Tag: Festus Adedayo

1966 coup and the Macbeth tragedy By Festus Adedayo

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Chief Richard Osuolale Akinjide, Minister of Education in the First Republic, under Tafawa Balewa, and Minister of Justice under Alhaji Shehu Shagari, and one of the most brilliant lawyers ever in Nigeria, stood before Justice Olujide Somolu. Somolu was Chief Justice of the Western State. Akinjide was a known Samuel Ladoke Akintola sympathizer and a staunch member of the NNDP in the Western Region. The Brigadier General Robert Adeyinka Adebayo government of the Western State had set up an inquiry into the running of the First Republic. In doing this,…

Bow-and-go: When Senate ate intestines of Òkété By Festus Adedayo

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Time and seasons have their indicators. My people have many of such indicators. For instance, when elders gather to feast on the intestines, the entrails of an Òkété, known as the African giant pouched rat, that community is at its autumn. In Christendom, the fig tree and its leaf are denotatively used to represent the end time. In eschatology, that part of theology concerned with death, judgment and the final destiny of the soul and mankind, Jesus Christ’s parable of the end time told to His disciples is usually referenced.…

Madam Tinubu’s rudeness towards Gov Adeleke By Festus Adedayo

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Governor Ademola Adeleke could be an embarrassing public spectacle. Whenever I see him afflicted by his dancing seizure in the public, I take my eyes off him, indescribably embarrassed for him, by him and on behalf of those who unleashed such public disaster on Osun State. On a personal note, I long concluded that the queer, unprovoked dancing in public, very unusual by every standard, is a mental health challenge, most probably a childhood neurological defect, something close to a rare variant of autism. Whenever I hear that line from…

Can Tinubu, our Eddie Kwansa, now come home? By Festus Adedayo

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Today’s Gen Z world may not know of “Eddie Kwansa”. It is a famous folk song Owerri, Imo State, donated to the rest of Nigeria. Released shortly after the piercing agony of the Nigerian civil war in 1972 by Dan Orji and his Peacock Band, the song should remind people of my generation of the equally famous NTA soap opera, New Masquerade. The Orji song became the signature tune of that opera and it runs thus, “Eddie Kwansa oo, bia o, bia o (3ce) Izu ka nma na nneji oo,…

The girls of Chibok, Maga, Papiri and our Frankenstein By Festus Adedayo

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Famous Ogbomoso, Oyo State-born bard, Ogundare Fọyanmu, had some words for evil spins and spinners. Religionists call these spinners “workers of iniquity”. They are a legion in Nigerian politics. Fọyanmu popularized this genre of oral poetry called Ìjálá Ọdẹ traditionally chanted by hunters and warriors. Though a special verbal art of worshipers of Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron and war, Ìjálá is sung by hunters most times at their leisure, upon return from hunting expeditions. In an Ijala chant which he entitled Òré Òdàlè – Betrayer – Fọyanmu chanted:…

Abulu, the prophetic madman, at Akure summit By Festus Adedayo

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I have read enough works on the phenomenon of sycophancy in politics to know that it is a democratic curse. Whenever I reflect on its curse on development, my mind hovers over a character called Abulu in Akure, Ondo State-born Chigozie Obioma’s The fishermen (2015). A fictional book that got the shortlist of The Booker Prize, in it, four well-brought up kids of same parents, in the city of Akure, where the tragic plot was set, capitalize on a parental lacuna of their father’s absence to manifest traits of truancy…

Ted Cruz’s genocide, blasphemy and Ida the slave boy By Festus Adedayo

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Today, Nigerian leaders are busy playing the biblical couple, Ananias and Sapphira, on allegation that they abet genocide in Nigeria. They do this while being enveloped in how to rig the 2027 elections. As they do, Citizen Yahaya Sharif-Aminu is on a death row. On February 23, 2020, this then 22-year-old was arrested for posting blasphemous statements on WhatsApp against Prophet Muhammad. The Kano bigoted mob, renowned for its hyena-like thirst for flesh and blood, immediately burnt down Sharif-Aminu’s family home. A musician, what Sharif-Aminu posted was, “there is no…

Amupitan’s magical marriage to a buffalo By Festus Adedayo

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While growing up, I went on hunting expeditions with elderly men. From there, I found out that the forest, as an ecosystem, is diametrically opposed to the human world. In the forest, the hunter exists with “other beings”- animals of different shades and character, plants – whose existences bear similarity with man’s. One of such beings is an unseen spirit whose existence the hunter can take for granted only at his own peril. In the forest, the hunter is in a continuous struggle with these beings but is seen as…

Iyaloja-General at Oba of Benin’s palace By Festus Adedayo

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The earliest example of personal rule gone awry in the world was given in the biblical account of Eli, the prophet. Personal rule has become prevalent in Africa and other Third World countries. In the account, Eli was High Priest and Judge of Israel in the city of Shiloh. Kind-hearted to the troubled and oppressed, the prophet’s renown for kindness became weightier in the narrative of his comforting words to Hannah, one of the hitherto barren wives of Elkanah. When Hannah eventually gave birth to a son named Samuel, Eli…

The Madman sermon on Mapo hill By Festus Adedayo

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Ibadan, Oyo State, the city of warriors, quaked last Friday. The rumbling vibrations of the historic coronation of Ex-Governor Rashidi Ladoja as Olubadan sent valleys into a seismic shake. Ibadan’s ancient event center, Mapo Hall, was nearly submerged with excited feet. Children of Oluyole were at the zenith of their excitement. Expensive automobiles, resplendent attires and infectious joy lit the faces of a people who christened self as cunning. That Friday, however, Ibadan wasn’t ready to listen to the rhythm of its famous Láyípo christening. It was rather ready to…