Two Yoruba ‘living ancestors’ are at each other’s throats at the moment.

The two personages have made great and indelible marks in life. They are giants in their own ways, and both are supposed to be close relatives like the proverbial ìyekan Alábahun (close-knitted relatives of Tortoise). They hail from the same town and are both answerable to the same Oba.

The underpinning axiom that established their common domain says: Ègbá méjì kìí ja ara won níyàn: bí ìkan bá ní bai sí, ìkejì á ní báa wà (two Egba men don’t argue on any matter; if one asks ‘is it not so?’; the other will respond: ‘it is so’).

So, what is the matter with the former governor of Ogun State, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, and his kinsman, the former military Head of State and two-term civilian President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo?

Let me confess my filthiness here so that the elders of the land will find clean apparel for me. I am too young in all ramifications of life to teach the two old combatants the rudiments of Yoruba philosophy. Whatever I do here, therefore, is purely out of curiosity. May Èsù Elégbára not allow curiosity to kill my cat. Àse!

Aremo Osoba wrote a memoir, “BATTLELINES: Adventures in Journalism and Politics”, in 2019. The book did not generate any heat seven years ago, when it was first published. Suddenly, an excerpt from the book, sub-titled: “How Obasanjo Deceived Us In 2003” (pp.280-294), surfaced a week ago. Heaven itself knows that the earth is witnessing yet another battle among the children of Oòduà.

I love Èsù.

He is my muse. If those pushing for my excommunication succeeded, you would likely find me pouring libations at the shrine of Ògiri-Òkò, Èsù Láàlú!

Of course, I would serve Him alongside the Father of Wisdom, Òrúnmìlà, the very one who teaches man wisdom like one’s sibling (Akóni l’óràn bíi ìyekan eni).

When the Gospel, in James 1:5-6, says whoever lacks wisdom should ask God, the writer of those verses, most probably, must have had Láaróyè (Èsù) and Àgbonìrègún (Ifá) in mind. Both are the end of wisdom. Heresy? We shall know shortly.

Geoffrey Chaucer (c1343-25 October 1400), the English poet, as far back as 1386, wrote glowingly about Èsù in his The Canterbury Tales.  That was four and half decades before Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1809-1891), translated the English Bible to Yoruba Language and ‘demonised’ the Yoruba trickster deity, Èsù, as the Jewish devil that is full of all evils.

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Chaucer, in The Squire’s Tale, says this of Èsù: Therfore bihoveth hire a ful long spoon / That shal ete with a feend (see “The Canterbury Tales”, pgs. 405-424). Interpreted to the Modern-Day English Language, Chaucer’s poetic line reads: ‘Therefore beloved, hire a full long spoon if you must eat with a trickster fellow.’ 

The Chaucerian admonition is repeated by Williams Shakespeare in The Comedy of Errors (Act 4, scene 3) and in The Tempest (Act 2, Scene 2). The three instances above are mere confirmation of the age-old Yoruba saying: Eni máa bá Èsù jeun, síbí è á gùn (he who will dine with Èsù must have a long spoon).

For an average old Yoruba man or woman who spent quality time in the countryside, the moral lesson that one must be circumspect when dealing with a dangerous, or cunning or sometimes, a wicked fellow, cannot be lost.

Èsù falls into the category of the Oral Literature characterization of an A-heroic personage, who, though, has the capacity to do evil and good at the same time, pitches his tent more with the underdog in any contest.

Èsù also remains so dynamic that none can predict Him. That character trait of the noble deity is the reason one is warned to look for a long spoon whenever one intends to have a dealing with the one who answers the name: Abániw’óràn bá’ò rí dá (one who procures trouble for the person who lacks one). Èsù does that pro bono, and with great enthusiasm!

Again, I repeat here: I love Èsù. I have taken time to research on why the deity is most feared among the Yoruba pantheon of Irúnmolè. His unpredictability stands Him out. Good-natured, affable and unassuming, Èsù strikes when one least expects. And once He elects to strike, Èsù takes no prisoner; He gives the opponent no chance for survival. Èsù can be mean, wicked and at the same time meek, vulnerable and very compassionate.

I have read the excerpt from Osoba’s memoir a couple of times. On each occasion, my mind raced to Èsù. I also tried to recall the 2003 governorship election that swept off Osoba (Ogun), Chief Bisi Akande (Osun), Chief Adebayo Adefarati (Ondo), Alhaji Lam Adesina (Oyo) and Otunba Niyi Adebayo (Ekiti).

I tried to review the television images of Chief Adefarati as he attempted some stunts to show that he was not as old as he was said to be, and how Chief Osoba ascribed the tag of arrogance pinned on him to his ‘well-starched’ agbada and the journalism profession. I wanted to laugh but I remembered Èsù. On whose side is the deity in these not-too-good public outings by the two prominent Ègbá chiefs?

I do not doubt everything Chief Osoba said in the excerpt. Every single letter speaks to the personality of Chief Obasanjo. But I have my reservations about certain elements therein. Chiefly among them is the fact that many of the people Chief Osoba mentioned as his witnesses to the ‘agreement’ with Obasanjo are dead. That fact puts an end to any attempt to verify or dispute whatever claim the former Ogun State governor made.

But more curiously for me is how Chief Osoba and his fellow governors of the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) fell for the ‘tricks’ of Obasanjo. Of them all (Osoba, Adefarati, Akande, Adesina and Adebayo), only the former Ekiti State governor, Adebayo, could be said to be ‘politically naïve’ not to have known that whoever would go into any negotiation or agreement with Obasanjo, would need more than a long spoon.

Chief Osoba, I believe, can write a whole book on Obasanjo. Chief Bisi Akande, ‘to the best of my ignorance’ as Tony Afejuku would say, has more than enough experience with Obasanjo; ditto the late Chief Adefarati. Even Niyi Adebayo must have heard so many tales about Obasanjo from his (Adebayo’s) late father, General Robert Adeyinka Adebayo. So, how did they all fall for the Owu man’s ‘tricks’?

I am not saying this because I believe that Chief Obasanjo ‘betrayed’ the AD governors in 2003. But when a man answers the appellations: Fox, Ebora Owu and the rest, somebody in Chief Osoba’s class should have known better. My little understanding, given my age bracket, tells me that what Obasanjo saw in 2003 was nothing but another war! What are the characteristics of a man of war in the class of Obasanjo? Who was his muse while at the negotiation table if not Èsù Elégbára?

Chief Osoba wrote about how Obasanjo came to his house, ate and repeated the visit. Did the Akínrógun of Ègbá take those visits for courtesy? Did Obasanjo not visit the late Audu Ogbe at home, where he ate the Idoma man’s pounded yam and ended up forcing the man to resign as the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)? Did Osoba not read that 2005 account before writing his memoir?

What about the late Dr. Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo? Did Obasanjo not eat, drink and engage in spousal dance exchanges with the former Senate President? What happened the next day on the floor of the Senate? Were the same Obasanjo’s boys, who were present at the all-night party, not the ones that shoved Okadigbo aside, and got him replaced as Senate President? Where were Chief Osoba and his fellow ‘negotiators’ when that Okadigbo incident happened?

Truth be told: there were many factors responsible for the political calamity that befell the AD governors of the South-West in 2003. Those issues were far beyond Obasanjo and his perceived ‘cunning’ ways. However, the greatest of them all is how Chief Osoba and his fellow governors and ‘negotiators’ came to the dining table with Obasanjo without bringing long spoons.

The current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was also an AD governor of Lagos State alongside Osoba and the other four, realised that he needed more than a long spoon. Rather than bringing a long spoon to the negotiation dining table with Obasanjo, Tinubu came with the blacksmith forge itself. Little wonder the Lagos Boy was the only one who survived the political annihilation!

I don’t want to be Obasanjo’s devil’s advocate here. But, from whichever angle one looks at it, Obasanjo’s training as a General in the Army and a warlord would have been suspect if he did not do what he did to the AD governors in 2003! You will understand this if you remember that Èsù takes no prisoners.

Ebora Owu was fighting the battle of his life in 2003. He knew that he could not afford to have the thunder strike him a second time and on the same spot. He lost the South-West in the 1999 election. The simple implication is that he had no home support.

He alluded to that as one of the factors that emboldened his Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, to challenge him. Going for a re-election without the home support was suicidal. Unfortunately, Obasanjo is not someone, even now, who wants to die anytime soon. He acted, and in doing that, he ruined other people’s cocoyam for his kolanut plantation to thrive! Vintage Èsù Òdàrà.

An old fox like Obasanjo would not sit back and allow the rug to be pulled off his feet. He did not learn the art and act of war for nothing! He is also a traditional man. Obasanjo must have read more about Èsù, his ways and tactics. There are various instances where Èsù played the fool to win a contest. The former President knew that, and he played the dumb for Osoba and his men to enter the trap!

Too bad; too painful that Chief Osoba and his friends did not read much about Èsù. They did not realise that the deity wears the veneer of vulnerability when he is, in fact, most vindictive and dangerous. This is why Èsù is called: Kò je, kò jé kí eni tó je gbé mì; as’òtún s’òsì láì ní ìtìjú (he who refuses to eat but will also not allow the one who eats to swallow what he eats; the one who supports both parties without remorse).

That is the character of the man, whom Chief Osoba said: “Obasanjo jumped at that opportunity to make a solemn promise that he will do everything possible to make sure that the elections were conducted well, to the satisfaction of all parties. It was on this note that the meeting ended.” As how? Pardon my resort to street lingo here!

How Chief Osoba, a well-read man, did not apply John Lyly’s Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578), where it is implied that in a matter like the 2003 election, ‘the rules of fair play do not apply in love and war’ in his various ‘negotiations’ with Obasanjo beats my imagination.

How the Aremo and his fellow governors failed to realise that the only principle that guided (then), and guides, (even now), Obasanjo’s dealings with friends and foes alike, is the Frank Smedley’s submission in his 1850 novel, Frank Fairleigh, where the English novelist posits: “All is fair in love and war.”

This is why, Obasanjo, curiously, in his response to Osoba’s claims, found it convenient to drag Atiku Abubakar to the messy controversy. But for a man who shares the same character portrait with Èsù Láàlú, the former President could have replied to Chief Osoba without bringing in his ex-vice-president.

But because Èsù takes no prisoners in His battles, Chief Obasanjo must remind Nigerians that Atiku Abubakar, “From the first day as Vice-President, he raised campaigners for his presidency.  On the Friday, he invited Na’Abba; he gave him 5 million naira to begin his impeachment work.” That insertion is for a purpose, which is known only to Obasanjo!

The unending waterboarding of Atiku by Obasanjo is typical of Èsù, whose pastime is war of attrition against His enemy. The political implication of the reference to Atiku should not be lost here. The man has an election against the incumbent President Tinubu in January 2027. Portraying him as a serial betrayer is a message that is pregnant with meaning.

And since we cannot pin Èsù to any particular party in a crisis, Him being an as’òtún s’òsì láì ní ìtìjú (the one who supports both parties without remorse), we cannot say precisely who the Obasanjo jab is intended to favour as the race for the 2027 presidential elections heats up! The one who does evil is the one who knows to what effect (oníkùn lò mo ìkà), is a popular saying among the elders of my place. May God not allow us to see Èsù in His element (kí Olórun má jê kí á rí’jà Èsù). Àmín!

But beyond the above, I think Yorubaland deserves some semblance of peace at this critical moment. The entire landscape is facing an existential problem caused by the invasion of our forests by some felons who kidnap, behead and commit all manner of crimes against our people. This is the time we need all our elders to come together to find a lasting solution to the problem.

Only Èsù himself knows why a book written seven years ago is now generating heat in Yorubaland today. Only Láaróyè knows why those who exhumed the buried corpse did what they did. My appeal here is another praise name of Èsù, and I do this on behalf of all peace-loving children of Oòduà:  Èsù má se wá n’ílè Yòrùbá, omo elòmíràn ni o se!

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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By Eyimofe Atake, SAN

Dear Professor, you promised us that your last message would be your final word, and I am delighted that you broke your promise. A conversation this good deserved a longer life. Let me also say plainly what your generosity makes easy to miss: across this exchange you have conceded the failure of the present system, withdrawn the regional proposal with a grace rare in public argument, and sharpened every safeguard in the bill by testing it. What remains between us is now a single proposition, and I want to name it honestly, because naming it is half of answering it. Your argument is no longer about law, and no longer truly about design. It is about people. You believe that no structure, however careful, can restrain the Nigerian political class. That is a proposition about our national character, and I will meet it squarely at the end. But first, your points in turn.

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ON THE LEGISLATORS WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE BILL

You suspect that few of the lawmakers advancing this bill could defend it with rigour. You may be right, and it would not matter. No law anywhere has ever been validated by the depth of each legislator’s understanding; if that were the test, no parliament in history has ever validly legislated. Legislation is the product of an institution, not an examination of its members: committees, hearings, drafts, experts and debate, so that the process knows more than any person in it. And this bill’s process has been unusually long and unusually open: decades of advocacy, public hearings across all six geopolitical zones in July 2025, and passage by margins too broad for caprice, 84 of 109 senators and 289 votes to 4 in the House. That is not a fashionable stampede. It is a national consensus finally finding legislative form. As for the shallow understanding you fear, its cure is exactly what you and I are doing now: public argument that legislators, journalists and citizens can read. Your critique is not evidence that deliberation is absent. It is the deliberation.

THE CHAIN AND THE NET

You describe my safeguards as a chain whose links may be weaker than we hope. Professor, your metaphor has conceded my case. A chain fails at its weakest link, because a chain is a series arrangement: break one link and the whole fails. That is a perfect description of the system we have now, which hangs on a single link, the centre. But the bill is not a chain. It is a net. The checks do not hang one from another; they operate side by side, independently, so that abuse succeeds only when every strand snaps at once. And here is what I must correct most firmly: you read my argument as optimism. It is the opposite. I never assumed the governor would behave, or the Assembly would resist, or the Council would scrutinise, or the centre would act. I assumed that every single one of them is unreliable, and that is precisely why the design multiplies them. One unreliable guard is a scandal waiting to happen. Nine unreliable guards, watching from different towers, answering to different masters, are a fortress, because their simultaneous failure is a far taller order than the failure of any one. This is not my invention. It is the oldest wisdom in constitutional design. James Madison, writing in Federalist No. 51 in 1788, put it in words that have never been bettered: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” And his solution to a government of non angels was exactly this architecture: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The American constitution was written by pessimists, for scoundrels, and it has processed nearly two and a half centuries of them. Structures built for flawed men are the only structures ever built. There is no other kind of man to build for. So the true comparison is not between my net and perfection. It is between a net of nine imperfect strands and a chain of one imperfect link. You have told me the strands are weak. You have not told me, because you cannot, that the single link fails less often. Its failure is the one thing we agreed on before we began.

THE BALLOT BOX YOU LAUGH AT

Your account of voting in Nigeria moved me, and I will not pretend the instrument is undamaged. But three things follow, and none of them is the conclusion you draw. First, every broken election you describe was conducted under the centralised police monopoly. The thugs who menaced your polling station, the intimidation that kept honest citizens at home, the insecurity that turned civic duty into personal risk: all of it happened on the watch of the single federal force, because for fifty years there has been no other watch to be on. Your indictment of our elections is an indictment of policing under centralisation. You have entered evidence, Professor, but on my side of the ledger. Second, the damaged instrument has nonetheless drawn blood at the highest level our politics has. In 2015, a sitting President of Nigeria was defeated at the ballot box, telephoned his opponent, and conceded before the final results were announced, saying that nobody’s ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian. It was the first time in our history, and a weapon that has felled a sitting president is not a toy. Ruling parties have lost States before and since. The ballot in Nigeria is a wounded soldier, not a dead one. Third, and most important, I never offered the voter as the sole protector. The ballot box was the outermost ring of nine. Strike it from the count entirely if you wish: the net still holds eight strands against the status quo’s one. And notice a final irony. Today the vote cannot discipline security failure at all, however free the election, because no elected official in Nigeria commands a police force. The reform gives the wounded instrument something to aim at. Instruments heal with use.

THE OSUN CASE: THE OPPONENTS’ NIGHTMARE, ALREADY HERE, WITHOUT STATE POLICE

Professor, as we exchange these letters, a living experiment is running in Osun State, and it belongs in this debate because it is the opponents’ exact nightmare, performed under the very system they defend. A governorship election is fixed for 15 August 2026. The police in Osun remain, of course, fully centralised: one Commissioner, posted from Abuja, answerable through one Inspector General to the Federal Government. And what do we see? The elected Governor of the State has publicly told the Inspector General’s own delegation that the Commissioner of Police has shown a lack of willingness and capacity to act fairly and without partisan bias, has demanded his redeployment, and has complained of three political murders in a matter of weeks without a single arrest.

Residents have marched to demand the Commissioner’s transfer. Civil society groups have petitioned for it. The Governor’s campaign has gone further still and alleged open collusion between the police command and the campaign of the party that holds the Federal Government. That party, for its part, praises the Commissioner’s professionalism and urges the Inspector General to refuse the transfer. I take no side on who is telling the truth, and my argument does not need me to. Look instead at the structure. Everything the opponents of State Police warn about, a police command allegedly serving one party against its rivals on the eve of an election, is being alleged today, under total centralisation, with not a single State force in existence. Centralisation, offered for fifty years as the cure for partisan policing, has not cured the disease. It has merely fixed its direction, so that the alleged abuse now flows from whoever holds Abuja. And observe the remedy available to the aggrieved. The elected Governor, the man our arrangements mock with the title of Chief Security Officer, can do precisely nothing but write letters and hold press conferences, petitioning for the transfer of one officer to the very centre alleged to benefit from that officer’s conduct. The voters of Osun can do nothing at all, for the Commissioner answers to nobody they elect. Both camps now besiege the Inspector General’s office, because the only lever over Osun’s policing sits in Abuja, in the hands of an appointee of a President whose party is a contestant in the very election at stake. Even if every allegation on every side is false, a structure that concentrates that discretion in a contestant’s appointee is indefensible, and its indefensibility does not depend on the truth of any allegation. The mere plausibility is the indictment. Under the reform, the ordinary policing of Osun would answer to the government and Assembly that the people of Osun elected, under national standards binding on all. And if a governor then abused his own force, the abuse would meet remedies defined in law: the prohibition on political deployment, the certification that can be withdrawn, the federal trigger, ratification by the National Assembly, and the courts. Today, the only remedy on offer is a lobbying contest over one posting. Defined and justiciable remedies, against discretionary postings by an interested centre: that, Professor, is the whole choice, and Osun has placed it on our television screens three weeks before the poll.

VARIANCE, NOT VIRTUE

You ask what evidence suggests the State political class is more competent than the federal one. None, and my argument never needed it. The case for 36 forces does not presuppose 36 competent governments. It requires only that some States are better governed than others, which no observer of Nigeria, yourself included, would deny. Under one national system, every Nigerian is chained to the average; the best State cannot rise above the centre’s mediocrity, and the worst hides inside it. Under 36, the best are freed to show what is possible and the worst are shamed by the comparison next door. You say our history shows States do not copy each other’s successes, and you cite education and health. But look at the one sector we are actually discussing. When the South West States created Amotekun, other States and regions followed with their own security outfits within a season. Security innovation is the one policy Nigerians have demonstrably copied across State lines, and the reason is the one you taught me: incentives. Education reform pays off in a generation; security pays off before the next election. Where the reward is immediate and visible, our politicians imitate with remarkable speed. As for your local government reduction: it is less absurd than you think, since the United States runs municipal police and elected county sheriffs among its 18,000 agencies without dissolving. But the bill’s own answer is simpler. The line is drawn by capacity, not theory: a force exists where a government can sustain one under national standards and certification, and a State not yet ready contracts the Federal Police on the Canadian model. Nobody is licensing a force for every village. We are licensing forces for the federating units the Constitution itself names, as and when they qualify.

LOCAL TYRANNY IS STILL TYRANNY

Here you are at your most humane, and I concede the moral point without reservation. For the citizen under the boot, it is no comfort that the boot is local. But complete the comparison, Professor, because the choice was never between tyranny and its absence. It is between tyranny with a rescuer and tyranny without one. Under the reform, the citizen of a rogue State has an outside to appeal to: a federal trigger built for exactly that abuse, a certification that can be withdrawn, courts beyond the governor’s reach, 35 neighbouring States, a national press, and a federal government whose political interest lies in humbling a rival governor. Under the present system, if the single force turns oppressor, there is no outside. No second force, no external certifier, no rescuer on the map. Localisation does not excuse tyranny. It creates the exit, and it creates the cavalry. Monopoly abolishes both. And remember the commonest victim of the present arrangement: the community sacked at dawn with no police of any kind within a hundred kilometres. She is not protected by the status quo. She is abandoned by it, and abandonment is also tyranny, of the quietest and most lethal kind.

STRUCTURES AND MEN

Now to your deepest point, that institutions are only as strong as the people who operate them, and that character, not design, is the decisive variable. Half of that is true, and the half you omit decides the question. Structure and character are not rivals; structure is how character is farmed. Our political culture is not weather that must clear before we may build. It is, in large part, the harvest of what we built before: fifty years of unaccountable, centralised, consequence free power have taught our politicians exactly the lessons they have learned. Traffic lights do not wait for drivers to become careful; they manufacture careful drivers. Accountability teaches responsibility, and impunity teaches its opposite. You ask why State politicians should be better men than federal ones. They need not be better men. They need only be nearer to consequence, and moving power nearer to consequence is the entire design of this reform. If we must wait for a virtuous political class before we build restraining structures, we wait forever, because virtue without structure has no ladder to climb. And forgive me for observing that your philosophy devours your own prescriptions before it ever reaches mine: better recruitment, professional command, judicial oversight, all the reforms you favour are also structures, operated by the same imperfect Nigerians. If design cannot restrain our people, your remedies fall with my bill. If design can, then the argument between us is over which design, and that argument I have made across four letters, clause by clause.

WHERE WE TRULY STAND

So let me gather the threads. You began with regional police; you have withdrawn it, with a candour that honours you. You pressed the history; it stands as a warning absorbed into the design, not a sentence upon the nation. You raised the electoral commissions; the bill is built as their structural opposite, and by your own logic of incentives, policing is the better bet. You offered alternatives; each faces your own implementation objection with equal force, and each fits inside the reform rather than in place of it. What remains is the last redoubt: that Nigerians cannot be restrained by design at all. If that were true, it would condemn far more than this bill. It would condemn the Constitution, the courts, the ballot, democracy itself, and every reform you have ever favoured. It is not caution. It is surrender, wearing caution’s gown. And the record says it is false: Madison’s scoundrels have been processed by structure for two centuries; a sitting Nigerian president picked up the telephone in 2015 because the structure left him no better option; Amotekun leapt State lines in months because the incentives were aligned; and this very exchange, two citizens reasoning in public and moving each other’s positions, is the political culture you say we lack, functioning before your eyes. Skepticism has done its work, Professor, and its work is done. Every seat at the table was given to doubt, and every seat has been answered.

ON YOUR FAR TOO GENEROUS SUGGESTION

As for the Senate, the House, or a Government House: you made me laugh, and you moved me, in one paragraph. But the Bar took my vows long ago, and I hold that every profession guards the republic from its own post. You have guarded it from the bedside for sixty years; I guard it from the courtroom and, lately, from this group. The advocate’s chamber is also a constituency, and the pen sometimes outlasts the seat. What I will accept from you is an appointment of my own devising: I hereby name you, without salary and without term limit, Auditor General of my optimism. Hold our feet to the fire through every clause, every standard, every protocol of this reform, exactly as you have done here. Because you were right from the beginning about the one thing that matters most: eighty percent of any idea is implementation. The remaining twenty percent is the courage to begin. The patient is on the table, Professor. We operate, and then we keep watch together, and the watch is stronger now that it has a second doctor.
Warm regards,
Eyimofe Atake, SAN, PhD (Cantab)

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Somewhere in present-day Osun State, about a hundred years ago, an oba ordered a manhunt for a troublesome strongman in his domain. The man, Kátákatà, was captured one night, killed and beheaded. His severed head was placed in a pot and brought to the oba. The palace erupted in celebration. At last, the nuisance was gone forever.

But at the height of the rejoicing, another celebration broke out outside the palace. It was Kátákatà himself, arriving with his drummers.

A stunned oba confronted him.

“But they brought your head to me this morning. It is in that room.”

“Kabiyesi,” Kátákatà replied, “that was not my head. It was your heir’s head they brought.”

How? The oba wondered as his visitor danced away.

Before noon that same day, Àrèmo (the heir to the throne) was brought home dead.

We heard the story many years ago from our fathers who insisted it was true. They pointed to a living old man who was Kátákatà’s ‘apprentice.’

There is another story, far more contemporary, that carries much the same moral.

Journalists often stumble on stories richer than the one they set out to find. The latest controversy in town is that the man we called maximum ruler, General Sani Abacha, died on top of a lady who was his girlfriend’s sister.

I read that Abacha report and felt like I heard or worked on something like that 28 years ago.

So, I went to the library of the Nigerian Tribune in search of the story.

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A newspaper archive is a strange place. It lies in ambush and catches you, no matter how alert you are. You go looking for one story, and another (often the better one), walks out to meet you. I was looking for General Abacha’s prized paramours when I found something else: an editor’s prison report more compelling than the tale of a dictator dying in the arms of his girlfriend’s sister.

Mr Femi Adeoti was the editor of the Sunday Tribune during the years of General Sani Abacha’s war against his enemies – the media and the political class. The editor published a story in May 1998 against Abacha and was arrested and detained at Agodi Prisons, Ibadan. There, he lived among, and interacted with, some of the most hardened inmates. He remained in custody until Abacha expired in June 1998.

Because every good editor is first a reporter, Adeoti spent his days in prison harvesting stories. When he regained his freedom, he told story after story about the inmates and the circumstances that brought them to jail.

The man published the first of his prison reports in the Sunday Tribune sometime in July 1998. I stumbled upon it last Friday while digging through the archives for our old reports on what killed Abacha. Then I felt an irresistible urge to reproduce it here because I see it as a metaphor for what I feel about Nigeria and the leaders it is blessed with.

My teacher taught me long ago never to abandon one story for another. I had planned to continue my celebration of Abuja and its budget of bandits but as the Yoruba say, bí ọmọde bá rí oyin, á sọ àkàrà nù—when a child finds honey, he throws away his bean cake. I am resisting that temptation. Every story deserves to be told. Tell both, or at your creative best, use one as a metaphor for the other. Metaphor. Yes. I do that here.

The prison story:

“In Agodi Prisons, Ibadan, I interacted with different characters. The moment they knew me as a journalist, I gained instant recognition and popularity. I kept receiving notes from the inmates—convicts and Awaiting Trial Males (ATMs). The characters were queer. Their stories were pathetic and interesting. The first person whose confession we will take today is a corpse robber.”

The voice above is the editor’s. What follows is the prisoner himself telling his story, raw:

“My name is…, but the inmates call me Orieku. I was born in 1972. I abandoned school in Primary Two. I just felt like leaving, so I left. I also left home in 1981. Since then, I have slept outside, mostly at Bode and under the Molete Bridge (Ibadan).

“One night under the bridge at Molete, an elderly man walked up to me and woke me. He was surprised to find me under the bridge at that odd hour, sleeping alone.

“He asked me to follow him to his house. He lived at Bode near Molete. It was at his house that I discovered he was a Babalawo (herbalist). I wanted to run away, but he calmed me down.

“I told him how I ran away from home and that my father died in 1973. My mother abandoned me and married another man. I did not want to follow her to her new matrimonial home. The Babalawo said he had a good job for me if I would do it.

“He told me he (Babalawo) specialized in using human parts for rituals and that he would like to recruit me to look for these human parts. He said I would look for where a dead had just been buried and go there in the night to exhume the body. That’s how I came into the business and became a corpse robber.

“This Babalawo was the only customer I knew. He would tell me what part(s) of the body he needed. And I would go for it.

“I had a very reliable informant. He knew almost every village around Ibadan. He would go into these villages to locate where they had just buried somebody. He would come back and give me a ‘perfect’ description of the place. Unfortunately, this informant is dead now. I would go to the location in the dead of the night to perform the ‘operation’. I would dig the grave, bring the corpse out and cut whatever part I needed. I would then re-bury it.

“I never cared to find out whatever happened after I might have exhumed the corpse. That was not my headache. Once I got what I wanted, my business with the corpse was over.

“I did not spare even my relations in my business. I went for their body parts and made good use of them.

“Christian corpses are very difficult to exhume. They are buried more deeply, unlike Muslim corpses.

“I was in business as a corpse robber between 1981 and 1986. Prices for these human parts were very cheap. Maybe that Babalawo was cheating me. He would pay N500 for head, N100 for fingers, N1000 for the two eyes and N500 for tongue.

“Throughout my career as a corpse robber, I sold only to that Babalawo. He would not allow me to sell to any other customer. He would always threaten me with charms.

“Then I left the business. Why I left was a long story.

“You see, my customer, that Babalawo, told me to look for the smallest toe on the left leg. And that it must be fresh. He said I must produce it within two days.

“It was a difficult task. I got in touch with my informant. He set at work. He told me a man was buried that morning in central Ibadan. I will not tell you the exact area, because people will easily remember the man.

“After giving the description, I prepared for my mission. I gathered my tools – digger (pick axe), cutlass and shovel. I set at work. I located the grave with ease because it is a popular area in Ibadan.

“They buried the man in an uncompleted building. So, nobody stayed near the building. I started work at about 1.30am, the grave was not deep, so the job was easy.

“Immediately I took the corpse out, I knew there would be trouble. The man was having beads on his neck, his two hands and legs. He was a Babalawo! I just summoned up courage and cut the toe. I put it back roughly and left the place hurriedly. I was afraid.

“I went straight to my customer and gave him the toe. The Babalawo was very happy and told me to come back later in the morning for my money.

“Because it was an emergency case, he said he would pay me N1000 for the toe. I was happy and went home to sleep.

“But when I woke up in the morning, the unusual happened. My wife suddenly woke me up and shouted: ‘What is wrong with your leg? Why the blood?’ I checked my leg and discovered that the smallest toe on my left leg was gone! The very toe that I cut from the dead Babalawo that night. I was terribly afraid and could not sleep again.

“I jumped up and went straight to my customer’s house. Immediately he sighted me, he began to rain abuses on me. He was angry and cursing me. ‘Why should you cut your own toe for me because of N1000?’ he shouted at me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me it is your own toe? I wanted the toe of a dead person, not a living human being.’ I tried to explain, but he would not listen. He just threw the toe at me and refused to pay me any money. He said the toe did not work because it was the toe of a living person. I took the toe, wrapped it in a paper and hid it from my wife. It became rotten and was carried away by a rat. The mark on my leg is this. You can see it (shows the editor his toeless leg).

“Why people call me Orieku (rat head)? Well, not much. They had wanted to call me Orioku (ghost head), but that would be too frightening. So they chose Ori Eku.”

Orieku said he left the business in 1986 and joined a popular theatre group in Ibadan as an apprentice. Then he diversified into petty stealing and burglary. It was that new vocation that took him to Agodi Prisons where he met the editor.

I read his story several times and saw the leadership of this country in Orieku. Nigeria’s political class is that corpse robber. The man thought he was cutting someone else’s toe. He discovered he had amputated his own.

It is common in Yorubaland to hear “Aṣeni ń ṣe ara rẹ̀.” The man who thinks he is cutting another person’s flesh may well be slicing into his own body. Those who think they are harming others often end up destroying themselves. The Kátákatà story, the corpse robber’s missing toe, and today’s politicians are all versions of the same tragedy: public wrongdoing is ultimately self-harm.

In 2022, we got the famous instruction: “Grab it, snatch it, and run with it.” If that season sounded brazen, the politics of 2026, as the country marches towards 2027, is even shriller. The scramble has become more desperate, the appetite less restrained. Little seems to matter anymore; not truth, not decency, not even who dies – so long as the grave robbers return with enough body parts to satisfy their dibias.

They are all stuck in the capital. Politicians who created bandit and terror groups in order to win elections; they can no longer go home to enjoy their loot. Those who dared return have found their own lives looted by the monsters they created. In destroying this republic and its democracy, they have turned their swords against the very sheath that once protected them. Every budget they poison with phantom projects and agencies, every institution they weaken with incompetent heads, every election they steal, every school abduction and terror act they condone with appeasement appears to injure someone else. But, one morning very soon they will wake up to discover that the missing toe is theirs.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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Africa will gain immensely from the recent acquittal of a former Sierra Leonean leader, writes MONDAY PHILIPS EKPE

Year 2023 did not end exactly the way former Sierra Leonean President, His Excellency, Dr Ernest Bai Koroma, had anticipated. Out of the blues, allegation of a coup plot to violently unseat the government of President Julius Maada Bio was weaved around his neck. The investigations that followed didn’t unravel any concrete evidence against him. Yet, in the manner of what obtains in countries without strong, unbiased justice systems, it was clear that the legal processes could go wrong rapidly. That apprehension went outside the borders of the idyllic but beleaguered West African country. However, a timely relief, a “deus ex machina”, came his way in the form of a bail to seek medical attention in Nigeria.

And last week, well over two years after that intervention, Dr Koroma received another good news. The Office of Sierra Leone’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice announced the termination of all the criminal charges raised against him. It derived its powers from the country’s Section 45 of the Criminal Procedure Act, 2024. The Information Minister of Sierra Leone, Chernor Bah, was reported to have told the BBC that the sudden u-turn occurred on health grounds.

Whatever the rationale, the significance of the moment mustn’t be confined to narrow motivations and interpretations. An action capable of redefining and realigning an entire nation is now in motion. Sierra Leone is due for general elections in two years’ time. So, bringing the symbolic head of the main opposition party, All People’s Congress (APC), back to the country would indeed be a smart move by the government in power if it’s keen on demonstrating a commitment to cohesion, equity and electoral decency.

Yes, many analysts and observers continue to view the initial accusations against Koroma as phoney. But then, mistreatments and injuries inflicted for whatever reasons do happen and they won’t stop now. The latest government’s gesture, at least on the surface, shows that President Bio is magnanimous. Posterity may even give him flowers. Who knows? Koroma himself, in a statement on the discontinuation of his trial, has expressed his gratitude first to God, then to President Bio, and thereafter to other critical actors like the leadership of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria and Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.

Koroma’s reaction reveals his acclaimed essence: a man at peace with himself, whose vision is propelled by an assurance of a brighter tomorrow. His words: “My faith has remained anchored in His (God) providence and in the enduring conviction that peace, justice and reconciliation must always triumph over adversity… Our country has overcome far greater trials because we have always found the wisdom to place nation above self, to build bridges of understanding, strengthen the bonds that unite us and work together in pursuit of a stable and prosperous Sierra Leone for present and future generations…. I remain committed to every sincere effort that advances peace, strengthens our democracy and promotes the welfare of our people.”

That characteristic, manicured response isn’t surprising to persons who have followed the public life of the man who presided over Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2018. His personality was a huge factor in nurturing the country back to normalcy after its internecine 11-year Civil War that was officially proclaimed ended in January 2002 by the late President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. In March 2014, the then Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, described Sierra Leone as one of the world’s sterling examples of post-war recovery and peaceful coexistence. To prove that the accolade wasn’t a fluke, at the end of Koroma’s tenure, the Global Peace Index declared the country as West Africa’s most tranquil nation and Africa’s third. 

How many people remember that Sierra Leone was the continent’s fastest-growing economy in 2014? That feat succumbed to the morbid weight of Ebola pandemic which arrived at its shores in May that year, unfortunately. By the time it was pronounced over by the government in March 2016, the mass death harbinger had done its worst. Not to also mention the unprecedented and devastating mudslides that hit the capital in August 2017. The responsibility of steering the ship of state at those excruciating periods statutorily rested on Koroma. That he shouldered it creditably and went on to conduct the elections which removed his own party from office shouldn’t ever be dismissed as inconsequential. That’s the signature of a true statesman.  

Watching him in the dock in Freetown in January 2024 was, therefore, painful for many. In my column first published in THISDAY on January 18, 2024 titled, “The Travails of Ernest Bai Koroma”, I voiced out the concerns of many others. It reads in part: “It’s quite ironic that Koroma may indeed have become a victim of his own magnanimity and sense of fairness. Much of Africa is still not a continent where standard democratic practices thrive, where the fidelity of the ballot is a given. Incumbent presidents do manipulate elections and their outcomes, many times brazenly, to their advantage…. Koroma’s current tribulation could appear to be a fight for his own image and future but the ramifications extend beyond that. He has earned a respectable spot as a national, regional and continental icon, a status his rivals may have to live with for a long time….

“Time is running out. So much noise has been made about the effort of ECOWAS to get Koroma relocated to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, away from the dangerous moves going on in the country fondly called ‘Salone’ by its citizens. Call it safe-landing. Call it rescue from sharks and leviathans. Or a sincere step towards avoiding a very present possibility of Sierra Leone’s descent into anarchy. The regional body shouldn’t add this case to the embarrassing illustrations of its waning stature. Bio must be helped to act responsibly and presidentially.”

Thankfully, happy ending is in sight. Bio has listened to the voice of reason – belatedly or otherwise – and acted accordingly. Happily, Koroma’s story is progressing nicely once again. He’ll continue with his role as African Union (AU) and ECOWAS’ distinguished representative to various nations for electoral and other purposes, a position obtained through his excellent democratic pedigree. Now, as Sierra Leone’s only living ex-president who has demonstrated unimpeachable devotion to his country’s lasting growth, Koroma should be positioned to contribute more even on the global stage. For this respected moral compass and a member of Africa’s limited club of genuine elite democrats, the best could still be ahead.

Ekpe, PhD, is a member of THISDAY Editorial Board

X: @monday_ekpe2

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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