Opinion

Tinubu, Yusuph Olaniyonu and hunger protest

Published

2 years ago

August 9, 2024

Trends Admin

Tunde Odesola

Tinubu, Yusuph Olaniyonu and hunger protest

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, August 9, 2024)

Returning home from work on a humid evening in 2016, I asked my children their thoughts about visiting America. They took their gaze away from the TV, searched my eyes for seriousness, smiled doubtfully and returned their gaze to the TV, exhibiting an air of ‘we have outgrown your pranks, this old man’. America ko, Africa ni.

“OK, guys,” I said deadpan, “We’re going to the US Embassy next week.” That should break the ice, so I thought, as I watched their faces light up suddenly, all speaking about the same time.

A voice said, “Let’s go there, Baba T!” Another, whose legs couldn’t reach the pedals of a car, said, “I’ll drive all of you to Lagos.” Yet another said, “I will issue all of you visas, you don’t need to go to the embassy.” Laughter. Voices. “You all don’t need visas to America when I’ll fly the plane,” a voice said. They all laughed at their father.

How many children does this man have, you must be wondering. Don’t wander too far; destined is the head that picks the choicest meat from the pot – orí la fí ń mú eran lawo. Shoot your shot at the orange tree – none, one, two or more oranges may drop. I shot my shot and more than one orange dropped into my arms. I’m not an eku eda, the proliferating house rat. My wife and I wanted two, God multiplied the two. Anyway, I admit children are gifts from God, lest any man should boast about his testosterone.

So, to Lagos we went from Osogbo, spending the night at grandpa’s house in Lagos and heading to the embassy a day after. I needn’t apply for a visa because I had one and had just returned from the US the year before. It was my Gang I needed visas for.

We went through security protocols at the embassy and in less than five minutes we were out of the embassy with visas in the kitty.

Weeks later, I booked tickets for my Gang and I but I didn’t inform them until a couple of days before departure. I always enjoy surprises and suspense.

On the way to the airport, my children were still suspicious of me, thinking the ‘US trip’ was one of my jokes. They were probably looking for me to burst out laughing, saying, “America ko, Africa ni, let’s return home, jare! I was only kidding you guys.”

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They struggled to bottle their excitement when we headed towards the plane, pinching themselves to wake up from the dream. They burst into stifled joy when the plane taxied off the tarmac, airborne. They locked hands, whispered silently among themselves as excited children do, and prayed not to be woken from dreamland. It was their first time on a plane.

We landed in America to the cold embrace of winter. Way into our vacation, my younger brother, Niyi, and a family friend, Benjamin Orusara and his wife, Sola, advised me to leave the kids behind to continue their schooling in the US. “Leave them? How? How much is school fees here,” I asked. “It’s free and compulsory for elementary, middle and high schools,” they told me. They added that it’s a jailable offence for parents or guardians not to send their children or wards to school in America. It was easy to reach a decision because their mother was already holidaying in the US, ahead of our visit.

So, I requested their report cards to be sent to me from Nigeria. Report cards sent, we all headed to the registration centre. This was before the commencement of the academic year. The only questions the registration officials asked were their names, ages and addresses, nothing more. The officials knew they were new to the country but it didn’t matter. Education was all that mattered.

The registration officials were surprised to see the quantity and quality of subjects my children had done in Nigeria, hinting that the subjects were high for their ages. They said I could move them up to their next classes to match up with their level of knowledge but I said they should continue in the classes fit for their ages.

First day in school, my Gang returned home with personalised laptops with their names ingrained on them along with books and other learning materials. You surely can’t get that in any public back home in Nigeria. They also brought home chargers for their laptops and syllabi. If your parents can’t afford stationeries, you don’t have to worry, there are papers, erasers, calculators, pencils, pens, markers, crayons, photocopiers and printers, textbooks, highlighters, lab coats, goggles etc in class for students to use.

In middle school, Nigeria’s equivalent of primary school, pupils in the school club called Green Power built a race car which they used in competing in a car race involving other primary schools. It’s not a pangolo or cardboard car. It’s a real car with big tyres and engines akin to Formula One cars. One of my Gang members was a member of the club and I witnessed one such competition as a parent. The Green Power club is also available in High School, where they build more sophisticated cars and gadgets.

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The middle school also owns an 18-wheeler trailer used by its music band to convey musical equipment to music shows and competitions. Imagine!

On a calm weekend in 2019, my Gang told me to take them out to a skating park called Insanity. It wasn’t their first time at the park, more so, they had been skating way back in Osogbo. So, I felt no worries about taking them to the park. But going by the name of the park, I should have known better. A terrible fall and everything went insane.

Blood splattered everywhere on the rink, the mouth was badly impacted, and teeth were missing. It was unsightly. I gathered my boy in my arms, took him to the bathroom, and washed him up, but the blood didn’t stop. My Gang was in disarray.

But Prof, as his nickname goes, showed uncommon courage and stoicism. He didn’t cry, he was calm and coherent, holding rolls and rolls of paper towels to his bleeding mouth.

I should’ve called 911 and accident and emergency rescue officials, firefighters and the police would have flooded the premises in less than five minutes.

At that time, I didn’t know there was a Fire Service Department directly opposite the skating park which was beside the county’s police station. I was a confused J-J-C. When my wife saw the injury, she went berserk.

I called my church shepherd, Pastor Peter Oyediran, a registered nurse. He told me to bring Prof to the city hospital. Like a deer escaping from the ambush of lions, I throttled down to the hospital, mindful that I stood being pulled over and fined for speeding. May God bless Pastor Oyediran, who despite just getting off work when I called him, still came to the hospital with us.

The city hospital, which is equivalent to Nigeria’s General Hospital, was like a skyscraper made of green glass and gold. As we stepped feet on the premises, courteous and well-dressed medical officials took over. They put Prof on a stretcher and wheeled him away after getting his name, age and my phone number.

They put him on a bed in an examination room fitted with the best gadgets known to medicine. One by one, they explained to me that they were going to run a comprehensive check to see if there was any damage to his eyes, ears, brain, nose, skull etc before zeroing down on the primary place of trauma, the mouth. They said damage to any organ in the skull might need to be treated first.

I breathe the breath which dying Nollywood actors on sickbeds breathe to signify the end of life – uhnnnnnn, thinking if I was sold, the money I would fetch wouldn’t be enough to offset the hospital bills.

Doctors, nurses and various medical officials were smiling at me as they explained in detail each procedure they were doing. Before carrying out any procedure, they explained to Prof, too and got his consent just as they got mine. I was smiling the kind of smile kidnap victims smile when kidnappers cracked a joke.

As treatment was ongoing, two medical officials came to me and gave me a form to fill out. The form was a feedback mechanism designed to know what the patient or patient’s parent feels about the quality of medicare provided by the hospital.

Investigations completed, Prof was given the all-clear, leaving us with the teeth and mouth – which were treated. The hospital then referred us to a children’s dental hospital.

Before leaving the county hospital after more than two hours, I lumbered to the reception to collect the medical bill which I expected to send me into bankruptcy and slavery. The receptionist flashed me a smile and asked Prof how he was doing. I wrinkled my face in a smile, thinking ‘iku de!’. She said, “You can go.” I asked, “Go where?” thinking payment was done at another department. “You can go home, it’s free.”

I turned to Prof, “Let’s go, boy.” Alas, I found my voice. We made our way to the parking lot, with me praying for the receptionist not to call us back, saying, ‘I’m sorry, it’s a case of mistaken identity. You guys need to pay.’

We went back home and I fell on my face, thanking God. Prof later got treatment from the periodontist, who referred us to a private endodontist, whom we also visited for treatment. His teeth are now properly healed.

A few days ago, a former Editor of ThisDay newspaper and former Ogun State Commissioner for Information, Alhaji Yusuph Olaniyonu, wrote an article titled, “At 58, God has given me a second chance,” in which he narrated how an elective surgery in a government hospital nearly sent him to an early grave.

Olaniyonu wrote, “It all started on 19 February (2024) when I drove myself into a government hospital in Abuja for an elective surgery. The surgery itself was meant to last for a few minutes and I should return home not later than two days thereafter. That was what I was told. But that was not what happened.

“Since that fateful Monday morning, I have gone into and out of the surgical theatre nine times for six major operations and three minor procedures. I have spent six days in the Intensive Care Unit, surviving on oxygen and relieving myself through catheters. I have become totally dependent on others for the performance of even such personal functions as cleaning myself. I have lost 20 kilogrammes in five months and was reduced to a mere sack of bones. I have lost the use of my limbs and, like a toddler, I had to learn to walk again. I have spent millions of naira and thousands of dollars of my own and other people’s money. I have travelled hundreds of kilometres to find help. I have reached the very bottom of despair itself, and I had made plans for my own burial. But somehow, I am still alive.”

Like countless Nigerians who have been sent to untimely deaths, Olaniyonu was almost killed by a consultant urologist who misdiagnosed and mistreated a disease as common as a non-malignant prostate. Only heavens know what Mr Consultant would be teaching medical students and how many patients he had maimed and killed.

It was to Egypt Olaniyonu ran, where friendly and dedicated medical staff retied the thread of his life which hung in the balance, contrary to the unfriendly and shoddy treatment he received back home after paying exorbitant fees. Nigeria would have lost Olaniyonu, one of the nation’s finest journalists, to professional sloppiness, and nothing would have happened.

There is too much blood on the hands of the country’s medical professionals and it’s high time cases of negligence were brought to book.

Alhaji Olaniyonu, this case should not be papered over, please. The consultant urologist must be brought to book. If you, as a journalist and lawyer, do not ensure justice, who else would? Is it the uncountable okada riders and poor accident victims that would?

Alhaji, just imagine yourself in a bamboo casket, wrapped in white cloth, tied up, and lowered into a grave. From the grave, look at your beautiful wife, Odunayo, and your sons, Oladapo, Oladipo and Oladepo, all wearing black, and doing dust-to-dust. Is that how all your earthly ‘là á là, kò ó kò, jà án jà án’ would’ve come to an end through the shoddiness of one consultant?

I agree that humans came from God and unto Him we shall return – inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un – but the Quranic injunction does not say anyone should be sent to an early grave by sloppiness.

I brought out the educational and medical architectures available to a fresh immigrant family like mine in the US to show that our beloved country, Nigeria, is nowhere on the map of countries where leadership works democracy to provide abundant life for the good of the majority.

There’s nothing that fuels the ongoing national protest against bad governance than the glaring fact that a majority of the Nigerian populace has been reduced to slaves and scavengers in a country, whose resources have perpetually been cornered by subsequent leaderships that are richer than the Nigerian state.

I think the ongoing protest against hunger should continue because the Bola Tinubu administration understands the badness and goodness of protest. Tinubu himself led many protests against bad governance in the past. He knows protest is a landmine that could lead to anywhere and anything.

Nigerians don’t expect Tinubu to turn Nigeria into the US or Egypt but he should please leave it the way General Muhammadu Buhari left it in the throes of death, Nigeria should not die in Tinubu’s hands, please.

Asiwaju, you claim to be the builder of modern Lagos, have the building materials you used in building Lagos finished ni?

Please, do something, omo Olodo Ide, Nigeria is collapsing.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

X: @Tunde_Odesola

Tinubu, Yusuph Olaniyonu and hunger protest

Opinion

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

1 day ago

April 4, 2026

Trends Admin

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism

Farooq Kperogi

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

You may resent Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but you can’t deny that he has earned his place in Nigerian political history as one of the, if not the, most consequential opposition figures in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. He constructed a carefully planned political and rhetorical template to oppose central governments effectively and then converted the symbolic capital he gained into a path to the presidency.

By May 29, Tinubu will mark his third year as president. He is beset by the same constraints his predecessors faced and is reacting to opponents almost exactly as they did, perhaps with even more viciousness and guile.

But the opposition seems to be in the wilderness. It is flustered, incoherent, spineless, and in strategic disarray. It would do well to study how an opposition Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would have confronted an increasingly tyrannical and devious President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

If Bola Ahmed Tinubu were in opposition today, watching a president preside over widening and deepening oceans of blood and rising insecurity, constrict the space for alternative parties, intensify economic hardship and offer only perfunctory condolence optics amid horrendous mass slaughters, he would launch a sustained, strategic, organized, merciless and unsparing regime of critical engagement using every available medium. We know this because we have a record of him doing precisely that.

My recollection of his key moves as an opposition politician aren’t intended to be exhaustive. They are merely representative.

In March 2013, for instance, in remarks widely reported at the time, Tinubu said that if President Goodluck Jonathan could not guarantee security, he should “honorably resign.” By November 2014, his tone had hardened. According to TheCable, Tinubu said that in any serious country Jonathan would have resigned over the scale of insecurity in the country.

In the same 2014, he accused Jonathan’s government of “failure, lack of capacity, vision and creativity” and of misleading Nigerians about the true state of security.

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That is the vocabulary Tinubu reaches for when he is not in power. He did not treat insecurity as a complicated policy arena deserving of cautious language. He treated it as evidence of unfitness for office.

An aggregation of all his statements about the insecurity that pervaded the country when Jonathan was in government (which has become worse on his watch) amounted to this: insecurity equals loss of legitimacy. That was one of his most potent rhetorical blitzkriegs against Jonathan, which traveled beyond the shores of Nigeria.

The same pattern holds for economic distress. On January 11, 2012, in an article published by PM News, Tinubu attacked Jonathan’s removal of fuel subsidy, dubbing it the “Jonathan tax.” He said the policy breached the social contract between the rulers and the ruled, described it as a punitive imposition on the poor and, crucially, urged Nigerians to resist it.

He wrote that citizens had a duty to “peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition.” That line matters. It shows that Tinubu, in opposition, does not merely diagnose hardship. He authorizes not just rhetorical dissent but physical rebellion against it.

Following his exhortation, there were disabling, convulsive and fatal nationwide protests and strikes. Tinubu aligned himself with that mood. He did not urge patience. He gave moral and political cover to resistance. Some even said he funded the protests, called “Occupy Nigeria,” in which at least 12 people died. It ultimately forced Jonathan to reverse the withdrawal of subsidies, which Tinubu is now implementing with more soullessness than Jonathan ever did.

He also does not leave resistance unorganized. On February 6, 2013, opposition parties merged into what became the All Progressives Congress. Tinubu was one of the principal architects of that coalition. The merger’s stated aim was to end corruption, insecurity and economic stagnation. It was a calculated attempt to convert grievance into power. Tinubu did not wait for electoral cycles to do their work. He engineered an alternative.

When he believed the Jonathan administration was using institutions against the opposition, he said so without equivocation. In January 2014, during the Rivers State political crisis, Tinubu described the disruption of opposition activity as “a frontal assault against democracy” and even a “coup against democracy.” In November 2014, after the chaos at the National Assembly, he again held Jonathan responsible. He saw pattern, not accident, and he said it plainly.

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He went further. In October 2014, when Jonathan sought legislative approval for a $1 billion loan to fight Boko Haram, Tinubu opposed it. He argued that the funds could be used for political purposes rather than security. In other words, he was willing to recast even security spending as partisan maneuvering. That instinct has not been erased by time.

Now bring this record forward.

On April 2, 2026, President Tinubu met victims of the Plateau killings at the airport rather than visiting affected communities, with the presidency citing time and logistical constraints. Strip away the explanations and look at it from the vantage point of opposition Tinubu. This is the sort of image he historically converts into a political weapon. He would not defend it. He would amplify it as proof of cold detachment and deadly incompetence.

In fact, the seemingly intractable and worsening sanguinary communal upheavals that are spreading all over the country and the rising mass abductions for ransom that seem to be unabating would have constituted more than sufficient grounds for opposition Tinubu to delegitimize the presidency of President Tinubu.

There is also the matter of political space. Tinubu’s own rise was made possible by the constellation of opposition forces. The 2013 merger was a deliberate construction of an alternative to an incumbent he portrayed as incompetent and anti-democratic. If he were outside power today and perceived any effort, real or imagined, to frustrate the emergence of rival parties, such as we are seeing with the ADC, he would not respond with restraint. His record from 2013 to 2015 shows a readiness to build countervailing structures and to accuse incumbents of undermining democracy.

In early 2013 when there were credible fears that INEC might block or frustrate the registration of the new opposition merger that became the APC, including the controversy over a rival party using the same acronym, Tinubu framed any attempt to deny registration as authoritarian sabotage of democracy by the president.

Tinubu’s stance as opposition was confrontational and absolutist. When he was outside power, he interpreted procedural or institutional resistance in maximalist terms as existential threats to democracy, not routine political or legal friction.

And he routinely blamed it on the sneaky wiles of the president, not the institutions that were responsible for the actions he railed against. Opposition Tinubu would have put the blame for INEC’s withdrawal of recognition of the David Mark-led leadership of the ADC squarely on President Tinubu’s desk and would have called it Tinubu’s fascist, cowardly, fear-inspired strangulation of a rival, oppositional political space.

What emerges from this is not a series of isolated reactions but a coherent oppositional method. Tinubu indicts insecurity as presidential failure, frames economic pain as betrayal, promotes and legitimizes physical public resistance, works to consolidate opposition power and heaps all blames for the misfortunes of the opposition on the president. He combined rhetoric with organization. He did not do half measures.

Tinubu in opposition would not recognize the defenses now offered on behalf of Tinubu in power. He would reject them, loudly and repeatedly, and he would mobilize against them.

Criticism of Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the grounds that his NADECO-era allies or Southwest loyalists no longer protest policies they had consistently condemned misses a basic truth about power. People rarely mobilize against themselves, their benefactors or the networks that sustain them. Expecting otherwise is naïve.

The more useful lesson is not to lament their silence but to study Tinubu’s own playbook when he stood outside power. He exemplified disciplined opposition, coalition building, strategic messaging and relentless pursuit of institutional leverage. Those outside the orbit of power should stop waiting for insiders to revolt and instead organize to displace them. Power is not donated; it is taken. Tinubu has proved that.

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Opinion

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Published

2 days ago

April 3, 2026

Trends Admin

Azu Ishiekwene

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Azu Ishiekwene

In many parts of the country, the rains poured down earlier in the week, bringing much physical and psychological relief from the searing heat.

The absence of electricity from public supply channels made it worse. Average daytime temperatures throughout March ranged from 33 degrees to 38 degrees centigrade in Lagos and Abuja, respectively.

Nigeria’s public electricity grid must rank among the most intractable problems any developing country could face. There is hardly anything more constant than the announcement of grid collapse, which leaves businesses and homes seeking alternatives and incurring unplanned expenses while paying for electricity not supplied.

What Candidate Tinubu promised

During his 2023 campaign, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said that if he didn’t fix the problem, he shouldn’t be voted in for a second term. He must be regretting that statement now. Since the beginning of his administration in May 2023, there have been multiple grid collapses, with the highest number recorded in 2024 at 12. Even when incidents were fewer, sporadic outages have continued. The failure, on face value, is attributed to a mix of technical, structural and administrative weaknesses in the system. But there is more to it in the sense in which it is said: “The more you see, the less you understand.”

So unreliable is the public electricity supply that the Presidential villa appropriated N10 billion in 2025, and an additional N7 billion in 2026 for the installation of a solar mini grid that will effectively disconnect Nigeria’s seat of power from the national grid, bedevilled by ageing transmission lines which collapse repeatedly from sabotage, poor maintenance, and frequency imbalances.

The joke is on us

Nigerians, ever ready to make a jest of their tragic maladies and long suffering, are beaten when it comes to power outages. They are shocked beyond humour. If the high-tension cables were not too high overhead, people in communities through which they run would not hesitate to hang their laundry on them – knowing from experience that the lines are just part of the landscape and are very likely to be without electricity.

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I have seen a video of a masquerade performing on a streetlight pole. Of course, the crowd applauded its invincibility; yet, both the crowd and the masquerade knew better. The lines had not been electrified for months and were unlikely to be for the spell of the circus.

Hope was rekindled at the beginning of the Tinubu administration when news filtered through that the currently embattled former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, had not only produced a blueprint, but was going to be given the assignment of sorting out Nigeria’s notorious electricity sector. I learnt reliably that, as part of his plan, El-Rufai was discussing a $10 billion investment agreement with the Saudis before he ran into rough weather.

The coming of Adebayo

That was how Adebayo Adelabu took the job – a job at which he has performed so disastrously, saying he failed would be an honour. But it’s not his fault – it’s the fault of the President who appointed him and the Senate that cleared him for a job that he was clearly incompetent to perform, either based on his record or based on any hope of redemption. He is brilliant, but the power sector is littered with the remains of brilliant people, among whom he is now a fossil.

His better years were when he worked as an auditor at PWC. He was also the Executive Director/CFO at First Bank, and later a deputy governor at the Central Bank. He may not have been directly responsible for the misfortunes of these institutions at the time, but he doesn’t exactly smell of roses.

In the normal course of things, his banking career should have been a yellow flag. Still, Nigeria being Nigeria, the quota system and political connections ensured that he defied gravity.

Then, in 2023, Tinubu offered him the position of Minister of Power, after his failed attempt to become governor of Oyo State on the platform of the Accord Party. That only worsened our misery. Adelabu will be best remembered for splitting electricity consumers into parallel payment bands that do not necessarily reflect improved services.

The thing is not that Adelabu failed at his job. It’s the lack of evidence that he tried. Mr Dan Kunle, an energy expert familiar with the history of that sector, told me that, “No one is saying a power minister should provide the resources to fix the sector from thin air. It’s for him to provide a solid framework that would create the right environment and attract sovereign intervention.”

Adelabu, like many of his predecessors, is running the power ministry in 2026 with the 1950 operational manual of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN). Yet, even then, when the country had a population of about 50 million, the British knew that electricity was an economic good. To provide meaningful and sustainable service, they had to prioritise not just the key administrative centres but also areas that could pay. That was why, for example, coal was shipped from Enugu to the Ijora Power Station in Lagos.

No roadmap

Adelabu has no roadmap, or if he has one for a population four times what it was under ECN, it’s a roadmap to nowhere. The same old problems persist: gas shortages, moribund plants, infrastructure deficits, massive debts, and frequent grid collapses, limiting supply to about 4,000 MW despite a capacity of 13,000 MW.

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While Adelabu may wring his hands alongside Nigerians when the lights trip off, the sector has been drowning under the yoke of N6 trillion in debt as of late 2025, fuelled by non-cost-reflective tariffs and unpaid bills to both generating and distribution companies. Some of the problems predate Adelabu, but his incompetence has worsened them.

Yet, he still has ambition. Not to redeem himself after his disastrous three years as minister, but to become the governor of Oyo State. Obviously, he believes the reward for poor performance is a higher office. He is so shameless, it means nothing to him that he holds the Olympic record for national grid collapse. It means nothing to him that Nigerian businesses are powered by Indian generators and their homes by Chinese solar panels.

Examples from Africa

Egypt, with a population of 110 million, has 100 percent universal electricity access, supported by a heavy reliance on gas (81 percent) and growing low-carbon sources like hydropower. This ensures a stable supply amid population pressures.

South Africa serves 85-90 percent of its 62 million residents but faces severe shortages. Frequent load shedding persists due to Eskom’s debt, ageing infrastructure, and maintenance issues, despite high per-capita generation.

Ghana reaches 88-89 percent coverage for 34 million people, with hydro and thermal power dominating. Urban areas enjoy near-99 percent access, while rural areas still have gaps and occasional outages.

Kenya hits 76 percent for 56 million, excelling in urban (97 percent) and geothermal power. Rural expansion lags, though targets aim for full access by 2030.

Compared to the countries above, only 57 percent of Nigerians are grid-connected, with outages occurring 85 percent of the time, and poor metering and corruption that sustain estimated billing and inefficiencies.

After watching Adelabu perform so poorly over the last two years on the national stage, I was hoping he would go away quietly, under the shadow of the darkness he has fostered. But since he insists that he won’t leave quietly – or appears determined to stay on – I’m considering a self-appointed mission to drag him to Oyo State to see how he will turn their night into day.

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.

Opinion

Super Bowl: Can Africa Spring Up anew?

Published

1 week ago

March 28, 2026

Trends Admin

Super Bowl: Can Africa Spring Up anew?

With a landmass of approximately 9.83 million km² and a population of 334–336 million as of 2025—making it the third-largest country in the world—the United States is massive. It is four times the size of Algeria, Africa’s largest country, and dwarfs Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation.

The United States is a titan among nations. Who knows—perhaps neologists will coin a new term if the U.S. eventually purchases or forcefully takes Greenland from Denmark, further surging its landmass and population. When this massive scale fuses with unparalleled infrastructure, world-class venues, and a vast market, the USA becomes an ideal host for international sporting events with strong returns on investment.

Between 1904 and 2025, the USA hosted one FIFA World Cup (with another to be co-hosted in 2026 with Mexico and Canada), four Summer Olympics, four Winter Olympics, and one FIBA Basketball World Cup. Unlike soccer, which is still finding its footing in the United States—even with Major League Soccer (MLS) having existed for 30 years—American football is the undisputed number-one sport. The Super Bowl—born from Lamar Hunt’s “light-bulb moment”—is the crown jewel. The Super Bowl has become what sociologists call a secular ritual, binding the social fabric of Americans together.

Beyond the Vince Lombardi Trophy, the Super Bowl has evolved into a global marketing masterpiece. From the famous 1984 Apple commercial introducing the Macintosh, which is studied in MBA classes worldwide, to the 1979 Mean Joe Greene Coca-Cola commercial that showed genteel human warmth winning over fearsomeness, the intentionality of brands going head-to-head with rivals has been a recurring feature of every Super Bowl.

While the USA is always attractive for hosting events, the Super Bowl’s success pivots on intellection that results in ingenious marketing. For the recent Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026, two brands mirrored David Ben-Gurion’s principle of “taking the fight to the enemy.” Pepsi and Anthropic’s Claude entered with an offensive strategy: Claude’s AI ad—“Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”—was a calculated strike in the competitive AI market, while Pepsi’s polar bear blind test revived the sulphurous rivalry with Coca-Cola. Many companies use their ad slots to build brand identity and equity or announce arrival in the business world.

Where does Africa stand in this Super Bowl business and sports calculus? While developed nations are making groundbreaking launches with chutzpah and creativity from creative shops—all resulting in a participatory economy—Africa’s involvement is largely an on-the-field display of Négritude spirit and ravenous passion.

For Africa, the Super Bowl has become a “badge of honor” through representation. Mohammed Elewonibi, a Nigerian raised in Canada, was the first player of African origin to win a Super Bowl (XXVI, 1992, with the Washington Redskins). Since then, nearly 41 players of Nigerian origin or heritage have won—the most of any African country—including six who tasted victory with the recent Seattle Seahawks: Uchenna Nwosu, Nick Emmanwori, Boye Mafe, Jaxon Smith-Njigba (of Nigerian and Sierra Leonean roots), Jalen Milroe, and Olu Oluwatimi.

Yet, as impressive as African athletes are in making the continent proud, we have blatantly failed to translate that audience engagement into commercial windfalls like the Super Bowl on home soil. It is appalling that most of Africa’s sporting events—the Durban July Handicap, Senegalese wrestling (Laamb), or the Safari Rally—have not fully harnessed the intersection of sports and marketing. Even the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), despite its 3.45 billion cumulative viewers (far surpassing the Super Bowl’s ~125–127 million), lacks comparable marketing prestige. Why are there no global product launches during our matches? Why aren’t AI giants capitalizing on Africa’s tech startup boom?

Africa is being fed celery when it deserves the whole salad. This asymmetry stems from structural economic factors, but the genie is out of the bottle—we must be forward-looking. To turn African sporting events into “goldmines,” we must reinvent the industry, much as Cirque du Soleil did for the circus. Facing declining audiences, rising costs, and fierce competition, it lost its grip on the circus business. Cirque, however, escaped the dying circus business by reinventing it.

By viewing competition through a new lens, Africa can transform massive viewership into unparalleled economic advantage and value. Just as Cirque du Soleil created uncontested market space, African sports must adopt what W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne called a “Blue Ocean Strategy”—creating uncontested market space and making competition irrelevant. Much as we can not compete toe to toe with advanced economies , we should not follow them like zombies.

In their book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, the authors highlight how companies in “red oceans” fight for shrinking profits in crowded, defined markets. African sports events currently sit in those crowded red oceans. To elevate them, we need disruptive leaders willing to venture into untapped markets, create new demand, and unlock unlimited growth opportunities.

Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, in their book The Experience Economy, wrote about the need to transform commodities into experiences. As Africans, we have been able to move our sporting events from the commodity stage to the third stage—service delivery—but the experience stage is the North Star we should aspire to reach.

Our cultures, as varied as they are, define us. Despite dilution by Western civilization, our culture stands uneroded, like the mountains that litter our landscape and serve as a canopy to preserve our common heritage. This means our forefathers took culture into the realm of experience—something we are still grappling with in our sporting spectacles today. For us to make headway, our cultures—already bubbling with experience—must mix seamlessly with our sporting spectacles.

Now is the time to merge cultural events like the Eyo Festival, Argungu Festival, Gnaoua World Music Festival, Osun Osogbo Festival, Meskel Festival, and others with our sporting spectacles—that is the Blue Ocean Strategy. This can only be achieved through close collaboration between leaders in sports administration and marketing professionals selling experiences, and the time is now. As this is done, a line from David Diop’s poem Africa—“That is your Africa springing up anew”—would fill our lips.

The experience stage is the nirvana!

Toluwalope Shodunke

Can be reached via tolushodunke@yahoo.com