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Oluwo and Sulu-Gambari scratching the nose with cobra head (2)

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Tunde Odesola
Oluwo and Sulu-Gambari scratching the nose with cobra head (2)
Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, September 8, 2023)
It’s evening yet on Creation Day in Odò ọbà, the Land of the prized Parrots, where the Lion complained about not having a crown to proclaim his kingship, and his creator gave him a golden mane. Later, he complained about his teeth and he got powerful jaws. He looked at his paws and bewailed, he got razors for claws. When he heard the clap of Thunder, he begged for dread in his voice. And he was gifted a roar.
Then he saw the Eagle soar in the sky and he pined, wishing to soar, too. Impatient, immature and foolish, the King climbed up to the mountain, ignoring his creator this time. A gust of wind hit his face, and he smiled: It’s so easy to fly, so gratifying to be king; ‘I’m the greatest!’. He leapt skyward, hoping to glide with the Eagle but he tumbled downwards and crash-landed in a field of marijuana.
Never mind my recourse to folklore, please. Remember, this is a journey into time, a journey that would fast-track the wheel of the past to roll alongside that of the present – like fastening the dreadlocks at the back of the head with the ones at the front – to make a mound upon which to gaze into the future and proffer solutions.
Indulge me to digress one bit. After watching the video of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi, during his recent visit to Uganda, where he described President Yoweri Museveni as an African hero, I knew it was time to smash the gourd of gluttony in Ife against the calabash of religious intolerance in Ilorin and the pot of absurdity in Iwo.
Truly, after watching the Ooni’s Made-in-Uganda video, I felt sombre and sober. I felt the Yoruba Obaship institution has seen better days. I felt as if I was watching a continuation of the Idi Amin lickspittle days. I felt convinced that new-generation Yoruba traditional rulers would profit from continuous assessment and tutelage in ipebi, the Royal College, on how to be kingly.
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Ogunwusi was only 12 years old when Museveni snatched power in Uganda after more than 15 years of bloody struggle. So, it’s understandable if the Ooni fluffed his lines and mistook the 78-year-old president for a traditional ruler.
Can you listen to bootlicking verses and not flinch? I can’t. This is what His Royal Majesty, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, told Museveni, who ascended the throne 37 years ago, “Your excellency, today is one of the happiest days of my life. Today, I’m here to surrender myself, my service and also my selfless effort for us to continue to make history. You’re a great leader, a leader par excellence. We all know what you stand for.
“I strongly believe that you’re a reincarnated spirit; not about your age now but you have been fighting for the unity, stability of Republic of Uganda. You’re not driven by money, you’re not driven by wealth…I have been looking for leaders like you that wield that political power….Your Excellency, you’re an icon. Your role is not finished yet.
“Nothing will happen to you, you said it that you survived so many sickness. You’re not an ordinary human being. I’m a spiritual king. I see you very deeply. Do not worry, you’re doing God’s work. God is doing your work…This is now the time for us to draft your legacy very well, beyond East Africa, all the way to West Africa. You still have a long way to go.”
After so much peregrination, the Ooni finally dropped the anchor of his mercantile ship, pleading with Museveni to, “Give us good access to work with you. If l have good access and send any message, any errand for the sake of this Pan-African Movement, God will continue to be with you.”
There’s nothing wrong with royalty doing business. From time immemorial, palaces are reputed for warehousing choice goods from all walks of life. However, he who decides to dine with the devil should, advisedly, use a long spoon, he should not use the hand of the Yoruba race. The absence of Ugandan traditional rulers in the video drives home the point that the Ooni was on a self-serving trip to Uganda.
Back to the ruler with a basket of titles, His Imperial Majesty, Oba, Dr, Emir, and Emperor Abdulrasheed Adewale Akanbi, Telu I, of the Molaasan royal family of Iwo.
In a video that went viral, Akanbi arrogantly banned Oro worshippers from practising their religion in Iwo, saying any worshipper seen with a sacrifice for Oro gods should be arrested and forced to eat it. He spoke in Yoruba, “No Oro must come out in Iwo, arrest him; it’s the king that says so! If you see anybody offering a sacrifice, tell him to eat it…arrest him, hold him and bundle such a worshipper to me!
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But retired Methodist Archbishop, Prince Ayo Ladigbolu, an octogenarian, advocates tolerance among various worshippers across the country. In a telephone interview with me, Baba Ladigbolu said, “Any form of (religious) intolerance is an inhuman attitude. You can’t force people to jettison what they have been practising before the arrival of Islam and Christianity. It’s ungodly because you have no respect for other people’s religion.
“You have the right to feel your religion is superior but superior to what? Their religion has been sustaining them, so let them be. It’s an act of ungodliness to do such in a country whose constitution provides for freedom of worship. That’s my position.”
A serving Archbishop of the Catholic Church, septuagenarian ’Leke Abegunrin, in an interview with me, also condemned religious intolerance. Commenting on the Ilorin religious crisis, the revered cleric said, “In my view, if truly we have a democratic government, justice should come into play. The media should blow this matter beyond the Ilorin locality. It should become a national matter, which may even attract international news. The state government should step into it immediately!
“It’s not right to stop people of other religions from practising their beliefs. It’s becoming common in Ilorin, that adherents of other religions are often intimidated. It was done not long ago to Christians. People should learn to be tolerant. I think lawyers of all religions should defend this and speak out loudly against injustice.
“Nigeria already has many problems, why add religious intolerance to it? While I appeal to the Government of Kwara State to be active in this matter and protect justice and peace, I equally appeal to the people of Kwara State to be law-abiding and allow peace to reign. There’s no state religion in Nigeria. Everyone is free to practise his or her beliefs peacefully. God bless Nigeria.”
But the Oluwo, who says he’s greater than all gods, ate his words after Osun State Governor, Senator Ademola Adeleke, sternly warned anyone who caused a religious crisis in Osun would face the music.
In a U-Turn, the Oluwo said he never said Oro worshippers shouldn’t practise their belief – making him the first lying oba I know.
Except for religious affinity, I see no basis for comparison between the Oluwo and the emir of Ilorin. Sulu-Gambari, a well-educated lawyer and retired judge, attended some of the best schools in England.
A request by PUNCH for Akanbi to disclose his educational qualifications was turned down, fuelling the suspicion that Oluwo doesn’t possess the degrees he claims.
Live and let live.
Concluded.

Opinion

Nasir El-Rufai’s scorched-earth one-man opposition, By Farooq Kperogi

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Farooq Kperogi

Nasir El-Rufai’s scorched-earth one-man opposition, By Farooq Kperogi

Like a stranded mariner gasping on the shores of irrelevance, former Kaduna State governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai writhes in the uneasy throes of power’s withdrawal. His disquiet, however, is less the quiet lament of a fallen statesman and more the tempestuous fury of a Shakespearean woman scorned.

He has become fiery, irascible, indignant, and unrelenting in his public expressions of rage towards his former friends in power who have isolated him. He is throwing the kitchen sink at the power structures in Kaduna and Abuja in an all-out effort to extract vengeance and to ward off potential ensnarement.

The former cushy, self-satisfied, and illiberal denizen of power who was the scourge of dissenters railing against tyranny, now finds himself wielding the very defiance he once crushed with arrogance and malevolent glee. He has become an accidental insurgent (a la “accidental public servant”) forged in the crucible of his own contradictions.

There is a part of me that loves this new insurrectionary, rebellious, activist, and intensely irate one-man band opposition that El-Rufai has opportunistically transmogrified into.

For one, he is providing the first real opposition to the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration. Every democracy needs the well-aimed slings and well-informed counsel of a sharp-witted opposition to keep its leaders from sinking into the depths of self-satisfaction and insouciance.

Say what you will about El-Rufai, but his intellect, erudition, and rhetorical dexterity are top-notch and undeniable. Imagine if figures of his political stature, institutional access, and strategic acumen had chosen to be thorns in the current corridors of power. Perhaps, the Tinubu administration would have thought twice before treating Nigerians with the cavalier disregard that has become its trademark in the last two years.

For another, he has an opportunity to experience what his critics went through when he was a governor for eight years. He abducted critics, caused opponents to be tortured, bragged about reducing politicians he has displaced to mere “bloggers,” instrumentalized the courts to squelch dissent, etc.

Now, he posts social media updates about his former commissioners being “abducted,” about the judiciary being weaponized against his supporters and his past administration, about the “misuse of federal security agencies in the persecution of opposition leaders,” etc.

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Not only has El-Rufai become a “blogger,” once his favorite pejorative for social-media-active politicians he has dislocated in Kaduna, he has now plunged deeper into a lowly “content creator.” With the launch of a TikTok account, he’s gone from being a mere “blogger” to a digital hustler, complete with the undignified ritual of soliciting Nigerians to subscribe to his channel.

Yet, I am delighted that El-Rufai has joined our ranks. Professional “wailing wailers” like me (to use former presidential spokesman Femi Adesina’s agonizingly asinine and illiterate insult for government critics) welcome him to the club.

Nonetheless, my joy that he is inadvertently rendering a democratic service by the constancy and stridency of his strictures against the government has not blunted the acuteness of my awareness that he is an unbearably devious, self-seeking, hateful scoundrel who is only on a mission to avenge what he perceives as a personal affront to him.

As most people have already observed, had El-Rufai secured the minister of power position he was promised, his current antagonism toward the government would be as unimaginable as a cat lobbying for the rights of rats.

Not only would he have been a staunch defender of every government action, but he would have also directed his trademark vitriol at ordinary Nigerians suffocating under economic hardship. He would dismiss their grievances with characteristic scorn and cruelty.

Indeed, the same northern establishment he now courts and seeks to mobilize as a political cudgel would have been his favorite punching bag—just as it was in 2023, when he enthusiastically championed Bola Tinubu’s candidacy.

It takes an unnatural degree of slow-wittedness not to see that El-Rufai’s newfound disillusionment with the governments in Kaduna and Abuja reeks less of principle and more of a bruised ego nursing its wounds.

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In my July 27, 2019, column titled, “How Political Power Damages the Brain—and How to Reverse it,” I called attention to (temporarily) politically displaced whores of power like El-Rufai who pretend to identify with ordinary people in their moments of political trauma.

“Also look at previously arrogant, narcissistic, power-drunk prigs who have been kicked out of the orbit of power for any number of reasons. You’ll discover that they are suddenly normal again.

“They share our pains, make pious noises, condemn abuse of power, and identify with popular causes. The legendary amnesia of Nigerians causes the past misdeeds of these previous monsters of power to be explained away, lessened, forgiven, and ultimately forgotten. But when they get back to power again, they become the same insensitive beasts of power that they once were.”

Get El-Rufai back into power now or in 2017, he would be the same villainous backstabber he has always been. He would be the same annihilator of the homes of poor people. He would be the same horrid tormentor of critics.

In a September 20, 2019, article, I described him as “straight-up Nigeria’s most bigoted and most dangerous public official alive.”

El-Rufai’s latest political metamorphosis is less a transformation than a temporary realignment born of personal grievance rather than ideological conviction. His brand-new zeal for opposition, while inadvertently serving the democratic process, is unmistakably fueled by wounded pride and thwarted ambition.

The same man who once ruled with an iron fist, silencing critics with impunity, now fashions himself as the voice of the oppressed, railing against the very structures of power he once upheld with ruthless enthusiasm. His current posture as an anti-establishment crusader is not the product of principle but of exclusion, making his activism less an act of courage than an elaborate act of self-preservation.

Yet, even as he momentarily aligns with the forces of resistance, history warns against mistaking his opportunistic dissent for genuine reform. Should fortune return him to the corridors of power, El-Rufai would waste no time reverting to the autocratic instincts that have long defined him. He would crush opposition, weaponize state institutions, and wield power with the same reckless abandon that now makes him a pariah.

Today’s dissenter is often tomorrow’s despot. To embrace him uncritically is to risk aiding yet another cycle of tyranny dressed in the fleeting garb of rebellion.

 

Nasir El-Rufai’s scorched-earth one-man opposition, By Farooq Kperogi

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

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Natahsha’s apoti is not godswill for Apkabio

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Tunde Odesola

Natahsha’s apoti is not godswill for Apkabio

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, March 14, 2025)

The darkness was so heavy you could touch it. ’Twas so thick it could stain. Sinister and choking, the darkness screened off the sky and its moonlight. Without thunderclap nor lightning daze, rain poured down on the night of long knives.

Suddenly, a violent wind arose amid the footfalls of fleeing bandits, who slung huge sacks of stuffed ballot boxes over their shoulders like Father Christmas slings his sack of gifts.

“Ole! Ole! Ole! Thief! Thief! Thief! The pursuing citizens shouted. The vote robbers neither stopped nor looked back en route to their chamber, deriving inspiration from the proverb of perseverance that says, “When the egúngún is in pursuit, the pursued is advised not to stop because as fleeing humans tire out, so is the pursuing egúngún tiring out.”

One after the other, the bandits jumped into their fortress through the doors, windows and ceiling, slamming the doors, windows and attic shut before the masses could close in. Ruthless and rapacious, the bandits caught their breath like lions do after an arduous kill. Wow! That was a close shave!

Once the robbers ran into their Abuja fortress, the pursuers stopped and backed off, knowing full well the fortress was guarded by gunmen and the Constitution.

The rain continued to pour down in torrents. No owls hooted, no crickets chirped, no dogs barked, only darkness loomed. The Official Manservant of the bandits is called Mr Clerk. He pressed a button on his table, and the whole chamber came alive in full red colour.

Now, everyone is seated in their respective seat; their faces shone with sweat, rain and blood stains, each beaming with smiles and a sense of accomplishment. Handshakes, backslaps and bear hugs with cackles of laughter shook the chamber.

Apkabio is the leader of the hunting pack. He banged his gavel for attention and said in his peculiar accent, “Distinguished ladies and yentlemen, I, hereby, grant Mr Clerk the permiyon to address and pray for us. Please, let’s pay attenyon because it is my intenyon for our victory celebrayon to progress till the morning hours. We deserve to party and enjoy ourselves, ladies and yentlemen.”

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Clerk: Let us pray. We’re grateful that it pleases the Lord Almighty to give our returning members sweet victory in their respective elections. Though the election battle was snatch and bolt, rip and run, the Lord gives victory to whom He loves…(Speaks in tongues: El shsasba prokorotori matayakata!). Father Lord, we pray that you be the guide and guard of Your children as they embark on their four-year legislative duties to their fatherland in Jesus’ mighty name!

Chorus: Amen!!!

An imam, whose tasbih (rosary) was longer than the intestines of a cow, was also on hand to pray for the brood of vipers. His turban was bigger than a parachute.

Apkabio: (Continuing in his funny accent) Mbon mmi, my own election was war! I didn’t participate in my party’s primaries, but I grabbed the ticket after I stuffed Supreme judges’ wigs, gowns and mouths with dollars. Okuk atan iko – money speaking. Money na water.

Fellow bandits hail Apkabio: After God na you!

Apkabio: No! No! No oooo! Make una no put me for wahala o. Yagaban na my oka (oga) o. I no near Yagaban a-roll a-roll (at all, at all) o.

Bandits: Hahahahahahahha. Na you, biko!

Apkabio: Where’s Honourable Natahsha? I can see a few honourables didn’t jump in through the doors and windows. Mr Clerk, please, tell Honourable Natahsha to see me in my private residence asap; there’s an urgent national assignment for her in my bedroom.

Clerk: Sir, Honourable Natahsha dropped a petition about the arrangement of the chamber.

Apkabio: Tell her I’ll do anything she wants, whenever and wherever she’s ready to tickle my fancy. She can have anything in this chamber, including my humble self. Who am I but a mere servant, ready to sow and reap in lush vineyards? Uwem enem – life’s sweet o.

The gang bursts out laughing.

Clerk: I’ll let her know, Your Honour, sir.

The gang partied late into the night, blasting Olu Maintain’s hit, Yahoozee; Kelly Hansome’s Maga Don Pay, and Living Things by 9ice, among other crematorium songs.

(Inside Apkabio house, domestic staff engage in gossip)

Gardener: (Singing African China song) …Mr President, lead us well; If you bi governor, govern us well; If you bi senator, senate am well; If you bi police, police well well, no dey take bribe…

Maid: Akpan, if oga or madam hear di song you dey sing, just know say your work for dis house don finish. Both of dem dey para now o.

Cook: Ekaette, wetin you mean? Why dem dey para nah?

Maid: Udoh and Akpan! Una no hear wetin dey happen!? Di yellow canary wey oga tink say im catch with im bowler hat for inside chamber, by the time oga put im hand inside the hat, oga no grab canary o, na shit oga grab! And the bird don dey sing to fellow Nigerians since!

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Gardener: Ha, Ekaette, na wa o. E bi like say dem take women swear for oga. Which kain insult oga never see on top woman matter? Dem don tear oga singlet, beat am, spit on am.. Haba! Shey na di route wey oga follow come dis world im wan follow go ni?

Driver: No bi today nah. You sabi how many earrings and nails wey I don pack while cleaning oga limousines? I no go tell una other extracurricular items wey I don sweep comot from inside oga limousines. Shey una see dat oga head wey bi like Abiku head, na only women and how to thief money full am.

Cook: You mean say oga dey do on motion?

Driver: Oga na ‘Everywhere You Go Turaya’, e dey active on land, air and sea. But dis Apoti wey oga go siddon on top don burn oga yansh, oga no fit siddon again. Apoti na wetin Yoruba dey call small wooden seat. Igbo people dey call am ‘obere oche’. Hausa dey call am ‘keremin kujira’. Dis apoti hot pass furnace.

(Vehicle horns blare. People talk outside the gates, raining curses on Natahsha and singing the praise of Apkabio)

Maid: Protesters don come collect money – human rights activists, police, students, labour, journalists, traders, lawyers, town unions, etc. Oga don spend real money on top dis skirt and blouse matter o.

Cook: Hey, look! See oga’s chief of staff don dey come downstairs; make e no meet us here o. O ya, o ya, make everybody disappear. Me, I never obtain Yankee visa, I dey waka go boys’ quarters o.

(Domestic staff disperse quickly)

The next day, Apkabio locked himself inside his room. He was greatly disturbed because the Yellow Canary wouldn’t stop singing. In fact, she has taken her song beyond the compromised courts in the land, to an international tribunal, where she’s singing on the top of her voice. Sweat broke on Apkabio brow.

He looked at himself in the mirror and shook his head. He opened his mouth, but no word came out. He cleared his throat and tried again to talk, yet there was no word. He slumped on his bed and wept.

Apkabio drifted into a dream. In the dream, Apoti pummels and drags him to the edge of a cliff and pushes him off, he shouts and jerks awake, panting, sweating and cursing.

Outside the room, Mrs Apkabio hears her husband’s shout. She rushes in. “Ha, my lord, why are you shouting and sweating like this?” she asked. “It’s that witch o, that ashewo girl. She pushed me from a cliff, but Mama Bourdillon grabbed me before I nack head for wall,” he replied.

“Blood of Jesus! This will pass, my husband. I’ve mobilised serving and retired female and male crooks, and they’ve been singing your praise. I recruited Itu Iya Ita in Calabar and a former Lagos Minister who has fallen on bad times. I also recruited a member of a family reputed for betraying,” she said. “Thank you,” Apkabio replied.

Mrs Apkabio: But you sef, why you no dey take eye see anything in skirt?

Apkabio: Na my enemies use women curse me, I swear.

Mrs Apkabio: See your mouth, he-goat! Abeg, I’m going downstairs to pay some leaders of Niger Delta militants who have been helping us threaten to cause wahala if you’re removed.

Apkabio: Thank you. I’ll never chase anything in a skirt again.

Mrs Apkabio: What if she no wear skirt?

(Both burst out laughing as the wife exits)

All alone, Apkabio goes back to the mirror and looks at himself; a one-horn, one-eyed principality stares back at him. Then, his inner mind spoke: “Apkabio, you’re a disgrace! You stole your way into the House. But instead of repenting from your old ways, you refused. What legacy do you intend to bequeath? A professor who rigged an election for you was jailed. You head a House of criminals, some of whose members are wanted for international crimes in the US and Europe. A current member of the hound is still in prison abroad. Apkabio, look at your life!

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

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Natahsha’s apoti is not godswill for Apkabio

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Farooq Kperogi: New insights into “Badamasi,” “Gbadamosi,” and IBB’s paternal heritage

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Farooq Kperogi

Farooq Kperogi: New insights into “Badamasi,” “Gbadamosi,” and IBB’s paternal heritage

Former President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s autobiography triggered questions about the onomastic etymology of “Badamasi,” his former last name, which appears to share historical and semantic kinship with the Yoruba “Gbadamosi.” It also activated interest in his paternal heritage about which he has been strategically coy, which I captured in my last column.

Because I know that the best system of inquiry for facts is necessarily question-oriented, self-critical, and cumulative, I shared a perspective I had heard about the provenance of Badamasi but expressed doubts about its reliability and historical accuracy and invited further reflections from others.

Saturday Tribune editor Lasisi Olagunju took up the challenge and, relying on insights from the late Sheikh Adam Abdullah El-Ilory, proposed that Badamasi originated from Ghadames (sometimes spelled Ghadamis), a historic Berber town in what is now Libya.

The town’s citizens are called Ghadamisi. It’s in line with the Middle Eastern practice of adding “i” to the end of the names of villages, towns, cities, and countries to form demonyms. Bukhari (which we domesticated as Buhari in Nigeria), for instance, means a native of the town of Bukhara, now in Uzbekistan, a West Asian nation that used to be a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Olagunju also referenced a fawningly Anglophilic, pro-colonial autobiography written in Arabic by a certain Abd Allah el-Ghadamisi, who arrived in Kano in 1903, titled, “Your Humble Servant: The Memoirs of Abd Allah Al-Ghadamisi.” He wondered whether this might be the book IBB mentioned as his grandfather’s favorite and that inspired him to name his son after its author.

He then suggested that the Yoruba Gbadamosi is more faithful to what he thinks is the original form of the name than the Hausa Badamasi since the voiced labial-velar plosive “gb” found in many Niger Congo languages, including Yoruba, is closer to the voiced uvular fricative “gh” in Arabic.

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Well, Olagunju’s proposition appears to suffer a factual collapse when it is burdened with the weight of historical, chronological, and even sociolinguistic evidence.

First, anyone who reads Professor Razaq ʿDeremi Abubakre’s 2017 book chapter titled “Stefan Reichmuth’s Wanderings in Arabicized and Islamized Yorubaland” will come across an Ilorin Muslim scholar and poet by the name of Badamasi “from Ile Saura, Agbaji, Balogun Ajikobi Ward, who was one of the first people to produce Yoruba poetry in Arabic script (p.373).” He died around 1891.

This suggests that even Yoruba Muslims have borne the name Badamasi since at least the 1800s, years before Abd Allah el-Ghadamisi appeared in Kano.

Second, it is unlikely that Abd Allah el-Ghadamisi’s autobiography is the book IBB’s grandfather was fond of and that students of Arabic in Hausaland read for pedagogical and spiritual nourishment because the commentary on the book by Muhammad S. Umar and John O. Hunwick, which Olagunju references, describes the book as betraying “imperfect knowledge of written Arabic” and full of “simple errors of Arabic grammar.”

Such a book can’t be a model that Islamic scholars venerate and teach. In any case, it wasn’t a piece of Islamic scholarship. The memoirs, Umar and Hunwick point out, “construct a discourse that portrays colonialism positively through a particularly laudatory proclamation of the good deeds of colonial authorities….”

Third, Olagunju’s claim that “Because, sometimes an author gets more famous than his work, al-Ghadamisi’s name appears to have overwhelmed the book’s title” doesn’t seem to be true. Only one copy of Abd Allah el-Ghadamisi’s book has survived, according to Umar and Hunwick.

Fourth, although traders and Islamic scholars from Ghadames have lived in Hausa land since at least the 16th century, sociolinguistic evidence suggests that it is implausible for Hausa speakers to domesticate the Arabic phoneme “gh” to “b.”

When Hausa speakers borrow Arabic words with the phoneme “gh,” which doesn’t occur naturally in Hausa, they adapt it to “g” (and occasionally to “k”) but never “b.” So, it’s socio-linguistically improbable that Ghadamisi would ever become Badamasi to Hausa speakers. It would most likely be Gadamisi.

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Now, what might be the root of Badamasi? Someone on Facebook by the name of M.Y. Kabara (I wonder if he is a progeny of the famous Nasiru Kabara family in Kano who died in my final year at Bayero University) pointed me to Arabic sources that seem to definitively show that the name Badamasi owes its presence in (northern) Nigerian Muslim onomastic universe to an Egyptian poet by the name of Muhammad bin Ahmed bin Ismail bin Ahmed Al-Sharaf Al-Badmasi Al-Masri. (Miṣr is the Arabic name for Egypt).

He was born in 1808 AH (equivalent to around 1405) in the small village of Badamas and died in Mecca at the age of 40. He was famous for a book of Arabic poetry he wrote in praise of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) titled “al-Qasīdatul Mukhmasah,” which is very popular with Sufi Muslims and Arabic students in (northern) Nigeria.

I am certain that it’s the book IBB’s grandfather loved so much that he named his son after it—like many people in the North did and still do.

Kabara pointed out to me that because “every quintet in Arabic poetry can be called ‘mukhmasah,’” the book of poetry has come to be known by the name of its author to differentiate it from similar works.

According to Dr. Ihab El-Sherbini, author of the book “Stories of Mansoura’s Streets,” Badamas, the poet’s hometown, used to be called “Potamos,” which means “river,” but that Copts (descendants of ancient Egyptians who are now mostly Christians that are associated with the Coptic Church) called it Badamos. After the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, Badamos evolved to Badamas.

Over time, the Badamas village ceased to be territorially independent. It’s now a neighborhood of the Egyptian city of Mansoura.

Based on this new knowledge, I am prepared to suggest that Gbadamosi and Badamasi are mere onomatological false friends, that is, they are names that sound alike but that are actually different and descended from different sources.

I suspect that the Yoruba Gbadamosi traces descent from Ghadamisi, most probably from Abdallāh b. Abī Bakr al-Ghadāmisī, a 17th-century Arabic poet and Islamic scholar born in Timbuktu who wrote the famous Manāhij al-Sālikīn fī Manāfiʿ al-Qurʾān al-Karīm (“Paths of the Seekers to the Benefits of the Noble Qur’an”) that is popular with West African Sufis.

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Curiously, the resolution of the etymology of IBB’s middle name coextends with new hints I’ve encountered about the probable ethnic identity of his paternal ancestry.

The village of Kumurya in Kano where IBB told a biographer his paternal roots are located was founded by the Agalawa, a historical trading community in Hausaland, originally of Tuareg (Berber) stock who migrated into the Kano region in the 18th century.

Though now fully assimilated as a sub-group of the Hausa people, the Agalawa trace their ancestry to nomadic Tuareg origins in the southern Sahara. I owe this insight to Rabiu Isah Hassan who first pointed it out to me on Facebook and provoked me to read further.

In his 2005 book titled “Ecology and Ethnography of Muslim Trade in West Africa,” Paul E. Lovejoy points out that early Agalawa immigrants in Hausaland occupied a lowly social status because “Most had been enslaved from Sudanese populations (p. 16).” They were derisively called “Bugaje” (is the famous Dr. Usman Bugaje of Agalawa origins?) as a collective plural and “Buzu” as a singular form.

Over time, they acculturated, dominated commerce, became prominent in Islamic scholarship, and have now become indistinguishable from the native Hausa population, except that they tend to have a lighter complexion than Hausa people, which causes many people to mistake them for Fulani.

Is IBB aware of this history of his paternal ancestry but chose to conceal it for fear of exoticizing and alienating himself, especially in the eyes of southerners who tend to delegitimize people’s Nigerian origins when they find out that the ancestral origins of (mostly northerners) people can be traced to spaces outside what is now Nigeria?

No northerner would question the legitimacy of anyone’s “Nigerianness” because of the accident of the location of their distant ancestral roots. It’s a consequence of the originary syncretism of modern northern identity. We are all mixed with all sorts of stemma from a vast array of places because we were never an insular, landlocked people.

Many of Kano’s prominent merchant dynasties, for example, have Agalawa roots, a famous example being the family of Alhaji Alhassan Dantata, who was West Africa’s richest man in the early 20th century. Since Aliko Dangote’s mother is from the Dantata family, it means he is at least half Agalawa. He himself might even be ancestrally Agalawa.

What’s there to conceal about this, especially because our heritage—ethnicity, linguistic group, even religious traditions—is merely incidental to us. We didn’t choose it, so there is no basis to be proud or ashamed of it.

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

 

Farooq Kperogi: New insights into “Badamasi,” “Gbadamosi,” and IBB’s paternal heritage

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