Tag: Festus Adedayo

Nigeria’s Cat and Mouse Fight With Amnesty International Festus Adedayo

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“Where the cat is a kitten, the court is wretched… No man there would rest at night because of rodents, for we mice would destroy many men’s malt, and you rats would tear men’s clothes were it not for the cat of the court who can pounce on you. If you rats had your way, you could not rule yourselves” – William Langland, ‘The Parliament of Rats and Mice’. There is this bitterly hostile rivalry between cats, mice and rats that is as old as antiquity. Unable to find a…

Commodore Olawunmi and the maladies this time By Festus Adedayo

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An early morning inferno broke out in Circus Maximus, Rome on June 19, 64 A.D. It spread like bushfire through the ancient city. Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar’s reaction was immediate: he scapegoated Roman Christians of the time and inflicted a persecution scarcely heard of in Roman history on them. Highly chagrined by the nauseating no-holds-barred interview granted by Retired Commodore Kunle Olawunmi on Channels television last week which exposed its security underbelly, the current Nigerian government found the template of this Roman emperor, renowned for debaucheries and political murders, fascinating.…

The Uokha and Ohanmi washed away road By Festus Adedayo

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A photograph gained notoriety on the social media last week. It was a washed away asphalt of a road constructed at Ohanmi in the Owan East Local Government Area of Edo State. Said to have been awarded by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the four-kilometer asphaltic road spanned Uokha and Ohanmi areas. In less than three months of its construction, the road got washed away, as revealed by the photograph. A federal Permanent Secretary is even said to hail from the area. Construction of roads of such…

WHY DID ‘EXPENSIVE’ BACK THE ENTRANCE? By Festus Adedayo

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With a feeling of revulsion and melancholy, the people of Akure, Ondo State, looked forward to marking the date, August 16, 2021. Thirty eight years before then, specifically on that day in 1983, the crème de la crème of the city had been murdered in cold blood in the federal elections of that year. Chief Robert Agbayewa, National Party of Nigeria (NPN) chairman; Babatunde Agunbiade, Majority Leader, Ondo House of Assembly; Olaiya Fagbamigbe, renowned publisher and member of the National Assembly, were all literally barbecued in daylight inferno due to…

Buhari: How not to fail By Festus Adedayo

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President Muhammadu Buhari made one of the most down-to-earth statements of his presidency last Thursday, though by proxy. After meeting Nigerian security chiefs at the Aso Rock Villa, the National Security Adviser, (NSA) Babagana Monguno, claimed Buhari said that he dreaded failure in office, so much; and I dare literalize it, like leprosy. “And (President Buhari) also made it very, very (italics, mine) clear that he’s not ready to exit government as a failure,” Monguno said. It was an opportunity for Monguno to thump the Buhari government’s chest. President Buhari,…

Is Babangida also a master satirist?, by Festus Adedayo

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In 1964, the Nigerian Tribune’s editorial comment, entitled: “Where do we go from here?”, a scurrilous attack on the Premier Ladoke Akintola’s government of the Western Region, published on April 16 of that year, landed its editor, Ilobu, now Osun State-born Ayo Ojewumi, alias Pen Atalanta, in a hot soup of sedition charges. The comment contained one of the newspaper’s most mordant strictures ever. It labeled the Akintola government’s actions “awful, stinking, disgraceful and ugly,” and accused it of “reckless squandermania and abuse of office.” Last Friday, while fielding questions…

Abba Kyari: Who, what shot the Sheriff? By Festus Adedayo

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In the Preface to my book entitled Ayinla Omowura: Life and Times of an Apala Legend, (2020) I equated stardom and zenith of social ladder with the purport of a Yoruba wise-saying which says, epo ni mo ru, oniyangi, ma ba t’emi je. This literally translates to mean, anyone who shoulders a heavy gallon of palm oil should avoid the destructive tendency of the stone-laced ground he walks upon.   I deployed the above to explain the premature death of Omowura, one of Yoruba’s most evocative traditional African musicians, who…

Mala Buni and those the gods want to destroy By Festus Adedayo

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Sometimes, the writer could wear the apparel of Nostradamus. In a May 2, 2021 piece I entitled, Buni and APC’S 40 years in power grandstanding, I sounded a note of warning that unless Yobe State Governor and All Progressives Congress (APC’s) Interim National Chairman, Mai Mala Buni, excused himself from the atypical dual office he holds, his party could be digging its own grave. Since he came on board the party in June, 2020, riding on the crest of a welter of condemnations against erstwhile party chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, whose…

LUGARD AS PASTOR ADEFARASIN’S ELECTORAL ACT AMENDMENT DEVIL By Festus Adedayo

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Seventy six years after his death on April 11, 1945 and cremation at the Woking Crematorium, Woking Borough in Surrey, England, poor Frederick John Dealtry Lugard has been killed many times thereafter by Nigerians. Though he died peacefully at the age of 87, having been born on January 22, 1858, this soldier, administrator and author, born in Fort St. George, Madras, India, raised at Worcester and educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, has remained one of the most vilified colonial officers in Nigeria. His presiding over Nigeria’s incongruous matrimonial…

Will Buhari learn from Zuma in Estcourt Prison?, By Festus Adedayo

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In ex-President Jacob Zuma’s jailing for 15 months by South Africa’s Constitutional Court, Africa and humanity in general are dragged to school by the nape of their dresses. Author of celebrated Yoruba classic, Igbi Aye Nyi – Life swivels like a wind – Chief T. A. A. Ladele, had earlier taught the world one or two of the Zuma lessons. Written in 1978, Ladele, an Okeho, Oyo State-born History teacher at Durbar College, Oyo and pioneer Headmaster of Baptist School, Iwere-Ile, was one of Nigeria’s early writers. In, Igbi Aye…