Opinion

Tinubu’s new tax regime as sovereignty for sale, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

2 days ago

December 13, 2025

Farooq Kperogi

Tinubu’s new tax regime as sovereignty for sale, By Farooq Kperogi

For weeks, I deliberately avoided commenting on the sweeping new tax regime the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration plans to roll out next year. It’s not because I did not recognize its gravity, but because I am not an economist and did not want to wade into a technically dense debate armed only with moral outrage.

Silence, in this case, felt like intellectual humility. Two developments, however, forced my hand.

The first was the unexpected melodrama that erupted in northern Nigerian social media circles over the federal government’s choice of influencers to “explain” the new tax policies to Nigerians. When a list circulated showing that most of the recruited social media advocates were from the South, northern influencers cried marginalization.

The grievance was loud enough that government handlers scrambled to recruit northern voices to restore regional balance. That this was the most animated public conversation around a punishing tax regime already tells us something disquieting about our political culture.

The second trigger was a widely shared Instagram video posted on October 18, 2025, by The Rohrs Team, a US-based financial education outfit. The video framed Africa’s current wave of tax reforms as a form of “debt colonialism.”

It argues that international institutions and Western governments have perfected a system in which African states are encouraged to accumulate debt and then trained to squeeze their own poor, struggling populations to service that debt. Watching the video, I found myself simultaneously nodding in recognition and wincing at its exaggerations.

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The video’s core claims are straightforward. It alleges that United Nations-linked initiatives such as Tax Inspectors Without Borders embed Western forensic tax experts in African countries to help governments close tax loopholes, audit businesses, and boost revenue.

It then argues that these efforts are not neutral capacity-building exercises, but part of an expansive IMF and World Bank-driven system designed to ensure that African countries generate enough revenue to repay foreign loans.

According to the video, this system relies on carrot-and-stick tactics: cooperate with external tax advisers and access more loans, resist and face isolation or penalties. The end result, it concludes, is a more efficient and less visible form of colonial extraction.

My check from multiple sources shows that some of this is wrong. Some of it is imprecise. Some of it is uncomfortably true.

It is false that UN or OECD officials directly impose tax laws, prosecute businesses, or collect money on behalf of Western creditors. Tax Inspectors Without Borders does not write tax legislation and does not wield enforcement powers. Those functions remain with national governments.

Claims that Tunisia’s tax-to-GDP ratio increased by over 50 percent because of UN tax collectors are also demonstrably overstated.

But dismissing the entire argument as conspiracy would be intellectually lazy.

What is undeniably true is that Nigeria, like many developing countries, is operating under intense fiscal pressure shaped by external actors. The IMF has for years emphasized “domestic resource mobilization” as a central plank of economic reform.

That’s just a fancy term for raising more taxes. Nigeria’s chronically low tax-to-GDP ratio is routinely cited as a pathology that must be cured. Debt sustainability analyses, credit ratings, access to concessional financing, and investor confidence all hinge on this logic.

In that sense, no one needs to issue direct orders. The structure does the coercion. If this sounds abstract, Kenya offers a concrete, sobering example.

In 2024, the Kenyan government introduced a sweeping finance bill that raised taxes across multiple sectors, including fuel, basic goods, and digital services. The bill was explicitly linked to Kenya’s IMF program and the need to so-called plug fiscal gaps.

The result was one of the most dramatic popular uprisings the country has seen in decades. Protesters poured into the streets, security forces responded brutally, and lives were lost. Faced with mounting unrest, the government withdrew the bill.

The story did not end there. The IMF openly acknowledged that the withdrawal created a financing shortfall. The question immediately became how Kenya would replace the lost revenue, whether through spending cuts, alternative taxes, or future legislation.

In other words, the policy instrument changed, but the fiscal imperative remained intact. That is how structural coercion works. The state may retreat tactically, but the economic logic reasserts itself.

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Nigeria’s impending tax regime fits neatly into this global pattern. The government presents it as modernization, efficiency and fairness. But its timing and content are inseparable from the overarching debt-fueled economic restructuring that has already produced fuel subsidy removal, currency devaluation, and a cost-of-living crisis of historic proportions.

The same external logic that declared petrol subsidies fiscally irresponsible now applauds aggressive tax expansion as prudent governance.

This is where the Instagram video, for all its rhetorical excess, gets something fundamentally right: sovereignty, as currently practiced, is largely a scam.

Nigeria may have a flag, an anthem and an elected government, but its macroeconomic choices are tightly circumscribed by external expectations. The petrol price regime that has tripled transportation and food costs did not emerge from a grassroots Nigerian consensus. It was the predictable outcome of long-standing IMF orthodoxy about subsidies.

The new tax regime, coming on the heels of that shock, follows the same script. Nigerians are being asked to pay more, endure more and sacrifice more in the name of fiscal responsibility defined elsewhere.

The economic consequences are not difficult to anticipate. Higher consumption taxes and compliance costs in an economy already hollowed out by inflation will depress demand, push more businesses into informality and further erode purchasing power.

Small traders, transport workers and salaried employees will feel the squeeze long before multinational corporations do. In a country where real wages have collapsed and unemployment remains structurally high, this is punishment.

And yet, there is an irony here worth lingering on. For the first time in decades, a significant number of Nigerians may begin to feel, viscerally, that the state is funded by their money. Oil rents long insulated the Nigerian government from its citizens. Taxes were an afterthought, easily evaded and politically inconsequential.

A regime that aggressively extracts revenue from ordinary people risks provoking resentment, but it also risks awakening accountability.

When people know that their tax naira pays for governance, the psychological contract changes. Suddenly, waste is personal. Corruption is theft from one’s pocket. Incompetence becomes intolerable.

The old revolutionary slogan “taxation without representation” was not just about money. It was about dignity and political agency. It was about the right to demand explanations from those who govern.

Nigeria’s new tax regime, harsh as it is, might inadvertently inaugurate a new era of critical democratic citizenship. Citizens who feel economically assaulted may also feel politically entitled. They may begin to ask harder questions, organize more assertively and reject the culture of elite impunity that oil wealth sustained for so long.

This brings me back to the farce of social media influencers scrambling for government patronage.

There is something profoundly grotesque about watching influencers fight over who gets to propagandize for a policy that will make life harder for most Nigerians. It is even more grotesque when this scramble is framed as a regional inclusion debate rather than a substantive policy argument.

The Tinubu administration recruits influencers not to so much to educate citizens as to anesthetize them. Explanation, in this context, is a euphemism for persuasion, and persuasion shades quickly into rhetorical intimidation.

I fully expect that the newly hired influencer battalions will soon swing into action, defending the indefensible, smearing critics, and blurring the line between advocacy and libel.

If recent experience is any guide, I may well become one of their earliest practice targets for having the audacity to point out that a tax regime can be both externally inspired and domestically harmful. Well, I am already used to that.

Nigeria deserves a conversation that goes beyond technocratic jargon and influencer theatrics. It deserves an honest reckoning with the reality that its economic sovereignty is constrained, its people are bearing disproportionate costs and its leaders are more accountable to international creditors than to the citizens they tax.

If this new tax regime teaches Nigerians anything, I hope it is that when the state reaches deep into your pocket, you earn the moral right to reach just as deeply into its conscience.

Tinubu’s new tax regime as sovereignty for sale, By Farooq Kperogi

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

Opinion

Disaster Looms: Otedola Bridge Must Be Demolished and Rebuilt Immediately — Expert

Published

4 days ago

December 11, 2025

Trends Admin

Otedola Bridge

Disaster Looms: Otedola Bridge Must Be Demolished and Rebuilt Immediately — Expert

A project management expert and scholar, Dr. ‘Jubreel Odukoya, has urged the Lagos State Government to take immediate action to demolish and reconstruct the Otedola Bridge, warning that it is “a structural death trap” and “a man-made disaster zone” that continues to claim innocent lives.

Dr. Odukoya, a Nigerian-born construction performance researcher trained in Malaysia, condemned the government’s inaction over the recurring tragedies on the bridge, stressing that no amount of condolence messages can replace urgent technical and ethical intervention.

“The Otedola Bridge is badly designed and poorly constructed. It fails all known standards of performance, safety, and engineering ethics. The time has come for the government to stop patching and start acting. The bridge must be completely demolished and rebuilt to meet global standards of road safety and structural integrity,” he advised.

Located along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway at the boundary between Lagos and Ogun States, the Otedola Bridge has a notorious history of accidents, tanker explosions, and mass fatalities. In June 2018, a fuel tanker explosion destroyed more than fifty vehicles, claiming numerous lives. In March 2024, a newlywed couple — Chiedozie Okoye of Zenith Bank and his America-based nurse wife, Joan Chidalu — died in another crash at the same location.

Dr. Odukoya explained that these recurring disasters are not coincidental but symptomatic of structural negligence, flawed design geometry, and inadequate traffic engineering.

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“The tragedies on Otedola Bridge are predictable outcomes of engineering failure. Sharp slopes, poor drainage, absence of crash barriers, and unclear lane demarcation make it extremely difficult for heavy-duty vehicles to navigate safely. When combined with weak supervision, poor materials, and disregard for ethical project practices, disaster becomes inevitable.”

Drawing on over 33 years of experience in project management, construction oversight, and quality control, including his tenure as Director of Projects Development at Kercon Construction Limited, Lagos, Dr. Odukoya stressed that government responses must go beyond temporary repairs and ceremonial site visits.

“In Malaysia, a bridge with repeated failures would never remain open to the public. It would be closed, reassessed, and reconstructed according to stringent design and soil stability protocols,” he said.

Dr. Odukoya, a member of the Malaysian Institute of Management (MIM) and the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MICG), called for the urgent establishment of a Technical Audit and Reconstruction Task Force to assess Otedola Bridge and other hazardous road infrastructures across Lagos State.

“Until we subject these critical infrastructures to independent performance audits, the bloodletting will continue. Lagos cannot keep burying citizens because of man-made negligence. The government must act. Otedola Bridge must be demolished and rebuilt now.”

He appealed to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s administration to demonstrate leadership by adopting international engineering safety standards and engaging certified professionals to redesign the bridge into a model of sustainable urban infrastructure.

“This is not about blame; it is about saving lives. Lagosians deserve roads that are safe, reliable, and built to last,” Dr. Odukoya concluded.

Disaster Looms: Otedola Bridge Must Be Demolished and Rebuilt Immediately — Expert

Opinion

A troubling message from Guinea-Bissau, by Azu Ishiekwene

Published

1 week ago

December 5, 2025

Trends Admin

Azubuike Ishiekwene

A troubling message from Guinea-Bissau, by Azu Ishiekwene

None of the three Guineas is thriving, but in Guinea-Bissau, the country that sits on Africa’s map like a tongue of fire, recent events are twisting that nation’s fate into profound misery.

Guinea Conakry is in the grip of a military dictatorship with a messianic complex, while Equatorial Guinea is led by an authoritarian civilian government that has lost its way.

Now, Guinea-Bissau, the country that gave the world Amilcar Cabral, one of Africa’s most foresighted revolutionaries, has added manufactured military coups to its long list of notoriety, which includes being one of the continent’s most deadly drug routes.

Making a coup

On November 26, a military regime led by General Horta Inta-A deposed the elected government of President Umaro Sissoco Embalo. It moved to consolidate its grip on power by appointing Finance Minister Illidio Viera Te as the country’s new prime minister. However, not many who have been following events in the small West African country (with a population of two million) would be impressed by the whitewash.

The deposed government of Embalo was obviously being clever by half by fomenting a palace coup ahead of the announcement of the election results, which might not have favoured him. Embalo has fallen the way he rose. In 2020, he literally defied the electoral commission after the elections and announced himself president from a hotel in the country’s capital, Bissau.

After two successful military coups, over half a dozen failed ones, and intermittent power struggles between the military, politicians, and drug barons who have made Guinea-Bissau a key corridor to Latin America and Europe, citizens in that country, one of the world’s poorest, were ready to give Embalo a try.

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He started well, under the rallying cry of “Embaloism,” which was supposed to rid the country of corruption, poor governance and instil discipline. He also attempted to rebuild confidence with regional allies and powerhouses, including Nigeria, and subsequently reached out to Portugal and the IMF to repair the country’s badly damaged economy.

From Embaloism to Embalomylitis

However, it didn’t take long before Embaloism gave way to Embalomylitis, a condition that has left citizens poorer and poorer, eventually ranking 177th out of 191 on theUN Human Development Index.

Embalo prioritised conspicuous consumption. According to a DW report quoted by opposition figures, the deposed president made over 300 trips abroad in five years, accumulating more than 200 flights on a private jet for non-state visits.

This was a time when schools were failing, and roads and hospitals were in disrepair. Two years ago, his finance minister and treasury secretary were also accused of withdrawing $10 million of state funds, which was paid into 11 private companies linked to a pro-government coalition. Yet, Emabloism was supposed to fight corruption.

To cover his tracks and maintain his hold on power, Embalo went the extra mile to look after the military, often using diverted resources, which primarily came in the form of foreign aid and donor funds, to keep soldiers happy.

The crunch

Matters came to a head last year when Embalo’s government shifted the elections, which were initially scheduled in November, ahead of February 2025, when his constitutional five-year first term limit was due to expire.

One year after the initial election date, and 10 months after his first term expired, Embalo finally organised an election last month, but lacked the courage to wait for the results before he instigated a coup led by two of his key allies – a General and a politician who were both members of his kitchen cabinet.

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In one of the most dramatic military take-overs, the fallen president was speaking to the press as troops were announcing his removal, and hours later, he was safely in Dakar, Senegal, which had been like his second home. The demand of the leader of the opposition, Domingos Simoes Pereira, and the ECOWAS election monitors, led by Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan, for the full results to be released, has so far been ignored.

Dancing on Cabral’s grave

Cabral would hardly recognise Guinea-Bissau as the Portuguese colony he fought so bravely for, and for which he left a legacy that significantly influenced the independence struggles of liberation groups such as the ANC, FRELIMO, SWAPO and MPLA. In his book, Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories, he extolled the virtues of honesty and accountability. Internal forces that couldn’t stand his courage and independence, instigated from outside, killed him on the eve of that country’s independence.

Yet, five decades later, the more things appear to have changed, the more they look the same. Across the continent today, from Bissau to Conakry and Malabo, and from Niamey to Ouagadougou and Bamako, Africa is experiencing an upsurge in military regimes, all claiming a lack of honesty and accountability for striking. Yet, none of the usurpers is showing any different habits from the politicians they overthrew.

If you add the military coups in Sudan, Gabon, and Chad to the list, and exclude the numerous other failed attempts, the picture begins to resemble a throwback to Africa of the 1980s and early 1990s.

The democratic space, even in once politically stable havens such as Côte d’Ivoire and Tanzania, is shrinking, and successful transitions after elections are becoming the exception rather than the rule. In Cameroon, 92-year-old President Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982, contested and won reelection, despite being unaware that he was on the ballot, let alone that he had been reelected for the eighth time.

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Another Africa

In another life, some of the continent’s strong leaders, such as Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, Senegal’s Abdou Douf, Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings or South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, would have weighed in, as Obasanjo did in Sao Tome and Principe in 2003, to call the soldiers to order.

But it’s different today. Not only is the continent buffeted and weakened by severe economic, security, and political challenges, poor governance has also worsened the situation. The West African regional group, ECOWAS, which would have been the first line of defence in Guinea-Bissau, is fractured, sundered by the new alliance of three delinquent Sahelian states – Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

Africa cannot help itself, nor can it rely on traditional Western allies, especially in Europe. France, for example, has fallen out of favour in several Francophone countries, while the US, under President Donald Trump, is setting the worst example of chaos-based leadership.

On your own

Guinea-Bissau can only expect messages of condemnation and threats of isolation from ECOWAS, the AU, and the UN. Such messages hold no weight for Embalo and his cohorts. They have heard similar rhetoric many times before without consequence.

The risk in Guinea-Bissau is unlikely to prompt Portugal, the country’s former colonial power, or interest the world’s resource vultures or its warmongers, such as China and Russia. Bissau-Guineans are on their own. The world would hardly notice until the tornado of military coups makes landfall in another African country, which, sadly, may be sooner than later.

A troubling message from Guinea-Bissau, by Azu Ishiekwene

Opinion

Siyan Oyeweso: Lessons in virtue and vanity

Published

1 week ago

December 5, 2025

Trends Admin

Professor Siyan Oyeweso

Siyan Oyeweso: Lessons in virtue and vanity

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, December 5, 2025)

H-o-r-r-o-r!? The lamp has gone out in the ancestral grove. Frightening darkness reigns. I step inside the grove, I grope on staggering steps. The gourd is broken. I saw its shattered pieces. I stagger. I can feel the wet wood, torn drum, snapped beads, burning ice, soundless speech, blind sight, lifeless breath, static motion and cold fire. I call out to the deep, but the deep does not call back. The deep is silent. The deep has become a mound. The light has gone out in the grove. Everything is cold.

Don’t our ancestors say if the load refuses to stay on the ground and rejects being hung, there’s yet a place to place it? I refuse to bury. I will perform the rites and turn back the hands of time. I beseech thee, owners of the land, heed my pleading just this once, because when the dead is invoked in the street, it is the living that answers (Ti a ba pe oku ni popo, alaye lo n dahun). Abdulgafar Siyan omo Oyeweso ooooo! Please, answer me, hearken to my chant and heed my plea. Come! Cone back, please! It is me, your little aburo, Tunde, that is calling. It is I, Odesola, your disciple.

Baba Ibeta, I refuse to refer to you in the past tense. Prof, please, I need you to do just one thing for me, real quick. I need you to remember our discussions before sickness struck. Remember our discussions when sickness struck. The one million naira you gave me on your sickbed lies doggo in my account, untouched. You said I should use it for the publication of a full-page colour advert in PUNCH for Prof Olu Aina, who is billed to bag an honorary doctorate from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, the prestigious citadel of learning, which you oversee as the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council. From the one million naira, you said I should place radio advertisements to announce the degree to be bestowed on the emeritus Professor Aina, Nigeria’s pioneer and distinguished scholar of Technical and Vocational Education, on December 13, 2025. I have long finished the artwork on The PUNCH advert, which you approved. I was awaiting the radio jingle being handled by ace broadcaster, Oyesiku Adelu. Now, I shall return the N1,000,000.00 to Iya Ibeta because the bowstring has snapped, and the bow has become a mere stick. Ọsán ja, ọrún dọpa.

Bọ̀dá Gàfárù, your humanity is gripping. What manner of man, lying prostrate on a sickbed, would remember to honour the living with his own money? What manner of man, stricken by a stroke, would give out N1,000,000.00 to honour a senior academic, two months before the event was to take place? What manner of man would hover between life and death, and still bend over backwards for the living? That manner of man can only be Siyan Oyeweso. He loves his fellow men and women far more than himself.

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Ẹ̀gbọ́n mí àtàtà, I weep bitter tears because I know you do not deserve to go. You do not want to embark on that returnless ‘Àrè Mabò’ journey. As your life hangs by a thread and we pray for your recovery, you said you would be grateful if the Almighty Allah gave you a second chance. You express the desire to write a book, “Siyan Oyeweso: Life After Stroke.” Also, you hope to take delivery of one of your earliest books, “Journey From Epe: A Biography of S.L. EDU,” which is out of print, but is being reprinted. Your book on Ile-Ife and the one on Ikorodu are undergoing proofreading. It’s your dream to see them to the press. In the throes of death, you still cater for the whole family. Now, Iya Ibeta is a widow. Your two-year-old triplets are fatherless. Oh Allah, this grief is unbearable.

I weep because I have whined with you in the days of famine and wined with you in the days of flourish. I’m with you in defeat and in victory. I witnessed the way you took defeat like a sportsman and celebrated victory with humility. I gnash because you are the ‘opomulero’ pillar behind my literary garden, even though I was never a pupil in the four walls of your classroom. I am the acolyte who sits at your feet after work.

Baba Òyé, I remember how we first met. Our first-ever meeting ended in a fight. That was at the palace of the 12th Timi Agbale of Ede, the late Oba Tijani Oladokun Ajagbe Oyewusi, the Agboran II, in the early 2000s. That fateful day, Oyeweso didn’t come to the palace to fight, nor did I, but the PUNCH spirit of fearless candour overtook me as I challenged what I saw as overpresumption.

Oyeweso had come to address a news conference, whose exact purpose I can’t recall, but the conference was certainly in the interest of Ede, the illustrious town Oyeweso lived for. I came to the news conference as PUNCH reporter from Osogbo, the state capital. And katakátá burst when it was question time.

Then, I was new to Osun State, having just been transferred from the Lagos headquarters of PUNCH. Oyeweso had answered a couple of questions from faces familiar to him within the Osun Correspondents chapel and was in a hurry to attend another assignment on behalf of the town. I raised my hand to ask a question. Exuding confidence and convivality, Oyeweso said everything there was to know lay in the press release shared to journalists at the conference. “No more questions, please,” he said. Anger boiled inside me. Who is this palace jester, I thought.

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“I can’t come all the way from Osogbo to be told not to ask questions here,” my anger boiled over. All heads turned in my direction, eyes piercing to see if there was a tag on my clothes suggesting I was a member of the union of road transport workers. “From where did this one stray?” the looks asked. But I continued, “I’m not going to write any story from this press release if you don’t answer my question!” Heads turned away from me to Oyeweso, who didn’t show he was rattled. He smiled, held the right hem of his agbada and folded it on his right shoulder. He did a similar folding to the left hem of his agbada, beaming his trademark ‘ẹ̀rù òbodò’ smile.

Then a journalist whispered, “He is Professor Oyeweso!” “So what!?” I shot back outside the earshot of Oyeweso. “My dear brother from PUNCH newspapers,” he began, sugar in his voice, “I do not mean to evade questions, far from it. If you know me, you would know I enjoy talking. In fact, I talk for a living. But the Timi, Oba Tijani Oyewusi, has just sent me an urgent text, demanding I run an errand, and I don’t want to keep him waiting. I’ll leave my numbers with you, so you cakl and ask any question as I run the king’s errand, please.”

That was the day our journey began. You were still a professor at Lagos State University then. This was before the Olagunsoye Oyinlola administration established the multi-campus Osun State University, and you moved back to your home state. You are the inaugural Provost, College of Humanities and Culture, UNIOSUN. Twice, you vied for the post of Vice Chancellor, UNIOSUN, and lost not for lack of competence, but to power play. The next day after each loss, you dust yourself up and trudge on as if nothing had happened.

To understand the Oyeweso enigma, picture a vehicle shaft connecting the two opposite wheels. This is why the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, and the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, opened their palace doors to his erudition even though both monarchs hardly saw eye to eye on many issues. Baba Iremide’s charm infects the political board. This is why he was embraced by both Governor Oyinlola and Rauf Aregbesola, two gladiators from different political camps. Despite being from Ede, the hometown of the popular Adeleke family, Baba Adekunle stayed true to his political ideals, pitching his tent with the BATified All Progressives Congress. Their differing political alignments notwithstanding, Oyeweso did not spoil Ede, his hometown, because he was going to Ẹ̀dẹ̀, the hallway. This is why the Adeleke family maintained the communal bond by supporting him on his sickbed. Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Alhaji Adegboyega Oyetola, supported Oyeweso before and during the sickness. In fact, it was Oyetola, aka Baba Jeje, who recommended Oyeweso for the post of Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

Your uncommon equanimity is the reason why I gave you my support when you expressed the desire to vie for the House of Representatives ticket in Ede-North-Ede-South-Egbdore-Ejigbo federal constituency. When that also fell through, I became a thorn in the flesh of Oyetola, whom I called morning, day and night, urging him to reward Oyeweso with a position. One day at a public function, an exasperated Oyetola saw Oyeweso and said, “Prof, tell Tunde Odesola to unclasp his fingernails on my neck o. I have told him repeatedly that you shall get an appointment, but he won’t leave me alone. Ha!” Shortly after the encounter, Oyeweso called me, and said, “Tunde,” I answered, “Sir!” Oyewso said, “Please, unclasp your fingernails on Oga’s neck o. We were at a function today, and Oga said, “So fun Tunde Odesola pe ko tu ekanna lorun mi o.” We both laughed. Aside from me pestering Oyetola, Baba Oluwasikemi would surely have a couple of other voices putting in words of recommendation on his behalf. So, his appointment was a collective victory for sagacity, hard work, resilience and vision.

Oyeweso was initially appointed Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council of the Federal University of Lokoja, Kogi State, before he was later announced as the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, OAU, in June last year. Therefore, it is not out of place to say that death did not allow Oyeweso to enjoy the fruit of his labour, affirming the philosophical thought that the world is a vanity fair. I do not believe in this philosophical thought; I believe Oyeweso’s life tramples vanity to affirm virtue.

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This is why Oyeweso blends perfectly into any setting – be it rural or urban, academic or marketplace. When you see him on the street, he could pass for a nobody. But when he mounts the podium, you hear an oracle of history. This virtue is what endears Oyeweso to the masses, and I suspect, it is one of the reasons why some of his colleagues despise him – they believe he mixes with every Tom, Dick and Harry. To this tribe of his colleagues, an academic should possess raised shoulders, a back haunched by the weight of poring over books, and a nose in the air.

I haven’t come out of mourning the Owa of Igbajo, Oba Adegboyega Famodun, when the Oyeweso disaster hit below the belt.

Where will I find another soulmate? Though we were born sired by different parents in the February of different years, Oyeweso took me as his blood brother, confiding in me his innermost wishes and fears. Who will call me “Prof Tunde? Who will come to my house unannounced? Oyewso would call my wife and say, “Hello, ma; Tunde o sun ile loni o. Odo mi lo ma sun” – “Tunde is not sleeping at home today. He’s sleeping in my house.” Then we would begin the intellectual rigour of writing and editing late into the night. The Nation Correspondent, now an oba, Kabiyesi Adesoji Adeniyi, Prince Wale Olayemi, my childhood friend, Abiodun Idowu, a psychiatrist, Temitope Ajani Fasunloye, Ismaeel Uthman, among others, participated in the rigour Oyeweso took us through – analysing and discussing. We did not do this on empty stomachs. There was plenty to eat and drink. At times, when Prof eventually allows you to go home, all you want to do is just go home and sleep. At times, I ran away from him. When I ran from him, he appeared in my house or office unannounced and says, “Ha, I caught you.”

Who would host a party for my promotion? Who would host a party for my homecoming? Death has crept upon us and taken our most prized jewel away. Oyeweso. I woke up that day around 6 a.m. I checked my phone. I saw your picture on Professor Samuel Gbadebo Odewumi’s reel. I told myself, Prof Odewumi is probably celebrating your recuperation. Still in bed, I scrolled and saw a post by Saturday Tribune Editor, Lasisi Olagunju, announcing your death.

Frantically, I checked Osun WhatsApp platforms. And there I saw the news of your passing into eternity. I then noticed I had received many calls and texts. It was dawning, but I was denying. I called. I asked questions. I blamed the Nigerian healthcare system, saying Oyeweso wouldn’t have died if he lived in an advanced country. I cited the misdiagnosis of the late Mohammed Fawehinmi in Nigeria, following his auto accident. But my oga and Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Mr Adeyeye Joseph, reminded me that the legendary Gani Fawehinmi, Mohammed’s father, was misdiagnosed in England.

So, I kept my mouth shut. And submitted to the will of Allah. Ina Lilah Waina Allah Rajun. Baba mi, I never thought I would ever write this about you. If tears could wake up the dead, you would be in our arms today. Orun re ire o, oko Nike.

Email: [email protected]

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