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Emefiele, El-Rufai, Aregbesola, and their Bata drums

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The Batá is a Yoruba drum that is in a class of its own. It used to be highly venerated in social and political circles as its percussion impacted virtually all spheres of life. It is a double-faced drum shaped by its crafters to look like an hourglass, with one end of it bigger than the other. In the olden days, Bata got deployed mainly during traditional and religious festivals – it occupied a special place in the heart of Alaafin Sango, all his descendants and devotees. In its outstanding place of social pride, the Bata shared spatial recognition with Gbedu, the drum of royalty.

In those early years spanning centuries, the Bata’s uniqueness was based on its deployment to connect with the ancestors and the other world. It often cosseted local politicians on outings in village administration. In Cuba where it later migrated to in the 1800s, Bata has played a major role in religious worship known as Santeria. In the 1950s, Puerto Rico and the United States of America adopted it too as their major drum. Though it has lost its savour today as it is drummed in semi-religious musical entertainments in secular and popular music, whenever the Bata enters a gathering, it distinguishes itself because of its unmistakably unexampled voice and symphony.

However, as unique as the Bata drum is, when it makes its powerful, penetrating rhythm, Yorubas preach caution and warn the drum and its drummer to dance carefully. They say, “bi bata ba le l’ale ju, yiya ni ya – when its delicate goat skin leather gets torn, it is cast aside and becomes utterly useless”. It is a lethal warning to power-mongers on the slippery terrain of power.

Like Bata, man, no matter how respected, if he wears the alaseju (one who over-flaunts) dress, it gets torn too. Many have wondered why the Bata got the kind of veneration it has had, outside of its unique moulding. Is it its magisterially unique voice that is a rarity among other drums? The black substance gummed on the Bata’s leathery face, or its amoebic but rare make? Made by suturing goat skin on Omo wood, the Bata’s playing head is uniquely structured from the goat skin. It also has tension straps that are not only durable cowhide but which have proved to be the mastermind of its unique, penetrating, and almost ear-drum-shattering rhythm. The Bata’s penetrating power on occasion is so pervasive that it instantly becomes the lord of the manor.

Three Bata drums got torn midstream last week. At the apogee of their power and majesty, these drums shared essences with the Bata drum. They were sought after for their penetrating percussions. No gathering was complete without them. They shattered eardrums with the power of their presence. However, like all Bata drums that fail to heed words of advice, these Bata drums got torn, and the irritancy that the torn drums provoked got to its highest decibel. As their Bata got brutally torn, gradually, they hit the butt of people’s reckoning, gravitating from being gadflies into wet-flies.

Godwin Emefiele, erstwhile Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor; Nasir el-Rufai, ex-Kaduna state governor and Rauf Aregbesola, ex-minister of interior and former governor of Osun state, were poster boys of power. At the apogee of power, the flaunting of their brawns was legendary. They were the epitome of the grandeur of the top. From another prism, they were the unique masquerade, the Eegun Alare. When this masquerade appears at the market square, there is a frenzy. The Bata drummer sustains the frenzy of the Eegun Alare by drumming, in a melodic symphony, “Oo le se bii baba re – I dare you to match the feats of your forebears; exhibit their uncanny dancing mastery and ferocious hounding of their vicinity”. The masquerade roused to the zenith of his exhilaration, pushes the beast behind the Egungun mask, and elasticizes himself beyond limits. In the process, he outdoes himself. He then assumes a level of invincibility that is unearthly, something in the mould of the Friedrich Nietzsche Superman; after all, the Eegun Alare is mythically assumed to be a resident of heaven come to earth. The Egungun then gets transfixed. He operates in the realm of the celestial. His whip trounces without border, even upsetting sacred bounds, including somersaulting in overreaching, dangerous stunts.

In different ways and manners, as Emefiele, El-Rufai, and Aregbesola snatched the klieg and became the most negatively talked about persons in Nigeria last week. Their power odyssey points to that English proverb that counsels that the evil men do lives after them. On a lighter note, perhaps what they mirror, the thread that runs through them, is how they signify that classical Shakespearean Caesar and Cassius dialogue. Though unempirical, the dialogue strikes at the core of the relationship between physiognomy and evil. Wary of Cassius and his capacity for treachery, Caesar had said: “Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous”. You would think Caesar was describing the Nigerian trio.

Lean-looking Emefiele was a financial egg-head. An economist and banker of note, Goodluck Jonathan appointed him as Nigeria’s CBN governor in 2014. Though a native of Agbor in Delta state, some chicanerous folks claim Meffy, his street name, garnered his wiles from the ruff-and-tumble slums of Lagos. Meffy grew up in Lagos, even attending the Ansarudeen Primary School and Maryland Comprehensive Secondary School in Lagos. It was only while pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Banking and Finance that he left the shores of Lagos, proceeding to the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. He was said to have come tops in his 1984 class. Meffy’s street wisdom, mixed with mastery of the wizardry of the marketplace, as Bob Marley sang, was the only carriage that pushed him through.

Early in his banking odyssey, Emefiele got to unravel the key that unlocks the hearts of the Nigerian men of power. Its acronym is GGG – Graft, grits, and genuflection. Immediately after Jonathan exited as president, Meffy effortlessly meandered into the hearts of the next holders of the reins of power. Muhammadu Buhari’s mythic asceticism and incorruptibility had yet to be perforated. So, to Mamman Daura, the president’s cousin, and Ismaila Isa Funtua, he gravitated. He was ready to carry their can of excrement to have his space cemented at the apex bank. In a viral photo shot, the CBN governor was pictured genuflecting by the feet of Funtua. It was a euphemism for the sequestration of the Bankers’ Banker bank. He was alleged to have opened the vaults of Nigeria’s CBN to Buhari’s acolytes and sidekicks, especially with the multiple exchange rate regime he operated by creating a rentier forex system for them. They could round-trip and emerge therefrom with billions of Naira in a jiffy. It was a shock to Nigerians when, on Thursday, May 16, 2019, Meffy became the first CBN governor since 1999 to get reappointed into office.

Like the Bata drum and the Eegun Alare, Emefiele then began to sound and dance in uncanny dancing steps, ferociously wounding the Nigerian economy as he pandered to the Buhari Villa marionettes. Roused to the zenith of power play, he pushed the beast behind his mask up and bit bullets that no one ever did. His Anchors Borrowers’ Programme (ABP), which, on its face presentation, was targeted at providing loans in kind and cash to smallholder farmers to boost their agricultural production, create jobs and reduce food import bill towards conservation of foreign reserve, became a veil to cover public eyes and siphon Nigeria’s scarce forex into the purses of some Villa rats. While claiming to have benefitted hundreds of farmers, most especially from Buhari’s north, a heist of monumental proportion was alleged to be afoot.

Perhaps, Emefiele’s most damaging bravado was his venturing into partisan politics even as a sitting CBN governor. As confirmed by the APC chairman of his ward, he registered as a card-carrying member of the party and purchased the presidential form, hiding behind an amorphous group of friends he claimed purchased it on his behalf. Pronto, as the American slang says, branded vehicles with his name embossed on them appeared on social media, with no disclaimer from his office. Then, his campaign posters flooded the nooks and crannies of Abuja. It was the most blatant exhibition of Buhari’s final castration by the Villa power cabal and a clear display of his mummified presence in Aso Rock. Not only was Emefiele’s move the most unprecedented by any chief of the Nigerian apex bank, but it was also daringly audacious. This was in vagrant disobedience of the Central Bank Act which frowned at an occupant of such exalted office peeling themselves of their apolitical, independent, and nonpartisan apparel. There was not even a single whimper from Buhari.

The last straw, as the cliché goes, which broke the camel’s back, was Emefiele’s Naira redesign policy. While the intent behind it, to wit to frustrate politicians warehousing cash for election purposes, was commendable, its raison d’etre, it was said, was against those who snuffed life out of his presidential bid. In the process, Emefiele literally and metaphorically killed Nigerians in their hundreds and exerted optimal pain on the people. Very many people died due to lack of access to cash while at the end of the day, the Nigerian politician who was always a step ahead in chicanery, eventually sidestepped Emefiele’s wiles. The policy, which Buhari openly sheepishly owned, was rumoured to have been an outcome of Emefiele and the cabal’s plan to frustrate Bola Tinubu whose excrement they couldn’t countenance nor stand, even in the toilet. Emefiele’s sack last Friday was thus celebrated on Nigerian streets as a typical example of a Bata drum that over-exaggerated its relevance, exceeded the decibel of its symphony, and an Eegun Alare who, in his moment of frenzied stunts, flew inside a burning fire.

The fundamental question to be asked is, however, was Emefiele cut from the zenith of power out of vengeance or the culmination of his numerous atrocities? If it is on the basis of the latter, an impartial investigation into his tenure would suffice. Will the presidency have the guts to invite Emefiele’s rumoured accomplices too, from Buhari himself to the Villa cabal and Abubakar Malami, the man said to have shrouded him with a legal shawl? If however he is being hounded simply out of vendetta, the president would be missing a key point in human philosophy. When you are enveloped by vendetta and the burning need to administer comeuppance on your nemesis, you wake up lost.

Nasir el-Rufai parades a history of political whoredom since his appearance on the Nigerian political scene as director general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE). He was in bed with Atiku Abubakar, the man who brought him out of the brier of obscurity and hoisted him into the political space. The moment Abubakar’s political matrimony to his boss, Olusegun Obasanjo, suffered a schism, the young Nasir flew to the next bed for consortium. He crouched beside Obasanjo who in turn rewarded him with a ministerial appointment. Then to Yar’Adua and Jonathan, he wagged his amorous buttock for the next dalliance.

El-Rufai’s governorship of Kaduna state for eight years paraded a horde of admirable developmental firsts. It however was nil in democratic credentials. Emperor Shaka the Zulu and Nero were his unprofessed mentors, even as he demonstrated a palpable lack of human feeling. El-Rufai sent bulldozers to the homes of his political traducers with flimsy excuses. In Nigeria where the fad is for the leadership to ethnicise politics and politicise ethnicity, El-Rufai blandly mirrors this narrow-mindedness. He habours separatist, ethnic and religious superiority, an aberration in a democracy. In a recent five-minute 43 seconds video of his that is currently generating uproar on social media, he remorselessly narrated how Kaduna would continue to be a totalistic Muslim state, something of the hue of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, in a metropolitan environment where there are adherents of other faiths. That El-Rufai exhibited such a narrow mindset is not the calamity that befell Kaduna; it is the recklessness and the you-can-go-jump-inside-River-Niger mindset behind it. If Shekau or Bin Laden had professed what El-Rufai mouthed as Kaduna state’s ideology under him in that audio, no one would have bothered. Certainly, a self-professed democrat should not have anything to do with such obvious democratic philistinism. When you read that Caesar-Cassius dialogue and compare the description with El-Rufai’s physiognomy, his attendant treachery, and weird evangelism, you would wonder whether Shakespeare was a prophet.

This mindset may have explained why El-Rufai’s eight years boasted of thousands of butchering of people in Southern Kaduna, with their careless justifications by his government. One of his sworn critics, Senator Shehu Sani, has had a welter of unpalatable words for him, in and out of office. Perhaps the most encapsulating of them, which seems to explain the relentless shedding of blood in the state, came last Wednesday. “Bigotry is (was) a state policy in Kaduna state for the past eight years. Muslim and Christians were set up against each other for political gains. Religious clerics were drafted and paid to propagate hate and divisiveness. The government purports itself as a champion of interest of the Muslims while it inflicted suffering and hardship on the same people. The state government maintained a systemic policy of marginalisation and repression of the people of Southern Kaduna because of their faith and political choices. Over the years, some of their leaders were arrested for voicing out. The last act was the proscription of one of their groups,” Sani wrote on his Twitter handle.

Now out of power, with rumoured disenchantment with the APC-led federal government over the position of the SGF that escaped him – a la Shehu Sani – El-Rufai’s innate prostitution inclination may yet be in automated mode. Tinubu may get ready to receive barbs from a man who Julius Caesar described in an unexaggerated narrative.

Then, as they did in Shakespearean drama, curtains opened on Rauf Aregbesola last week. This erstwhile Tinubu acolyte slithered into the media like a rude awakening. Dressing calamity in robes of victory, he drove in an open roof. This was garnished by a crowd whose presence stank of monetary purchase. They were there to hail his entrance into an Osun state which still gnashes its teeth as a result of his eight years of calamitous rule. On a “triumphant entry” into a state he almost set alight due to his extremist ideology, he reportedly lauded Tinubu who he said, without him, he would not have been where he is today. It was the same man he breathed the fire of a Chimera upon in Ijebu-Jesa in February 2022.

“Only God can terrify us, not man. Go and tell them wherever they are, we own this party… We followed him dutifully with all sense of loyalty… Some people even thought that we were no longer Muslims because of how we cooperated with him. We dealt with him without treachery but we never knew he planned evil for us…We exalted him beyond his status and he turned himself into a god over us and we had sworn to ridicule anyone who compares himself to God. God has no competitor; He is enough to be God…” he said as if he held the patent to the key that unlocks God’s heart. The innuendo was not lost on the crowd.

The common twine linking Emefiele, El-Rufai, and Aregbesola is their gross misuse of grace, their adulterous disposition to power, and their failure to realize its transience. They rode so high that they forgot that there is always a tomorrow when a man could walk in a descent down the valley of life. Aregbesola’s exceptional fall from the Kilimanjaro of political relevance lies in his arrogant, immodest sense of arrival at the top of the mountain. Even the ocean does not forget to thank the streams, springheads, and rivers that feed it.

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El-Rufai’s SDP Gambit: A Political ‘Harakiri’ | By Adeniyi Olowofela

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Former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, is a restless and courageous politician. However, he ought to have learned political patience from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who spent years building a viable political alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when its stalwarts boasted that they would rule Nigeria for 64 years.

Cleverly, Tinubu abandoned the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to establish another political platform, the Action Congress (AC), which later metamorphosed into the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

In collaboration with other political groups—including the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and some elements of the PDP—the All Progressives Congress (APC) was born, with El-Rufai as one of its foundation members. Ultimately, the APC wrestled power from the PDP, truncating its 64-year dominance plan.

For El-Rufai to abandon the APC now is nothing short of political suicide, as Tinubu is strategically positioned to secure a second term with an array of both seen and unseen political foot soldiers.

The Social Democratic Party (SDP), as a political entity, effectively died with the late Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola. Any attempt to resurrect it is an exercise in futility.

For the sake of argument, let’s consider a hypothetical scenario: Suppose another southern politician is fielded in 2027 and wins the election. Even if he signs an agreement to serve only one term, political realities could shift, and he may seek another four years.

If anyone doubts this, they should ask former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. The simple implication of this is that President Tinubu remains the best candidate for northern politicians seeking a power shift back to the North in 2031—at which point El-Rufai could have been one of the credible northern contenders for the presidency.

When Ebenezer Babatope (Ebino Topsy), a staunch Awoist, chose to serve in General Sani Abacha’s regime, he later reflected on his decision, saying: “I have eaten the forbidden fruit, and it will haunt me till the end of my life.”

By abandoning the APC for another political party, El-Rufai has also eaten the forbidden fruit. Only time will tell if it will haunt him or not.

However, for some of the political leaders already contacted from the South West, supporting any party against President Tinubu would be akin to Judas Iscariot’s betrayal—a reputation no serious South West politician would want to bear.

El-Rufai’s departure from the APC to SDP is nothing short of a suicidal political move, reminiscent of Harakiri.

Prof. Adeniyi Olowofela, a former Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Science, and Technology and the Commissioner representing Oyo State at the Federal Character Commission (FCC), sent this piece from Abuja, the nation’s capital.

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Akpabio vs. Natasha: Too Many Wrongs Don’t Make A Right

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For most of last week, Senate President Godswill Akpabio was in the eye of the storm as his traducer, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who represents Kogi Central, was relentless in getting her voice hear loud and clear.

Though the matter eventually culminated in the suspension of the Kogi senator for six months on Thursday, it is clear that the drama has not ended yet. The whole saga, as we have seen in the last few weeks, smacks many wrongs and few rights. The Senate scored some rights and some wrongs, the same for the Kogi senator. But in apportioning the rights and the wrongs, we have to distinguish between emotions and the rules.

Recall that in July of 2024, Senator Akpabio had compared the conduct of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan to that of someone in a nightclub. That statement incensed the Kogi Central senator, the womenfolk, and a number of other senators. Days later, Akpabio, having sensed the mood of the Senate, spoke from his chair and said: “I will not intentionally denigrate any woman and always pray the God will uplift women, Distinguished Senator Natasha, I want to apologise to you.” That was expected of him and by that statement, Akpabio brought some calm into the relationship between him and the Kogi senator, but as we are to discover in the last two weeks, still waters do run fast under the surface.

The latest scene of the drama started with what looked like an innocuous development on the Senate floor. The Senate president, in exercise of the power conferred on him by the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the Senate Rule book, made adjustments to the seats in the minority wing of the chamber and relocated Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan. The excuse was that following the defection of some senators from the minority side, seat adjustments had to be effected. That was within Akpabio’s power. Remember that the Senate Rule book does not only empower the Senate president to allocate seats, but he can also change the seats occasionally. So, Akpabio was right with that action. But perhaps Akpoti-Uduaghan, based on family relationships with the Akpabios, expected that she would have been alerted of the impending seat change. And on getting to the floor of the Senate to discover the seat switch, she got alarmed. Was she right to flare up? No, that is the answer. Apart from the powers of the Senate president to change seats allocated to senators, the rule book also says that every senator must speak from the seat allocated. The implication is that anything a senator says outside the allocated seat will not go into the Senate records. The Senate, or any parliament for that matter, is a regulated environment. The Hansards take records of every word and action made on the floor of the chamber. And so, it is incumbent on every senator to follow the rules.

So, on Thursday, February 20, when Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan raised hell over her seat relocation and engaged Senator Akpabio in a shouting match, she was on the wrong side of the Senate Rule book. No Senator is expected to be unruly. In fact, unruly conduct can be summarily punished by the presiding officer. It is important to note that the rules of the Senate treat the occupier of the chair of Senate President like a golden egg. The President of the Senate is the number three citizen in the country, even though he was elected to represent a constituency like his colleagues. He is first among equals, but the numero uno position comes with a lot of difference.

A legislative expert once told me that the Chair of the President of the Senate must be revered at all times and that infractions to the rules are heavily punished unless the offender shows penitence. The rule says the President of the Senate must be heard in silence; Senators must avoid naming (being called out for unruly conduct); and that any situation that compels the President of the Senate to rise up to hit the gavel in trying to restore order could earn the culprit (any named senator) summary dismissal. Those are the powers of the President of the Senate, which Madam Natasha was trying for size. I think it is important that Senators are taken through inductions on the rules and regulations, whether they got in mid-term or at the beginning of the session.

Rules are very key to operations in a big club like the Senate or the House of Representatives. But as we will later discover on this page, the number of years spent on the floor does not necessarily guarantee a clear understanding of the rules.

Well, as we saw it, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan raised hell by protesting the decision of the Senate to relocate her seat. She was out of order, and her colleagues noted the same. With another presiding officer, she could have been suspended right there. But Akpabio didn’t do that. Then, the Kogi Central senator opened another flank, this time, outside of the Senate chamber. She granted an interview to Arise television, claiming that she had been sexually harassed by Akpabio. Here, too, Senator Natasha was on the wrong side of the Senate rules. Yes, she has a right of freedom of speech, but if the right must be meaningfully exercised, she must do so in compliance with the rules of the club she belongs-the Senate. This is expressly so because she is covered by Order 10 of the Senate Rule Book, which permits her to raise issues of privilege without previously notifying the President of the Senate or the presiding officer. The elders and the holy books also say that when you remove the log from the eyes, you show it to the eyes. As a club, the senate detests the washing of its dirty linen in the public. Such conduct led to the suspension of the late Senators Arthur Nzeribe and Joseph Waku, as well as Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, Senator Ali Ndume and even Senator Abdul Ningi in recent past.

Rather than go to the court of public opinion to accuse Akpabio of sexual harassment, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan should have quietly assumed the seat allocated to her, raise her complaints through Order 10 and at the same time tender details of her sexual harassment allegation against Akpabio and seek Senate’s intervention. If she had done that, she would have been on the right side of Senate Rules and had Akpabio by the balls. As much as the Senate rules forbid a senator from submitting a petition he or she personally signed, the Senate does not forbid any lawmaker from raising allegations that affect either their rights or privileges on the floor. Several newspaper editors have been summoned before the Ethics Committee to answer questions of alleged breach of the privilege of senators. I recall that as correspondents in the chamber, senators were always unhappy each time we scooped a story or blow open a report they were about to submit. Such senators didn’t need to write a petition. They would only come to the floor and raise points of order on privilege. Senator Akpoti- Uduaghan failed to do that.

But the conduct of the Senate President and some of the principal officers on Wednesday, March 5, left so much to be desired of the Senate. I was shocked to see Senator Akpabio rule Senator Natasha in order; he also ruled Senator Mohammed Monguno in order as well as Senator Opeyemi Bamidele. How do you have three right rulings on one issue? First, he allowed Senator Natasha to lay a defective petition on the Senate table. That’s expressly out of order. In the days of Senate Presidents David Mark, Bukola Saraki, and Ahmad Lawan, we saw how such scenes were handled. A David Mark would simply ask the senator, ‘Distinguished Senator, please open to Order 40(4) and read’. By the time the senator finished reading the order and seeing the order had negatived his or her motion, he would only be begging to withdraw that motion. That was not the case with Akpabio. And to make matters worse, the clerks at the table were also looking lost. They could not guide the presiding officer in any way. That tells a bit about human resource capacity in the assembly. But then the Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele and the Chief Whip, Mohammed Monguno, who have spent quite a long time in the National Assembly, should know better. Their interventions did more damage to Akpabio’s Senate. Once the President of the Senate had ruled Senator Natasha in order to submit a petition she personally signed, (against the rules of the Senate which forbids such), and the Kogi Central senator had approached the chair and laid the petition on the table, the matter in a way becomes sub judice, to borrow the language of the law. The Senate Rule Book classifies such an action as “Matters Not open to Debate.” So at that point, the matter was no longer open to debate. Since the gavel has been hit and the action has been taken, no senator has the right to reopen the case. It was wrong of Senator Bamidele and Monguno to immediately start to revisit a closed matter, and that’s illegal. It is wrong for Akpabio to allow it.

I recall an incident in the 6th Senate when President Umaru Yar’Adua was bedridden in Saudi Arabia. Some senators moved a motion, seeking the Senate to constitute a panel to visit Saudi and ascertain the health status of the president. Somehow, when the motion was finally passed on a day, Senator Ike Ekweremadu presided, it turned out that the motion only mandated the Federal Executive Council to do the assignment. The original proponents of the motion were enraged, but they were not allowed to reopen the matter. They had to go into lobbying and eventually secured signatures of two-thirds of the Senate to re-table the matter and that paved the way for the adoption of the famous “Doctrine of Necessity.” That’s how serious the matter should be handled, but it was trivialized by Akpabio, the Senate Leader and Senate Whip. That’s on the wrong side of the rule.

Now that Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan has been suspended, many would say she was being silenced. That is far from the truth. Her suspension was on the basis of what the senate perceived as unruly behavior on the floor. We are yet to hear the details of her sexual harassment allegations, and I believe that she has avenues to ventilate that. Nigerians earnestly await these details, which should be salacious enough to help us cool off some heat.

 

 

 

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Now that Natasha has made Akpabio happy

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In South Africa under the presidency of Jacob Zuma, any analysis of government and governance without factoring sex into the mix was tame and lame. Zuma was a notorious polygamist who had six official wives as president, many more by unofficial account and 22 children from the liaisons.

He was a kingpin of lechery. On May 8, 2006, a South African court under Judge van der Merwe acquitted him of rape of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, an HIV-positive AIDS activist, who was the daughter of his friend, Judson Kuzwayo. During trial, Zuma pleaded that the sex was consensual but admitted that he had unprotected sex with the lady. He then stunned the world with his bizarre claim that he had “showered afterwards to cut the risk of contracting the infection.”

 

In the process of studying power relations in Nigeria, sex as a phenomenon is often understudied or underrated. In other words, while power relations are known to be shaped by a complex interplay of factors that range from the economic, political, social, to the cultural, including individual characteristics and relationship dynamics, hardly are gender and sex reckoned with.

 

In my piece of March 6, 2022 with the title, Buhari’s Serial Rape Of Nigeria’s Lady Justice, I doubled down on a sub-theme of the powerful role sex plays in national politics. To do justice to this, I recalled a September 7, 2008 cartoon sketched by Jonathan Shapiro, award-winning cartoonist with the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times whose cartoon identity was Zapiro. I illustrated the piece with a submission that though political cartooning may look harmless, it can be nerve-racking, provoking the bile of political office holders and triggering a huge political umbrage in the process. This cartoon triggered a huge ball of fire in South Africa. Named ‘Rape of Lady Justice’, in it, Zuma, who was then leader of the African National Congress (ANC), and later to become president, was seen loosening his trousers’ zippers for a sexual romp. On his head was a shower cap. Before him, flung on the bare floor, was a blindfolded lady with a lapel inscribed, “Justice System” hung on her chest.

 

Four hefty and menacing-looking men knelt by the Lady Justice’s side, holding down the “wench”, whose skirt was half peeled off. They were political surrogates of Zuma in the ANC, which included Julius Malema, then leader of the ANC Youth League. The scale of justice had fallen down beside the Lady Justice, with one of the men smilingly beckoning on Zuma to clamber her, muttering, “Go for it, boss!”

 

That cartoon shot Zuma into a fit. Indeed, he immediately sued Zapiro for the sum of £700,000. Massive reactions followed it, ranging from the condemnatory to the laudatory. The ANC, SACP and ANC Youth League pilloried it as “hate speech,” “disgusting” and “bordering on defamation of character” and then petitioned the South African Human Rights Commission for redress.

 

I went into all these dogo turenchi, just as I did in another piece I wrote on February 6, 2022, to ask that we must not underrate the power of sex in high places. In that February piece, I borrowed a line from Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde, who said, “everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power”. With it, I submitted that the Wilde theory should tell us that there is an intersection between gender, sexual power and political power. This was further escalated by renowned scholar, Prof Wale Adebanwi, in one of his journal articles, where he submitted that “the African man of power must display or exhibit his virility – particularly sexual virility.” In the same vein, Zimbabwean journalist and blogger, Fungai Machirori, urged us to study the sexual histories of our men in power because, from the rhythm of their silently dangling penises, we may find a compass to their politics.

 

Last Thursday, the ghost of the spat between Senate President, Godswill Akpabio and senator representing Kogi West, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, will seem to have rested. In the relations of power in the senate, on that day, Akpabio, it will seem, had succeeded in showing Akpoti-Uduaghan that, as bland-looking as the old Nigerian pence looked, it was not a currency to be trifled with by the Kobo coin (Bí tọrọ ṣe yọ to, kíì s’ẹgbẹ Kọbọ). Not only was she suspended for six months for violating senate rules and bringing the senate “to public opprobrium”, her salary and security details were withdrawn while her office would be locked during the pendency of the suspension.

 

If you watched the senate proceedings leading to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension, you would be sorry for Nigeria. Then, African-American Sterling Brown would come to your mind, just as you visualize Jonathan Shapiro’s cartoon in Akpabio figuratively loosening his trousers’ zippers for a forceful sexual romp with the Lady Justice. With same lens, you would see Majority Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, Adenigba Fadahunsi and other fawning senators holding down the “wench”, smilingly beckoning Akpabio to “Go for it, boss!”

 

Like Africans, African-Americans grew to know the wisdom which teaches that injustice is a furnace that burns and destroys. The life of Sterling Brown, professor at America’s Howard University, folklorist, poet and literary critic, was chiefly dedicated to studying black culture. In one of his poems entitled “Old Lem,” Brown wrote about mob violence and injustice which black people suffered in the hands of the American criminal justice system. American writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin’s ‘The Fire Next Time’ also speaks to this theme. In the America of the time, black parents, aware of the danger of their blackness and the violence and death they could suffer, deployed folklore to cushion them, even as they told stories that depicted their skewed realities.

 

There was this famous folklore told to African-American children while growing up. Entitled “Old Sis Goose,” it goes thus, as I reproduce it verbatim: One day, “while swimming across a pond, Sis Goose got caught by Brer Fox. Sis gets pissed off because she believes that she has a perfect right to swim in the pond. She decides to sue Brer Fox. But when the case gets to court, Sis Goose looks around and sees that besides the Sheriff who is a fox, the judge is a fox, the prosecuting and defence attorneys are ones too and even the jury is comprised entirely of foxes. Sis Goose doesn’t like her chances. Sure enough at the end of the trial, Sis Goose is convicted and summarily executed. Soon, the jury, judge, Sheriff and the attorneys are picking on her bones.”

 

The morals of this old anecdote are two. One, as encapsulated in one of the lines of Apala musician, Ayinla Omowura’s track, is that, if you do not have a representative in a council where your matter will be decided, even if you are right, you would be adjudged guilty. The second moral is that, if the courthouse is filled with foxes and you are an ordinary, lonely goose, there will be no justice for you.

 

In the senate last week, Akpoti-Uduaghan was Sis Goose who looked around and saw that, beside the judge, Akpabio who is a fox, the prosecuting and defence attorneys were all foxes, too. Even the jury is comprised entirely of foxes. Though they appeared as unbiased umpire senators, they were flesh-starved foxes baying for blood of the hapless little Goose. And Sis Goose was summarily executed.

 

First, we must realize that, just like other Nigerian institutions, the power, glory, graft and corruption at the beck and call of Akpabio’s senate presidency is breathtakingly awesome and humongous. Don’t mind his suffocation of these agencies in his most times nauseating jokes, Akpabio has the power to literally turn anyone’s night into day. If you enter his senate as a pauper and find favour in his ego, you could upstage Mansa Musa, ninth Mansa of the Mali empire’s wealth. Owing to this largesse in his hands, as ants gravitate towards the pee of a diabetic, the senate president has the pleasure of a humongous number of solicited and unsolicited fawners and senatorial Oraisa (praise-singers) and hangers-on latching to his apron strings. It is a tactic to have a bite of the corruptive mountain of pies in the hands of the titular. This need to grovel by the feet of power was affirmed by Senator Opeyemi Bamidele. Akpoti-Uduaghan had alleged that, in a midnight call he made to her, he had threatened that, if Akpabio went down, she, too (ostensibly meaning a huge mound of free wealth) would similarly go into the incinerator.

 

As I recalled last week, immediately Akpoti-Uduaghan leveled allegations of sexual harassment against Akpabio on Arise TV, a build-up began to salvage Akpabio, the King Fox and prevent the largesse empire from falling. First came Onyekachi Nwaebonyi, senator representing Ebonyi North. Nwaebonyi’s fawning is nauseating. On a television show, he acknowledged Akpabio, a first among equals senator, as “our father” and had to be rebuked like an erring kindergarten pupil by the anchor of the programme. Nwaebonyi later came back to attack Akpoti-Uduaghan in the unkindest manner as a serial philanderer. Thereafter came Ireti Kingibe and Neda Imasuen. While Kingibe, who claimed to have driven herself to the television station, struggled frenetically to make her female senator colleague the victimizer, she deodorized King Fox as her victim. Imasuen, chairman senate committee on ethics, even before his committee sat on the alleged infraction of Akpoti-Uduaghan, told the world on another television interview that Akpabio shared same beatification qualities with Angel Gabriel. The question then is, if Nwaebonyi, Kingibe, Yemi Adaramodu and Imasuen could externalize an issue on television and not the parliament, what criminalizes, in the so-called senate rules, Akpoti-Uduaghan doing same?

 

At the televised senate hearing, King Fox, in defiance of the rules of equity and justice, was judge, jury and accused who sat in judgment over his own case. Second, it was obvious that the foxes had gathered for Akpoti-Uduaghan’s legislative obsequies. It was also apparent that the executioners had been carefully selected for the job. One by one, the senators assembled arsenal with which to shed the Kogi senator’s blood. Chief Whip Mohammed Monguno clinically prepared the guillotine. Spears, axes, knives and swords were readied. Monguno stood up and went into oblique narration of how Standing Order 55(1) had been violated. Now, like an objectionable character, a meddlesome interloper who Yoruba call Karambani, Kogi West Senator, Sunday Karimi, acting like all fawners at the feet of power, admitted he put Akpabio in “this problem” because he pleaded with King Fox to allot chairmanship position to Akpoti-Uduaghan.

 

Then, Ade Fadahunsi, ex-Customs officer, representing Osun East, began his own gibber on the floor of the senate. While accepting that the senate was a consequential parliament and that its integrity(?) had gone down, Fadahunsi saw the allegation of sexual harassment against King Fox as “mere trivial matter” and admitted he didn’t “want to know what is the undercurrent.” In his parliamentary arrogance, Fadahunsi even saw it as “an insult” for “a radio we licensed” to invite a man alleged to have gone on a rampaging libido to come and explain what he saw inside the pot of soup that made him tilt his hands suggestively (t’ó rí l’obe t’ó fí gaaru ọwọ). Fadahunsi then lifted the bible to reify his doggerel, fawning over King Fox in the process.

 

Still during the executioners’ hearing aimed at taking Akpoti-Uduaghan through the gallows, Mohammed Dandutse, representing Katsina South senatorial district, stood up, his babanriga fluffing helplessly like the lame hand of an invalid. He waffled so pitiably that you would wonder what he was talking about. After him, Cyril Fasuyi, in his usual kowtow, did not fail to fawn. Even Senator Ita Giwa, on television, propounded a bizarre theory which argued that, once a woman had risen to become a senator, she was immune to sexual harassment. This pitiably suggested that a woman senator must have had enough of men to be moved by the typhoon of their harassment. Nigerians’ mouths were agape.

 

So many issues crop up from the Akpoti-Uduaghan travails. The first can be seen from Opeyemi Bamidele’s argument in favour of her suspension. During this executioners’ session, he argued that the Kogi senator must have been so execrable in behaviour that, all political parties, all genders and all age demographics were in alignment with King Fox against her. Opeyemi did not tell Nigerians that the executioner senators were only defending their esophaguses in the hands of King Fox.

 

As argued by many, the National Assembly is our modern day equivalent of the “I” as “We” thesis, the secrecy and single-purpose pursuit cult of the Yoruba Ogboni fraternity. Espoused by Peter Morton-Williams in his journal article entitled, “The Yoruba Ogboni Cult” (Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct., 1960, pp. 362-374) Morton-Williams didn’t follow Leo Frobenius’ earlier 1910 examination of the Ogboni cult in Ibadan, in the process of which he referred to its members as “mystery-mongering greybeards’.

 

Morton-Williams classified the Ogboni Cult into two grades membership – the Wé-Wé -Wé – ‘children’ of the cult, its junior grade Ologboni or Alawo (Owners of the Mystery or the Secret), and the the Olori Oluwo, ritual head of the Ogboni. The Nigerian senate is similarly classified, with the Senate President replicating the Oluwo. The senate chambers, which is akin to the Ilédì (lodge) of the Ogboni, is where secrets are lidded. In Ogboni cult, kolanuts are split and eaten as an act of reminder that the Ogboni members are bonded in secrecy. This act makes it very hard for any of the Ogboni to factionalize the fraternity and breaking the pod of secrecy that binds the cult. Any member who violates this code courts ritual sanction. As the Ẹdan Ogboni, a pair of brass/bronze figure that represents male/female, linked by a chain, is a symbol of membership and abidance by the rules, so is the Senate Order book. So, when Remi Tinubu, a woman who had also once been a victim of verbal sexual flagellation, also came out to reinforce the power of the secrecy of the Senate over an alleged debasement of womanhood, it only confirmed the fraternal solidarity of this modern senate cult.

 

The Akpoti-Uduaghan travails have so many symbolisms. One is gender, in which case, the Kogi senator is suffering the audacity of her femininity. In this patriarchal society, it is a crime for a woman to be beautiful, brainy and, on top of it, attempt to disrupt the status-quo. The penal sanction meted out to such disruptors is ostracism or death, as is in the Ogboni cult. Second is that, as the pigeon (eyele), the bird that eats and drinks with the house owner in time of plenty, the senate fraternity considers it sacrilegious for Akpoti-Uduaghan to repudiate the fraternity oath. The Ilédì, Senate chambers, a la Senator Ita Giwa, is home for the lascivious, the sleazy and the heart-wrenching. As the harvest for the seed of membership of Ogboni is prestige, wealth and societal honour, for the Nigerian senator, it is humongous cash. If Akpoti-Uduaghan is aquaphobic, not ready to face the ostracism that logically comes from fighting a fraternity’s status-quo of which she had been a member, she had no reason to jump inside the river.

 

For the man of power, sex is a conquest game, won either by shedding drops of a virile libido or the victory of ego over a woman traducer. It was what Adebanwi meant by his “the African man of power must display or exhibit his virility – particularly sexual virility.” As it stands now, Fox Akpabio has succeeded, according to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s unsubstantiated allegation, in being “made happy” through his summary execution of the Goose. For how long? Only time will tell.

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