Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, March 24, 2023)

“Yokolu, yokolu, ko ha tan bi? Tinubu gbe won sanle, won ti yoke!” is a Yoruba song of victory depicting the merciless manner Oduduwa incarnate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, smashed the spine of the enemy against Aso Rock.

Hehehehe! If you lift your eyes unto the East, and ask from where does your help come, please, discontinue reading this article because your help will never come! I don’t care whatever name you call me, I care the Almighty god of Lagos has taught the children of discord a lesson. I’m glad they won’t stop crying in eight years.

They are forever stubborn and stiff-necked like a fake KDK fan – these people who eat stones without drinking water, who wolf down yestern bread from the eastern parts without drinking tea, and yet demand freshly cooked gbegiri and amala in Lagos. If they are not stubborn, they should have heeded the advice of the lipless, wetin-you-carry Oba in Lagos, who saw tomorrow, and graciously advised them to jump into the lagoon.

I think drowning in the lagoon then is less painful than the prospect of being pushed down from Asso Rock now, one after the other, breaking necks, splitting spines and cracking limbs. Long may the Lagos monarch, Kabiyesi Real One, live for his foresight and fatherly advice.

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The Atlantic Ocean never rests. The enemies of Tinubu will never rest. They wailed when Bola only had marine powers, controlling the Atlantic, the lagoon and Odo Iya Alaro. Now that he’s set to control the air, land and sea, let’s see where they will run to.

Mungun, if you think the owner of the bronze mortar only controls the sea and air, where in your reckoning is his land army led by the bloody illiterate called MC Oluomo, whose eyes are set on the stool of Oshodi? Did you say that MC Oluomo is horrendous? That an agbero can never become king in Yoruba land? You’re a goat! A blind, deaf and dumb goat for that matter. Is a former recharge card seller, Tunde, (I’ll change my name soon), not calling the shots in Asso Rock today? Listen, and hear me clearly, please; anything the All Progressives Congress touches turns to rust. Go and ask the dying giant, Nigeria.

Hahahahaha! I laugh a sad laugh. Erin iyangi. I’m utterly sad and scandalised that MC Oluomo, a dropout agbero, is APC leader whom senators, House of Representatives members, House of Assembly members, local government chairmen etc bow before in Oshodi-Isolo area. Ha!!! Uncle Bola, aye ma n baje lo re e!

Why would the youth want to go to school or stay away from crime when they see the life Oluomo is living? Why won’t MC Oluomo’s sidekick, the moron called Koko Zaria (imagine the name), threaten to beat up some female artistes and even call former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Chief Ayo Opadokun, Chief Bode George, Dele Farotimi, Falz, Mr Macaroni etc unprintable names?

Political patronage shouldn’t be measured by the number of skulls acquired during conquests. Patronage should be on account of hard work, obedience to law and order, creativity, innovation, enterprise, nobility etc.

Hahahahaha. I laugh a sad laugh. The king that will fetter the elephant has yet to be enthroned. Who can stop Tinubu when his mind is made up? Tell me, who will stop Alameda from enthroning a serially accused murder suspect from becoming king in Yoruba land?

Did you not see how MC Oluomo, a hooligan, was swaying anticlockwise, like a lizard on hindlegs, on the streets, distributing garri to rowdy crowds in disguised vote buying when he could simply have told the impoverished crowds to queue up and benefit from his atrocity?

Musiliu Akinsanya doesn’t understand law and order. He understands brawl and Luger. Choose: Pig and filth or MC Oluomo and bloodiness – Omoluabi Yoruba will pick pig and filth. And it’s not about being picky, it’s about not descending into anarchy.

Osun descended into disorder when it enthroned a wife beater, hemp smoker, Yahoo-Yahoo, and Canadian convict as king, Lagos will surpass that record by installing as the king of Oshodi, a reputable man of immeasurable violence, MC Oluomo, who warned the Igbo not to come out and vote during the last general elections.

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Instead of the police investigating Oluomo for his inciting remark, the police became his lawyer, saying ‘let’s take it that he (Oluomo) was joking.’ Hahahaha! Oluomo n fi iku sere. The lifetime award for the ‘Most Useless Force’ in the world belongs to the Nigerian Police Force.

Let’s even imagine some ‘eru iku’ – merchants of death – in the National Union of Road Transport Workers rape a lady or kill someone, and the case was brought to Oba MC, (imagine the crazy name), in whose favour would the lout-turned-king rule? President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Yoruba do not deserve a real-life Itu Baba Ita of the late Gbenga Adebayo comic series.

It’s bad enough that some members of a murderous transport union rode on the back of your support to trample on the law and become terror that stalks round the clock. Making MC Oluomo king as a compensation for his violence would be a sin against humanity.

Oluomo boasted in one of his insulting videos that since he knew you in the 1990s, he had been highly favoured by you. Tinubu, omo Abibatu Mogaji, imagine, MC Oluomo and his gang have unfettered access to you – you, a first-class brain, whereas millions of graduates and hard-working Nigerians can’t live on $1 per day each. Please, do not aid the illiterate Oluomo in carrying his meal offering past the mosque. Please, let your umbilical cord with Oluomo remain on the owner-dog level. Please, don’t put the blue blood of Yoruba royalty at the risk of rabies from the attack dog.

Jagaban, now that you will be President, it’s time you made away with those unconventional soldiers led by Oluomo because you will now be the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Where would you keep these frankenstein monsters? You can keep them in your palace in Bourdillon, it’s big enough but they will go haywire if you put them in a Yoruba palace. ‘Omo ile ni won, bi e gbe won si ori beedi, won a ja bo’ – they’re ne’er-do-well, put them on the bed, they will still fall and sleep on the floor.

I’m a Christian, but the import of Muslims giving honour and adoration to the late Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), and also reciting for the dead and the living, the Kurisiyu prayer found in Suratul Baqara, just hit me. May the soul of Chief Obafemi Awolowo continue to find repose in the Lord. May the Lord keep the family he left behind. Will Awolowo install an MC Oluomo as king? Yes, there was a place for the Adelakuns and the Adedibus, but it was never in the palace.

If you intend development for Nigeria, Asiwaju, you shouldn’t put square pegs in round holes. Oluomo is not even a thread in any hole. He’s an abomination to royalty and decency. Yoruba obaship shouldn’t be suya and ‘paraga’ given to assuage bloody fools.

Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey, may the Lord bless him with many more years in good health. He once warned about the need to appoint good people into leadership positions, singing, “Ka to fi eyan j’oye laarin ilu, o ni lati je eni rere…” I’m sure you know the evergreen song, sir. Is MC Oluomo a good man? Can you allow him to marry your daughter, Oyinda?

Baba Seyi, choosing an oba should be a painstaking exercise – just like Nigerians took painstaking measures to elect their next president – but the Independent National Electoral Commission tossed a coin, which went up in the air and never came down, and while the people were still grumbling, INEC announced you as the winner.

Well, now that you’re president, Bobo Chicago, please, endeavour to write your name in gold through laudable policies, erasing the controversial memories of you in public mind. A good name, you will agree with me, is the passport needed for Aljanah fridaus, not stored up wealth. I wish you good speed, Your Excellency.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
Facebook: @tunde odesola
Twitter: @tunde_odesola

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, March 17, 2023)

Cleveland, a city in Ohio, USA, was long regarded as the sufferhead among American cities. Bearing on its big head the weight of an unfortunate nickname – The mistake on the lake – Cleveland shares a few similarities with Nigeria. How did Cleveland get its nickname? This is how.

As recently as the late 1960s and 1970s, Cleveland was described as a city where ducks flew upside down because there was nothing worth dumping on. An unforgettable incident happened in June 1969 that made the appellation of a rundown city stick to Cleveland like a mask.

Just as Nigeria has River Niger, Cleveland has Cuyahoga River, where the city’s factories dumped their waste with reckless abandon. The Cuyahoga River, by the way, empties into Lake Erie, which is the 11th largest lake in the world.

On a fateful ‘Ọjọ́ burúkú, èsù gbo’mi mu’ day when the devil was horribly thirsty for evil, a spark from a moving train on a bridge above the river ignited the toxic chemicals floating on the river, resulting in an inferno five storeys high. The fire was quickly put out and nobody died from the incident.

If such an inferno occurred in our beloved Nigeria, your guess is as good as mine; fake pastors would’ve had a field day, the opposition would’ve accused government of arson, government would have said the fire was God’s wish, and Bubu wouldn’t visit the scene; Garba or Adesina would’ve issued a statement silent on casualties, calling on Christians and Muslims to watch and pray. The hopeless country would’ve moved on.

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Commerce, industry and life folded up in Cleveland as the former 5th largest city population in the US shrunk to become the 54th largest. The river of tears rolling down the cheeks of the Nigerian masses bearing the brunt of misgovernance such as naira scarcity and poverty is bigger than the fast-shrinking Lake Chad, slowly drying up rivers Niger and Benue, and the polluted rivers in the Niger Delta.

But Cleveland has rebounded and is holding its own as America’s third largest iron and steel producing city, arts and cultural hub, topnotch healthcare destination, champion of environmental protection and progenitor of Rock and Roll.

If Cleveland was a ‘Mistake on the Lake’, Nigeria must be a ‘Disaster on the Niger’. Or a ‘Blight on the Benue’. Nigeria’s socio-political history paints the picture of domination, suspicion, hate and jealousy among her various tribes.

The seed of tribal domination, suspicion and hatred was sown with the nation’s first coup d’etat when Igbo soldiers, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu and Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, in the night of January 15, 1966, led other coup plotters, who were mainly of Igbo extraction, to carry out a pogrom on Nigeria’s political elite that included Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, and more than 20 top politicians, senior army officers including their wives, and junior soldiers on duty, even as another Igbo soldier, General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, seized the reins of power when the country was descending into anarchy.

Apart from Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna, other majors that were the masterminds of the first coup in Nigeria were Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Chris Anuforo, Dan Okafor, Adewale Ademoyega, and Humphrey Chukwuka.

A list of the casualties in the January 15, 1966 coup include Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Premier Ahmadu Bello, Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Finance Minister Festus Okotie-Eboh, Ahmed Musa (Ahmadu Bello’s aide), Hafsatu Bello, Mrs Latifat Ademulegun, Zarumi Sardauna, Ahmed Pategi (Bello’s driver).

Others include Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, Colonel Ralph Shodehinde, Colonel Kur Mohammed, Lt Colonel Abogo Largema, Lt Colonel James Pam, Lt Colonel Arthur Unegbe, Sergeant Daramola Oyegoke, Police Constable Yohana Garkawa, Lance Corporal Musa Nimzo, Police Constable Akpan Anduka, Police Constable Hagai Lai, and Philip Lewande. Unegbe was the only Igbo killed during the coup.

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Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, luckily escaped being killed in the January 1966 coup plot because he had been sentenced to a 10-year jail term for alleged conspiracy to overthrow the Balewa government in 1963.

Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the President of the country, who was on a cruise to the Caribbean when the coup occurred, had transferred powers to the Senate President, Prince Nwafor Orizu.

Then came the counter-coup of July 1966 aka ‘July Rematch’ which was more senseless and sickening than the January coup as an undisclosed number of Igbo soldiers, including Ironsi, were murdered, setting Nigeria on the path of a civil war that started on July 6, 1967 and ended on January 15, 1970 – lasting exactly 2 years, 6 months, 1 week and 2 days.

It’s true to say that the spine of the fragile unity of Nigeria was broken by the January 1966 coup, it is truer to say that the Igbo have never recovered from the Biafra War. No tribe can ever recover from a war that killed an estimated three million people.

Aborigine Indians never recovered till date in the US, Tibetans, Taiwanese and Uyghurs never fully recovered in Chinese hands, natives never recovered in Canada – in wars wherein genocide, starvation and sterilization were potent weapons for forceful land takeover and imperialism.

War is always terrible and avoidable. It’s like the bullet, once shot, it hurries to wreak havoc. It’s sane to say that the January 1966 coup was a military action, whose consequence shouldn’t be visited on an entire tribe. But warmongers would say that everything is fair in war and that the Igbo got what they deserve. However, is it right to kill an ant with a sledgehammer? Is it right to kill a dog because it barks?

The whole concept of Nigeria’s amalgamation is insane, unnatural and pretentious because after the Biafra War, ‘No victor, no vanquished’ became the new song on every lip, whereas suspicion, mistrust and contempt sit in the belly of each tribe.

With the 2023 general elections, the chickens have, again, come home to roost. The elections have, once again, widened the national fissures of ethnicity, religion and hypocrisy accentuated by the headless regime of retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari – a beneficiary of coups. Buhari divided Nigeria so much that when people are killed anywhere in the country nowadays, the first question that comes to mind is, “I hope my tribe isn’t involved’.

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Sadly, ethnicity, religion and hypocrisy have been critical factors determining the swing of electoral victory in the 2023 elections, just like past elections. Sadly, this is what the political elite designed for the masses, and it’s bearing bountiful harvests.

If not hypocrisy, what would you call Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who, as the day of election reckoning nears, has gained rapid demotion from being Lagos State foreman to being Lagos State groundsman ready to hug the homeless, lick the vulcaniser arse and stand at church entrance like a stranded sexton.

If not for ethnicity and hypocrisy, why haven’t the Igbo ever been this concerted, assertive and vehement in condemning bad governance in Igbo land especially, and across Nigeria generally, as they’ve now been rooting in Lagos?

Inasmuch as I’m an advocate of giving the job to the best hands, notwithstanding religious consideration, I’ll be remiss and insincere if I claim that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim was altruistic. That political act was in disregard of Christian religion, and could embolden an encore by the political class in future elections. Its unforeseen fallout is what’s making Sanwo-Olu’s heart beat 1,000 times per minute at the mention of Elluu Pee.

For one thousand and one reasons, the All Progressives Congress should’ve been punished at the polls but it exploited the nation’s faultlines, like other parties also did, to garner votes nationwide in confirmation of the weaponization of poverty.

No doubt, the memory of Biafra wracks the Igbo till date, the same way the loss of Ilorin, a Yoruba land, to the Fulani, rankles the Yoruba still. This is why ‘Lagos is no man’s land’ mantra provokes instant disgust in the Yoruba.

If the Labour Party loses Lagos governorship election on Saturday, the Igbo will come to great political pain, and return to the old song, “We want Biafra.” I join in the song; if the Igbo cannot aspire to be what they want in Nigeria, let them go.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
Facebook: @tunde odesola
Twitter: @tunde_odesola

By Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, March 3, 2023)

When cornered by death or stalked by danger, an insect called the Malaysian Exploding Ant turns against its assailant, ruptures its abdominal muscles, causing its poisonous glands to explode.

With the explosion of the poisonous glands, the ant releases an irritating substance in all directions. The released secretion is capable of immobilising or entangling the adversary.

The Malaysian Exploding Ant loses its life in the explosion, dying an honourable death, ‘ikú yá ju èsín’, teaching its assailant a bitter lesson – never mess with a Malaysian Exploding Ant. By falling on the sword, the ant preserves its clan, sacrificing itself for its colony.

In the olden days, whenever a tyrannical Alaafin of Oyo poked the eyes of the earth with his blue heels, the Oyomesi – a fraternity of powerful chiefs – would storm the palace, and open to the Alaafin, the calabash of death. Abomination! The king must never see the inside of the empty calabash. Èèwò!!

The statement, ‘See Paris and die’, is totally different from ‘See calabash and die’. ‘See Paris and die’ proclaims Paris as the ultimate scenic city in the world where every mortal should visit before dying. But an Alaafin that sees an empty calabash is on the journey of no return.

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The youths that stormed the Lekki tollgate three years ago were Nigeria’s exploding ants, who, condemning police brutality and demanding improved welfare and infrastructure, resorted to legitimate protest because they were tired of living under conditions unfit for even animals in the wild.

The government didn’t wait to see whether or not the youths would rupture their abdomens in harakiri at Lekki, rather, it sent its sheriffs and soldiers after them, singing a Bob Marley lyric, ‘kill them before they grow’, and yet call them ‘leaders of tomorrow’ a day after the massacre.

The youths were mistaken; they had thought their leaders were only wicked, little did they know they were heartless, too.

After marking the Lekki tollgate with the blood of innocent citizens, the regime of Nigeria’s President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), denied that no youth was killed, calling on wailing parents and relatives to produce the pheromones in the blood of the dead.

However, the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, blamed Buhari’s regime for allowing the protest to get out of hand. After the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government crushed the youth’s resistance against oppression at Lekki, Buhari and his party went home and slept with their two eyes closed. We had won, they thought. But revenge is the unforgiving cousin of karma; it’s brutal and unforgetting.

Millions of Nigerians youths nationwide had a voice in the Lekki tollgate protest because they all are affected by the actions and inactions of the directionless Buhari regime. So, they lay in wait and bide their time. Their time came last Saturday. And they utilised it to the hilt.

From the ruins of the earthquake that shattered entrenched political structures and disembowelled godfathers along with their godchildren, I seek interpretations to Nigeria’s new political map etched through the ballot nationwide on February 25, 2023.

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Obi is not the hero of the 2023 presidential election, he is the arrow. He’s not the vehicle of the struggle, he’s the driver who preached to not make monetary inducement a guarantee for support. With his message of hope and an assurance that Nigeria could be born again, Obi got support across ethnic and religious lines because poverty speaks only one language: lack.

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Nigerians who queued behind Obi are the heroes and heroines of the 2023 presidential election. Even when the struggle became intense and had to cross ethnic and religious lines, the heroes and heroines remained resolute for the horrors they’ve been subjected to by the APC and the PDP in almost 24 years is worse than errors of the struggle.

Being a product of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and the Peoples Democratic Party, Obi is, surely, no saint, but his lyrics make sense to a nation in need of a messiah different from those of the betrayers resident in the two leading principalities and powers of darkness called parties.

Make no mistake about it, Peter Gregory Obi must have been pleasantly surprised with the numbers thrown up by the election. Not in his wildest imagination would he be sure to sweep the broom into the Lagos Atlantic or snatch Plateau State from the jaws of the Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress.

Obi, with the backing of his supporters, knew he had something big in his hands, but like the unpredictability of football tournaments or new inventions, he wasn’t sure how his innovation would turn out. He simply put his product in the market, and b-o-o-m, the rest belongs to history.

Globally, braggadocio is a sauce with which politics is eaten. Former US presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton fit the bill of braggadocious leaders exuding the air of infectious confidence.

The presidential candidate of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, publicly said it would be belittling of him to even take Obi’s name on his lips, now that Obi has slammed him in Lagos, he should tender an open apology to Obi for belittling the new face of opposition in Nigeria.

* To be continued.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @tunde odesola

Twitter: @tunde_odesola