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Opinion : To  The  Mayegun | By Tunde Busari

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In 2001, the then King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal released a song titled STATEMENT. The intro/opening track goes thus:
Ohun taye ba so e da,
Se bohun naa o fi bu e bo dola
Ohun t’aye ba so e da
Ohun t’aye ba so e da
Se bohun naa o fi bu e bo dola
O ba tete, mero naa pa o
Tori ojo iwaju
O ba tete, mero naa pa o tori ojo iwaju u
Bobo nice tan ba so e da
Baby fine tan ba so e da
Se bohun naa o fi bu e bo dolaa

(Translation)
Whatever people turn you to is the same they will use against you tomorrow
You better think right now to escape future regret

If you surrender yourself to human manipulation, you will live to regret your docility in future.

Dissecting the intended message of the excerpt and juxtaposing it with public image of one I always like to call Alhaji K1, one will feel no pain to understand why the Ijebu-Ode son is often a beautiful bride to diatribe from known critics and even a section of his fans.

I have come across reactions of some of his fans who would always spill that though they enjoy what they call his classical fuji because of its simplicity, they don’t like his expressive arrogance which, according to them, fall short of his status as public figure expected to be a role model to younger generation of musicians.

On this social media, if you have the time, the loose time to burn, you will read all sorts of comments-informed, uninformed, ill-informed and outright babanlanonsense. The traffic of words, which accompanied the news of the Mayegun installation in January, pointed to the fact that Alhaji K1 is blessed with fanatical fans and bitterest foes in almost equal percentage. In every 10 comments, six congratulated him while four screamed and highlighted why he was a misfit for that title.

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The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi, the conferring authority, also shared from those disapproval. When I could no longer bear the pressure on me, some hours to the installation, I picked my phone and spoke with Oba Adeyemi who shed light on the matter and also told me how he was unperturbed by the rage on social media.On January 21, just a week after the installation, through Nigerian Tribune, my employer, I published an exclusive interview headlined: ‘Why I made a musician Mayegun of Yorubaland-Oba Adeyemi,’ The first class traditional ruler defended his choice with argument difficult to dismiss, especially with his reference to his previous involvement in similar subject.

When the same Mayegun, the beneficiary of the Alaafin, is now alleged to have turned round and peed inside the palace of the same Alaafin, then there is trouble beyond Covid-19 in the air. I never knew I was, in the public eye, that close to the Alaafin’s palace until messages were descending into my whats app and inbox, requesting me to confirm the toxic story. I replied all the messages with deliberate silence because whatever I would have said would be ‘a palace source’ and would give credibility to the stuff and make a saboteur in me.

Baba Alaafin, in an interview I published last year, had passionately warned Nigerian youths to take advantage offered by social media to expand their knowledge base rather than to dig hole on their path to a promising future. So, while the story was dancing in the sky, he probably was sympatising with the carriers and consumers, knowing that any topic about him is not and cannot be ordinary because he is not and cannot be ordinary among traditional rulers even beyond Yoruba nation.

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Back to Alhaji K1’s song in his STATEMENT. The track, which is both advice and sermon, seems to be the principle which he has long chosen to guide his life, regardless of its popularity, acceptability and applause of the public. He loves to do things in his own way and leaves the public to their judgement of his actions. He does not lose sleep whether they smile or gnash their teeth or attempt a dive into the Atlantic. As long as his action aligns with his principle, it’s all correct, borrowing from my former line editor, Mr Wole Efunnuga. In truth, there is no wrong in living your life for your life and not living your life for lives of others. Isn’t that what most of so-called motivational volumes preach?

Even at that, Alhaji K1 should note from this Sunday morning that there is need to subject certain things in his life to review as he steadily climbs older age (63 years, one month) and assumes higher status as the Mayegun of Yorubaland. It is no longer‘to hell with what the public say’, Apala baa jisoro, Solooo Makinde ooo.’

Rather, it is now a matter of reflection, a deep reflection and patient preview of his future. I want him to know that the failure of the current tale is not the end of the matter. In fact, a strategic thinker would see it as impetus for other hawkers to take their turn to also cook another and more damaging stuffs. And when lies are told, retold and retold again, they sound like truth and even transform to truth in the ears of target audience.

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It appears that the gang up against him is real, untiring, obstinate and deadly too such that one day, he would be shocked to be stripped of his flaunted political privileges when manufactured (false) evidence of anti-party activities is couriered to the leadership of his party. Aren’t we in the age of photoshop and advanced forgery?

But before it gets to that possible end, he has all opportunity now to turn a new leaf, even though only a fool will daily struggle to satisfy everybody to enter their good book. Okay, was he aware that visual of how he physically molested a hustling photographer of age bracket of one of his sons would one day hit the air to force him into defensive? Did he know how widely the picture was shared? That’s the point. That’s my point!

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Opinion

Wayward Ways and Means, epidemic kidnapping 

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File photo of The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun

We are about to witness a mud-fight between two gods of integrity. In a Nigeria where the mantra is, if you see something, say something, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, elected to say something. And he did say something last Wednesday. “We talked about inflation, where has it come from? It’s come from eight years of just printing money. And the issue is that that money was not matched by productivity…For eight years, the weak were left to their own devices. It is the privileged few that took everything” he said while appearing before the Senate Committee on Finance.

Edun’s appearance in the senate was a total shellacking of the administration of Mai Gaskiya, Muhammadu Buhari. Falling short of naming that government one in same frame with Ali Baba And the Forty Thieves, Edun accused Buhari of every conceivable economic malfeasance, finally heaping the blame of Nigeria’s current economic regression at his doorsteps. He went ahead to promise that the Tinubu government would audit the N22.7 trillion ways and means advance which the Buhari regime incurred.

Bashir Ahmad, former media aide to Buhari, was however of the opinion that blame-shoveling was bad politics. Comparatively, he said, the PDP was better at dressing its stench in pleasant deodorant. Posting on X, Ahmad wrote: “I often wonder why, as a government, we concentrate more on amplifying the faults of the previous administration rather than acknowledging its numerous achievements. The PDP seems to have a more skilful approach to politics than we do in the APC…it’s rare to find instances where President Yar’adua’s (PDP) government criticized President Obasanjo’s (PDP) or where President Jonathan’s (PDP) government faulted President Yar’adua’s (PDP).”

What they cooked that burnt down the house of Nigeria is gradually exposing itself. Get your popcorn and be ready for the rumble in the jungle. When someone tries to hide behind their finger, my people compare them to the exact scenario that both Bola Tinubu and Buhari find themselves today. Their story is perfectly told in the Epa and Aja tale. The tick, which the Yoruba call Epa, is a parasitic member of the Arachnida family of insects. Arachnids are a class of joint-legged arthropods which include, among others, spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, etc. As parasites, they feed on mammals, birds, and sometimes reptiles and amphibians. They feed on the blood of their hosts by attaching to them firmly with their proboscis. In consuming their blood, ticks satisfy their nutritional requirements. When a tick parasitizes its hosts, it acts as vector through which serious diseases that affect humans and animals are transmitted into the host. Eventually, while the tick is satisfying its survival quest, the host will suffer either diseases or anemia and eventually die. So, when Epa assumes that it is killing the host; take for instance, Aja, the dog, unbeknown to it, it is killing itself. The day the dog dies, the tick dies too. Yoruba express this as Epa npa’ra e, o l’ohun npa’ja.

Though he may right now be sunk in the pastime of feeding his cows in Daura, the truth is, Muhammadu Buhari’s self-imposed title of Mai Gaskiya may be on its way out of the retired General’s lapel. There is an ongoing attempt to deconstruct him as either the most naïvely inept Nigerian president to have lived or the imbecilic landlord who opened his house to burglars and watched while they looted his treasure. Buhari’s own political party, the APC-led government, is spearheading this deconstruction. So, should his successor, living through the mantra of “see something, say something” which has seized the information highway today, keep sealed lips and not disclose alleged massive theft of Nigerian patrimony that it is privy to? Should Tinubu see the wound on the sole of his foot as one that has familial imprimatur and thus walk loose with it? Should he say something about the massive theft that went on during the Buhari government which he has information about or say nothing? Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edu, chose the latter.

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Either as blame-shoveling or “saying something when something is seen”, Buhari looks like he is in a very bad shape, image-wise. He has unfortunately landed in the hand of a successor government that is ready to scapegoat anything in sight to justify its inertia. Already, it is clear to everyone that if there is one thing in surplusage from this government today, it is blame-shoveling and immense capacity to reverse itself. In the last nine months, we have seen the government blame everybody, everything but itself for its inability to do the magic it advertised so ebulliently during the campaigns. COVID-19, Godwin Emefiele, PDP, Buhari and all what ought-nots have suffered this victimhood of government’s antics. Edun and this government have also blamed Emefiele’s alleged reckless spending of the overdraft that the Buhari government collected from the CBN as largely accounting for the food and security crises that Nigeria is battling. Right now, Nigeria is seeking Interpol’s help to arrest three suspects alleged to have stolen the sum of $6.2m from the CBN, using Buhari’s forged signature. They are believed to have done this in cahoots with Emefiele who is on trial on 20-count charges. My haunch is that, if Emefiele has his days in court, the courtroom will explode like Hiroshima did and the matter may drift off like a fog, similar to the Sambo Dasuki security fund scandal. In the same vein, this government has reversed itself so effortlessly on policies it advertised with glee, like Jay Jay Okocha did on the field of play. The last reverse was the annual levy it imposed on expatriates which it revoked pre-beginning last week.

 

For an administration like the Tinubu government that is tottering in pitch darkness and fumbling for a way out, the eternal wisdom in the tale of the tick and dog seems self-explanatory and self-evident. The “Epa npa’ra e…” presents in a number of nuggets. First is that, it can come in the form of the question that has been asked repeatedly: How can the Tinubu government, and virtually all its runners, divorce themselves from the 8-year colossal wastage and failure of the Buhari government? The president, like a nursing mother, hunchbacked Buhari into power and gave him the wings with which he flew. Until a railway line halved them into their two separate ways, Tinubu defended every of the Buhari policies with the vigour of a matador. From insecurity, Fulani herders’ rapacious bloodletting, (where are the cows?) to dwindling economy and every allied matter of state policy, Tinubu was there for Buhari. Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the president, has almost had the mucus dripping out of one of his nostrils flip inside the second as he struggles to claim that Tinubu never requested Buhari to enter the forest of the brave – the Igbo igbale. So, for the Tinubu government, through Edun last week, to surgically try to separate itself from the Buhari government will be akin to an Epa which is trying to kill the Aja. Edun, with froth metaphorically foaming out of his mouth, attempted to do that last week.

Unfortunately for the government, head or tail, it loses. This is even if it listens to the self-centered counsel of Ahmad and elects to make the calamity wrought by the Buhari government a family affair. Its situation would be comparable to that of a man all alone inside a bunker who decides to allow a stench-like fart escape from his buttock. He, all alone, will bear the stench. How reconcilable would it be for Tinubu to say that the Buhari he deodorized as recently as December last year, as emanating “from the rarest phylum of virtuous servant-leaders,” whose emergence could be likened to that of “leaders…(that) happens only by divine orchestration,” a man of “absolute and undiluted integrity” had now been discovered to have sat on a government that is surrounded by a mass of maggots?

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We were still battling the waywardness found in the Buhari government’s Ways and Means when, as usual, Nigeria relapsed into its perennial orgy of massive kidnap of school pupils. The latest happened last Thursday at the Government Secondary School and LEA Primary School, Kuriga, Kaduna State. About 280 pupils and teachers were said to have been abducted by bandits. This has triggered national outrage. The bandits were reported to have invaded the Kuriga area of the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State by shooting at their victims in a Gestapo manner. As usual of Nigerian Aso Rock Villa, government is flexing its effeminate muscles and throwing threats into the sky. Sub-nationals and individuals too have tethered their usual empathy offering at the grove of this rapacious god of banditry.

The incessant incidences of kidnapping in Nigeria have grown into a hydra. They have become a source of national threat. Nigeria, according to researchers, boasts of a phenomenally large public and private schools which are nearly 97,000, the largest in Africa. Its primary education sector, according to Aly Verjee and Chris Kwaja, is roughly equivalent in size to the 98,000 public elementary and secondary schools in the United States. Today, these schools are under severe threat from terrorists.

The above-named scholars collated the history of Nigeria’s bloodletting. According to them, in their research work entitled An Epidemic of Kidnapping: Interpreting School Abductions and Insecurity in Nigeria (African Studies Quarterly Volume 20, Issue 3, October 2021) beginning from 2014, “the small, non-descript town of Chibok in Borno State in northeast Nigeria” earned the notoriety worldwide with the abduction of 276 girls. Since then, Nigerian northern schools have known no peace. Though the abduction sparked global outrage, Nigerian governments have moved on nevertheless. The Chibok abduction which was the cusp upon which the APC government wove its political campaign to seize power from Jonathan in the 2015 election was hung on, contributed immensely to the defeat of Jonathan. He was accused of mishandling the kidnapping. However, some top persons in this government were alleged to have organized it to embarrass Jonathan. Buhari thereafter campaigned on a pedestal of promise to restore security to Nigerians.

The scholars’ collation of the spate of kidnappings is frightening. According to them, before Chibok, other kidnaps were carried out though they attracted less media campaign. This was because the AC, CPC alignment and realignment was afoot and the masters of media orchestration in the AC had not aligned with the Buhari CPC. In 2013, 41 students and one teacher were shot/burned alive at the Mamudo Government Secondary School in Yobe State. Same year, another 44 students and teachers were murdered in a separate incident at the College of Agriculture, Gujba, about 120km east of Mamudo, reported Verjee and Kwaja. Similarly, in February 2014, another educational institution in Yobe State, which happened to be the fourth, was attacked. After the attack, 59 students were killed at the Buni Yadi Federal Government College, 30km south of Gujba. This was followed by the Chibok abductions in April 2014. With Buhari, the man who flaunted his epaulettes as a military general in civilian attire now in office, 110 girls got abducted from the Government Girls Science Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State in February 2018.

December of that year, said Verjee and Kwaja, saw another mass abduction in Buhari’s home state of Katsina. More than 300 boys were forcefully taken out of the Kankara Government Science Secondary School. Equally, on December 19 of that same year, 18 students of an Islamic school in Dandume, close to Kankara, were detained by a kidnapping group, while in February, 2021, 42 people, which included 27 students, were kidnapped from the Government Science College in Kagara, Niger State. On February 26, figures bandied, of between 279 and 317 students, were kidnapped from the Government Girls Secondary School in Jangebe, Zamfara State. In March 2021, there were two further mass abductions and three attempted abductions, all in Kaduna State. On March 11, 39 students were abducted from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in Mando. A tip-off to the Nigerian Army averted the kidnap on March 13 of pupils of the Turkish International Secondary School, Rigachikun. On April 20 of same year, 20 students and three staff of Greenfield University in Chikun, Kaduna State were abducted. Five of them got killed by their captors. Plateau State was to get its own share on April 29 when four students were abducted from the King’s School, in Gana Ropp, Barkin Ladi. Then, on May 30, 136 children and several teachers were taken from the Salihu Tanko Islamic School in Tegina, Niger State. In June, 103 students were abducted from the Federal Government Girls College in Birnin Yauri, Kebbi State and on July 5, 121 children were abducted from the Bethel Baptist High School in Maramara, Kaduna State. So many more that space would not allow us reel into happened as figures provided by Verjee and Kwaja.

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It will appear that, under Tinubu, Nigeria has entered its season of kidnap epidemic again. In the paper under discourse, Verjee and Kwaja made some recommendations that I found to be very profound. The first is that successive Nigerian governments have conflated the social challenge of kidnap for security challenges and as such, have solely treated school abductions as security problems which needed to be solved solely by military response. Government does this by fortifying the schools. In doing this, Nigeria is merely treating symptom rather than a national disease. Why it is impossible to get a let out of this is that, first, due to the large scale of Nigeria’s education system, deployment of soldiers and police in the protection of schools can never work.

Rather, according to Verjee and Kwaja, government must first address the trust deficit that exists between state security actors and the people. A very meager percentage of Nigerians perceive state security actors as credible. They have always had a checkered history of corruption and violence. There is a profound belief out there that Nigeria’s top security chiefs do not want insecurity to end due to the money they make from it. This perception fuels further fear of militarization and repression, leading to predatory behavior of state security actors.

Whatever it will take, Nigeria must get to solve the pandemic of school kidnappings. The audaciousness of its perpetrators and the seeming combine of many forces in carrying out the kidnappings make it very complex to get rid of. We must as well realize that this epidemic is just a tiny fraction of Nigeria’s political economy of violence. We have always had an ineffective and underperforming state, as well as sparse economic opportunities which have been fueling the school kidnappings. Already, the Kaduna government has rented private negotiators to secure the release of the kids. At the end of the day, multiple of millions of Naira would be paid to these no-gooders and like the boulder of Sisyphus, in no long a time, the terrorists will strike again. And Nigeria will begin another round of sorrow, tears and blood.

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The North is angry!

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Northern Nigeria used to have a cult of power called the Kaduna Mafia. The Kaduna Mafia decided who would become the Nigerian president, which road to build, which to abandon, which industries to be cited and where. When it couldn’t help but hand the reins of power to the south, it determined which weakest link to exploit. The 1976 assassination of Murtala Muhammed and the handing over of power to Olusegun Obasanjo explains this. If the Kaduna Mafia was bothered about the north-centric disposition of Obasanjo, it could have defiantly handed over the reins of the military government to Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, at that time a lieutenant colonel in the army. Nothing would have happened. When it handed power to Obasanjo, it had to ensure a triple promotion for Yar’Adua, the Fulani scion whose stock needed placation. He was named Chief of Staff Supreme Military Headquarters, with the brief to curtail Obasanjo’s probable excesses against the north.

Though the Kaduna Mafia seemed to have hit its expiry at the time Muhammadu Buhari came into office, the northern oligarchy was resolute about the Daura General’s emergence. And Buhari didn’t disappoint. His administration inflicted one of the most atrocious ethnic and cronyistic governments on Nigeria.

But today, the North is angry. This time, the subject of its annoyance is the planned relocation of some key departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos State. In time past, when the north got annoyed, it was akin to the shrill cry of the pied crow. The crow is a bird the Yoruba call the Kannakanna. So many myths surround this strange bird. The most outstanding of its mysterious features is its queer and unusual cries. These, the Yoruba, in their deep into mystical beliefs, associate with calamities. Yet, the Kannakanna has other features, one of which is that, it does not lay own eggs but rather chooses to harry other birds off their own egg nests. This bit about harrying other birds seems to be true. It, however, has no known explicable biological reasons. The other myth woven round the bird is that the Kannakanna does not lay its own eggs. This has been disproved by ornithologists.

When you compare the ancientness of northern elders’ cries in Nigeria whenever they feel things are not going their way with this strange bird, you will find out that the Kannakanna has a lot in common with the elders of the north. This mysterious bird is known among the Yoruba to be the bird of the elders; elders in this wise, witches and wizards. In some other instances, obeisance is paid to witches through chanting of their cognomen. One of these chants is that the witch is the owl with copper-like eyes – owiwi oloju ide. Witches are also simultaneously reputed to have their legs bespattered with camwood – osun. Beliefs in witches say that the crow is a messenger of these unique beings of African women. It is the animal they send on their mysterious, most times destructive assignments. Always decked in black apparel – its quills – a few other species of crows have white apron-like quills on their chests. Though it feeds mostly on ants, the Kannakanna’s most cherished meal is the hatchling of a sparrow (eye ega). The sparrow itself is a social, homely, very small, seed-eating bird with conical bills. It will fight its assailant to a standstill if annoyed. That is why when a spat is in the offing between two groups or individuals, the Yoruba will say that they smell a fight in the proportion of what happens when the crow attempts to beat the hatchling of a sparrow – “Kannakanna na omo ega…”

So, the north is annoyed. This time, the north that is annoyed is represented by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF). A few other voices have spat into the void and lapped the sky-spiraling spittle with their faces. One of them was Ali Ndume, the senator representing Borno South in the National Assembly. While the NEF, through its Director of Publicity and Advocacy, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, said that the relocation of the CBN departments would lead to brain drain, Ndume delivered his in form of a subtle threat. He said, if the Yoruba-born president of Nigeria goes ahead with the relocation of those departments, this “move would have consequences.”

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For Ndume, who is today the self-appointed one-man squad spearheading the north’s dissonance with government’s policies, the president is being ill-advised by the people he derogatorily labeled “Lagos boys” in the corridors of power. Hear him: “All these Lagos boys who are thinking that Lagos is Nigeria are just misinforming and advising the President wrongly. Those political cartels that are in the corridors of power are trying to misinform the President and we will tell the President. The President will take action. They are not doing any favour to Mr President because this will have political consequences”.

If you are imbued with the steady eyes to see the unseen, ears to hear the unsaid and ability to penetrate the thin veneer of today to arrive at Nigeria’s atrocious past, Ndume will remind you of the ubiquitous Kaduna Mafia. The only difference is that the Kaduna Mafia was not as loquacious, nor visible as the Borno senator. In Bala Takaya and Sonni Gwanle Tyoden (eds) book, The Kaduna Mafia: A Study of the Rise, Development and Consolidation of a Nigerian Power Elite, (1987) this mythical, sect-like northern Nigeria powerful force’s role in Nigeria’s political economy was rightly dissected. Operating under similar historical evolution and characteristics as the Mafia in Italy, Spain and the United States of America, the book used the septic-tank darkness nature of the Italian Mafia to explain the Kaduna Mafia. It said it “is such that for (the Kaduna Mafia) to continue its existence and pursue its objectives with the required effectiveness, it cannot but subject its identity, nature and activities to obscurity. (Secrecy) is one of the hallmarks of a successful mafia set-up”.

The Kaduna Mafia, a faction of the Nigerian bourgeois class and northern oligarchy, escalated the ethnic politics between the north and the south in the 1970s to the 1990s. The Mafia was a set of amorphous but lethal power-baiting individuals. Within this period in the life of Nigeria, this narrow group interest held the rest of Nigeria to ransom. It dictated the political and economic barometer of the country and blithely decreed the future of Nigeria. It perfected underdevelopment, focusing solely on development of the north and like godfathers in today’s politics, was narrow-minded and self-centered. Like the roach, the Kaduna Mafia had very sensitive political antennae with which it sniffed the pendulum of power and ethnic gains. Realizing that the best place to manipulate power was outside the locus of power, the Mafia fiddled with policies in such a way as to ensure that the north made maximum benefits through strategic positioning of policies and structures. Using the façade of Islamic puritanic posture, the Kaduna Mafia was be able to conceal its selfish political and economic interests before the overall intent got exposed to a larger Nigeria.

The overall effects of the Kaduna Mafia’s ethnic politics were negatively consequential for Nigeria. In the military, for instance, the first and only Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, was clairvoyant about the future hegemonic hold of uniformed men on the running and ruining of Nigeria. Thus, he ensured that a number of qualifications for entrance into the military were waived for northern boys enlisting in the military in 1959 to the 1960s. In height, education and mental acuity criteria, many northern boys who didn’t measure up became soldiers, rising to become military governors and even Heads of State. This ultimately inflicted colossal damage on the future of the country. One of such boys was Muhammadu Buhari. In terms of academic qualifications, he obviously didn’t have the school certificate requirement. He also ranked very low in terms of depth. How was anyone, even Bello, who had much charisma and depth, to imagine that someday, Nigeria would be in the hands of a Buhari? The rest, as they say, is history.

So, when Ndume and the NEF began the resurgence of their crow cry about a north under siege, what came to the minds of other parts of Nigeria is similar to the cry of a butcher who is being stalked by a threat of death. So when the butcher screams that death was about to take hold of him, the question people ask is, didn’t the animals he had mercilessly butchered too have blood flowing in their veins? Yoruba render this as, “Iku fe pa alapata, o nkigbe; omo eranko t’o ti da l’oro nko?” What this pithy saying advocates is the need for fairness at all times as whatever one is unwilling to stomach, they should refrain from imposing it on others.

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The current federal government is trying to relocate CBN departments like the Banking Supervision, Other Financial Institutions Supervision, Consumer Protection Department, Payment System Management Department, and Financial Policy Regulations Department from Abuja to Lagos? Ex-CBN Deputy Governor, Kingsley Moghalu, was the first to thaw its ice by labeling it an unnecessary wolf cry. In a tweet on X, he claimed the Lagos office, which he said had been completed and inaugurated approximately 12 years back, was underutilized while the staff of the CBN at the Abuja headquarters “exceed the health and safety limits of the building, hence the need to relocate.” He said the relocation was “rational, given that the market entities supervised by these departments are predominantly located in Lagos.”

While corroborating Moghalu, CBN former governor and ex-emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, said “Northern politicians will shout that this is moving from Abuja to Lagos. Abuja is a federal capital not a northern issue. So long as this is a principled decision, the noise should be ignored.” According to him, “All this noise is absolutely unnecessary. The CBN has staff manning its branches and cash offices across the Federation. Moving staff to the Lagos office to streamline operations and make them more effective and reduce cost is a normal prerogative of management.”

Now, why does the NEF relish this idea of northernizing Abuja? Does this Kaduna Mafia-incarnate think that localization means ownership? Countless times, the South-South people have cautioned those who see the FCT as their patrimony, reminding them that the glittering roads of Abuja were paved with oil money from their soil. It was this same northernization of Abuja reasoning that bred the vacuous clamour for a northerner to be FCT Minister at the beginning of this present government and the gas-lighting of the incumbent.

Before the February 4, 1976 promulgation of Decree No 6 by the Federal Military Government of Nigeria which initiated the removal of the national capital from Lagos to Abuja, there had been previous advocacy for its relocation. One of such was made by Chief Obafemi Awolowo at the 1953 constitutional conference held in London. It was Awolowo and his Action Group’s contention that Lagos must be merged with the Western Region while a new federal capital should be built in central Nigeria.

Following this up, the Action Group published a pamphlet in 1953 with the title Lagos Belongs to the West, where it articulated that “(Lagos) is strategically… highly vulnerable. Geographically, it is not by any means properly suited to serve as the headquarters of the Central or Federal Government. Lagos is to Nigeria what Calcutta is to India. What we need now, to pursue this analogy, is a New Delhi.” The party then made this proposal: “A large area of land should be acquired by the Federal Government near Kafanchan, which is almost central geographically, and strategically safe comparatively, for the purpose of building a new and neutral capital. The new capital should be built on a site entirely separate from an existing town, so that its absolute neutrality may be assured. Being the property of the Federal Government, it would automatically be administered by it in the same way as Washington, D.C. in USA or Canberra in Australia. Such a capital would be a neutral place indeed.”

In August I975, the Supreme Military Council formed a Committee on the Location of the Federal Capital, one of whose members was Dr. Tai Solarin, Headmaster of Mayfair College, Ikenne, who had written many articles in the Tribune newspapers advocating relocation of the capital from Lagos to the north. One of such was a 197I article he wrote with the title Lagos ‘should go’. Other members of the committee were Dr Ajato Gando, the only member with a background in geography and urban planning; Reverend Colonel Pedro Martins from Lagos, and Justice T. Akinola Aguda as Chairman. The Aguda committee, made up mostly of westerners, recommended Abuja as the FCT. If the SMC had northernization of Abuja in mind, it probably would have made the committee an all-north affair. While its initial planning and implementation were undertaken by the Military Government of Generals Murtala Muhammed and Obasanjo, Gen Ibrahim Babangida eventually relocated Nigeria’s capital to Abuja.

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One of the terms of reference for the establishment of the new capital was to ensure that it was a truly neutral city which would accommodate Northern, Eastern, and Western peoples and where these peoples would co-exist in harmony. The SMC was wary of the new capital not being free from the rancorous historical legacies of state capitals where dominant groups imposed themselves on previous urban centres. Today, with the nauseating ethnicization of Abuja and an opaque reading of sentiments into national policy matters like the FAAN and CBN relocation by northern crows, the fact that there was a predominant Northern influence in the process of construction of Abuja has made the noxious perception rife today that the FCT is a northern bequeathal. What NEF, Ndume and others are doing by locating ulterior motives in the relocations from Abuja to Lagos is northernizing the ownership of the FCT. Otherwise, the president should be left with the prerogative to decide what policies best suits its administration. What Nigeria needs now is healing. What the framers of the FCT establishment and Awolowo’s Action Group envisaged was a neutral capital which it no longer is. NEF, Ndume and the likes are curating an Abuja that is a threat to unity and indeed a potential symbol of the escalation of the North-South discord.

Should Abuja ever be an issue for ethno-religious claim? It was conceived to be a city of love and not hate. It was conceived as a city of equality and not of superiority of one part over another. That was why the Federal Government paid off the original owners of the land and created Suleja for them. As Nigerians, we owe one another that duty of respect and love – and Nigerians can love! I experienced it last Friday during the burial of my mother. Nigerians of all classes and ethnicities, public figures, private figures helped me in seeing my mother off to eternity. Governors who I, at one time or the other, wrote against; senators I once queried their patriotism to Nigeria; captains of industry, North and South; farmers , artisans, white collar, blue collar people – everybody from everywhere gave my mother a state burial. I thank them immensely. The lesson for me there is that I should stay on the track I have chosen for myself while I plead that we work harder to make Nigeria a haven for all Nigerians who are still alive. Enough of bickering over nothing – not over Abuja, especially!

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Ibadan blast, Abuja kidnaps and calamities

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Big calamities seldom knock before opening the door. Calamities’ sneaky essence is articulated in one song by grand old Odolaye Aremu, Ilorin, Kwara state-born Dadakuada song minstrel. While philosophizing the concept of calamity, which Yoruba call “eemo”, Odolaye sang that surprise and swiftness are primary features of calamities, holding tight to them like leeches. So he sang, “Peki laa k’eemo,” (calamity is met suddenly). The singer points at horses used in races and in ancient wars meeting their end unprepared during races. It is the same with soldiers who mount horses and ride them to death. Odolaye sang that, as sudden death pounces upon warhorses, so also do buffalos meet their end in the treacherous thickets of the savannah.

Last week, though not racing on horses nor does it have anything in similarity with buffalos, calamity swiftly walked into the capital of Oyo state and like Odolaye aptly dissected it, it was sudden. It came with its handmaidens – weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Residents of Bodija, Ibadan, suddenly heard a late evening loud bang which reverberated around many parts of the ancient city. By the time the bang settled, lives had been lost, property destroyed and Ibadan suddenly became an epicentre of bad New Year news. Buildings were reduced to rubble, vehicles destroyed and a yet-to-be-ascertained number of people killed by the explosion.

Preliminary investigation found out that this calamity was the handiwork of some Malian miners who lived there. They had allegedly brought in high-level dynamite into a human neighbourhood. As at the time of writing this, official sources put the number of dead at five while excavation of bodies was still being done. One of the dead was said to be a United Kingdom returnee who met his untimely death while visiting. Mining activities have become harbingers of “eemo” in Nigeria’s lucrative mining fields, Zamfara state being an earlier example. In this state, foreigners perch on gold sites like bees on nectar with its attendant incubation of banditry.

Still on the sneaky bang of calamities, Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, also witnessed an implosion in the number of kidnapped persons. From January 2021 to June 30, 2023, 40 kidnap cases were said to have been recorded in the FCT, with heart-wrenching 236 victims. The modus operandi of the kidnappers has today witnessed a mutation. Before now, waylaying commuters on the highway and ferrying them into the bush to demand ransom was the style. Today, under President Bola Tinubu, kidnappers have gone haywire. They are daring and disrespectful of Abuja as Nigeria’s seat of government. So, kidnappers boldly walk into people’s homes to cart away their victims without batting an eyelid.

Nigeria is under the siege of bandits who have terrorised the country non-stop, castrating the government’s expected proactive interventions and reducing successive governments to, in the words of Yakubu Dogara, mourners-in-chief. On the Abuja–Kaduna highway last week, about 30 people were said to have been abducted at Dogon-Fili near Katari, along the Kaduna-Abuja highway in Kachia local government area of Kaduna state. Eleven other persons were kidnapped in the Dutse-Alhaji area of the FCT, Abuja. Those who dispensed “eemo” to these fellow Nigerians and their families were gunmen dressed in the camouflage of military men, while the kidnappers dressed like herders.

The most pathetic and tear-jerking narration from the Dutse-Alhaji kidnap came from Oladosu Ariyo, lawyer and father of a slain 13-year-old. In an SOS that brimmed with frustration, pain and sorrow, Ariyo wrote to the Nigerian Bar Association to narrate the calamity that suddenly walked into his dwelling place. He narrated how the band of kidnappers invaded Sagwari Layout Estate in Dutse and kidnapped his lawyer wife and four children. They promptly demanded N60 million ransom. Being able to pay only a small percentage of the ransom, the kidnappers killed his firstborn and dumped the corpse on Kaduna Road. They threatened to kill the three other minor children and his wife if the whole ransom was not paid. They were said to have so far killed three of the eleven residents of the Sagwari Estate Layout in the Dutsen-Alhaji area they abducted.

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The most immediate issue that the kidnaps evoke, bringing to the fore, is the disconcerting reality that kidnappings have gone outside the grips of the Nigerian government. Often orchestrated by persons who don military uniforms and inflict havoc recklessly for hours on citizens, this calamity has persisted since the Muhammadu Buhari government. It was often followed by official denials, especially during the Buhari era. That government was a seeming legitimisation of the infliction of violence and death on the people. States that border and surround the FCT like Niger, Kogi, Nasarawa and Plateau states had been hotbeds of kidnaps and wanton killings since the Buhari government. In saner climes and environments, this proximity is enough indication and foretell of imminent preying on the FCT by the bloodthirsty hounds called kidnappers and bandits. For a proactive and sensitive national security apparatus, a mechanism to arrest the imminent descent on Abuja ought to be on the drawing board, even before they struck. Unfortunately, in Abuja, unlike many civilised cities of the world, there are no statistics of ingress and egress into and outside the national capital. In the same vein, the census of landlords who live in the various suburbs of the city remains an illusion.

The issue of absence of governance is the cause of the spike in insecurity in Abuja and other parts of Nigeria. If you bore a hole through it, you will find corruption as well. There is also no doubting the fact that national security inertia juts out as a core issue in the Ibadan blast. Why would such destructive dynamite pass through the cordon of security agencies to wreak such havoc? Apart from those issues, existential matters are also trapped in the spate of kidnappings in Abuja and the blast in Ibadan. The existential issues come in rhetorical questions. Why must it be Oladosu Ariyo and his family who were abducted that night at Dutsen-Alhaji and not other families? Why was the UK returnee who met his untimely death in the Ibadan blast the one who must die? Why didn’t he delay his journey by some days, to arrive in Ibadan after the blast? Why did that calamity zero in on those who died? Why was Bodija the scene where the dynamites must explode and not elsewhere? These are questions that have defied satisfactory answers to humanity, science and religion. They have been asked consistently since the beginning of creation.

The above questions have procreated a set of people called fatalists who believe that human beings are helpless about the future, as well as the fortune or calamities that come to them. In Yoruba epistemology, this fatality is expressed as “ayanmo” or predestination. Its similar variant is “Kadara,” which is strictly identical to destiny. Kadara is woven around the concept of ‘Ori’ or the bearer of one’s destiny. The third of the tripod is called “Akosile” which holds that every individual’s destiny, as well as all that will happen to them in their life journey, are already written down in heaven before human beings begin to journey down to earth. An affirmation of this is mirrored in the saying “Ori yeye ni Mogun, ipin aise lo po,” which translates to mean, among the dry skulls at the Mogun shrine are many innocent heads.

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The “Ori yeye…” narration, best explained by an anecdote said to have taken place a long time ago, apparently in pre-colonial Yoruba, has a few other slants different from the one below. The king of a town called Otolu had his trumpet called Kakaki stolen by persons he couldn’t fathom. The trumpet was a monarchical insignia used during ancestral festivals and was blown to announce the imminence of the festival. Upon the disappearance of the trumpet, Oba Otolu summoned his 17 servants for an explanation on the missing ancestral trumpet. Each swore his innocence but, miffed, literally spitting fire from his mouth like Sango, the king ordered the servants to be beheaded by the Ogun shrine. A few months after their decapitation, an Oba Otolu king friend in the neighbouring town apprehended two of his aides who had the trumpet and sent them to the Otolu king. Upon interrogation, they confessed that the heir to the Otolu throne, the king’s son, had handed it over to them. The king then ordered the beheading of the prince and the two culprits. As they were about to be decapitated at the Ogun shrine, pensive, the Otolu king muttered, pained about the shedding of innocent people’s blood thus, “See the number of heads of innocent persons we wrongly beheaded at the Mogun shrine!” The king was said to have committed suicide upon arriving at the palace.

So, were those 17 palace servants fated to be beheaded by the Orolu king? Was it their “ayanmo” (destiny) to die such gory, painful deaths? The Yoruba concept of the human person believes every human being has an ayanmo which can be positively or negatively manipulated by the nature of the head (Ori) that the person brought into this world. Thus, if an ayanmo is lopsided, failing in efforts, the Ori can help restructure the person’s destiny. This is why they say destiny has no remedy but Ori is the judge, “ayanmo o gb’ogun, ori l’elejo.”

Destiny, as articulated by Professor Segun Gbadegesin in his “Eniyan: The Yoruba Concept of a Person” in The African Philosopher Reader, edited by P.H Coetzee and A. P Roux., Routledge (New York, 1998) P.144, is “pre-ordained portion of life wound and sealed up on Ori”. According to him, “Human beings have an allotment of… destiny which determines the general course of life”. Bolaji Idowu, however, sees the Ori as a complete human personality who came before Olodumare (God) shortly before departing for this world. The human knelt before Him for allotment of his destiny and was open to what is called a “trimorphous conception of destiny”. This is in three and they are, Akunleyan (destiny got when kneeling to choose); Akunlegba (destiny got when kneeling to receive) and Ayanmo (irrevocably stamped on the person).

Some of these beliefs, made into proverbs, aphorisms, mores and lore are predicated on predestination. For instance, an ancient wise saying says that a tree will not fall in the forest and kill one who sits at home; and the rafter will not fall and kill the wayfarer (igi o ni da, k’o pa’ra ile; aja o ni jin k’o pa ero ona). Almost in line with this epistemology are the teachings of the two dominant religions, Christianity and Islam. They also believe that human beings are destined for some of the fates that befall them. However, as architects of their fates, human beings can tinker with their destinies through the worship of God. The third leg of this belief system is a doctrine called fatalism. Held by fatalists, they believe, without recourse to theology, that human beings are powerless to tinker with their future. They also hold that anything that happens to human beings is not within their human remit to change.

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Many people have tried to examine why African leaders seem to cavalierly allow calamities to befall their people rather than taking proactive measures to ensure that they do not occur. I tend to think that this thinking by governments is an outcome of a very injurious but longstanding romance with theological submissions about calamities, as well as traditional Africa’s explanation of predestination. Data have proven that the more religiously or traditionally inclined government runners are, the sloppy it becomes for them to do the needful in safeguarding the lives of their people. The Buhari government, for instance, was so steeped in this belief in the God-ordained nature of human calamities that it firmed out the most important of its governmental responsibilities to God. Most times, it called on God to help it attack its attackers which is downright senseless.

Many events that happen in this modern age perforate some of the traditional African theses we have held for centuries. The Ibadan dynamite blast of last Tuesday is one. Contrary to a saying cited above, trees are now falling in the forest and killing people who sit in their homes; and rafters are falling, killing wayfarers in the process. The Ibadan blast attests to these. If the Tinubu government will not follow the footsteps of Buhari’s administration and thus be less fatalistic in its security architecture master plan, it should not be rocket science to exterminate kidnappers and be victorious over the menace of kidnapping. It is penny-wise pound-foolish to remove subsidy on petrol, with its attendant hardships on the people, then extend national pain by yawning while insecurity takes over the national capital. The truth is, if the FCT could be this unsafe, with information of its porosity to evildoers available all over the world, no investor would come to Nigeria.

Tinubu must urgently reduce the frequency of calamities in Nigeria by tackling insecurity frontally. By doing this, he will be redrawing the map of the sneakiness of calamities in Nigeria. Above all, he will render Odolaye Aremu’s thesis on calamity (eemo) and its suddenness (peki) irrelevant.

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