Month: July 2024

The proponents of violent protests are not relenting. They have fixed August 1 to August 10 as the days of rage. They are insisting that the house must be burnt down in anger. Like W. B. Yeats’ wrote in his poem, The Second Coming, “the falcon no longer hears the falconer.” In this case, the champions of violence are not willing to listen to wise counsel. There’s a loss of order and guidance as the forces of chaos and destruction no longer heed the call of reason.   To what…

“Unlike the stomach, the brain doesn’t alert you when it’s empty.” – Arabic proverb.   There are many tales about how the tortoise got its cracked back. One with various versions stands out. It is the one in which the tortoise had two geese as friends. In the Buddhist scriptures, the tortoise fell from the sky and split in two as the geese were taking it to their home in the Himalayas. According to the story, the geese held a stick in their beaks while the tortoise grasped it in…

Without moving his body, African Development Bank (AfDB) President, Akinwumi Adesina, watlzed his tall frame in a dance last week. He danced to the rhythm of Gwo Gwo Gwo Ngwo of Gentleman Mike Ejeagha’s trending song track, Ka Esi Le Onye Isi Oche. A rhythmic refrain track from an album titled Akuko N’Egwu Vol. 1., Ka Esi… has a lot of similarities with A o m’erin j’oba, both taken from Igbo and Yoruba cosmologies respectively. Both are from rich traditional African folklores. While both also had Elephant and Trickster Tortoise…

On Friday, I listened to one of the most impactful sermons ever at the New Reservation Baptist Church, Iyaganku, Ibadan, Oyo State. It was devoid of the depressing low of “style-style fundraising” and motivational prosperity sermons that Pentecostalism has sunk into in Nigeria. Church Pastor, Dr. Kayode Oyedemi, taught about how death was man’s companion which should be loved and not hated. He brought the reality of death in our lives so vividly that I doubt if any one who attended that service would unnecessarily reify life, going forward. It…

All of a sudden, President Bola Tinubu is running from pillar to post. The febrile fear with which his presidency tries to stave off the proposed August 1 hardship protest is baffling. It seems to remind one of the biblical verse in Genesis 4:7 which says, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?” This English interpretation does not convey the message’s total interpretative capturing as its Yoruba version rendition. That particular scriptural verse is interpreted in Yoruba as “Bi iwo ba se rere, ara ki yio ha ya…