If the one who controls the nation’s security architecture lacks faith in the security of his aides on our roads, then we are cooked, salted and barbecued at the same time. This is akin to Aso Rock Villa abandoning the epileptic National Grid for a N10-billion solar power so that while the rest of us wallow and waggle in òkùnkùnbirimùbirimù (absolute darkness), our President can pick a dropped needle at 1.00am in Aso Rock.
There are two sociological concepts that define the Yoruba cosmology on peaceful coexistence. The first is Alájobí (shared progeny or blood tie), and the other is Alájogbé (co-residentship). In Yoruba worldview, the two concepts, sociologists say, “are not mutually exclusive but function together to create a stable society.”
While Alájobí establishes a person in their specific origin, Alájogbé widens the horizon by teaching individuals to live peacefully and harmoniously with people of diverse backgrounds and opposing views – either political or religious. This in essence means that in a society, Alájobí’s interest must take into account the values of the Alájogbé so that no interest is sacrificed for the other
The situation in Yorubaland today is that many feel failed on both fronts. They complain that the Alájobí in power appears distracted by political calculations while communities bleed. At the same time, they accuse some foreign Alájogbé elements of abusing the generosity of their hosts by turning forests into sanctuaries of terror, farms into killing fields and highways into corridors of fear. Such conduct violates the very covenant of neighbourliness on which peaceful coexistence rests.
Hospitality is a sacred Yoruba virtue, but it is not a licence for predation. The stranger who is welcomed into a home is expected to honour the rules of the household. When some guests repay kindness with violence, they endanger not only their victims but also the long tradition of trust that made their presence possible. The lesson is simple: the Alájobí must not neglect his duty of protection, and the Alájogbé must not abuse the privileges of hospitality. A society survives only when both obligations are honoured.
This is for the Alájobí orchestra who says that because President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a Yoruba man, all Yoruba men and women must support him. Under the watch of Tinubu, something that has never happened in the entire South happened in Yorubaland. The decapitation of the kidnapped Mathematics teacher from Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State is something very new to the Yoruba race.
Until the unfortunate beheading of Mr. Michael Oyedokun, we thought that random decapitation of citizens was an exclusive preserve of the North. That incident was not the only strange happenings in the South-West under the Presidency of Tinubu. Kidnapping of school children has never been our lot in Yorubaland until the penultimate week in Oriire, Oyo State. Again, the North holds the patent to school children kidnap. Yorubaland is now sharing the trophy.
But when it happened in our land, it got worse. While the depraved minds of the North who make school children kidnapping their pastime would always go after secondary school children, the ones who took our children into captivity 17 days ago went after pupils in the nursery and primary school! There in the forest or whatever, we have children as young as two to three-year-olds held in conditions which no-one can fully decipher yet.
Yet, the Alájobí proponents are not seeing this stranger than strange occurrence as happening under the watch of our ‘own brother’ in whom we are expected to be well pleased. When one’s relation is on top of an orange tree, the wise men of my place say that one will not eat the unripe sour oranges (Ará ile eni kìí wà l’órí osàn kí ènìyàn mu kíkan). The question to ask these tiwan ntiwa (our own is our own) clappers is: what benefit has Yorubaland derived from the presidency of our son-of-the-soil such that we must all break bones and spines to support his second coming?
What has the Tinubu Presidency done differently to show that the man cares about our security or the security of any Nigerian for that matter? Has it not been politics all through? Has he taken the pain, as a Yoruba man who must be supported by all, to visit the relations of the victims of the Oyo kidnap? Are the you-don’t-have-light-here people of Jos, Plateau State, not better off given that President Tinubu visited them, at least even if the presidential jet that conveyed him to Jos had barely taxied to a halt when the president hopped in for the return journey to Abuja?
Two weeks ago, precisely on May 19, 2026, writing under the title: “Afenifere and Fulani siege on Yorubaland”, on this page, I questioned why Afenifere found it convenient to lay the blame of insecurity in Yorubaland on the governors of the South-West region while it insulated the almighty Federal Government. I pointed out that only the President controls the State security architecture.
Many commenters argued that even at that, the state governors should still do something about insecurity. I read those comments and I asked: what exactly should Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State in whose state those children and teachers have been taken hostage, have done in this circumstance?
The answer came over the weekend with the ‘powerful’ security delegation President Tinubu sent to the Oriire area of Oyo State over the unfortunate kidnap of those helpless toddlers and their minders. The delegation was led by no other person than Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser (NSA) to the President. He was accompanied on the farce called security visit by the Chief of Staff (CoS) to the President, Femi Gbajamibiala, and a host of other security personnel.
I may be wrong. But I have the strong conviction that Governor Makinde’s earlier visit to the area obviously prompted the President to send the ‘high-powered’ delegation! Before then, the Presidency had been silent like the proverbial raffia-palm farm stream. I watched Makinde as he interacted with the relations of the kidnap victims and I felt so sad. The picture of the husband of the kidnapped principal holding the governor as if Makinde holds the solution to the immediate return of the victims has refused to go away.
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I held my breath as a grandmother, whose four grandchildren and daughter-in-law are in the kidnappers’ den, begging profusely, for the governor to help bring back her grandchildren. I saw the I-am-doing-my-best look on Makinde’s face and the graphic picture of a man going through a mental torture over what he has limited or no immediate control over played in my head. Then, I asked again: What can Makinde do in this circumstance when the man who holds the key to the nation’s security architecture that can be scrambled to go for the rescue is busy playing politics?
I say politics, a dangerous one for that matter, because all Tinubu is doing about the Oyo school kidnap is nothing but bloody politics. I read the post by the Lagos night soil man, Joe Igbokwe, the Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Dirty Gutter and Drainages, where he alluded that the Oyo kidnap is linked to the 2027 second term bid of Tinubu.
I don’t know how much shamelessness is sold for in Nnewi, Igbokwe’s countryside in Anambra State. But it is crystal clear that the very day Joe decided to move to the sugarcane plantation of Tinubu in Bourdillon Street was the very day the old fella threw the last modicum of self-worth in him into the Atlantic!
But for that, how on earth would a supposedly responsible father like Igbokwe be so insensitive to write that: “If kidnapping school children and their teachers is a strategy to stop President Tinubu from winning the 2027 elections, you have failed woefully. Light and darkness have no meeting point. It is a poor strategy that is dead on arrival.”
So, in the entire calamity that the kidnap of those toddlers and their teachers, including the unfortunate summary execution of Oyedokun through decapitation portends, all Igbokwe sees is the 2027 ambition of his paymaster, Tinubu. And if we may join the issue with him, has it occurred to Igbokwe that those victims were kidnapped less than 24 hours after Governor Makinde declared his presidential ambition?
Is the Igbo-Yoruba naturalised Igbokwe reading between the lines? If another warped mind were to follow the line of argument he advanced in his most unfortunate post, would such a person not conclude that the kidnapping was orchestrated to embarrass Makinde or frustrate his political ambitions? Is that what Igbokwe is suggesting?
If we go back a little over a decade, was it not a similar pattern with the Chibok girls, who were abducted shortly after President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan declared his bid for a second term in 2014? Who benefited politically from that tragedy? Who were the gainers and who were the losers?
Why, for God’s sake, must we continue to share the same civic space with people who reduce every human tragedy to political calculation? Why do we have, operating on the same orbit in this country, men and women who think like human beings and others who seem determined to behave otherwise?
When you have figures like Igbokwe as principal players in the Tinubu’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), one cannot but be suspicious of the moves and body language of the President when issues that require his immediate decisive actions are at play. This is why I feel personally sad and scandalised that while our children are in the forest and at the mercy of the elements and criminals, the man we elected as our head hunter is busy dancing palongo (uncoordinated dance steps) in the political arena! It is most unfortunate; it is most unthinkable. Sadly enough, that is the reality. I will explain.
I watched a TV programme on Sunday, May 31, where the presenter said that Tinubu was in Lagos. I calculated the distance from Lagos to Ogbomoso and it came to 246 kilometres. Then I asked: why did Tinubu have to send a delegation to Oriire instead of going there himself? How does the President set his priorities?
The fact, a very incontrovertible one, is that Nigerians did not vote for the NSA or the Chief of Staff to the President. Nigerians voted, or were said to have voted for Tinubu as President and Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the Armed Forces. If anyone should lead the charge for the rescue operation, it should be the C-in-C himself. The parade is Tinubu’s; he alone can shout the order! If anyone ought to be in Oriire, Tinubu was the one because he was the one elected to carry out such an assignment more so that he was even in Lagos when the delegation moved to Oyo State!
His staying back in Lagos while he sent some babariga-wearing errand boys to Oriire leaves a bad taste in the mouth. At the risk of sounding insolent, it is crass insensitivity; it is very unfeeling! It is part of the deadly politics of the moment at the expense of the lives of innocent children and their minders!
Again, and more worrisome, is the fact that the Presidency delegation had a morbid fear of the insecurity pervading the entire landscape. This is why our NSA, in company with the best of our security personnel, had to travel to Oriire by helicopter! That the delegation abandoned the road for the air is very instructive.
If the one who controls the nation’s security architecture lacks faith in the security of his aides on our roads, then we are cooked, salted and barbecued at the same time. This is akin to Aso Rock Villa abandoning the epileptic National Grid for a N10-billion solar power so that while the rest of us wallow and waggle in òkùnkùnbirimùbirimù (absolute darkness), our President can pick a dropped needle at 1.00am in Aso Rock.
The way and means by which the Tinubu’s delegation got to Oriire is not the dangerous politics here. The most troubling of the entire charade is the fact that the NSA team did not contact or have any interaction with Governor Makinde or the Chairman of Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State! The delegation completely sidestepped the governor.
The claim that that the Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Olusegun Olayiwola, represented the governor when the Ribadu team came was, and is not exactly true. The fact of the matter is that is that since the kidnap took place, Olayiwola had been in Oriire to monitor events there before the team arrived!
A lot has been written about this unfortunate breach of protocol and crass political pettiness since Sunday. And the Presidency, very unusual of its media handlers, has not been able to respond to the issue. How on earth do we allow politics to determine the fate of the lives of the victims that are in danger?
And this goes for the Makinde-is-the-chief-security-officer chanting gang. If Tinubu sent his NSA and his Chief of Staff to go to Oyo State to assess the situation, who is expected to brief them? Who is also expected to lead such a ’high-powered’ delegation to Oriire if not the governor? How do you sidestep the governor of a grieving state the way Makinde was sidestepped, and you expect the citizenry to take you seriously?
Granted, Makinde belongs to a different political party. Agreed, the Oyo State governor has indicated interest in Tinubu’s job. How, if one may ask, do these affect those hapless citizens in captivity? Where lies the humanity in us if even when lives are in danger, we still place political inclinations above the common good of the people?
I don’t know Nuhu Ribadu, the NSA, in person. All I know about him, I got through his official conducts as the head of the Economic and Financial Crimes commission (EFCC), where, to a greater extent, he did well. Going by that antecedent, I find his Sunday visit to Oriire without an atom of courtesy to Governor Makinde very uncomfortable.
That is not the picture Ribadu cut while in the EFCC. Men do change, so they say. I don’t want to be tempted to say it is unbecoming of his office as the NSA. Ribadu is answerable to the President. If sidestepping Makinde is one of the briefs the ex-police officer got from his principal, then we are in for the night of the long knives.
I know it is difficult in such a circumstance to abide by the ancient injunction that if one is sent on an errand like a slave, one should find a way to deliver it like a freeborn. Even at that, I pray for a day when everyone in positions of responsibility will be able to draw the line between self-worth and outright slavery. There are some briefs that one should not accept; the Oriire visit and its attendant breach of protocol is one.
As for Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff, I don’t think he could have done better than he did during the visit. As the head of the personal aides of the President, Gbajabiamila does not cut the picture of a man who can stand for what he believes in when the President is involved.
Again, like our wise men are wont to say: Tí ewé bá pé l’ára ose, á di ose (a leaf that is used to wrap soap for a long time has itself become soap). His mien at the palace of the Soun of Ogbomoso tells the story of a child who is ready to carry out the instructions of his father to the letter and also impress the father regardless of whose ox is gored! May God give us men of honour!
In all this, my heart goes to those little, innocent children in the forest. The picture of the mother with her toddler child begging the government to rescue them is enough testimonial that men of conscience are in short supply in this epoch. What can we do other than to pray that God will show mercy and rescue the victims, not only in Oyo, but all over the nation.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
