Tag: Festus Adedayo

The rotten apples at Louis Edet House By Festus Adedayo

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Sometime in the early 2000s, at the cusp of Tafa Balogun’s glory as the Inspector General of Police, an oil magnate from a Southwest riverine area was arrested. He was travelling into the state capital from his riverine part of the country. It was at nocturne. The oil magnate, who moved like an Oba, was in a convoy of cars. Inside the car was a falange of private security persons. They were armed to the teeth with sophisticated weapons. It was obvious that this Oba-like man was into oil bunkering…

Tinubu’s Chicago certificate as Afó’kéèmù By Festus Adedayo

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Last Monday, as noiselessly as a phantom, President Bola Tinubu brought home his strange friend. While an Igbo proverb says the footsteps of a man cannot create a stampede, Alexander Zingman, the president’s Belarusian friend’s sloppy footsteps created more than a stampede. It was as though the great South African poet, Mazisi Kunene’s lines were being chanted to scare us. They reverberated round the length and breadth of Nigeria. “The madman has entered our house with violence/Defiling our sacred grounds/…Bending down our high priests with iron…” Kunene wrote. We could…

The three wrongs of Owo Memorial Park’s demolition By Festus Adedayo

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The furore over the recently pulled down Owo Memorial Park in Ondo State is said to have thawed, which is gladsome. There is, however, the need to further examine the subsisting issues in the drama. The park, constructed by the late governor of the state, Rotimi Akeredolu, in honour of victims of a terrorist attack that occurred on June 5, 2022 at St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, with casualties of over 40 people, was dismantled by the current governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa.   At the hub of the crisis was the…

How Atiku, El-Rufai, Amaechi can learn from Tinubu’s school of politics By Festus Adedayo

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Power politics in the animal kingdom could be as intense, deceptive and selfish as it is in the human kingdom. An ancient African allegory whose patent cannot be credited to a particular tradition, illustrates this. It is the fable of an old forest warhorse, the lion. After years of feasting on animals, his mane soaked in their innocent blood, Old Lion became too senescent to haunt for games. Stricken with old age, diverse infirmities and unable to put food on his own table, the King decided to get food by…

Farewell, Olori Solape Abolarin By Festus Adedayo

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For the well-respected monarch, the Orangun of Oke Ila in Osun State, Oba Dokun Abolarin, what philosophers mean by the concept of brevity of human existence walked into his embrace, in its full throttle, last Monday. Around 5pm on that day, a major pillar of his monarchy, his Olori, his wife, Mrs. Solape Abolarin, breathed her last in an Ibadan hospital. I literally heard Kowéè, one of the species of smallish/mid-sized songbirds Yoruba attribute traditional bad omen or symbol of death, danger and calamity to. It chirped in its ghoulish…

June 12 wounds and Nigeria’s search for closure By Festus Adedayo

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Antjie Krog is a South African writer, academic and broadcaster. As a radio journalist with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, (SABC) Krog reported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) proceedings under the chairmanship of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Thereafter, she chronicled South Africa’s Apartheid regime’s human rights abuses and assassinations in a 1998 book entitled Country of My Skull. In that book, Krog attempted to define what she meant by ‘memorialization’ as the remembrance and keeping memories of the dead and living victims of conflicts. Krog dramatizes it as: “Beloved, do…

June 12 and its casualties, 32 years after By Festus Adedayo

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On Thursday this week, it will be 32 years of that June 12 phenomenon. On July 9, 1998, the lifeless body of a young man adorned the front page of the Nigerian Tribune. The tear-jerking, bloodied body decorated the front pages of many other Nigerian newspapers like manacles in the hands of a convict. He had been shot dead by the police in Abeokuta, Ogun State. It was during a Southwest-wide protest against the perceived murder in detention of Chief MKO Abiola, winner of the June 12, 1993 election. The…

A fictional report of Tinubu, Trump’s meeting at the White House ,by Festus Adedayo

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An ice wall initially separated President Bola Tinubu and POTUS Donald Trump. As they sat inside the White House’s Oval Office, Tinubu was the first to thaw the ice. “How are you managing old age, Mr. President?” he asked jocularly. Apparently fazed by the Nigerian president’s boldness, Trump flashed his traditional wry smile and replied, “Same here, Mr. President. How are you coping with age?” They both laughed rambunctiously, laughter which instantly infected some of their aides on each sides of the divide. While official account claims Tinubu is 73,…

Tinubu’s lifejacket and a deer’s sacred skin By Festus Adedayo

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What hunters see in the forest is enough to make children of men without balls blind. An ethnographic study of hunters in a wild called Ìgbẹ Alágogo conducted by a scholar at the University of Ibadan, Ayo Adeduntan, gave birth to the narrative. Ọláníyì Ọládèj̣ọ Yáwóọ̣ré had gone hunting one day and came face to face with a deer breastfeeding her young. Stupefied by this weird sight, an unusual dizziness pounced upon the hunter. But “an animal is pursuing me” is a disgraceful song that must never be sung by…

Dele Momodu: Celebrity of Nigerian journalism @ 65 By Festus Adedayo

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Last week, icon of the Nigerian media, Dele Momodu, celebrated his 65th birthday. One of the events hallmarking the celebration was the Dele Momodu Leadership Centre he constructed in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State. Like a wayfarer, Momodu’s journey through the rough road of the Nigerian media has no doubt been very eventful.   He rose to celebrity status from a humble background in the city of Ile-Ife. This much was manifest last Tuesday as the Osun State governor, Ademola Adeleke, freely allowed tears to cascade from his brows…