Tag: Festus Adedayo

Magu, Maggots And Maga Dogs By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

Is there a crime-fighting institution or architecture in Nigeria? The answer is no. Our measurement of their suitability is the candidate’s ethnic affiliation, the person who introduces them and their loyalty to the occupier of authority seat. To expect a thorough-bred czar to come out of such a nebulous system is hypocrisy of the highest order. Again, the system felled Ibrahim Magu, Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) last week. It had always done that. Olusegun Obasanjo, the maiden president at inception of Nigeria’s fourth republic,…

Abba Kyari’s death and Koronu people in COVID-19 Nigeria By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

The death of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, last Friday, like the death of any mortal, calls for sober reflection. May God grant the repose of his soul. However, for all of us – politicians, those controlling the levers of political power, lowly-placed people and humanity in entirety – the major lesson therein, aside the ephemerality of life, is that this passage is another wake-up call on us not to assume our immortality. If the high and mighty can fall when death stings them, no man is…

Osun: Excavating the Ruins of the ‘Oranminran’ Years, By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

A major and consequential event took place last week in the quiet state of Osun which students of politics, power and government should take more than passing interest in. The State governor, Gboyega Oyetola, last Monday assented the recommendations of a panel set up to review some of the policies of his predecessor and boss, Rauf Aregbesola, who is now the Minister of Interior. Oyetola was his Chief of Staff. The state executive council not only approved the recommendations of the committee, made up of very respectable persons in the…

Makinde’s Auxiliary Error  By  Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

Anyone who lived in Oyo State at a time when members of the road transport union called NURTW became law unto themselves, killing, maiming and making the state ungovernable, would applaud Governor Seyi Makinde for the recent Park Management initiative that was launched last week. It was a policy that, according to the cliché, thought out of the box. He appointed managers who would superintend over the running of motor parks in all the 33 local councils of the state and thus harvest estimated billions in the hands of these…

Why did Governor AbdulRazaq eat Arugbo’s cocoyam? By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

After watching the viral video of several Ilorin, Kwara State old women, referred to as arugbo in Yorubaland, pleading with the Kwara State governor, Abdulrazaq Abdulrahman, not to demolish the Ile Arugbo (Old people’s home) built for them by the old Kwara political warhorse, late Dr. Olusola Saraki, and his eventual demolition of the property last Thursday, what leapt into my subconscious was the old folklore, Ti nba je koko arugbo (if I ate the old woman’s cocoyam) notoriously told at moonlight in Yoruba-speaking homes of the pre-colonial, up to the 1970s era. A three-member travelling…

Will You Be At The Funeral?: An Oration At Nigerian Political Parties’ Graveyard By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

The die was cast. The party had met and decided. The Action Group, at its 8th Annual Congress held at the African Sports Club, Jos, from February 1 to 8, 1962 had concluded on the alleged anti-party allegations leveled against Premier of the Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola. In his opening remarks, Leader of the party, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, acknowledged that there were real and dangerous contradictions within the party, to wit Akintola’s “contemptuous conduct against the party.” Sure that a crucifix had been erected for him, Akintola left…

Fouta Djallon Animals We Share Human Space With By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

There is blood, blood everywhere. Sweats, the colour of blood as Nigerians scamper for unavailable fuel; blood from herdsmen who shoulder AK 47 guns like the Malacca; rivers of blood in Rivers State from felon who even security agencies have scarce understanding of their motives; blood from Boko Haram insurgents that flows as if a cistern had broken and blood flowing from heads Badoo cultists break with stones at dusk. Add these to the problem of hunger in the land. These blood flows remind this writer of Irish writer, Oscar…