Tag: Festus Adedayo

Kizz Daniel, stars’ buga and the curse of stardom By Festus Adedayo

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Asked to write an essay in professor of psychology, Scott Allison’s “Heroes & Villains” class at the University of Richmond, Virginia, Corinne Devaney chose Bob Marley. Marley was a mulatto born in a crime-centric slum neighbourhood of St. Anne in Jamaica. He was a product of a liaison between a black mother, then 18-year-old Miss Cedella Malcolm, and Norval Sinclair Marley, a white father from Crowborough, East Sussex, UK. The older Marley was then about 60 years of age. Sinclair and Cedella had met and later married while she was…

Can we get Buhari to resign? Today! By Festus Adedayo

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Now that the wise, prudent, babes and suckling have come to the gruelling realisation that Nigeria is gradually coming to a deadly repose under President Muhammadu Buhari; it is nice seeing everyone in frenzied scampering. Legislators in Abuja, like vipers stirred off their places of comfort, are spitting venom. The political elite, seeing from afar the impending expiry of their inordinate suck of the Nigerian nectar, are confused and disconcerted.   Abuja, their nest of filch, is becoming too hot for comfort. The same Abuja is also fast assuming the…

How Nigeria turbans its terrorists, the Ada Aleru ,by Festus Adedayo

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At a time when Nigeria thought it had witnessed the zenith of pain and agony from its unhealed wounds, with the unimaginable pus that oozes daily from them over the years, last week, a frightening symptom emerged from the wounds. Bleeding blisters emitting dirty-looking, foul-smelling discharges indicated that the Nigerian wounds may have gone gangrenous. The sign of gangrene came right from the theatre of war in Zamfara State, where bandits have literally taken over government. If we thought the daily harvests of dead bodies of countrymen killed by bandits…

Kashim Shettima and the fury of Christianity, By Festus Adedayo

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Two anecdotes of the extreme reaction of scorned women will avail you if you are looking for a corollary to Nigerian Christendom’s tempestuous anger at the choice of Kashim Shettima. Shettima, a Muslim and former governor of Borno State, was recently chosen as Vice Presidential candidate to Bola Tinubu, a Muslim presidential flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC). In traditional Africa which celebrates centuries of polygamy, incidences of husband-wives tension, confrontations, jealousy and bitterness have led to destruction of polygynous homes. One of such is Richard Edward Dennett’s anecdotal…

Kuje: Did we hand over Nigeria to terrorists in 2015? By Festus Adedayo

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For those who watch the complicated Nigerian security mess from afar, the killing of Japanese ex-Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe in Nara, Japan last Tuesday and the ambushing, same day, of President Muhammadu Buhari’s advance convoy in Dutsinma, about 152 kilometres from his hometown of Daura, Katsina State, both speak to rising global insecurity. A few hours after on that same Tuesday, that joke went burst. Approximately three hours after shelling the president’s advance convoy with an assortment of bullets, killing two people in the process, around 10pm, terrorists stormed the…

Nigerian Politicians And Pestilence Of Forged, Missing Certificates By Festus Adedayo

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Last week, media reports indicated that at the end of filing of personal information before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), many of Nigeria’s presidential and vice-presidential candidates informed the electoral body that they had “lost” their academic certificates. If you think the gale of missing certificates that currently afflicts Nigerian politicians is a fable that began today, then you apparently haven’t gone into Nigeria’s rich political maggot history. The truth is that certificate forgery, identity trickery and fraudulent misrepresentation have become a meme of Nigerian politics, even from the…

Peter Obi as Nigeria’s Rosa Parks By Festus Adedayo

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On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks did what philosophers call against method. Paul Feyeraband, an Austrian philosopher, had in 1976 pioneered that thesis. In a racial American society of the time where blacks were inferior and were expected to leave their bus seats for whites, Parks refused to give up hers for a white male passenger. Her refusal sparked a boycott that changed the paradigm of racial relationships in America. It even shot the less-known Martin Luther King Jr. to world recognition. At…

The Muslim-Muslim Ticket, The Prostitute And Her Qu’ran By Festus Adedayo

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Separating the Nigerian from his politics and religion is almost like a man trying to forcefully pull off a strand of hair from his moustache. It is akin to trying to prise off the glue that wedges Siamese twins together. Yoruba social worldview also offers an explanation of this difficulty. At a bandstand gig for Alhaji Danjuma, Kano-born wealthy entrepreneur of the 1970s, owner of the defunct Agege Cinema and a man known in the Lagos social circuit as Yaro Maikudi, late Apala music exponent, Ayinla Omowura, had explained why…

The ruins, villains and bagmen of June 12 By Festus Adedayo

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After last week’s national convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC), President Muhammadu Buhari wrote, profusely thanking the governor of Kebbi state, Abubakar Bagudu, for his yeoman role in the convention’s success. Buhari’s letter commended Bagudu for the “extraordinary role” he played in ensuring the successful conduct of the convention. Bagudu is the chairman of the Progressives Governors’ Forum and in this role, conducted the recent national convention that ensured the victory of a man who was the “son” and protégé of the winner of the June 12, 1993 election…

Has Tinubu read the story of S. L. Akintola’s last days? By Festus Adedayo

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Bola Tinubu

The war of the First Republic had reached a feverish height. Those it consumed were wheeled to the sepulchre by the day. Blood of political party faithful painted the sky crimson.   According to Femi Kehinde, a former member of the house of representatives and biographer of the last premier of the Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, in the book, ‘S.L. Akintola In The Eyes of History’, (2017), Akintola knew that his standing up to the octopodal political machine in the Action Group was akin to suicide. Death bestrode…