Playing Scrabble with the murderous king of Orile-Ifo

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, February 7, 2025)

Despite being jobless during the decade-long Great Depression that ravaged the industrialised West, American architect, Alfred Mosher Butts, never turned his mind into the devil’s workshop nor allowed idleness to find employment for his hands.

Butts reckoned Americans needed an indoor game to ease the stress of the biting depression, so he invented the trademark crossword game called Scrabble in 1938. The word ‘scrabble’, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, means ‘to use your fingers to quickly find something that you cannot see’.

Ever since I learned to play Scrabble in the 80s, and going ahead to become champion at the University of Lagos and Abia State University respectively, wordplay has luxuriated in my heart.

Everywhere I go, I unscramble the words on vehicles, billboards, number plates, packs, etc moulding letters into words to test and increase my word-power, and sharpen my word recall skill. Everywhere I go, I carry a pen, jotter and dictionary with me, writing down words and reading the dictionary from páálí to páálí.

Scrabble is psychedelic: a stimulant when you win; a depressant when you lose.

Though we lived two houses apart on Omotoye Estate, Orile Agege, Lagos, Uncle Paul Bassey – FIFA and CAF instructor – was already a national sports oracle when my homeboys and I were fledgling undergraduates in the second half of the 1980s. Good Lord, Uncle Paul loves Scrabble! Though he was our idol, we didn’t have the chance to know him intimately until one day when I set a trap for him.

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That day, as I opened the gate to our house while seeing a friend off, I saw Uncle Paul, aka PB, walking up the road. I put my hand through an opening in the gate and intentionally delayed the locking of the gate from outside while I waited for him to come within earshot.

When he was within range, I greeted him and stepped onto the road, alongside my friend, and I suddenly began, “Yesterday, I played five premiums in a game. I beat Lanre so badly, I felt pity for him.” My friend looked nonplussed, wondering how Scrabble crept into the little talk we were having before we got to the gate.

But the arrow of my message had hit the bull’s eye. Uncle Paul stopped and looked back, “You play Scrabble?” he asked. “Yes, sir,” I said, a laughter of accomplishment welling up inside me. “Can you meet me in my flat at PUNCH Quarters by 10 tonight?” he said. That was the moment I knew my rascality na follow come. We met at 10 pm, played four games and began a lifelong journey of mentorship, love, trust and integrity.

This was how I opened the door of Uncle Paul’s home to my scrabble-playing buddies on the estate and beyond. Here comes our line up: Niyi Adebayo (Poovy), Tayo Odusina (Scrappy), Seyi George, Adeyemi Adebayo aka Kisko (deceased); Leslie, Segun Adeyina (OB), Charles Onyeshidi (Charlo), Dele Taiwo; Duke Orusara (Ikéràbà), Lai Ibidunni (Oòshà), Kola Dada (Ògo), Biodun Oyegunle (Longman), Rashidi Odurinde (Ayétótó), among others. This is the first time ever I’m divulging the secret of how I ambushed PB and lured him to be my friend.

Every Saturday morning, we would gather at PB’s flat, play Scrabble late into night, sleep in his flat while some would go home. We would wake up to Scrabble early Sunday morning and continue till late into the night, with food and drinks provided by PB, whose wife, Aunty, and all-male children were always happy to see us.

Oh, Aunty! May her sweet soul continue to rest in peace. She was particularly pleased to welcome us because we kept her husband company at home during weekends. With many family members living under his roof, Uncle Paul’s house was a beehive. PB, who is currently the Chairman, Akwa United FC, was a former sports editor of PUNCH Newspaper, deputy General Manager, Champion Newspapers, before establishing Today Sports, a national sports newspaper which has been rested.

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To play Scrabble, you dip your hand into a small sack containing 100 tiles of calibrated English alphabets and scrabble for seven letters which you put on a rack, unscrambling them to form English words that you place on a tile board to earn a score. If you play all seven letters at once, bingo! – that’s a premium. A premium score gives you 50 additional marks to your original score.

In a video which went viral for its evilness, 73 years old Pa Areola Abraham was first shown kneeling and later prostrating on the floor as a nearby voice, which investigation said belonged to Ogunjobi, rained curses and death threats on him, his wife and children while physical assault lasted.

By his heartless conduct, the suspended king of Orile-Ifo, Òlórí-Òfo Abdulsemiu Ogunjobi, is likely not lettered enough to play the beautiful game called Scrabble. I’ll play some Scrabble with the letters of his village, O-R-I-L-E I-F-O, to x-ray the character of the bloodthirsty beast called king. Unscrambling the eight letters of the hamlet will give you many six, five, four, three and two-letter English anagrams.

However, I’m only going to dwell on the words that describe Ogunjobi, the misfit monarch, retired ruffian and serving scoundrel on the throne. O-R-I-L-E I-F-O will give you F-O-O-L. No be so? Na so. It will also give you F-O-O-L-E-R, F-O-I-L-E-R, O-I-L-E-R and O-R-I-O-L-E.

Are you following me, dear readers? Everyone knows who a fool is, except a fool. The F-O-O-L who calls himself a monarch feels that inasmuch as his face isn’t in the depressing video, he stands absolved. That assumption shows the shallow thinking of the low-cadre officials of the Nigeria Police. In the main, it’s this cadre of officers, with their sawdust thinking, that investigate, prosecute and mess criminal cases up in court.

A F-O-O-L-E-R is someone or a thing that fools, tricks or deceives someone. Ogunjobi has been living in a fool’s paradise, thinking himself a king when he’s worse than a slave. For years, he has masked his barbarity with braggadocio that indigenes of Orile-Ifo fearfully took his butterfly for an eagle, and he soared to perch on the sun…burnt he tumbled down broad daylight ashes.

A F-O-I-L-E-R is a person who frustrates, foils or defeats. As a retired police inspector, Ogunjobi should be a foiler of crime but his attack on the Ile Oluji-born Pa Abraham showed he must have been a foiler of innocent members of the public. Rather than be a legit F-O-I-L-E-R, he must have been an illegal bunkerer, an O-I-L-E-R in the corrupt Nigerian system. I need no ‘Ga’nu si’ alfa or a miracle-inventing pastor or fake babalawo to tell me that Ogunjobi never collected huge bribes while in the police. When you see the mouth of the grasscutter, you will know it can eat foliage.

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Still scrabbling. When you shuffle the tiles O-R-I-L-E I-F-O, you will get O-R-I-O-L-E. An Oriole is a beautiful, vibrant songbird resplendent in its yellow and black or orange and black plumage. It is found in Europe and North America. Yellow and black colours are good on an oriole. Black and Orange colours are good on an oriole. But they are not good on Ogunjobi, whose skin typifies the mishmash Yellow Fever in Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s 1976 monster hit.

A Yoruba anagram of O-R-I-L-E I-F-O is O-F-O. O-F-O means a misfortune or empty barrel. I thought Ogunjobi had the Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun; the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun; and Aso Rock in his pocket when he boasted of being the owner of Nigeria, the police and that he could kill Abraham without repercussions. But as the empty barrel that he is, Ogunjobi couldn’t meet his bail conditions and has yet to be released from prison days after he was charged to court. I had thought he owned the Central Bank.

The police shouldn’t treat Ogunjobi with the gloves of camaraderie. He should be treated like a criminal suspect because Abraham said in the press conference facilitated by the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights that Ogunjobi had been involved in numerous murders in Orile-Ifo.

The score is now 2-2 between Osun and Ogun states. Osun scored the first goal with its Canadian jailbird king, who belches hemp smoke like a locomotive train. Also in Osun, we have a warmongering king in the Isokan Local Government Area, who called for mayhem in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party. In 2022, Ogun State scored its first goal when the Onifojege of Fojege, Nureni Oduwaye, blinded a chef for dancing with his queen. Ogunjobi has now equalised for Ogun State: 2-2.

The person who stole palm oil from the attic is less guilty than the one who collected the oil from the thief on the ladder and put it down. Yoruba traditional rulers dancing the dance of shame are less guilty than the politicians who enthrone them. During elections, politicians need hoodlums to kill, maim and snatch ballot boxes. After elections, some of the killers turn up to be rewarded with traditional stools. One of such hoodlums has Oshodi in his vice grip and he’s scheming to be rewarded with a crown.

I wonder what would have happened to the septuagenarian if Ogunjobi and his mob had met him on a lonely road at night. Governor Abiodun has taken a commendable step. He should prove he’s got the balls by going further to do what ex-Governor Olusegun Mimiko, did to a Deji of Akure, who publicly fought his wife.

Governor Abiodun, please, do the needful.

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

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Playing Scrabble with the murderous king of Orile-Ifo

As foes and friends unite against Tinubu, by Farooq Kperogi

Although 2025 has only just begun, the Machiavellian maneuvers and the increasingly tensile, high-decibel political shrieks being emitted by politicians about the 2027 election might lead one to believe that the election will take place next year.

Of all the political realignments that are forming preparatory to the 2027 election, it’s the unity in political adversity between former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Governor Nasir El-Rufai that strikes me as the most intriguing.

El-Rufai feels understandably betrayed by his humiliating exclusion from the Bola Tinubu administration whose ascent to power he helped to facilitate with uncommon vim and vigor. Nonetheless, he is protesting his betrayal by making common cause with Atiku Abubakar whom he had serially stabbed in the back more treacherously than Tinubu has thrown him under the bus.

It is akin, in a way, to a soldier who, after leading a fierce battle to enthrone a king, finds himself cast out of the palace. Wounded and seething, he seeks refuge in the camp of an old mentor and ally whom he once betrayed in the heat of war, hoping that their shared resentment for the new ruler will be enough to overlook past treacheries.

Recall that El-Rufai consistently disclaimed any debt to Atiku Abubakar in his political rise even when leaked US Embassy cables quoted him as telling US Embassy officials that Atiku is the single most important reason he made an “accidental” detour to public service. Worse still, he was the lynchpin in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s all-out, no-holds-barred, scorched-earth decimation of Atiku’s presidential aspirations.

As I pointed out in my August 12, 2023, column titled “El-Rufai’s Betrayal and Akpabio’s Buffoonery,” it was El-Rufai who carried Obasanjo’s messages to Western embassies saying Atiku must never be allowed to be president.

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“On September 21, 2006, for instance, El-Rufai (allegedly)”met with the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and the UK High Commissioner ‘under instruction’ from President Obasanjo to inform them of and seek their blessing to deny Atiku Abubakar the chance to succeed Obasanjo,” I wrote and characterized El-Rufai’s volte face as “a wild change of loyalties.”

Of course, it’s a banal fact of Third World life that betrayal is the lifeblood of partisan politics. So, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about El-Rufai’s duplicity. In any case, El-Rufai had also ridiculed Muhammadu Buhari as a bigot who was “serially unelectable” but later embraced him and even became the single most important reason why Buhari decided to run for president again, according to Buhari himself.

Yet, although Atiku must have developed a thick skin to perfidy (I am sure he, too, has stabbed quite a few people in the back in the course of his political career), I can’t help but wonder what goes on in his mind when he strategizes with El-Rufai toward the political containment of their common foe now.

Does he see El-Rufai as a repentant traitor seeking redemption, or merely as a desperate, scorned man whose newfound friendship is actuated by opportunistic political self-preservation rather than conviction?

Atiku will probably watch his hands closely and weigh his every word, knowing that today’s ally could easily be tomorrow’s betrayer.

Nevertheless, in the ruthless calculus of politics, perhaps Atiku understands that some alliances, however uneasy, are dictated not by trust, but by the urgency of a common enemy.

This sentiment underpins the rumored subterranean rapprochement between Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.

A Tinubu-Kwankwaso alliance is projected to be a formidable checkmate for the emerging Atiku-El-Rufai coalition.

However, in all the alliances and re-alliances that are being formed and reformed and the boundaries of friendship and betrayal that are being negotiated and renegotiated, one thing has been remarkably missing: how to reverse the progressively worsening plight of common people.

The condition of poor people who are vulnerable to the whirlingly blinding vagaries of market forces is the cornerstone of my public intellection. This sprouts from my own experiential brushes with poverty growing up. Although I have escaped my past condition, I have not lost, and won’t ever lose, my empathy for the poor.
None of the people strategizing about taking over or retaining power in 2027 spares a thought for the seemingly irreversible death spiral that cruel neoliberal economics has visited on the masses of economically disinherited Nigerians. That worries me deeply.

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It is obvious that even so-called opposition politicians don’t have an alternative template for husbanding the economy. That’s why their criticism of the present torment has been muted at best. They all believe the state should be rolled back from the quotidian life of everyday folk and that governments have no responsibility to assist citizens to live decent, dignified lives.

This style of government frees people in power from the responsibility to be accountable to the people and the license to jettison the unwritten social contract they signed with the people.

They all want a country where, as I pointed out in the past, the economy will “grow” even if that causes the people to growl. “After the economy has ‘grown’ but the people still groan, where is the growth?” I wrote in my June 24, 2023.

That is precisely what is happening in Argentina, which is pursuing similar inhumane market-centric policies as Tinubu. Argentina’s populist rightwing president is getting plaudits for “growing” the economy while the people are growling in anguish.

He is being celebrated for achieving a budget surplus at the expense of deep deficits in people’s quality of life, at the cost of a recessionary economy that has plunged more than half of the country into extreme poverty. The Western press is also praising Tinubu’s “reforms.”

No politician, to my knowledge, is talking about a more compassionate, people-centered approach to managing the economy. Unfortunately, the people don’t seem to care. Maybe that’s why the politicians don’t care, either.

Or perhaps it’s the other way around: the politicians stopped caring first, numbing the people into apathy through years of airy promises and performative concern. When hardship becomes routine and disappointment a certainty, cynicism replaces hope, and survival takes precedence over ideals.

In such a climate, politics becomes a spectacle rather than a means of change, and the people, resigned to their fate, watch passively, expecting nothing and receiving exactly that.

Betrand Russell could very well be describing Nigeria’s situation when he wrote 1923 that “A very large percentage of English-speaking people really believe that the ills from which they suffer would be cured if a certain political party were in power. That is a reason for the swing of the pendulum.

“A man votes for one party and remains miserable; he concludes that it was the other party that was to bring the millennium. By the time he is disenchanted with all parties, he is an old man on the verge of death; his sons retain the belief of his youth, and the see-saw goes on.”

As foes and friends unite against Tinubu, by Farooq Kperogi

Farooq Kperegi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Farooq Kperogi: Why does Nigeria buy official cars every budget year?

Ever since I started consciously monitoring the business of the government, I have always wondered why Nigeria’s yearly budgets unfailingly allocate astronomical amounts of money to buy the same items—cars, cutlery, furniture, etc.— that should last for years before needing replacement.

What happens to the items that are replaced every year? Who keeps them? And what necessitates the ritual of replacing items in perfect condition every year, especially for a country that says allocating money for subsidies to make life a little easier for people is too much of a burden?

I never wrote about this because I had assumed that there must be some arcane justification that I failed to grasp for this profligate annual budgetary ritual.

Not wanting to be an ultracrepidarian (as people who comment authoritatively on subjects they have little or no knowledge of are called), I had chosen to simply wonder in silence— or perhaps ask people in government why they expend scarce resources to change items in excellent conditions, something everyday folks never do.

However, House of Representatives member Bello El-Rufai, who represents Kaduna North Federal Constituency and whose privileged position as the son of a former minister and governor should give him an insider perspective on why this practice happens, piqued my curiosity when he questioned it during a parliamentary debate in December last year.

He quipped that since his boyhood every year’s budget has featured new computers, cars, utensils, and furniture even when these items don’t expire in a year.

“We need to cut down on costs.,” he said. “The recurrent expenditure issue exists in every budget. Even as a young person like myself, I see that we budget for vehicles every year, utensils every year. To open more revenue streams or block loopholes, we need to scrutinise these ministries’ budgets. If they bought vehicles last year, they should hold off because vehicles do not expire.”

The speech went viral because it resonated with vast swaths of Nigerians who had been caught up in what we call a “spiral of silence” in communication theory, which occurs when people suppress their opinions about an issue because they (often incorrectly) assume that their opinions are in the minority and therefore unwelcome.

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That someone who is deeply inserted into the inner sanctum of power by reason of both birth and positional privilege has articulated a thought that had been hibernating in the minds of millions of Nigerians was liberating. It reassured many people that their gnawing doubts about the moral propriety of Nigeria’s ritualized budgetary prodigality are not ill-informed or out of line.

I thought the speech would ignite a soul-searching national conversation about Nigeria’s wasteful budgeting practices. However, it seems it didn’t. If it did, I must have missed it.

But let’s face it. There are not many regular people on the face of this earth who change their cars, computers, utensils, etc. every year. Even wealthy people use these items for a few years before changing them.

Why does a country whose governments routinely proclaim that they are too poor to be able to afford subsidizing the energy consumption of its struggling population spend stratospheric amounts of money to replenish one-year-old items for people in government every single year?

Each time I write about the immorality of visiting avoidable anguish on the Nigerian population through the withdrawal subsidies, the standard retort I get from neoliberal apologists who care more about the happiness of the “markets” than they do about the health and vitality of the people is, “where do you want the government to get the money to pay for subsidies?”

Well, how about from the same place where it gets the funds to change year-old items every year for government officials at the cost of billions of naira?

Just because Bello El-Rufai raised this issue and his fellow politicians didn’t shoot him down, at least to my knowledge, I got curious and researched what happens in other countries.

It turns out most wealthy nations of the world (who, by the way, extend various kinds of subsidies to their vulnerable populations) don’t replace cars, computers, and utensils every year as a matter of course.

In the United States, the official vehicles of the president and the vice president are not replaced every year. In fact, “The Beast,” as the presidential limousines of U.S. presidents have been called since 2001, “have largely been on eight-year cycles for the past 30 years,” according to Autoweek.com.

The most recent model of the presidential limousine was introduced in 2018. It replaced the previous version, which debuted in 2009 during President Barack Obama’s administration. So, President Donald Trump doesn’t have a brand new car.

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Although the official vehicles for the president and the vice president have an eight-year replacement cycle, they undergo periodic upgrades to incorporate the latest security features, including communications, armor, and defensive capabilities. That’s more economical than buying brand new cars every year just for the sake of it.

Members of the U.S. Congress (that is, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate) don’t have funds specifically allocated to them for the purchase of official or personal cars. They only receive allowances and benefits that may cover travel-related expenses.

Most members of Congress don’t buy cars. They instead opt to lease cars using their congressional office budget called “Representational Allowance” for House members and “Senate office funds” for Senators), and lease terms typically range from 2 to 4 years. That means they may switch vehicles periodically based on lease expiration.

Only high-ranking Congressional officials (such as the Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader) or those facing security threats use government-provided vehicles for official duties.

I also found that the replacement cycle for vehicles used by U.S. government agencies ranges from 3 to 5 years.

The guidelines established by the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal fleet, say sedans and light-duty vehicles should be changed every 3 to 5 years or after or after they rack up 60,000 to 75,000 miles, whichever comes first.

Vans and trucks are changed every 5 to 7 years or 100,000 to 150,000 miles, whichever comes first.

Law enforcement and emergency vehicles are replaced every 3 to 6 years or after recording between 50,000 to 80,000 miles, with replacements based on performance, reliability, and safety concerns.

What happens to government vehicles that get replaced? According to the General Services Administration (GSA), most government vehicles, once they reach the end of their service life, are sold to the public through GSA Auctions, which is the federal government’s online auction platform.

Auctions are open to individuals, businesses, and local governments. But the vehicles can also be transferred to other government agencies or donated through programs like the Federal Surplus Personal Property Donation Program, which provides assets to eligible non-profits, educational institutions, and local governments.

Similarly, the replacement frequency of official vehicles for the UK Prime Minister and cabinet members is not yearly, as it is in Nigeria.

Although change of cars for UK government officials is not governed by a fixed schedule as it is in the U.S., the Government Car Service (GCS), an executive agency of the Department for Transport, manages the fleet of vehicles assigned to cabinet ministers and other officials and determines when they need to be changed.

In sum, most wealthy nations of the world don’t allocate funds every year for the replacement of non-perishable items used by government officials. It’s a wasteful practice that should have no place in a struggling country like Nigeria.

The funds allocated for the yearly needless replacement of cars, computers, utensils, etc. should instead be invested in programs and policies that bring relief to the people.

I hope Bello El-Rufai will move beyond rhetoric and galvanize support for legislation that will enshrine a 5-year replacement cycle for items that are currently replaced every year in Nigerian budgets. He would write his name in gold if he did that.

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of journalism.

Farooq Kperogi: Why does Nigeria buy official cars every budget year?