Tag: Festus Adedayo

Crimson As Colour of Mrs. Tinubu’s Wolf and Sheep Allegory By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

Did Itsekiri, Delta State-born Senator representing Lagos in Nigeria’s National Assembly, Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu, nee Ikusebiala – interpreted, meaning, “death’s most fitting analogy is a sleep” – wife of the Asiwaju of Lagos, All Progressives Congress (APC’s) National Leader and ex-Lagos State governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, know the implication of stirring the hornet’s nest? That was what she did last week when she introduced the wolf and sheep allegory into the current national discourse on the security situation in Nigeria.   Last Tuesday, at the thick of a dense discourse which…

Pantami: Buhari’s Terrorism-Canceling In Name Of Region And Religion By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

On Christmas day in 2009, Nigeria’s Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, aged 23, having been born December 22, 1986, attempted to detonate plastic explosives that were hidden in his underwear. He had boarded a Northwest Airlines Flight 253 heading from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, with 289 passengers on board. Providence however rescued those souls as the explosives refused to explode, burning instead Abdulmutallab’s laps and genitalia. About three years after, on February 16, 2012, a United States federal court convicted him on eight counts bordering on his criminality. These included an attempt…

Monguno’s missing $1b: Fraud or Freudian slip?, by Festus Adedayo

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Unbeknown to many Nigerians who haven’t heard him speak, Major General Babagana Monguno (retd), President Muhammadu Buhari’s National Security Adviser, secretly admires self-styled Mr. Bombastic, Jamaican-American reggae musician, singer and Disc Jockey, Orville Richard Burrel, better known by his stage name, Shaggy. Suave and glib, with words gliding effortlessly through his mouth like okra soup skids at the slightest prodding, Monguno can electrify and disarm his audience, not with guns but with bombasts. A few weeks ago, Monguno addressed the press on what he labeled the Federal Government’s newfound resolve…

Buhari and His Tinubu Frankenstein By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

The news last week that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had begun a probe into the finances of former governor of Lagos State and All Progressives Congress (EFCC) strongman, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, literally shattered the Nigerian political airwaves. In the news, the EFCC reportedly wrote a letter to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) asking it to furnish the commission with details of Tinubu’s assets declaration form. Dated November 6, 2020, marked CR/3000/EFCC/LS/Vol4/322 and signed by its then Zonal Head, Abdulrasheed Bawa who is now the EFCC chairman,…

Kadaria, Kagara and abductors of our collective intelligence, By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

On sighting the headline of her piece entitled Nigerian Media: Let’s Stop Ethnic Profiling!, I initially thought well-respected media mogul, Kadaria Ahmed, was set to confront a media orthodoxy. Though it was plain, unambiguous and self-explanatory, in a moment, I imagined that that piece was about to collapse ancient established theses about the Nigerian media dominance and vain hold on power. This is because I love anyone who audaciously perforates the majesty of principalities and powers, persons, objects or places.   This was what carved a special place of regards…

Gov. Bala Mohammed’s paradise for AK-47, cows and Fulani, By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

At the risk of being charged for excessive hyperbolism, “AK-47,” “cows” and the word “Fulani” are the most notorious clichés on parade in Nigeria today. And, come to think of it, they are woven together in narratives of the affliction that threaten to tear Nigeria asunder today. As if by coincidence, the three also bear very similar traits that unite them. While the Fulani herdsman is one of the most ubiquitous tribes in Africa, encircling the region like a contagious pestilence and sowing tears and sorrows in their trails, the…

Nigeria’s cow war: Northern elites as Orogun Adedigba, By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

Oyin Adejobi, late Yoruba cripple thespian, renowned for his famous African alternative dispute resolution drama sketches called Kootu Asipa of the 1980s, once allegorized the story of how he became disabled. In Orogun Adedigba, (the wicked co-wife) an autobiographical movie, Adejobi narrativized how his mother’s jealously wicked co-wife puffed up the fire of a destructive potion that immobilized him for life. That singular malediction became the burden Adejobi shouldered for his 74 years on earth. Though the Osogbo-born thespian’s stepmother’s potion succeeded in crippling him, it couldn’t stop the realization…

SUNDAY IGBOHO AND THE SPIRIT OF OGBORI ELEMOSO BY FESTUS ADEDAYO

Emporium Reporters

Two of Yorubaland’s most prized states’ helmsmen – Governors Oluwarotimi Akeredolu and Seyi Makinde – have made very strong but seemingly diametrically opposed positions on the security of their people, making it the most talked issue in the nation today. In recent time, their Ondo and Oyo States have become hotbeds of the scalding hot security crises in Northeastern and Northwestern Nigeria. Flakes of the unending years of savage Boko Haram war in the Northeast are whooshing gently but destructively and settling on Western Nigeria.   Fleeing displaced Northerners who…

Tinubu, run! Please, run! By Festus Adedayo

Emporium Reporters

What could have prompted Aunt Adelina to declare in The Feast of the Goat that “Well, that’s what politics is, you make your way over corpses…”? After seeing what politics and politicians do with us in Nigeria, should I have asked that question in the first instance? Optimists that Nigerian politicians are, they have started a race ahead of God to the year 2023; and they do not appear to mind stepping on the blood and the corpses of their brothers into that office they covet so badly. While at…

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,…