Opinion
Opinion: Did Buhari watch Chelsea’s incredible victory?
By Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Monday, May 31, 2021)
’Twas a spectacle with all the trappings of a full-fledged drama: conflict, timing, tension, rhythm, mood, language, sound, space, focus, contrast and a crushing climax. ’Twas the UEFA Champions League final played before 50,035 spectators on a 115x68m stage called Dragon Stadium in Porto, Portugal’s second largest city after Lisbon. Believe you me, the dragons that emerged within the stadium and afflicted the Manchester team won’t be exorcised too soon.
It’s not only art that imitates life, sports do, too. And many a time, life, in its fitful drama, offers grapes instead of oranges and waxes bile instead of honey.
For me, the outcome of the impending UEFA finale was as sure as death. Lightning doesn’t strike at the same spot twice. Eewo orisa! Impossible abomination! But I was soon to discover the futility of this age-long belief even as science has proved that lightning strikes the 102-storey Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York, about 25 times every year.
I had it all figured out, or so I thought. I had cast some catchy headlines and thought up some super storyline with twists and turns leading to the ultimate triumph of Manchester City FC in the UEFA final.
But life is quicksand; after Chelsea’s lightning had struck Manchester City twice in England, it travelled an air distance of 1,812 kilometres to Portugal and struck City for the third time in six weeks! Chelsea FC put a grenade to my personal pot of fantasy and shattered the initial layout of this article. Ha! How do I beat my deadline?
Usually, I write my column on Saturday morning but I delayed it till Saturday night – after the epic final – just to accommodate Manchester City’s anticipatory victory, hoping to use the triumph to rile my known and unknown football frenemies, who cut across countries and continents, online and offline.
In England, for instance, I dislike Chelsea FC with passion and long draped it in the garb of an archenemy while in Spain, where I support the club that plays football like angels, FC Barcelona, my archfoe is (un)Real Madrid FC, which I do not dislike but hate for their dominance.
When Chelsea came up against Madrid in the semifinals of the competition, I supported the London club but I silently prayed it never get past Manchester City in the finals.
Worldwide, tit-for-tat aka ‘gbas gbos’ is the language spoken in football fandom, where revenge is never cold, but served hot like the pounded yam of 20 years.
In Porto, on Saturday, Chelsea’s cunning coach, Thomas Tuchel, exacted another pound of flesh from the greatest coach in club football today, Pep Guardiola, who had peppered Tuchel four times while they both coached Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund respectively.
Before the UCL final, Guardiola had only lost in one of the 15 finals in his career while Tuchel had lost in his two finals only to come back a year later and win both titles.
The mantra among Nigerian football supporters is ‘the enemy of my friend is my enemy’, and inter-club banters could spring from trivias such as jersey colour or coach’s height, reinforcing the proverb which says an enemy never kills a big grasscutter, ota eni kii pa odu oya.
To understand football fans’ psychology, a peep into Nigerian politics or polygamy will suffice. Except suspicion, envy and rivalry, nothing is cast in concrete in Nigerian politics or a typical polygamous home. What is sauce for the goose is never sauce for the gander: rules change like quicksilver, depending on the idiosyncrasies of who is at the driver and the convenience of the seat.
For me, May is a month I won two battles but lost the war. One, my preferred team, Leicester defeated Chelsea 0-1 in the final of the English FA Cup. Two, Villareal, a Spanish team, defeated Manchester United in the final of the Europa League final 10-11 on penalties, but the biggest prize of all was lost to Chelsea’s never-say-die spirit and Guardiola’s oversabi which is turning into an albatross over the years.
I’m still in shock as to why Guardiola, like it’s now becoming common to him in the knockout stages of the UCL to come up with questionable line-ups, decided to play without a natural striker and a defensive midfielder on the biggest stage of club football, and Chelsea punished his indiscretion when a Mason Mount intelligent pass split open City’s defence through the very middle for Kai Havertz to maroon goalkeeper Ederson Moraes, scoring the only goal of the match.
Today, I neither intend to bemoan the twin bombs dropped on the city of Manchester by Villareal and Chelsea within three days apart, nor do I intend to count the countless teeth of Adepele, the hyperdontia that Nigeria’s political class has become.
Now that the hurlyburly’s done and the battle is won and lost, Chelsea, worthy Champions of Europe, deserve their time in the sun for ‘Blue is the colour, football is the game’.
I doff my hat for Chelsea, whose fans, britannica.com describes as one of ‘England’s most notorious gangs of football hooligans known as Headhunters’, and ‘have been responsible for organised violence in the stands since the 1970s’.
But as the euphoria of victory and the bitterness of defeat ebb, I guess it’s also time the Nigerian leadership looks in the mirror and takes lessons from the Chelsea triumph.
I wish Nigerian President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) and his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, watched the match. I don’t give a hoot if they oohed or aahed during the match. All I care about is that they both did not lose the lessons inherent in the Chelsea victory.
I also wish the President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, his deputy, Ovie Omo-Agege, and the leadership of the House of Representatives – all watched the match, and not lose sight of the lessons in the exemplary leadership of Tuchel, who took Chelsea from the ninth position in January this year to the pinnacle of club football four months later.
Tuchel, unlike the Buhari-Osinbajol-led government, didn’t whine about the players he inherited from Chelsea’s former coach, Frank Lampard, but settled down to work and turned an average team to Europe’s best.
I wish Nigerian political leaders at all levels saw the economic stupidity in our love for foreign football and truly develop our local leagues to partake in the multi billion dollars venture football has become globally.
As I said early on, this article is a salute to Chelsea’s indomitable spirit, and not a criticism of the inept Buhari-Osinbajo government. Tuchel picked the best available legs for every game. He wasn’t nepotistic like the Buhari-Osinbajo rudderless government, which has never criticised killings by suspected Fulani herdsmen across the country.
Tuchel understands the burden of leadership. He knows the goals of the board and the expectation of the club’s teeming supporters worldwide, and he rose to the occasion by constantly communicating with his players, never absented himself at critical moments, demonstrating compassion, exuding confidence and building trust – virtues lacking in the Buhari-Osinbajo government.
It’s Chelsea’s moment of joy, I won’t spoil their fun by allowing what a popular ex-Edo lawmaker calls ‘odoriferous saga cum gargantuan saga’ to take the shine of their victory. I won’t allow the Buhari-Osinbajo government to take the centre stage of this piece.
May was a month of Chelsea triumph. It was also a month when Nigeria’s Defence Minister, Bashir Magashi, delivered a ‘heartless’ speech at the funeral of former COAS, Lt.-Gen Ibrahim Attahiru. May was the month when the new ‘Aide-de-Camp’ to the Aide-De-Camp of Governor Nasir El-Rufai was unveiled and the incoming First Lady got into a fresh ‘thug’ of war.
May was the month when the parents of kidnapped Greenfield University students paid N180m and bought many motorcycles to secure the release of their children from kidnappers.
May Buhari and Osinbajo take the lessons of Chelsea victory beyond May.
Up Blues!
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @tunde odesola
Twitter: @tunde_odesola
Opinion
Farooq Kperogi: One president, many spokesmen, and mixed messages amid misery
Farooq Kperogi: One president, many spokesmen, and mixed messages amid misery
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s unparalleled appointment of three official, cabinet-level spokesmen—in addition to 9 other senior media aides— symptomizes an insidious governmental malaise. It shows a government that is obsessed with public relations at the expense of public welfare, propaganda at the expense of progress, and mind management at the expense of meaningful management.
On November 14, Daniel Bwala, the former mouthpiece for PDP’s Atiku Abubakar during the last presidential campaign, was inaugurated as Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication. This move added him to a line-up that already included Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, who had been informally recognized as the senior spokesperson after Ajuri Ngelale’s dramatic exit, and Sunday Dare, Special Adviser to the President on Public Communication and National Orientation.
Yet, on his very first day, October 18, Bwala brazenly declared himself “the spokesman for the president” to State House correspondents, proclaiming that he was the direct successor to Ngelale. His Twitter declaration further cemented his self-anointment: “Resumed officially as the Special Adviser, Media and Public Communications/Spokesperson (State House).”
Since Onanuga had effectively functioned as the spokesman for the president after Ngelale was forced out of the Presidential Villa, it seemed like Tinubu had no confidence in Onanuga and chose to upstage him by bringing in Bwala.
That puzzled me. I wondered what reputational, symbolic, or political capital Bwala had to earn such an edge. Here’s a man who is deeply resented by Tinubu supporters for his erstwhile caustic attacks on the president and APC during the last election, who is reviled by the opposition for his perceived treachery and mercenariness, and who is disdained by people who couldn’t care less about both Tinubu and the opposition. Such a person is more of a reputational liability than an asset for persuasion.
So it came as no surprise when I read a swift news release from Bayo Onanuga disclaiming Bwala’s self-description as “the spokesperson” for the president. TheCable of November 19 reported that Tinubu was “furious on learning of Bwala’s manoeuvre and immediately instructed Onanuga to issue a clarification.”
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The “clarification” says Bwala is now Special Adviser Policy Communication and Sunday Dare is now Special Adviser, Media and Public Communications. “These appointments, along with the existing role of Special Adviser, Information and Strategy, underscore that there is no single individual spokesperson for the Presidency. Instead, all the three Special Advisers will collectively serve as spokespersons for the government,” the statement said.
Tinubu has by far the largest media team in Nigeria’s history—just like he has the largest cabinet in Nigeria’s history. Yet his government has inflicted the most hardship on Nigeria and demands the greatest sacrifice from Nigerians whom he has already stripped of basic welfare and dignity.
Despite this elaborate roster of media professionals, Tinubu’s government stands as a paradox: the most expansive communication team in Nigerian history, yet the most tone-deaf administration in addressing the agonies of ordinary Nigerians. Like his record-breaking cabinet size, his communication machinery seems less about functionality and more about optics—a poorly orchestrated façade against the backdrop of deepening national suffering.
Historically, Nigerian presidents have managed with far leaner communication teams. President Olusegun Obasanjo had a relatively modest media and communications team. His first spokesperson was Doyin Okupe, who was designated as Special Assistant on Media and Publicity from 1999 to 2000.
He was succeeded by Tunji Oseni whose designation was changed to Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity and served in that role from 2000 to 2003. He was replaced by Remi Oyo from 2003 until 2007.
Apart from these official spokespeople, Obasanjo appointed Dr. Stanley Macebuh as Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications. After firing him, he replaced him with Emmanuel Arinze.
He also appointed Femi Fani-Kayode as Special Assistant on Public Affairs and replaced him with Uba Sani after elevating him to a minister. In other words, Obasanjo never had more than three media/communications people at any one time, and he always had just one official spokesperson.
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s had Olusegun Adeniyi as his one and only media person/spokesperson. He is also on record as the first president to elevate the position to a cabinet-level position by redesignating as a “Special Adviser” position.
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Goodluck Jonathan sustained this tradition. When Ima Niboro was his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity from 2010 to 2011, he had no other media/communications person. And when Reuben Abati took over from Niboro from 2011 to 2015, he was the only spokesperson and media/communications person for the president.
The slide into a propagandocracy began with Muhammadu Buhari, who doubled down on PR appointments. While Femi Adesina served as his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu operated as Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity. Buhari’s entourage also included social media mavens, photographers, and digital content creators—an unprecedented escalation in spin management.
There was Tolu Ogunlesi (Special Assistant, Digital & New Media); Lauretta Onochie (Personal Assistant, Social Media); Bashir Ahmad (Personal Assistant, New media); Sha’aban Sharada (Personal Assistant, Broadcast Media); Naziru Muhammed (Personal Assistant, TV Documentary); Sunday Aghaeze (Personal Assistant, Photography); and Bayo Omoboriowo (Personal Assistant/ President’s Photographer).
But Tinubu has taken this expansion to absurd heights. Apart from three cabinet-level official spokespersons, you also have Tunde Rahman (Senior Special Assistant to the President — Media); Abdulaziz Abdulaziz (Senior Special Assistant to the President — Print Media); O’tega Ogra (Senior Special Assistant (Digital/New Media); Tope Ajayi – Senior Special Assistant (Media & Public Affairs); Segun Dada (Special Assistant — Social Media); Nosa Asemota – Special Assistant (Visual Communication); Mr Fredrick Nwabufo (Senior Special Assistant to the President — Public Engagement); Mrs Linda Nwabuwa Akhigbe (Senior Special Assistant to the President — Strategic Communications); and Mr Aliyu Audu (Special Assistant to the President — Public Affairs).
Such bloated extravagance sends a disconcerting message about the administration’s priorities during a time of profound economic hardship.
In a March 4, 2017 column titled “Propagandocracy and the Buhari Media Center,” I pointed out that the size of a government’s propaganda apparatus is often inversely proportional to its confidence in its own legitimacy. Tinubu’s indulgence in this over-the-top PR operation signals two troubling realities: insecurity and incoherence.
The insecurity stems from an acute awareness of its own fragility—an administration desperate to control the narrative because it knows it has failed to deliver on substantive governance. The incoherence arises from the cacophony of voices in this unwieldy structure, breeding contradictions, turf wars, and conflicting messages. How can a government unable to synchronize its internal communication hope to connect with its citizens?
At its core, Tinubu’s sprawling PR machine is emblematic of an administration focused on perception management rather than problem-solving. This gluttonous obsession with propaganda, in the midst of soaring inflation, subsidy removals, and austerity measures, is an affront to struggling Nigerians.
Leadership demands more than just the appearance of competence; it demands action. Until Tinubu shifts his focus from multiplying spokespersons to delivering substantive governance, his legacy risks being that of a leader who built a fortress of spin while the people languished outside its gates.
Farooq Kperogi : One president, many spokesmen, and mixed messages amid misery
Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.
Opinion
From warmongering to lie-peddling, Alapomu go explain taya
From warmongering to lie-peddling, Alapomu go explain taya
Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, November 22, 2024)
Ankara needs no introduction; it’s the capital of Turkey, an Islamic country with a 99% Muslim population. Ankara needs no introduction; it’s the name of the brightly-coloured cotton fabric popular in West Africa. Ankara is the introduction. It marks out its wearer as a guest qualified for semo and plastic bowl at Nigeria’s owambe shindigs. Welcome, dear ankara – the uniformity cloth, clothing the lowly and the mighty at parties, like green leaves clothe móín-móín and èko, two edible kindreds, tumbling in embrace down throaty road.
Native to Ankara, Turkey’s second largest populous city after Istanbul, are the Angora goat, Angora cat and Angora rabbit, renowned for their extraordinary coats which are shorn and made into mohair, a globally prized source of cotton, with Angora being the westernised name for Ankara.
Yet, there’s another meaning to ankara. In Spanish, ‘encara’ means ‘still’, an adverb, whose synonyms include yet, nevertheless, nonetheless, notwithstanding, however, despite that, all the same, even so, in spite of etc.
On April 18, 2007, at 19 years of age, Lionel Andres Messi Cuccitini, football GOAT, during a Copa del Rey semifinal first-leg match between Barcelona and Getafe, singlehandedly dribbled past the entire Getafe team, leaving in his wake, players and goalkeeper biting the grass, with the commentator, Joaquim Maria Puyal, screaming, “ankara Messi, ankara Messi, ankara Messi, Messi, Messi, ankara Messi, ankara Messi, ankara Messi, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, gol, goooooooooooooooooo…”
From Barcelona’s right half of the centre circle, Messi got a short pass from Xavi and made a beeline for goal, ghosting Getafe players, who fell over themselves like bags of beans, making the commentator scream, “ankara Messi, ankara Messi – meaning: ‘still Messi’, ‘still Messi’, ‘still Messi’, as each Getafe player tumbled and the entire stadium stood on edge, frenziedly watching if the charging GOAT was going to miss or score. The GOAT did not miss. He scored the greatest Goal of All Time. And the whole stadium – Barcelona and Getafe fans – erupted in ecstasy.
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Gripped by the pulsating dribbling run that produced Messi’s goal, the Catalan radio commentator, Puyal, mispronounced ‘encara’ which means ‘still’ in Spanish as ‘ankara’, thereby gifting football lexicon a new word. If you’re in doubt, please, google ‘Ankara Messi’.
I’m ready to put my neck on the chopping block at Ìmògún, the ancient place of skulls, if any of the three following assertions is wrong. One: Ankara, Turkey’s capital city, is not unfamiliar to the Alapomu of Apomu, Oba Kayode Adenekan Afolabi. Two: The Igbákejì Òrìsà is not unfamiliar with ankara, the popular fabric; and three, the stylish Alapomu is not unfamiliar with designer clothes made from Angora furs.
But, by the king’s insistence on standing his ground even though he’s standing on quicksand, the crown may tumble into the gutter of politics. It’s evident the kabiyesi believes that a lie vehemently told possesses the capacity to become the truth after some time like a lizard becoming a crocodile after eating. His rejoinder to the viral video of his call to arms screams, “A bad excuse is better than no excuse.”
Since public outcry trailed the video of Oba Afolabi, in which he personally called for violence in the 2023 Ayedaade/Irewole/Isokan House of Representatives election in Osun, Afolabi has remained as tenacious as Messi, trying to dribble out of the odium his indiscretion has landed him.
This is the badly-worded rejoinder the king sent to The PUNCH: “ALAPOMU IS NOT A WAR MONGER – Alapomu Media Aide.
“The attention of Oba Kayode Afolabi, the Alapomu of Apomu has been drawn to an opinion written by a Columnist titled “Apomu King turns war monger for PDP” published in a national newspaper.
“A statement made by his media aide, Tolu Adetunji said Oba Afolabi is not a war monger but a man of peace. He said the article is biased, prejudiced, subjective, one sided opinion which is not based on facts but on a video which the King has refuted in many national newspapers and online publications.
“The refuttal was made shortly after the video went viral nearly a week ago” according to the Media Aide.
“In the refutal the King said the video was doctored to bring his reputation down in the eyes of the right thinking members of the society.
“Based on the rebuttal, the Media Aide said “anyone who wants to do a story or write an opinion on the video should be fair and objective by balancing the story with the king’s official response to the video.”
I won’t bore you by reproducing all the incriminating assertions the Alapomu made while gassing at the empowerment programme by the incumbent House of Representatives member for Ayedaade/Irewole/Isokan federal constituency, Lanre Oldebo, recently. I’ll take just a paragraph of his speech.
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Oba Afolabi, “I said, Mao, if the election turns to war, so be it; if it turns to combat, so be it. No one can cage the king but God. I told Mao that at all costs, I am solidly behind him – go and unleash absolute violence – this candidate (Lanre) MUST win the election. Then the situation snowballed into “Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! To! Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! We thank God the effort yielded good fruit…”
May it please your kingship, Oriade, to know I did not remove one ‘ta’ from the 10 ‘ta-ta-ta’ and the one ‘to’ you said to describe what followed your battlecry. This is because I do not want to misquote your majesty.
Being a commoner in conversation with royalty, I need to minimise my excitement and maximise this opportune moment of man-god correspondence because the bull is no mincemeat to be hit twice by the hunter’s arrow, a kìí rí efón ta léèmejì.
The more I watch the video, the more I’m confused as to the motive of the kabiyesi coming out more than one year after the electoral heist, to publicly admit his role in the coup. I’m confused because the kabiyesi is a man of integrity; he wouldn’t say such a thing for money.
I sincerely feel pity for the kabiyesi because the video pinned him against the wall. Going by the language of his rejoinder, he didn’t really want to start a media war but he needed to say something, and by saying something, he impugns my own integrity, leaving me with no option than to spit out the salt and the fart. Omoye has run into the market naked, the flowery ankara clothe is of no use to her.
Kabiyesi, I know the APC are no saints. They cheat, shoot and maim, too. They have kings in their pockets, too. But every infraction on public integrity should be condemned fiercely as this is being condemned.
Oba Alapomu, you said, “Anyone who wants to do a story or write an opinion on the video should be fair and objective by balancing the story with the king’s official response to the video.”
What a cheeky statement! Kabiyesi, I advise you should just squarely face the warmongering duties you’ve taken on behalf of your party, the PDP, and leave elementary journalism alone.
Alayeluwa, I guess those around you, who have passed by a newspaper house in their wakabout peregrinations, are the ones telling you I must ‘balance’ my article, “Apomu king turns warmonger for PDP,” with your baggage of lies.
Kabiyesi, let me throw this in real quick, it might help your understanding of journalism. Sir, journalism is a profession based on truth, fairness, equity and justice. You lost the moral authority to call for balance when you gathered the balls of the APC in your hands and sharply pulled them backwards. Ouch!! You know it hurts. As the saying goes, “He who comes to equity, must clean with clean hands.” Igbá Kejì Òrìsà, did you come with clean hands?
Alapomu, you also said the video of your shenanigans was doctored. Please, kabiyesi, with due respect, ask enlightened people around you what is meant by, “He who alleges must prove.” Your Highness, the onus lies on you to produce the ‘authentic’ video, where you didn’t say all the things you said.
My Lord, I humbly challenge you to produce the video proving that I maligned you in any way. I am dead sure you can never produce such a video because any video you produce won’t only become an exhibit in court, it will also be subjected to forensic analysis as INEC, Police and the DSS will be joined in the case, and then, what the PDP cooked that burnt down the whole house would be revealed.
Kabiyesi, sir, your laughable rejoinder mistook denial of an allegation for proof of innocence. That may be a royal way of thinking but it’s not the justice way of thinking. Truth doesn’t think like that.
I’ll advise the kabiyesi to just apologise (publicly or privately) for the viral outburst and treat all citizens as his children, going forward. But if the Oriade prefers media back-and-forth, I’ll hold steadfastly my truth to his sword.
By the way, instead of cheerleading the PDP, the kabiyesi can earn some foreign currencies from publishers of English dictionaries – Thesaurus, Longman, Oxford, Merriam-Webster, Cambridge and Collins – by patenting his own meanings of electoral violence, rigging, prebendalism, serfdom, injustice, vanity, intolerance and evil.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
X: @Tunde_Odesola
Opinion
Apomu king turns warmonger for PDP
Apomu king turns warmonger for PDP
Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, November 15, 2024)
As a nobody son of a nobody, I dare not caress the blade of the king’s sword with the palms of my hands. Otherwise, blood shall trail my footsteps to Ìmògún, the ancient place of skulls, where the heads of the guilty and the guiltless tumble down the hill on the king’s inviolable order. In utter respect and total submission, I bow and tremble before the throne of Apomu! Who am I to look into the eyes of the gangster of Apomu, Oba Kayode Adenekan Afolabi? Èwò orisa!
As a commoner, I dare not disrespect the Alapomu. May Sango kill my bata drum and its accoutrements! I fear the king, I swear. May the king’s sword not be unsheathed from its scabbard before my very eyes, and stabbed into my very back – won ò ní ti ójù mí yo idà, kí wón tí èyìn mí kíbó. The mighty king kills who dares, aróbafín ni oba n pa! May my writings and agitation not kill me like Ken Saro-Wiwa. May the king not kill me.
Trembling – therefore – I maintain égbèfà distance near to the king; fearful – thereof – I move away from the king at égbèje distance because, in the land of Ódùdúwà, you dare and die – the king is the next in command to the gods.
In the land of Káárò Ójíire, nobody greets the king standing, we prostrate to greet the Alapomu, the almighty oba who gallantly fought on the side of the Peoples Democratic Party in the Osun House of Reps election war in 2023. K-a-b-i-y-e-s-i o!
Actually, I didn’t set out to write about the Alapomu in this edition. I had my mind set on the great Baptizer, sorry, I mean the great Balthazar of Equatorial Guinea Kingdom, Emperor Ebang Engonga (GCFR), who baptised over 400 women in the sea of his semen.
Because of its faraway distance, I was preparing to tread the spider’s web to Malabo, moving gingerly, ensuring my feet and hands did not get entangled in the naughty knots dotting the spider’s silky entrapment while trying to critique Balthazar.
But, a day before I was to write the Balthazar article, a bedlam suddenly arose over the viral video of the Alapomu in a Whatsapp group I belong to. I didn’t join the hullabaloo but took notice of the various press statements about the unkingly action of the Alapomu.
Most Whatsapp groups are madhouses with madmen and madwomen prescribing medications for madness. To maintain your sanity, you must know how to unstick yourself from the gummy madness online.
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The farmer’s calamity is the sparrow’s hilarity. I repeat, the farmer’s cause of weeping is the sparrow’s source of laughter. The sparrow’s belly, full of corn, draws scorn and baleful looks from the helpless farmer.
Journalism and quicksilver and shifting sands are all children of the same father called Dynamism. The life of a columnist is the fate of the Swiss watch – tick-tock, tick-tock without rest – life of news monitoring round-the-clock, and when you think you finally got a topic you want to write about, another bigger story breaks, belittling the story you’re exploring. When this happens, the columnist becomes a creative spider, webbing a potpourri of tales.
You will agree that Balthazar’s story should be a stand-alone tale. Balthazar is big. He’s an elephant, he needs space. And I figure the Balthazar story will still resonate throughout the year, so I can always come back to it, but the Alapomu story would soon be lost in the ocean of the tyranny our tyrant elite drown the masses.
Along the way, I had also given a thought to the interview by popular gospel musician, Yinka Ayefele, whose radio guest – a demented cannibal, claimed to have killed over 80 persons. Ultimately, however, I had to drop Balthazar and Yinka Ayefele, and hug the Alapomu.
Crowned only four years ago, the viral video of Alapomu’s verbal dysentery during a PDP empowerment event in his domain recently is both repulsive and shameful.
Fellow Nigerians, this is a translation of what the man called kabiyesi said in Yoruba, “I will tell you PDP members a secret: Go and take good care of your house because we do not know who the rival party will put forward (for the next election). If the rival party puts forward a strong candidate, and if there’s no unity in PDP, it can affect us. I always say something to people – you don’t know the value of your possession until you lose it. No matter what, let’s cherish our common interest.
“I’m using this opportunity to beg you (PDP members) to stand by Lanre (Oladebo). On the eve of his election, Akogun stormed my palace, and said, “Kabiyesi, you have been slammed to the ground.” I said, “Who slammed me to the ground?” He (Akogun) said, “It is Olufi (the King of Gbongan).” I said, “What? Olufi!? Olufi is my son! Gbongan was founded in 1793, the Olufi is junior to me, he should be calling me father. How can he slam me?
“Akogun spoke and maintained that the rival party had met.” I said, “Ha, the election is no longer between Lanre and Oluga, it’s now between Olufi and I, and I will show him (Olufi) that I’m his father. I had an elaborate meeting with Mao, who didn’t reveal the content of our meeting to you people. He (Mao) is right behind me here. (He looks sideways to his back where Mao was seated).”
Boasting of his indomitable powers, the Apomu ruler continued, “I said, Mao, if the election turns to war, so be it; if it turns to combat, so be it. No one can cage the king but God. I told Mao that at all costs, I am solidly behind him – go and unleash absolute violence – this candidate (Lanre) MUST win the election. Then the situation snowballed into “Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! To! Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! We thank God the effort yielded good fruit…” And the people hailed the king.
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Lanre Oladebo, the incumbent House of Representatives member representing the Ayedaade/Irewole/Isokan federal constituency, is an indigene of Apomu while his major rival in the 2023 election, Mrs Taiwo Oluga, an All Progressives Congress chieftain, whom Oladebo overthrew, is an indigene of Gbongan. Mao’s full name is Alhaji Lateef Adeniran. An ex-chairman of Isokan LG, Mao is also from Apomu.
The Ayedaade/Irewole/Isokan federal constituency has a history of producing women for the House of Reps seat, with a former Speaker, Mrs Patricia Etteh (PDP), and Mrs Ayo Omidiran (APC), representing the zone for two terms each before Oluga was elected in 2019, losing re-election in 2023 to Oladebo, a male.
The inadvertent revelation of the Alapomu confirms the ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-to-ta-po-pa that shot Oladebo to victory. What a king! What a country!
The ta-ta-ta-ta-ta king of Apomu is not an ápòdà; he’s educated, handsome and suave. But a king should not abandon the nobility of his throne to roll in the gutter of politics because, eventually, he would be like the old man, who ties corn cobs to his waist and is being chased about the village by chickens pecking at his Balthazar.
Apomu was a great community, historically. For about 400 years, Apomu was the economic nerve centre of the entire Oyo Empire of the 16th Century. Its strategic location as a land connecting various Yoruba inland and riverine communities, together with its proximity to resources, accessible roads and political stability, made Apomu the market of choice.
Because of the humongous wealth it generated, security was not discounted in Apomu. Guards were on alert in the land, securing lives and property. But one day, says Yoruba oral tradition, something strange happened to one of the guards, making him to flee the town, bequeathing to the Yoruba language this proverb that describes profound calamity, “Ìlóyá, oníbodè Apòmù, a kó o n’Ífá, a gbà á lóbìnrin, òpèlè tí kò bá wolé mú, ajá gbe e, ‘e bá mi mu, e bá mi mu’, ajá ko si kònga, ilé tí kò bá wò, ilé jóná.” Meaning: It’s time to go, declares the Apomu border guard, whose Ifa goodwill was stolen, and his wife was snatched. He rushes inside his house to get his Ifa oracle to divine why life is going awry, a dog snaps up his oracle. He runs after the dog, shouting ‘help, help’ ‘help’, the dog falls into a well, he runs back home only to find his house on fire.”
That wasn’t the only unfortunate incident in the history of Apomu. Apomu also witnessed the Owu War between 1820 and 1827. The war involved Ife and Owu over the control of Apomu, which was under Ife. The war which led to the destruction of Owu caused Owu indigenes to flee to present-day Abeokuta. The war arose over slaves and trade conflicts.
By boasting that kings are above every authority in the land except God, Afolabi arrogantly smashes the meaning of k-a-b-i-y-e-s-i on the head of decency while the police, DSS and INEC watch helplessly.
I know most traditional rulers are battleaxes and footmats of various political parties. But Apomu has an illustrious history. The Alapomu should stop stoking the embers of political war, he should lead with honour.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
X: @Tunde_Odesola
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