a professor in the same
university, news filtered into the campus that “Awo,”
Obafemi Awolowo, had died. The grief was spontaneous,
palpable, general and quite openly expressed. Rallies began
spontaneously all over the campus.
I was all of 19 years old.
It was not my own school; I was serving my term out in
the Ibadan varsity campus because the Lagos State University
senate has rusticated me for a session. I had been a bad boy. I
fought a female colleague and was kicked out for a session.
But I got caught up in the occasion and became part of a
massive movement of grieving students.
Speaker after speaker spoke glowingly about Obafemi
Awolowo. The crowd became larger than anything I have
ever seen, before or after, of a gathering of students,
mourning the passage of a Nigerian leader -- I do not recall if
anyone spoke up and called him a factional or tribal leader.
The crowd must have decided on a candlelit procession
because I remember that we moved as a sea through the
campus; we sang dirges and solidarity songs, and we walked
317
through the connecting road and gate into the Polytechnic
Ibadan.
The students of the polytechnic joined the ranks of
mourning students, and this massive crowd of students
moved through the city of Ibadan in a sorrowful procession,
in honour of the fallen hero. We walked as far as Oke Bola,
where Awolowo lived in his lifetime.
The procession must have started around 10pm; we did
not return until day had begun to break.
Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo was buried as a hero. I never
met him, but I walked for him. I met his visions, and I saw his
works all around as I grew up. These are the same
infrastructures that the parasitic inheritors, whose only goal
in government is to privatise the fruits of the Awolowo
visionary seeds, speak about as decaying, or decayed today.
“Awon ajo’gun ewu, ti ko mo iyi agbada n’la”. Inheritors without
value for the inheritance, philistines given to consumption
instead of creation.
My generation and several still unborn will yet celebrate
the fecundity of Awolowo’s imaginations, and the fruits they
have borne, that the carpetbaggers are consuming, without
planting new ones, and with nary a thought for the future.

***

Olufela Anikulapo-Kuti, (aka Abami Eda).

Him I knew and adored.
I came to Lagos in 1985. I was part of the second set of
students admitted into Lagos State University.

318
 One of my friends in “LASU alaaro” was a guy we
called ‘Shobby Yenyen.’ Shobo was a Fela devotee; he had
every song Fela ever sang on tape, and he could each without
missing a beat. This was my introduction to Fela beyond the
legends and myths that the Arokean Boge grew up hearing
about the ‘Abami’ in my days growing up at Fiditi Grammar
School, Olivet in Oyo, and OSCAS in Ife. You can
thank ‘Shobby yenyen’ for my Fela addiction.
Fela’s several biographers have written tomes about the
enigma he was; I am not remotely qualified to presume to
regurgitate their several musings about the man. But I can tell
you about what he meant to the like of me -- the young and
the old -- numbering over a million, who buried him like the
hero that he was, and still is.
Fela was born into a privileged background; into a family
of lettered people in a country where most still have not been
given access to basic electricity till date. Fela’s mother was the
first woman to drive a car in Nigeria; he did not have to speak
for a class into which he was not born. But speak he did, and
sing he still does. Fela’s songs from the popular staples such
as “Zombie, Yellow Fever, Shuffering and Shmiling, Coffin for
Head of State, Confusion Break Bone etc.”, and less known
masterpieces such as Alhaji Alhaji, Akunnakuna - Senior brother
of Parambulator, BBC, Chop and Clean Mouth -- all unreleased
till date -- spoke truth to power in his inimitable way.
Olufela suffered for his beliefs. He was beaten,
imprisoned, impoverished and brutalised but he never
wavered and he never sold out; even his traducers knew he

319
was not for sale and his followers never doubted his resolve.
Fela lived and died for his beliefs.
On the day of Fela’s burial, I was in school at the Lagos
State University, at what we called L & H, and I observed a
strange phenomenon that I am certain the records will reflect.
The sun and the moon contested for space in the firmament,
in broad daylight! A prophet sent to these shores had died
and the heavenlies wanted to witness his internment. Or so I
thought.
It took my brother, Taiwo Akinlami, to cure me of this
delusion. Fela was not a prophet, he was simply a man who
told the truth about a society that has refused to change, and
by the refusal to change, Fela’s words became a self-fulfilling
prophecy, and in order for us to conceal our sins, and hide
our shame, we have all invested Fela with the office of the
prophet. We are the ones that have refused to change.
Fela did not leave a legacy of material wealth, even
though he left material wealth behind. His house on
Gbemisola Street in Ikeja is probably the only real estate he
left behind, but Fela spoke truth to power in a manner not
seen before his coming and unrivalled since his demise.
When he died in 1997, I was working to exit Lagos State
University with my Law degree. I did not attend his funeral,
but over a million Nigerians buried him as a hero.

***

320
 I expect them to attack my finance and seek to damage my
business interests as well as my reputation, but as Robert
Nesta Marley famously said: “who Jah bless, No man curse”. I
am not worried about their coming attacks, several men, who
are better than me, have been similarly attacked in the past.
I have seen the Nigeria State in its many different
manifestations, deliberately, overtly, and sometimes,
covertly, snuff the life out of its own citizens. The State, or
system -- take your pick, for they are the same -- killed its
own, how much more its castigators.
Murtala Ramat Mohammed was killed by the Nigerian
system whilst he was yet its Head of State. When you realise
that Obasanjo succeeded him, you will have an idea of the
system that produced him.
The system killed Ken Saro-Wiwa; his only sin was that
he castigated the system. We even managed to coin a phrase
for it: “Judicial Murder.” The same State that would not talk
to Ken, is today prostrate by militancy in the Niger Delta,
speaking to men representative of no one beyond themselves,
and possessing of neither vision nor ideological foundations.
Another effort at buying more time for the unsustainable
system of visionless motion.
The Nigeria State murdered Moshood Kashimawo
Olawale Abiola; several high-ranking Nigerians are aware of
this fact. His death was too convenient; the subsequent
“power shift” arrangement that produced Obasanjo and
allowed for clear rules to be bent in qualifying the Alliance
for Democracy for registration, suggest that

321
the Afenifere leadership always knew this fact, or, at least,
suspected it, and used it as a tool for ensuring the reputation
of their party. There are several accomplices after the fact of
Abiola’s murder. The way Obasanjo routed them in 2003 and
the negotiations into which they were manoeuvred before his
ambush, suggests a level of accommodation for the evil
endemic in the system.

***
Let the hagiographers begin their enterprise, and I am
happy to engage those interested in revisionism. Let the
battles of polemics be fought and let the wars of ideas begin.
All these I am happy to fight.
The Nigeria State or its system has killed better men and
women than myself, and I am fully aware of its murderous
capacities. But I ask one thing of you, if they come for me, and
it pleases God to yield my life to them, Bury Me Like A Hero.
Just as I still listen to the immortal songs of Olufela
Anikulapo-Kuti, read my words, preach its messages, let us
together rebuild Nigeria.
Bury Me Like A Hero.

322
INDEX

2nd Republic, 18
3rd Term, 20
Abacha, 73, 74, 75, 92, 94, 132, 154, 176, 221
Abadina, 27
Abdullai, 88
Abdusallam, 15, 50
Abiodun Faleke, 22
Abiola, 92, 148, 153, 176 Abuja, 54, 55,
99, 120
Achebe, 75
Action Congress (AC), 13
Action Group (AG), 21, 90
AD, 18, 90, 91
Adams, 16, 95, 96
Ademola Adeniji-Adele, 18
Adesanya, 18 Afenifere, 18, 90
affiliations, 150, 155, 174 AG, 21,
90 agricultural, 24, 184
Ahmadu Bello, 20, 23
Aisha, 22
Akintola, 19, 21, 23, 24
Akpabio, 60
Alamieyeseigha, 60, 61, 62, 98 Ali, 50, 98,
124, 151, 152, 153, 171 alliance, 21, 92, 94
Alliance for Democracy, AD, 18 alliances,
20, 92, 104, 219 allocation, 20, 42, 216
Amaechi, 77 amalgamation, 78
ambassadors, 168
America, 27 46, 79, 140, 169, 188
Andoakaa, 76 Angas, 20,
95 ANPP, 43, 90 anti-
grazing, 44, 139 apartheid,
125
APC, 14, 16, 17, 37, 38, 50, 77, 81, 82, 104, 114, 126, 127, 132, 136, 157,
158, 171, 193, 219, 220, 223
applicants, 35 appropriation, 13, 128
Aremu, 9, 126, 172, 177, 188, 189, 190, 191, 218
Aremu', 190, 191
Arewa, 88
Army, 23, 122, 123
Arts, 28
Aso Rock, 22, 57, 76, 98, 137, 138, 149
Assembly, 46, 60, 223
Atiku, 14, 82, 83, 94, 100, 149
Awoists, 18, 19
Awolowo, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 34, 45, 81, 82, 90, 91, 177 Babachir, 50, 68
Babangida, 18, 29, 50, 71, 74, 123, 152, 220
Bafarawa, 60
Beko Ransome-Kuti, 28
Benue, 23, 51, 104, 121, 136, 139, 155 Biafran, 96
black, 56, 57, 192, 207, 224 Boko Haram,
43, 99
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, 13, 38, 45, 59, 70, 77, 81, 82, 91, 99, 100, 101, 114,
126, 127, 181, 219 bomb
blasts, 54 bombing, 54, 55,
152 Borno, 43 bribe, 187
British, 20, 56, 59, 61, 117, 122, 151 broom,
192, 193 brooms, 191, 192, 193 brown
envelope, 85
Buhari, 8, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 38, 44, 50, 51, 58, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78,
82, 93, 94, 97, 98, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 116, 118, 121, 126, 127, 136, 139, 149, 151, 152, 154,
155, 157, 170, 173, 177,
178, 181, 218 bunkerers, 43 Buratai, 102 cabal, 22, 23 campaign, 19, 77, 78, 82, 138 candidacy,
37, 83, 149 capitalist, 221 censorship, 85, 101 census, 20, 73 centralized, 34 certificate, 60, 116,
157 chairman, 22, 76, 138 change, 28, 35, 39, 82, 92, 93, 94, 101, 135, 136, 148, 149, 157, 170, 172,
173, 174, 183, 207, 216, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223 checkpoints,
55, 121 Chevron, 114
Chief Ganiyu Dawodu, 19
Chief John Oyegun, 22
China, 208
Christians, 41, 118
Chukwumerije, 154, 176 church, 48, 113, 114 Ciroma, 137, 138, 139 citizen, 36, 45, 48, 61, 80,
89, 116, 119, 121, 125, 126, 134, 150, 175 citizens, 13, 17, 28, 37, 48, 51, 55, 56, 62, 69, 76, 79, 80,
87, 95, 96, 100, 102, 113, 116, 121, 125, 128, 134, 148, 149, 150, 152, 168, 174, 191, 219,
223
citizenship 14, 45, 80, 96, 116, 118, 119, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 128,
148, 155, 175, 219 civil, 20, 21, 26, 55, 73, 74, 123, 157,
168, 193 civil war, 20, 21, 123 Clark, 59, 98
coalition, 14, 15, 37, 38, 82, 132, 172 Code of Conduct
Tribunal, 22, 60 cohesion and unity, 174 colleges, 85
colonial, 20, 117, 150 commander-in-chief, 181
commissioners, 71, 72, 150 commonwealth, 71, 72, 75,
76, 91, 127, 131 complicity, 92, 104, 105, 113, 114, 172
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, 16

324
Conference Centre, 27 Conflicts, 7, 42 conscience, 4, 26, 29, 48, 67, 135, 140, 218, 221, 222
constitution, 20, 34, 46, 47, 48, 116, 219 constitutions, 20 contemporary, 1, 21 cooperative, 24
corruption, 15, 16, 18, 25, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 82, 97, 99,
100, 101, 102, 104, 118, 120, 121, 149, 175, 177, 178, 206, 221, 222 Councillor, 169 country, 14,
17, 20, 23, 28, 30, 43, 48, 53, 56, 57, 59, 72, 79, 88, 91, 93, 94, 97, 101, 102, 104, 122, 126, 148, 153,
154, 157, 170, 174, 183, 218, 219,
221, 223, 226 coup, 22, 34, 73, 89, 123, 124, 138, 215
coups, 89 CPC, 132, 171 crimes, 50, 58, 88, 120, 177,
178 criminal, 15, 20, 48, 50, 172, 173, 178, 219 crusade,
60, 68, 72, 76, 77

325
 ,

crusades, 72 101
cult, 81, 82
CUPP, 82
Danjuma, 15, 20, 23, 122, 123, 124 Dasuki,
50 defence, 44
Delta, 37, 48, 61, 98, 119, 128
democratization, 37 Diaspora, 221
dictatorship, 132 Diezani, 57, 58, 68
diligence, 39 diversity, 21, 175 do
not die, 25, 223 doctor, 53, 169, 170
drums, 208
Dubai, 59, 79, 102, 207
Eagle Square, 90
Eagles, 9, 56, 174, 175, 176
East, 34, 82, 89
Eastern, 34, 122
Ebora of Owu, 18, 98, 99, 148, 172, 178, 189
ECONET, 59
economy, 74, 86, 120
education, 17, 24, 27, 28, 53, 78, 83, 84, 157, 224, 225 EFCC, 50, 60, 68, 75, 76,
169
Egbin, 37
Ekiti, 17, 24, 62, 134, 137, 156 El Zaky-zaky, 50 election, 22, 23, 24, 25, 38, 78, 93, 98, 154,
176, 193, 219, 221, 222, 223 elections, 17, 23, 38, 60, 73, 91, 98, 100, 134, 171, 218, 219, 220,
223 electorate, 24 empire, 20, 23, 101
empires, 20 154 enslavement, 114, 117, 148 environment, 27, 29, 35, 45, 55, 78, 84, 86, 120, 121,
137, 140, 184, 185,
225
equalization, 118, 119, 126 ethnic, 16, 17, 21, 23, 119, 121, 122, 124, 127, 132, 174 ethnicity, 16,
24, 116, 119, 120, 155, 175 existential, 29, 30, 49, 75, 80, 86, 87, 89, 92, 95, 96, 100, 133, 134, 148,
156, 158, 168, 221, 222, 225
extradition, 58, 68 faculty, 179, 181
Fai, 43
faith, 18, 73, 79, 94
Falae, 91 farmers, 24,
104 farming, 85
Fashola, 60, 77, 100, 220 Fayose, 60, 61, 62, 88 federal, 13,
20, 21, 34, 73, 76, 78, 119, 215, 216 federal government, 13,
216 federalism, 34
Fela Anikulapo, 29, 135
FEUDALISM, 83
feudalistic, 18, 20, 21, 28 Fiditi, 27, 84,
183, 184 First Republic, 20, 90, 215

326
followers, 16, 61, 185 football, 56, 174,
175, 176, 209 foreigners, 41 formula,
20 foundations, 21, 89, 188 fraud, 34
Fuel Subsidy, 13
Fulani, 21, 23, 44, 54, 77, 88, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 127
Fulfulde, 16 fundamentalism, 17
Gani Fawehinmi, 28, 29
GEJ, 15, 102, 103, 149, 177, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223 Generals, 48
genocidal, 23, 123 genocide, 56, 155 gladiators, 208
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, 14, 29, 58, 59, 70, 93, 97, 98, 99, 100, 177, 218 government, 13, 15,
21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 35, 39, 44, 53, 58, 59, 61, 62, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 83, 84, 86, 90,
94, 97, 99, 102, 104, 105, 113, 126, 127, 136, 139, 140, 149, 150, 151, 154, 158, 168, 170, 173, 215,
216, 218, 219, 220, 222
Governors, 35, 123, 223 Gowon, 20, 34, 73, 123,
124 grievances, 21, 39, 40, 41, 42 groups, 20, 34,
85, 119, 122, 124, 215 guards, 80
gubernatorial, 22, 24, 25, 76, 134
Gwaris, 96
Hausa, 16, 21, 29, 41, 123, 124, 127 Hausa-Fulani, 16, 21 healthcare, 53, 61, 79,
80, 158 herdsmen, 23, 54, 88, 104, 121, 139 Herdsmen, 44 heroes, 25, 152
Hilltop, 190 historical, 21, 34, 119 history, 18, 73, 76, 84, 93, 98, 117, 122, 147,
177, 179, 219, 223 hospitals, 53, 74, 79, 131, 207
Ibadan, 26, 27, 83, 84, 91, 104, 122, 184, 185, 186, 187, 191, 192, 207, 209 IBB, 14, 15, 153, 154,
221
Ibori, 59, 60, 61, 70
ICPC, 75

327
identities, 118, 119 Idiagbon, 73, 74
Igbo, 20, 29, 34, 41, 88, 117, 118, 119, 123, 127, 152, 155
Igbos, 88, 96
Ige, 18, 21, 81, 91, 94, 132, 178
Ignorance, 8, 83
IITA, 9, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188 illiteracy, 24
immigrant, 224, 225 immunity, 72, 78, 102 impunity,
28, 44, 68, 72, 120 Inalende, 26, 27, 83, 191, 208, 209,
210 independence, 34, 118 independent candidacy,
37 industrialization, 24 industries, 18, 24
INEC, 38, 219 Inequality, 7, 42 information, 88, 114,
119, 131, 206 infrastructure', 62 injunction, 56, 181
injustice, 13, 40, 42, 68 institutions, 50, 139, 140, 187
Insurgencies, 7, 42 intelligence, 98, 99 interests, 14,
20, 88, 94, 128, 150, 152, 175 investments, 15 Ironsi,
20, 122, 124
Islamic, 20, 117
Jagaban, 15, 16, 18, 23, 89, 96, 99, 149, 157, 181, 193
Jang, 60
Jimi Agbaje, 38, 218
Jonathan, 14, 50, 59, 60, 61, 76, 77, 78, 93, 94, 98, 99, 172, 177, 218 JTF, 126 judge, 169, 181
judgment, 67, 79, 88, 177 judiciary, 22, 25, 67, 68, 222 Jukuns, 20, 95
June 12, 9, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 176, 223 jungle, 47, 157, 185,
189
justice, 42, 50, 57, 59, 60, 67, 113, 114, 169 Kaduna, 29, 37, 88, 95,
151, 155
Kaduna Nzeogwu, 29
Kanem Bornu, 20 Kanu, 89, 96
Kanuri, 16
Katafs, 95
Kemi Adeosun, 39, 60 Ken Saro-
Wiwa, 43 keyboard warriors, 221
kidnap, 209 killers, 105, 123, 154
Knowledge, 9, 18, 156, 185
Kogi, 22, 25, 51, 119, 120, 193
Kwankwaso, 82
labor, 14, 53, 93, 225
Ladoke Akintola, 21
Lagos State, 13, 28, 38, 55, 79, 81, 100, 104, 126, 127, 131, 132, 179, 184, 220
Lam Adesina, 104
Lamido, 60, 220
LASU, 28, 55, 179, 180, 184
law, 15, 25, 49, 50, 51, 88, 140, 177, 179, 180 LCDAs, 126, 127

328
leaders, 19, 20, 21, 46, 51, 71, 74, 81, 90, 122, 185, 188, 207 leadership, 17, 18, 19, 36, 44, 45, 46,
73, 81, 90, 91, 96, 132, 136, 148, 153, 171, 206, 207, 218, 222
legislative, 20, 75, 122, 150 legislator,
169 legislators, 71, 72, 76, 136, 222
Lekki-Epe Expressway, 13
Library, 188, 207
Local Governments, 35
Lugard, 20, 177 Maina, 50
majority, 28, 48, 83, 96, 134, 172, 173, 174, 225
Mambilla, 23
Martin Luther King Jr., 114 martyrs, 25, 67 massacre, 123, 137
media, 50, 81, 85, 171, 173, 206, 221 membership, 85, 116, 118,
122, 123, 125, 128, 150 memorial, 150 middle belt, 17, 20, 23
middle class, 78, 79, 80, 87, 89, 133, 134, 156, 158, 219, 222 Midwest, 34, 215
Mikel, 57 militancy, 43 militants, 42, 43, 44 military, 15, 17, 30, 34, 70, 73,
94, 102, 123, 124, 186, 215 minister, 42, 44, 50, 55, 57, 58, 60, 124, 133, 139,
181 Minister, 39, 104, 114, 139 ministers, 15, 71, 124 minorities, 17, 20, 23,
34, 96, 117, 118 minority, 20, 34, 76, 117, 122, 124, 136, 206, 215 Miye i
Allah, 138
MKO, 92, 153, 155, 223 Mosque,
114 motherland, 95, 221 Murtala,
60, 72, 73, 124 Muslim, 16, 56, 119,
127, 151, 176 myth, 16, 20, 42, 118,
123, 124, 136
NADECO, 18, 82
nation, 36, 37, 51, 57, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 87, 90, 95, 96, 98, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 128,
133, 149, 153, 154, 155, 156, 175, 176, 185, 189,
218, 219, 220, 221, 223 national
chairman, 16 nationalities, 117
nationality, 14, 116, 119 Nationhood,
7, 9, 36, 153
NDA, 36
NEPA, 69 Nepotism, 46
news, 17, 54, 55, 56, 85, 137, 138, 184, 206 Niger Delta, 37, 42,
51, 98, 216
Nigeria, 1, 3, 9, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47,
48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 69, 71, 72, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 95, 96,
97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 105, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 132,
133,
134, 135, 136, 137, 140, 148, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 169, 170,
171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189,
191, 193, 206, 207, 215, 216, 219, 220, 225 Nigeria Civil War, 21
Nigerian, 20
Nigerian Defence Academy, 181
Nigerian judiciary, 15

329
Nigerian press, 15, 17, 18, 82, 100, 104, 114, 221
Nigerian State, 7, 14, 20, 29, 30, 42, 43, 49, 50, 51, 59, 69, 70, 89, 95, 98,
100, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 126, 140, 154, 155, 175, 176, 177, 193, 215 NNPC, 42, 58
North, 8, 20, 23, 34, 41, 42, 73, 82, 89, 95, 96, 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124,
136
northern, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 73, 76, 88
Northern, 20, 41, 83, 95, 96, 117, 118, 122, 123, 124, 125, 152
NPC, 20, 21, 23
N-PDP, 15
NPN, 18
Nyako, 60
Nyame, 60
NYSC, 39
Obasanjo, 9, 14, 15, 18, 20, 22, 29, 37, 38, 45, 46, 50, 59, 60, 71, 72, 73, 75,
76, 77, 81, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 124, 126, 136, 137, 152, 154,
168, 176, 177, 178, 185, 188, 189, 190, 191, 207, 220 OBJ, 149, 219, 220,
221
Officer, 35, 105, 123, 124, 169, 187
Ogoni, 43
Oil States, 34 oligarchs, 15
Omoyele Sowore, 39
Ondo, 22, 100
Onnoghen, 22, 25, 67, 68
Oodua', 89 OPC, 54
oppositions, 37
oppression, 113, 152
oppressive, 17, 83
Origin, 119
Ortom, 136
Osinbajo, 180
Osun, 17, 25, 116, 118, 125, 157, 193 Owu, 98, 148, 151, 154, 173, 177, 218
parliament, 21 parliamentary, 215, 216 parties, 13, 38, 93, 132, 222 party,
16, 22, 38, 90, 102, 128, 132, 135, 182, 192, 209, 221 passport, 35
patriotism, 119, 125, 126
PDP, 13, 15, 17, 38, 50, 76, 77, 78, 91, 127, 131, 132, 158, 171, 193, 219, 221, 223
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), 13 Peter Odili,
43 petroleum, 42, 50, 58
Plateau, 37, 51, 56, 57, 60, 104, 121, 137, 138 PMB, 101, 103 policies, 86, 90, 101, 216, 220 political
governance, 14 politicians, 20, 59, 73, 78, 89, 95, 102, 169 politics, 3, 16, 17, 19, 55, 91, 125, 151,
177, 181 population, 20, 42, 79, 126, 175, 226 poverty, 24, 29, 79, 83, 85, 86, 87, 89, 97, 99, 131,
133, 135, 136, 148, 157, 188, 190, 191 Poverty, 8, 83, 86, 87 power, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25,
28, 29, 37, 44, 50, 57, 58, 60, 61, 69, 75, 76, 83, 92, 93, 94, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104, 117, 121, 126, 138,
140, 149,

330
 151, 168, 172, 193, 215 presidency, 14, 22, 38, 97, 98, 149, 219, 221
presidential, 38, 39, 44, 58, 91, 104, 168, 189, 190, 218, 223 presidential
library, 189, 190
press, 14, 17, 82, 85, 93, 94, 104, 114, 131, 206, 222 Prime
Ministership, 21 principalities, 87, 168, 169, 170, 189
privatization, 131 profession, 94, 180
Professor, 29, 50, 88, 180, 181 progressive, 17, 23, 78, 91, 93, 101, 131
promotion, 42, 48, 51, 124, 126 propaganda, 76, 81, 82, 93, 104, 131,
177, 184, 220 quota, 119, 125, 126 realities, 14, 15, 20, 35, 74, 100, 131,
158, 168, 169, 225 recommendation, 215, 216
regime, 20, 25, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 92, 93, 132, 218, 219 Region, 20, 34, 215
regions, 20, 34, 48, 98, 215, 216 religious, 16, 17, 21, 113, 127, 150, 155, 156, 174,
175, 192, 225 removal of subsidies, 13 repatriation, 58 resources, 42, 207
restructuring, 34, 127, 147, 149, 150, 216 revenue, 20, 216
revolution, 92, 93, 94, 170, 222 Ribadu, 75, 76, 220
rights, 3, 47, 48, 88, 118, 119, 122, 125, 128, 139, 150, 191, 219, 223
River Niger, 20
Rivers, 34, 119
roadblocks, 120
roads, 24, 29, 80, 121, 131, 185, 220
Rufai, 88
Rule of Law, 7, 49, 76, 140 ruler, 25,
113
ruling class, 21, 101, 102, 127 S. M.
Afolabi, 75
Sabon Gari, 41
Sagay, 50 salaries,
120
Saraki, 14, 15, 22, 102, 168
Sardauna, 20, 124
Sardauna of Sokoto, 20, 124
schools, 18, 27, 53, 67, 79, 80, 84, 85, 127, 131, 157, 158, 208
Sciences, 28 Second Republic, 73
second term, 24, 51, 76, 98
security, 23, 51, 54, 73, 80, 105, 158, 186, 187, 192 Security
Service, 39 senate, 22, 68 Senate, 39, 222
Senator, 22 servant, 26, 58, 157 Shagari, 72, 73 Sherif, 43 shithole', 172 society, 26, 28, 35, 36, 39,
42, 47, 67, 78, 86, 89, 92, 134, 135, 152, 170, 173, 174, 185, 206, 222
Sokoto Caliphate, 20, 117 soldiers, 28, 55, 77,
89, 151, 154 songs, 208, 209
South, 20, 23, 82, 96, 100, 117, 118, 125 southern,
20, 73 southerners, 73, 88 Southwest, 14, 23
sovereign guarantees, 13 spiritualization, 168,
169
State, 13, 16, 18, 20, 28, 30, 34, 36, 39, 43, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 56, 60, 61,

331
 69, 80, 88, 89, 100, 103, 104, 116, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 131, 137, 139, 140,
148, 153, 154, 155, 158, 172, 173, 175, 177, 178, 182,
189, 206, 215, 218, 223 statesman,
88, 152 statesmen, 50
Stomach infrastructure, 86
structure, 34, 46, 89, 150, 188, 215, 216 Student
Union Congress, 70 subjectivization, 81
succession, 22, 92 sufferings, 26
Supreme Court, 67 survivalists, 29 system, 3, 14, 15, 17, 27, 28, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41,
42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 92,
93, 94, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 113, 114, 119, 125, 126, 131, 136, 137, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154, 156,
158, 172, 173, 180, 182, 215, 216, 218, 222, 223, 225 system of government, 216 systems, 14, 136
Tafawa Balewa, 21
Tai Solarin, 28 Tambuwal, 82
teachers, 84, 85, 134 team, 56, 174, 175 territories, 34, 104, 223 terrorist, 44, 139, 151, 223 The
Guardian, 14 Theatre, 207 thieves, 29, 50, 78, 83, 91, 93, 94, 98, 101, 102, 131, 132, 136, 153, 172,
188, 192
Tinubu, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 45, 68, 81, 82, 86, 91, 93, 94, 99, 100,
101, 102, 104, 114, 126, 127, 136, 168, 220 Tiv, 21, 117,
118 tolling, 13 trade, 17, 24, 179, 224, 225 traditions, 209
Tramadol, 225 transmission, 37 tribe, 24, 29, 92, 116,
119, 120 tribes, 87, 117, 148 Trump, 46, 140
truth, 4, 15, 17, 20, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 44, 51, 81, 82, 89, 92, 96, 99, 122, 125, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139,
149, 152, 154, 155, 156, 158, 168, 177, 181, 192, 206, 222
TV station, 24
Uncle Bola, 18 UNILAG, 180
unitary, 34, 215
university, 28, 70, 71, 125, 179
University of Ibadan, 27
UPN, 90
ventriloquists, 87, 88, 89, 96 violence, 18, 36, 40, 41, 42, 44, 121, 223 vision, 29, 36, 37, 39, 46,
47, 48, 94, 153, 155, 158, 183, 185, 188, 206, 207,
225
Votes, 24, 157
Wahab Dosumu, 18
waterworks, 80
wealth, 19, 29, 39, 72, 78, 79, 85, 86, 98, 99, 128, 219 weaponization, 85
weaponized, 23, 24, 86, 87, 89, 135, 136, 137, 157, 188, 206 West, 21, 24, 82,
83, 100, 184 western, 24, 90, 206, 221
Western, 34, 122, 151, 215 Wey, 124
Willink Commission, 34 Wole
Soyinka, 29
writing, 13, 47, 103, 172, 188 Yar
A'dua, 219
Yar'Adua, 76, 97

332
Yoruba, 17, 18, 21, 23, 29, 37, 41, 59, 81, 90, 91, 95, 99, 117, 118, 119, 127,
138, 152, 155, 176, 182, 192, 193, 209, 218, 220 Yorubaland, 19, 23 youth, 27, 29, 157,
176, 184, 186, 189, 190, 192, 193, 223, 224, 225, 226

333