Tag: Festus Adedayo

As dollars elected, created mannequins at party primaries By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

While touring Northern Nigerian provinces in the 1950s to canvass for votes, Ahmadu Bello, the great-great grandson of Uthman dan Fodio and Premier of the Northern region, used to have his flowing robes stuffed with banknotes which he then distributed to the electorate. For the Sardauna, that munificence took the place of campaigning. This was aptly captured by John Meagher, in his ‘The Establishment of Military Government in Nigeria’ of February 16, 1966, with additional information from the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA) in Maryland, USA. So, on May…

Deborah: Atiku Abubakar and why votes are thicker than blood By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

Distressing pieces of bad news are everywhere. From the murder of Miss Deborah Samuel Yakubu by students of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto last Thursday, to the immediate distancing of Nigerian politicians from her killing, hope that a post-Muhammadu Buhari Nigeria will not be clone of its unjust and inequitable era seems to be fading. Between the Deborah murder, the political mockery on the political arena and the lack of regards for Nigerians by Nigerian rulers, two explainers respond to the distresses: They are the Sekere and the…

Emefiele the tortoise wants to marry the King’s daughter By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

As the melee I describe as the Godwin Emefiele malady gains traction, one anecdote that seems to capture it can be found in the song of late Ibadan, Oyo State-born Yoruba Awurebe music maestro, Dauda Epo Akara. The malady is unexampled for its cunning. In it, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Emefiele, seeks to disadvantage others in the scramble for Nigeria’s Number One office, simply because he holds the key to the Nigerian vault and opens it at will to President Muhammadu Buhari, his home and a coterie of…

To survive Online challenge, media should embrace plural journalism, says Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

Dr. Festus Adedayo is a political communication scholar, author and lawyer. He was a media adviser to two executive governors. In this interview with ROTIMI AGBOLUAJE of The Guardian Newspapers, he spoke on the challenges facing media in Nigeria today.   How can the media industry produce quality hands for this generation?   IT’S distressing when you look at the media industry. At the time we got into journalism, our predecessors told us that we didn’t meet the industry at its prime. Even the one we met was such that…

How to memorialize the Alaafin By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

Gradually, the curtains are being drawn on the era of the late Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, the Alaafin of Oyo who left us in a thunderbolt manner. The eighth day inter-religious prayers were held yesterday. The next questions that will be asked from today are, how do we make this king live forever in our hearts and who is the next Alaafin? Since over a week of his departure, the world has witnessed a rainbow of reactions to his ascension to the hereafter. While his iconic cultural representation has been lauded…

Alaafin: I Am An Ake, Ibara Man by Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

In 1948, while Egbaland quaked under the yoke of a massive revolt spearheaded by Chief (Mrs.) Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti against the imposition of taxation on women by the Egba monarchy under the Alake, Oba Oladapo Samuel Ademola and allegations of impropriety in the use of these taxes, one small lad of about ten years resided inside the Egba palace whose life trajectory was going to be affected by the uprising. The young lad who lived in the palace as the non-violent protest raged was Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi. Unknown to many, even…

Alaafin: I’ve prepared my burial By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

  How was I to know that that meeting I had with the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, on March 2, 2022, was the last between a father and his son? In the last couple of hours of hearing of his passing, I have scrutinized, without success, memories of anything unusual in the sky on that day that probably spoke of the looming calamity that would befall the Oyo palace. The sky was the usual grey, without a foreboding countenance; the palace courtiers were the usual ensemble, spraying entrants…

Feeble dance of the Tinubu, Osinbajo masquerade By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

The most appropriate representation of the impending 2023 presidential election contest for the Yoruba is what is called the Odun e’gun or the Egungun Festival contest. It is a festival cum contest in which masquerades file out in their rainbow colour regalia, with a mammoth crowd gathered to watch them dance. As of today, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Yemi Osinbajo are the Yoruba people’s two biggest masquerades in this odun egun.   The Alagbaa, one entrusted with the traditional right to preside over the ancestral rites of the festival is…

Dele Bello, Oseni: When squash players die, do their racquets die? By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

On January 10, 2022, after a tiresome game of squash at the Ibadan Recreation Club, I walked upstairs to the section’s gym. As I began a bout of expelling the recalcitrant mass of protoplasm that had made my midriff its place of hibernation, it just occurred to me that, for months, I hadn’t seen the man who single-handedly procured the equipment in the gym while he was chairman of the section, Dele Bello, affectionately called DB. So I put a call through to him which was unanswered. The second day…

Rotimi Williams alive in Wole Olanipekun By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

Since his death in March 2006, not minding the galaxy of topnotch legal colossi that Nigeria has sired ever since, many schools of thought hold that Nigeria had not been able to reincarnate Chief Frederick Rotimi Alade Williams, QC, SAN. I argue to the contrary, however, that, in Chief Wole Olanipekun, Williams is very much alive with the Nigerian bar. The late Queen’s Counsel had oscillated in the legal firmament, both literally and with his immense physical stature. Like Williams, Olanipekun has also traversed the world of law. First Nigerian…