By Sylvester Udemezue

1. BACKGROUND:

1. Rivers State House of Assembly has 32 members. The Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Rt Hon Martins Amaewhule, on 11 December 2023, had reportedly led 26 other lawmakers of the House, on the floor of the House, to openly and VOLUNTARILY defect to a different political party, citing “division” in their former political party. The remaining 4 or 5 Lawmakers (those who did not defect) had on 13 December 2023 elected one of their own (Edison Ehie) the new Speaker who then declared vacant the seats of the defected 27 members, and wrote a letter requesting the electoral umpire, INEC to conduct by-elections to fill the vacancies created by the defection of the 27 members. A lawmaker (Edison Ehie) later resigned from the House and was made the Chief of Staff to the Governor. Since then, and claiming that the seats of the defected 27 had become vacant in line with the provisions of Section 109 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, and that the 27 affected lawmakers were no longer members of the Rivers State House of Assembly, the remaining 4 have been conducting the affairs of the House, including confirming Commissioners and having the 2024 budget presented to them by the Governor. A plethora of litigation has however arisen, with some lawsuits currently pending at the Rivers State High Court, some at the Federal High Court, some at the Court of Appeal, and some at the Supreme Court, Nigeria’s apex court.

• RE: I-AM-AN-AUTHENTIC-LEGAL LUMINARY OPINION BY A GREAT LEARNED SILK AND MATTERS ARISING

• At a luncheon said to be organised “in honour of the 10th Legislative Assembly of Rivers State” in Port Harcourt, on 19 October 2024, by His Excellency Nyesom Wike, Life Bencher, former Governor of Rivers State, and current Minister of the FCT, Abuja, Chief OCJ Okocha, OFR, SAN, JP, DSSRS, ex President of NBA, ex Attorney-General of Rivers State, ex Chairman of the Body of Benchers, ex Chairman of the Council of Legal Education, etc, and a notable legal giant who has put in over 46 years into active law practice in Nigeria, had while addressing recent comments credited to an unnamed individual ( I think it was the current Governor of Rivers State, His Excellency Sim Fubara) who the respected Learned silk Okocha said had referred to the learned silk and other lawyers as “so-called legal luminaries”,  declared as follows:

“I am an authentic legal luminary…. Anybody who read the judgment of the Court of Appeal a few days ago… one telling statement: it is a joke take too far for three persons to say they are the legislature of Rivers State; a joke taken too far. Look at the legislators of Rivers State, led by Hon Martins Amaewhule…. All of us, the good people of Rivers State, patriotic citizens of Rivers State, stand in solidarity with you, the authentic legislature of Rivers State…. Precisely, the wheels of justice in Nigeria turn too slowly, rather too slowly for our comfort, but my word to you is to persevere. Judgement Day is coming, Judgement Day,  is coming, and we will know on whose side the law is…. I assure you, my brother Martin that God is on your side…. I also assure you that the law is on your side. Let us allow the Supreme Court to decide the matter. Thank you all, and may we all continue to pray for our authentic legislature. God bless all of you”  (See: “OCJ Okocha Replies Fubara – Asks Fubara To Stop Deceiving Himself; Says Wike and Amaewhule are Ahead”<https://youtu.be/nNGrqHYZuQ4?si=NRk2thubMxzbE7hG> Accessed 20 October 2024

• Without commenting on the ongoing political rift between or among some political players and juggernauts in Rivers State (that is not my business here), I have the following humble observations on some legal questions arsing from the comment by learned silk, Chief OCJ Okocha, regarding the legal imbroglio in the Rivers State House of Assembly. 

1. Respected learned silk OCJ Okocha is without any doubt a juggernaut in the legal profession, one who has accomplished a great deal of a lot, both as a lawyer and as an individual. No doubt! I have a lot of respect for my great oga. I hail you, Great Learned Silk and Life Bencher. Any time, any day, you’re an iroko tree in the legal profession in Nigeria. Having said that, my oga, learned silk would graciously permit me to make the following further submissions, with the greatest respect.

• With due respect, it is very curious that great learned silk in his eloquent legal opinion/speech, rendered at a social/political luncheon, failed to address nagging legal questions surrounding the reported defection of Hon Martins Amaewhule and 26 other members of the Rivers State House of assembly on 11 December 2023. While referring to Rt Hon Martins Amaewhule as “the authentic Speaker” and his camp as representing “the authentic House of Assembly,” and that the remaining 3 or 4 members of the House (those who did not defect) could not under any circumstances, constitute the Rivers State House of Assembly, the learned silk unfortunately failed to say even a word on the defection by members of the group the learned silk referred to as the “authentic House” and the legal implications of their defection on their continued membership of the Rivers State House of Assembly. What is the legal effect of their defection on their seats as members of the Rivers State House of Assembly? Even if the learned silk believed that the remaining (minority) members of the House were incapacitated to continue with the business of the House, the INESCAPABLE QUESTION the learned silk and legal juggernaut OCJ OKOCHA should have started with in his speech (since he decided, although it is his right, to offer his legal opinion at a social function) was whether Rt Hon Martins Amaewhule and his co-defectors remained members of the House after their defection on 11 December 2023.

• With due respect, addressing the question of whether the remaining 3 or 4 members can constitute the House of Assembly to carry on with businesses of the House without starting from the issue of defection of the 27 members and the legal implications of the said defection, is in my opinion, like one addressing question number 3 without addressing questions 1 and 2 or climbing to step 3 of a ladder without passing through steps 1 and 2 of the ladder. A case of placing the cart before the horse.

• Permit me to respectfully submit that any declaration of the Court of Appeal as made in the latest/referenced case, to the effect that the remaining (minority) members of the Rivers State House of Assembly cannot continue with the businesses of the House of Assembly in the absence of the majority, cannot and does not constitute the law on the current subject in view of the subsisting leading judgment of the  Supreme Court of Nigeria in DAPIANLONG V DARIYE (2007), which had said/held that minority members can continue with certain businesses of the House of Assembly even after/where the seats of the majority members have AUTOMATICALLY become vacant following defection. 14 members of the 24-member Plateau State House of Assembly had voluntarily defected from PDP to another political party, leaving 8 or 6 members. In his lead or leading judgment in the case of DAPIANLONG V. DARIYE (2007) 3 PLR/1983/22(SC); [2007]NGSC 181 (27 APRIL 2007); (2007) LPELR-928(SC) @61, which arose from the dispute that followed, His Lordship, Hon Justice Walter Onnoghen, JSC, had this to say:

“In the instant case, it is not disputed that 8 out of 10 members in a House of 24 membership initiated and carried out the impeachment of the 1st respondent. There is no doubt that there existed in the Plateau State House of Assembly 14 vacant seats as a result of cross-carpeting. It is my view that until the vacancies created by the carpet crossing members are filled by the process of by-election, the Plateau State House of Assembly can only transact such legislative duties that require the participation of less than 2/3 majority of ALL the members of that House, which duties definitely excludes impeachment proceedings”.

• In my respectful opinion, it appears the legal mplication of the judgment of the Supreme Court judgment in DAPIANLONG V DARIYE is that the vacancy in the seats of majority members does not stop the remaining minority members of the House from carrying on with the ORDINARY businesses of the legislative House. Why then, did respected learned silk OCJ OKOCHA refrain from saying anything about this aspect, since he chose a social function/banquet/party to address the legal questions surrounding the legal logjams in the Rivers State House of Assembly? With due respect, i repeat that this is curious. Although i recognize that it’s the right of the learned silk to ignore whatever he chooses to ignore, yet, I humbly submit that IGNORING THE REALITY DOESN’T ERASE THE EXISTENCE OF THE REALITY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.  

• Meanwhile, one may even ask further questions: What is the legal status of any pronouncement of the Court of Appeal which runs against this clear, yet to the overruled, lead-judgment pronouncement of Hon Justice Walter Nkanu Onnoghen in Dapianlong v Dariye? In declaring (as presented by the learned silk) that “it is a joke take too far for three persons to say they are the legislature of Rivers State”, did the Court of Appeal have before it, to consider and answer, the legal questions arising from the ABSOLUTELY VOLUNTARY defection of 27 members of the Rivers State House of assembly on 11 December 2023? Does nature abhor vacuum? What is the meaning of perpetual succession attributed to corporate institutions? How does the concept of Corporate Legal Personality come in? Should the Rivers State House of assembly close shop, and all businesses of Rivers State governance suspended, only because some members of its House of Assembly woke up one day and VOLUNTARILY chose to quit vide defection? Is the House of Assembly of Rivers State a personal estate of the 27 defected legislators with the consequence that their VOLUNTARY defection leading to loss of their seats in line with Section 109 of the Constitution, brings the House to a total comatose nature, even where some members are still remaining undefected?  Do we want constitutional democracy in Nigeria to survive and grow or do we want it to end in the hands of politicians? I shall read the affected Court of Appeal judgment, to offer my humble suggestions on its status in the face of Dapianlong v Dariye.

• The point I try to make, respectfully, is that, without first addressing legal questions surrounding the reported defection of 27 members on 11 December 2023, no one can claim to validly, successfully and exhaustively address/answer any legal questions as to whether the remaining 3, 4 or 5 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly can continue to carry on with businesses of the House of Assembly of Rivers State. If anyone wants to honestly, objectively and exhaustively address the legal imbroglio in the Rivers State House of Assembly, the starting point is the defection of 11 December 2023 and its necessary legal, practical implications. Else, the person would run into troubled water of logical errors, factual inaccuracies and legal blunders, because whether or not the remaining MINORITY members can continue with the business of the House is dependent of the question whether the seats of the VOLUNTARILY defected MAJORITY members had become vacant. This, it’s submitted with the greatest respect, appears to be the fate of the one-sided legal opinion offered by great learned silk OCJ OKOCHA. 

• From available yet-uncontroverted evidence, the fact of defection of Hon Martins Amaewhule and 26 others from their political party to another, which happened on the floor of the Rivers State House of Assembly on 11 December 2023, is not in doubt.  Hence, it’s curious that some lawyers either deliberately or inadvertently avoid mentioning that aspect and its legal implications, but instead would concentrate on whether the remaining 3, 4 or 5 members can continue with businesses of the House. Particularly, with due respect, I am surprised that great learned silk, legal icon and iroko, the respected Chief OCJ Okocha omitted to address the many questions arising from the defection of the majority members of the Rivers State House of Assembly on 11 December 2023, but went straight to address and make conclusive statements on the status of the remaining 3, 4 or 5 members, and declaring that “3 members cannot constitute the House of Assembly of Rivers State”, “it is a joke taken too far”. Learned silk even went further to declare the 27 defected members as the “Authentic Legislature” without advising the watching public on how he came to that conclusion in view of incontrovertible evidence showing that the same 27 members had earlier on 11 December 2023, voluntarily defected, thereby bringing themselves within the purview of Section 109 of the Constitution.

1. Respectfully,  by ignoring to address questions surrounding the defection, one wonders whether the respected learned silk was now treating the defection as if it never happened. If he believed it did happen, one had expected that he would have been willing to tell us, his followers who had been waiting to hear from him about this, what he thought about the position of the law in Nigeria regarding defection by a legislator under such circumstances of no factionalisation existing or merger arrangements ongoing, at the time of the defection, in the political party on whose platform the affected legislator was elected to the House.  The great learned silk OCJ Okocha has thus missed a golden opportunity to lecture us on the position of the law. A golden opportunity has also been denied us of hearing from a legal giant, an all-inclusive legal opinion on all legal questions arising. A great deal of a lot is missing in the learned silk’s speech, unfortunately, with due respect!

• Finally, at the conclusion of his said luncheon legal speech, the learned silk declared thus: “Let us allow the Supreme Court to decide the matter.” Could this be why the learned silk had refrained from addressing legal questions arising from the said 11 December 2023 defections — perhaps the learned silk did not want to comment on questions currently pending before the courts for determination? Obviously no, because if that was the learned silk’s reasons, then the learned silk should for the same reason, have avoided reaching the following conclusions/statements; all they are among the many questions currently pending before courts of law for determination:

• “it is a joke take too far for three persons to say they are the legislature of Rivers State; a joke taken too far”;
• “Look at the legislators of Rivers State, led by Hon Martins Amaewhule”;
•  “Judgement Day  is coming, and we will know on whose side the law is…. I assure you, my brother Martin that… the law is on your side”.

• All these are issues currently pending before the courts. I respectfully believe that the learned silk is entitled to offer his legal opinion on anything, at any time. But since he chose to comment on one side, he should have endeavoured to comment  on all sides. With due respect, it is curious that while refraining from touching any legal questions arising from the defections, the learned silk had concentrated on making conclusions on legal questions surrounding whether the remaining members could constitute the House. A great opportunity missed, unfortunately, with due respect!

• Well, we will not give up in our search for a determination of, and in our discussions about, the law as it’s. This discussion must continue in the interest of law, the Constitution, Constitutional Democracy, the Legal Profession and Nigeria. To this end, from my own tiny end, please stay tuned for Part 2 titled, “Part 2: One Cannot Validly Discuss Whether 4 Or 5 Members Of The Rivers State House Of Assembly Can Continue With Businesses Of The House Unless And Until One Has Ascertained The Legal Implications Of The Reported Defection Of 27 Members Of The House On 11 December 2023 (A continuation of the ‘I’m an Authentic Legal Luminary’ Discussion Series)”.

• POST SCRIPTUM:  ADVICE TO LAWYERS GENERALLY

Legal Practitioners, irrespective of their political, cultural, ethnic, religious or social leanings or predilections, have a primary responsibility as lawyers to uphold the truth at all times, and to promote the rule of law irrespective of whose ox is gored. This duty is overriding and supplants the lawyer`s duty to his/her clients and/or any desire on his/her part to protect or advance any provincial interests he/she represents. It could therefore be concluded that promoting the truth, justice, and rule of law, is the most obvious and fundamental role for lawyers in a constitutional democracy, although this duty is not necessarily such a simple one. Nevertheless, let it be known that if Nigerian lawyers for whatever reasons fail in these core duties, our hope of building, sustaining and advancing true constitutional democracy and democractic constitutionalism would become a mirage. (See: “The Rivers State Assembly imbroglio and duty of lawyers to defend rule of law and constitutional democracy in Nigeria” By Sylvester Udemezue; published on 07 July 2024 in LawAndSocietyMagazine; TheNigeriaLawyer; TheNigerianVoice, BarristerNG, etc)

Respectfully, 

Sylvester Udemezue (Udems), 

Proctor, 

The Reality Ministry of Justice (TRM)

08109024556

[email protected]

(20/October/2024)

By Suyi Ayodele

In this geopolitical zone, we must deliver 100 per cent in favour of APC. Therefore, Ondo State, you must be at the forefront, the two other states – Oyo and Osun – we will capture them, but I will not reveal our secret. We are strategising. Everything must be 100 per cent behind President Bola Tinubu.”

The above vow was made by Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, APC National Chairman, at a meeting with APC stakeholders ahead of the November 16, 2024, governorship election in Ondo State. He did not stop at vowing to capture Ondo State. He listed two other states: Osun and Oyo, as part of the states he would “capture” for supper.

When that is done, the entire South-West geo-political zone will be 100 percent APC-controlled region.

I am bothered about Ganduje’s choice of words. His use of the word ‘capture’ reminds me of how Samuel Ajayi Crowther was captured by the Fulani and sold into slavery some 200 years ago at his village, Osoogun, near Oyo town. History says “Ajayi was around 12 years old when he and his family were captured, along with his entire village, by Fulani slave raiders in March 1821 and sold to Portuguese slave traders.” Ganduje is Fulani.

I checked the semantic implications of the verb, “capture”, using the Semantic Principle of Contextualisation. Ninety-nine percent of the results I got have negative connotations. For instance, one meaning describes it as “take captive”, another synonym gives it out as “subjugate”; and one informal usage says it means “collar’.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines it as: “act of seizing or taking as a prisoner or prize; gaining possession of by force…” (Pg 345). Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (Fourth Edition), adopting the Stylistics strategy of Foregrounding says “capture” means: “to take someone as a prisoner, or to take something into your possession, especially by force” (Pg 218). Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus says it means: “to take prisoner…” (Pg 173). And Webster’s Universal Dictionary & Thesaurus defines it as: “to take prisoner; (fortress, etc) to seize; to catch…” (Pg 87).

The heat from the political furnace of the APC will also roast many of the PDP-controlled states in the South-East, South-South, North-Central, North-East and North-West. Some of these states will willingly surrender to the ruling party, while the others will be decimated. Nothing can change that permutation as long as Bola Ahmed Tinubu remains the President of Nigeria, and he seeks to be president again for the second term.

When a woman speaks, pay attention to what she says with her eyes. The axiom is equally applicable to the menfolk, especially the political elite of this era, who can give anything, and do anything, to achieve their goals. The only beautiful thing is that our politicians warn us before they strike. The fault is ours that we fail to act to counter whatever they say.

In the build-up to the 2023 presidential election, President Tinubu said that “Political power is not going to be served in a restaurant. They don’t serve it a la carte. At all costs, fight for it, grab it, and run (away) with it.” Nigerians refused to pay attention to him. We waited for the February 25, 2023, presidential election date to know the full import of what Tinubu said.

But then, it was too late. By the time we realised what was happening, the same Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and its Result Viewing (IReV) portal, which worked for the senatorial and House of Representatives elections held the same day, time and venues with the presidential election, did not work when it came to Tinubu’s election. The man did not only grab and run away with the election, but he has also done a dash with our collective posterity.

The APC employed that method in 2015 when it captured the entire country. It repeated the feat in 2019 and took it to a bestial level in 2023. Now, 2027 is knocking on the political door and Ganduje is already telling us what to expect. The whole mess in the country is all because of the 2027 second-term ambition of President Tinubu. Nobody should be deceived by Ganduje’s addendum of “but I will not reveal our secret.”

Every good student of Semantics and Stylistics must pay attention to words, their meanings and the strategy deployed in using them. When a man employs the strong evocation, as contained in the modal auxiliary verb, “Must”, the way Ganduje used it in Akure, my Semantics teachers said it has one basic function to perform; and that is compulsion!

What Ganduje meant is that the APC would win Ondo State and other states that he mentioned, by all means! This deployment of diction does not pay attention to the political preferences of the voters. The APC “MUST” win because the region “must” be 100 percent behind the president. If he wants to play the true leader, Ganduje should not have left the people in doubt that his party’s victory will be rooted in good governance.

The APC National Chairman has already told us what was in the offing. APC has only one “strategy” and one “secret”: win and let the opposition go to court. All the states in the South-West must go into the APC’s captivity for Tinubu to obtain 100 percent home-based support. I am worried because too early in life, I was trained to pay attention to what a man says and use the same to measure his character,

Brother ‘Biodun Ogunleye taught us Literature-in-English in Form Five. He was a colourful teacher. He never allowed any of his students to call him “Mr. Ogunleye”. He was content with the simple “Brother Biodun”. He said that made him closer to his students. And he was indeed close to us. He was not a teacher; he was, and he is simply a brother. We loved and enjoyed his classes.

In one of the sessions, he taught us the topic, characterisation. He stated that every character speaks according to his or her psychological make up. The adopted text then was Ola Rotimi’s “The Gods Are Not to Blame. He would ask us to read out the words uttered by a character and then ask us to describe who the character is based on what we read.

It was from him we learnt that King Odewale, the main character in the play is “temperamental.” ‘What a man says speaks more about his personality’, the teacher of teachers said. Brother ‘Biodun is eternally correct. He later left the teaching profession for Law. At a time, he was the Ekiti State Secretary of the APC. How our darling Brother Biodun ended up with the figures in the APC is one topic I will take up with him anytime we happen to be together. But thanks to him for that cradle knowledge about how to situate every character.

Words don’t just come out of human beings. All the words we utter are processed first before they are vocalised; except in the cases of some Nigerian politicians who utter words before they process them. A former National Chairman of APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, once described his successor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, as a man who talks before thinking. Every man is therefore as good as what he says.

I am applying the same principle to the utterances of Ganduje in Akure because of his antecedents, and more importantly, the antecedents of the political party he represents. When a political party is populated by people with Machiavellian tendencies the way APC is configured, voters beware!

A foretold war is not likely to kill a wise lame. The man with walking difficulties is usually counselled to begin the journey to exile the very day the warning bell was tolled. Unfortunately, it may be too late for the people of Ondo State.

I say this because APC is not a silly party like the docile opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Ganduje said he “will not reveal our secret.” One would expect the PDP or any of the opposition parties to decode what “our secret” means.

But not the PDP, not any of the non-existent parties! When a child eats eko (agidi) with an elder, and the elder does not stain his fingers, let the child know that the secret is under the leaves used in wrapping the eko.

Incidentally, the wisdom in the above saying is lost on the PDP. The party is too busy with the distraction from its recalcitrant children like Nyesom Wike and Ayo Fayose of this world to be able to think outside the box! A political party which lacks the testicular fortitude to deal with the likes of Wike and Fayose will always be at the receiving end of the political shenanigans of a rampaging APC. Shior!

This is why Ganduje threw diplomacy and decency to the wild winds and announced that APC would “capture” Ondo, Osun and Oyo States for Tinubu. He is a man who states it as it will happen. His antecedents confirm that. He is like that notorious character, Obika, the son of Ezeulu, in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, who gets away with virtually all his irresponsible actions. When a man’s character depicts the negative side of life, attention must be paid to whatever he says and does.

Under Ganduje as governor, the streets of Kano were a sea of suffering – beggars, old, young, male and female. The number of out-of-school children ballooned in unimaginable percentages. That is the marketer-in-chief of the APC in a South-Western state in 2024. Bí ìyà ńlá bá gbé ni sánlè, kékeré á g’orí eni.

Governor Lucky Ayedatiwa should run away from him if he would be lucky again and the world would truly be his’. A man who answers Orimisan (My head is good) as his middle name should be circumspect when in company with dangerous, devil-may-care people. The man who wears a white garment has no business embracing the man who carries a keg of palm oil! “Wisdom is profitable to direct”, says the Holy Book in Ecclesiastes 10:10.

APC and Ganduje can gloat today because they get away with whatever perfidy they concoct. But I have a word of advice for them. The duo should not rejoice because they have the capacity to capture the entire nation. The day will always break; so, the one who rejoices for wearing a rag in the darkness of the night will be totally exposed. There is a limit to which the people can be pushed before they will react.

When a goat is pursued to the wall without any escape route, it turns to attack its traducer. One day, the ones in captivity will break the chains and fetters holding them bound to violence. Obika rides on the personality of Ezeulu, his father, to commit all manners of crimes. But, when the people got tired, they ensured that he was humiliated by being flogged publicly by the white man. Every act of perfidy has an expiry day. Maybe the November 16, 2024, “capturing’ of Ondo State will be the Nunc dimittis for the APC; who knows? But it is possible the party can win by fair wins.

Ogun Awitele (Foretold War), as a storybook written by inimitable Adebayo Faleti, ends with victory over an audacious band of night marauders. The villagers won because they didn’t go to sleep when they received the promise of the robbers to capture them and their goods. The South-West must be careful not to sleep with all heads in one direction, else, they become the 2024 Ajayi Crowther.

By David Hundeyin

4 years ago on October 20, 2020, my ongoing journey began with the Lekki Massacre, which happened just a couple of kilometres from my apartment. Within the next 17 days, I was forced to smuggle myself out of Nigeria and I haven’t been able to go back since.

In the intervening period, I have spent time in a Ghanaian safe house, I have been declared wanted for “national security violations” in Nigeria, and I have survived a kidnap/assassination attempt in Accra organised by the (now former) Director of the National Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Rufai Abubakar.

In all this time and across all these experiences, one piece of wisdom I heard from my good friend @YarKafanchan has never left my head and remains my true north. She said it in passing one evening in 2021 when we were hanging out at Breakfast 2 Breakfast, Osu, and she probably didn’t realise that what she said was so profound that it would remain stuck in my head forever.

She said: “Nigeria’s biggest trick is convincing you that nothing is happening. Meanwhile everything is happening.”

She said that in the context of us figuring out whether the Buhari regime had forgotten about teaching us #EndSARS people a lesson, and if we should risk returning home, but I took that pearl of wisdom, expanded its application, and made it my True North for analysing Nigeria.

Nigeria was not always this way, but after decades of deliberate actions by internal and external actors, it has become the country where “nothing happens.” When it comes to anything consequential, meaningful and positive like favourable trade policy, economy-boosting infrastructure projects, or diplomatic and geopolitical positioning to enhance regional integration, nothing happens in Nigeria. It is frozen in time and covered with dust and cobwebs. To all intents and purposes, nothing is happening.

But behind the scenes, when it comes to listening to the counsel of American econmic hitmen and piling on ruinous dollar-denominated debt that the country categorically does not need, or when it comes to spending billions of dollars to develop military, intelligence and law enforcement capacity, only to use it to monitor the young girlfriends and political opponents of middle aged big men with potbellies, everything is happening. Nigeria may not be able to generate more than 5,000 MW of electricity for 200 million people, but when it comes to using NIA field agents – actual intelligence operatives trained expensively in Israel and North Korea – to go after outspoken Nigerian citizens in foreign countries, everything is happening.

This is why I cannot bother myself with who Peter Obi chooses or does not choose to wish Happy Birthday to. It’s not that I don’t think Yakubu Gowon is a genocidal a-hole. It’s that his involvement in what happened between 1966 and 1970 is not even the worst or most disastrous thing he has done. The worst things Yakubu Gowon did came AFTER the war, and they are why we are where we are today.

Nigeria as it existed then, was one of the most powerful countries in the entire Global South, and a very consequential country on the world stage. Nigeria was a country that funded liberation movements in other countries, used its economy and military to massive geopolitical effect in Africa, gave out foreign aid, and came within one Ajaokuta Steel Complex of becoming Africa’s first proper industrial economy.

Most of this period, when Nigeria was one of the world’s real movers and shakers in the decade between 1970 and 1979, fell under Yakubu Gowon’s tenure. The Nigeria he had was a country where everything was happening, and everybody could see that everything was happening. Nigeria was one of the players moving pieces on the global chessboard, and not merely one of the pieces being moved.

Yakubu Gowon had the unique opportunity with a postwar Nigeria that found itself economically, militarily and geopolitically in the proverbial Garden of Eden, to lead the country into World Power status. There was a perfect storm of geopolitical circumstances, and Nigeria was right in the sweet pot. The country had real money to spend on infrastructure and industrialisation, and very little foreign debt. It had de-facto geopolitical leadership of Sub Saharan Africa, and infinite possibilities for continental alignment and integration. He didn’t even have to worry about winning an election every 4 years. All he had to do was deliver leadership

If he had delivered Sub Saharan Africa’s first industrialised nuclear power, Africa and the African diaspora would have finally had an untouchable base to build from, and the world would never again have been able to treat Black people with the levity it continues to do in 2024. I am 34 this year. Gowon became Head of State at 33. He found himself leading this budding postwar superpower with everything falling into place for it at 37. And what did he do with this once-in-a-century opportunity?

He did Cement Armada. Udoji Awards. Offshore bank accounts. Contract and invoice inflation. Free Nigeria Airways flights for anyone who could get a “note” from a military officer, which eventually ran the airline into the ground. Cars, houses and holidays in London for girlfriends of big men in government. The beginning of the Rolls Royce culture in Ikoyi. During his 5 postwar years in power, Nigeria for the first time began piling on dollar-denominated foreign debt that it did not need, which was the fuel for the explosion that came 15 years later called IMF Structural Adjustment.

He met a country that was powerful and competent enough to hatch its own foreign influence and subversion operations around the world. Nigeria used to be so consequential that every single liberation war it directly or indirectly intervened in swung the way it wanted. From Lagos, the outcomes of liberation wars in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia were decided. By the time he and his mad dog successor Murtala Mohammed left the scene, Nigeria had gone from this to a victim – a country that couldn’t pay its debts, started suffering electricity blackouts, and ended up having American intelligence penetrate its core, to the point where the outcome of elections or post-coup succession was decided by people like Susan Rice.

It was once a country where everything happened in plain sight, but by the time Yakubu Gowon and the Class of 1966 were done, it became the Nigeria we know today – a benighted country where you have to be highly connected or extremely intelligent to even suspect when anything is happening, because to all intents and purposes, nothing ever happens.

The challenge for my generation and the coming ones is to hijack and regain control of our collective destiny, which Yakubu Gowon and his contemporaries lost for us. They inherited the Black world’s most powerful country and potent nation state. They bequeathed a parody of a country that has been fully captured by economic hitmen, where the CIA has been able to openly install a drug peddler with urinary incontinence to become puppet president of the largest Black country in the world – a level of blatant disrespect that illustrates just how much has been taken from us.

Instead of getting mad at Peter Obi for wishing such people Happy Birthday (which doesn’t actually change the figurative price of garri in the market), our generational challenge as Millenials and Zoomers is to wrest back control of our country and its governance, intelligence, law enforcement and military institutions from the foreign interests that took them from our 90 year-old “senior statesmen” who sold their children for the proverbial mirrors, gin and red cloth.

Getting angry at Yakubu Gowon is pointless and is not going to save us. Getting mad at people wishing him Happy Birthday is borderline asinine. He has already got what he wants out of life. At 90, he has amassed a lifetime’s worth of oyibo’s mirrors, gin and red cloth, and the Black superpower he once led is now dragging status with Eswantini and Sao Tome & Principe. We should be happy for him. He is a fulfilled man who led a life that clearly fills him with fulfillment.

We have our own mission now, and it is to start undoing his damage. In our lifetime, Nigeria should once again becomes a country where everything is happening. It has to happen soon. Otherwise, 200 million people go kpai.

Let’s be guided.

https://x.com/DavidHundeyin/status/1848153436182970474

By Lasisi Olagunju

All music comes from Africa,” African pop singer, Angélique Kidjo, told an interviewer in 2023. Kidjo’s dad is Fon; her mum is Yoruba. In locating Africa as the source of all music, she was saying that in our music and in our songs are all things that interest, excite or worry humanity. In that same interview, Kidjo waxed lyrical. She said she came from a culture “where you spend 10 minutes saying good morning, how is your father? How is your grandmother?”

In every story, every conversation, there is at least a song. And that includes Kidjo’s ten-minute greetings. I feel her. As a Yoruba, I am expected to make anything sing. The unpleasant, if sung the right way, will be good music. That is why we are advised to laugh at any occurrence the severity of which sobbing and weeping cannot redeem. And, so, in spite of everything, the time to sing, dance and laugh is now.

At 4.50 pm on 29 May, 2023, a lady of influence tweeted: “You either accept Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR and Kashim Shettima GCON as your president & vice president respectively or join the wailers for the next 4 years, at least, or 8 years. And if you ask me, wailing for 8 years will be emotionally exhausting. If a new Nigeria is your concern, you’ll pray to God to guide our leaders right irrespective of the party you belong in.”

That was a few hours after Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu became president and pronounced “subsidy gone.”

Fast forward to 10:30 am on 9 September, 2024. The X influencer tweeted: “I am fully committed to campaigning for and supporting any better candidate who can defeat this government in 2027, regardless of their party. For me, removing PBAT is a personal mission and a priority. In shaa Allah.”

Our lady has clearly violated the 4-years-or-8-years timeline she gave us just one short year ago. What has changed that has soured the romance?

In case you are scouring the ocean beds in search of what crime the president committed which has cost him the love of this prime supporter, a window opened at 11:23am on 15 October, 2024. The lady tweeted: “Are we really just going to sit back and accept that spending 100,000 Naira a week on fuel is now the norm? That’s 400,000 Naira a month. How many of us can actually afford this? And meanwhile, electricity costs have shot up by nearly 400%. Are we okay with being drained financially just to survive, or are we ready to question why we’re being squeezed like this?”

The last time I checked, the above tweet had attracted almost 800,000 views. Many who replied to the lady’s tweets abused her. They shouldn’t have. When Saul came back from Damascus and became Paul, how was he received? I commend this lady for her forthrightness. At least, unlike others, she didn’t subscribe to John Milton’s fallen character in ‘Paradise Lost’ who loses and shouts: “…farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear” but goes ahead to yell “Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil be thou my good.” To that Miltonic character, repentance and remorse are too high a price to pay for whatever sin he had committed.

The lady here is one of millions with blisters of buyer’s remorse under their skirts. But she came out to yell and bail out of the abusive love. I commend her. Out of the eight million who voted in this government, there must now be at least seven million sipping the ale of regret quietly in public but cursing King Macbeth privately under their creaky beds. Evil should stop being their good. Because of tomorrow, their buyer’s remorse should be loud.

In 1994, Angélique Kidjo released ‘Agolo’ an album that contains the song: ‘Orio rio/ Ola djou monké n’lo/ Ola djou monké/ Ola djou monké n’lo’. What is she saying? The wordings are obviously in her Quidah, Benin Republic Yoruba. The Oyo-Yoruba in me has no difficulty in situating the root of the lyrics in one of her mum’s folksongs, ‘Ori Ori o Olajumoke nlo…’ There is a story behind that song. And this is where I am going. The folksong rose to meet me when I read the tweets I started this piece with.

The ‘Olajumoke’ song is a lyricised Yoruba folk story about the consequences of rash choices. It says that if you are going to choose a husband or wife, open your eyes, the inner and the outer. The dude you are dying to have may be an empty tin (agolo/pangolo), an àgbá òfìfo (empty barrel).

The story goes that Olajumoke was the most beautiful girl in the village and she knew it. Suitors came after suitors. None was handsome enough to match the taste of the fussy, finicky damsel.

One bright sunny day, a very handsome young man sauntered into the marketplace. The dude is a complete stranger, the type the clairvoyant would see and describe as a beautiful snake. The enchanting young man’s out-of-this-world elegance charmed Olajumoke. The strangeness of his person and his suspicious entry did not alarm Olajumoke. They instead combined to disarm her. She melted and commenced a session of comely stalking, and followed the love of her life up and down the market.

The sun was going down; buying and selling was over. Bobo Handsome commenced his exit from the market but noticed this beautiful girl following him. He asked why. Olajumoke broke all rules and protocols of village romance. She toasted the unknown man of uncommon allure. “Let us be husband and wife.” The strange man was forthright. He couldn’t marry her. “I am Orí (head), a complete stranger here. My place is beyond the Blue Sea (Odò Aró) and even far after the Red Sea (Odò Èjè). You can see that we cannot be husband and wife.”

Because love is blind, Olajumoke would have none of what the stranger was saying. Remember Angélique’s line:

“Ifé ayé ilé /Igbadoun foun ayé (Love in this world is strong/ It is pleasure for the world)”.

The lady of beauty insisted she would follow the strange man to wherever on earth. Then Orí, the young man, lunged into a burst of songs. “Leave me/ If you don’t turn back, we will get to the Sea of indigo/ If you don’t leave, we will reach the Sea of blood…”

The lady of our story did not heed the warnings, neither did she contemplate a change of resolve. She must marry this man of means and colour. That was how she followed a complete stranger on a journey of love. It was a long trek across daylight and moonlight. Then, they reached and crossed the Blue Sea. Soon, they reached and crossed the Red Sea. Then, things moved very fast for the lovey-dovey girl. It turned out that everything that gave the man elegance was borrowed. He started dropping the parts one by one where he got them. He started with his arms, and then his legs. The spirits that loaned them to him got back their properties. Then the torso, the flesh, the hairs and the nails. Every minute part was a borrowed item and the lender got back their properties. Orí is no longer what we call head. What he is is one ugly, scary skull. Now, beautiful girl knew she was in deep trouble. She is married to a Skull – deathly and deadly. She no do again. She told Orí but the ex-handsome man said it was too late; their romance was till death do them part.

Skull did what captors do with their victims. To ensure his ‘wife’ did not escape, Orí decided to ‘bell’ her with waist beads. Each time beautiful Olajumoke attempted to run away, the beads alerted the husband, jingling: “Ori Ori o Olajumoke nlo (Skull, Skull, Olajumoke is running away).” How did this girl get back her freedom? Did she ever get a reprieve? Well, the conclusions are as varied as the storytellers and where they belong.

How Olajumoke chose her husband is the way we choose our leaders. The signs are always there that the masquerade we are costuming will most certainly snatch the singlet we have as our only garment. Like Mr. Skull, they do not hide who they are. The parts that make up their bodies of intelligence are unreal; they are borrowed. The only parts that are truly theirs are the fingers – for counting billions.

“Omo eni kò sè’dí bèbèrè” was the battle cry of Tinubu’s campaigners in Yorubaland last year. Everything was reduced to beads (ìlèkè) and bottoms (ìdí). Any Yoruba person who campaigned against the child of the house was a bastard. We asked the past why it invented (ìlèkè ìdí) (waist beads) for girls only. The past told us it was for reasons of beauty – rounded hips, slim waists, etc. We asked what else? We are told the beads also tell which girl is chaste and which is not – or likely to be not. The loose loosen their waists; they walk and roll the beads pushing the world into libidinous wars. Where such is seen, waywardness robs such girls of parental adornments. That was why some of us insisted in 2023 that not all omo and their big bottoms deserved the land’s ìlèkè. But they said our mouths smelt bad. What did we know?

The reason we talk today is the reason we counseled yesterday against replacing destroyers with predators. We said last year do not vote for election, vote for structure. Let us break down this house and rebuild it so that we can all be safe. “It is very difficult, indeed almost impossible, to maintain liberty in a republic that has become corrupt or to establish it there anew” (Machiavelli). We ignored structure and everyone gave their electoral waist beads to their own child. Votes were reduced to abject ornaments for voluptuous behinds. Machiavelli wrote again, “people are often misled to desire their own ruin.”

When Sani Abacha took over the government in 1993, people clapped for the kingmaker who had made himself king. They said he was a wrong-righter. When by 1994 it became clear Abacha was determined to sit still on the June 12 election and the mandate it conferred, MKO Abiola went philosophical: Ìlèkè tó sò’dí òpòló ni ejò gbé wò yí o (a string of beads is found to be too large for Toad’s waist, Snake now goes for it). It is the same today. Check toad, check snake, measure their waists, solve the riddle.

Some regime backers, last week, told the newspaper columnist to stop his criticisms of the president and his bumbling presidency. “Provide solutions,” the persons yelled in forwarded messages. Well, the columnist did not campaign last year to be beaded with power. The columnist’s duty is to tell the king that he is naked. If the naked, his clothiers and courtiers do not know the solution to the nakedness, then, what else is there to say other than sing in musician Lagbaja’s voice: “Mo sorri fun gbogbo yin l’okookan.”

I am not done with Angélique Kidjo and the interview in which she spoke the words I quoted earlier. It is in the 29 June, 2023 edition of The Telegraph of the U.K. In her words is a warning to the ‘victorious’ to know how very slippery the mountaintop is. The powerful who think they stand firm and therefore could betray the ground that holds their ladder should hear out Angélique: “I didn’t get here because I decided to be number one. I got here because people decided to listen to me. The people who put you up here, well, they can always pull you down.” Wisdom. But ‘they’ won’t listen. Their ears are like Ori’s body parts – borrowed – and collected back by the lenders.