Opinion
Yoruba rascals and Igbo idiots (1) – Tunde Odesola
Yoruba rascals and Igbo idiots (1) – Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, March 31, 2023)
Was. Is. Will. The spellbinding sight of the throne would blush King Solomon green with envy. With a grin, the elephant walked majestically towards the throne, swishing his tail as its tree-trunk legs embossed map-like footprints in the brown earth.
He clambered up to the throne, turned around, made a throaty sound of satisfaction with his skyward trunk, and lowered his bulk into the baited throne, tumbling down the covered pit underneath.
Many traps don’t bear warnings. You’ve just walked into my trappy headline, “Yoruba rascals and Igbo idiots.” My trap has caught you, a big game. Upon reading the headline, your mind probably wandered along ethnic paths, “What’s this man up to this time?” “Uhmm, he must’ve blasted the Igbo, and their stupid leader, Iwuanyanwu,” “This stupid Yoruba boy has come again?”
Because I’m Yoruba, you expect to see me shooting at the Igbo, but I come in peace. You expect to see fire, but I bear water; you expect hate speech, but I bear the good news; instead of carrying a bag of bullets, I bear a branch of olive.
Now that you know I got you trapped, dear esteemed reader, why not sit back and enjoy this ride into Nigeria’s distant past when we sang, “…though tribes and tongues may differ, in brotherhood we stand,” and chorused, “Nigerians all, are proud to serve our sovereign Motherland?” Or, did we mean, “Our suffering Motherland?”
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Now, let’s start on an easy peasy, piece of chips note by going down memory lane to see how potato chips came into being. Potato chips, like the geographical expression called Nigeria, came into being by misadventure. Both weren’t meant to be but they came into being when Man violated nature in Africa, and gasped in exasperation and revenge in New York.
Here goes the legend of potato chips: Potato chips hopped on global menu in the 1850s after it was first made in a New York restaurant called Moon’s Lake House where an African-American chef, George Crum, performed the first potato miracle.
A customer, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, repeatedly sent back an order of French fries, complaining they were too thick and soggy. Annoyed by the picky customer’s demand, and bent on retaliating, Crum sliced some potatoes paper-thin, fried them till they curled up in crisps, and seasoned them with a ‘kongo’ of salt.
When the commodore ate the chips, his face lit up; he munched and munched, and munched and munched, asking for more. Thus, potato chips birthed in Saratoga and became a household name in New York, attaining fame even to the end of the world.
By ‘mistake’, I got admitted in the 1980s to read Chemistry at the University of Lagos. Oh, how I hated science subjects! But my father, Pa Bisi Odesola, would do anything to see his firstborn become a graduate. So, he urged me on, saying the sky was the limit if I could weld passion to commitment. But I had neither commitment nor passion for sciences; I was already taken by the arts.
Without his knowledge, I bought textbooks for art subjects and studied for the General Certificate of Education conducted by the West African Examination Council. I also bought the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Examination Board form, and I chose Imo State University, Okigwe, because it offered English Language and English Literature as combined honours. In my GCE and JAMB exams, I came out with flying colours.
I couldn’t break the news of my coup to my father, so I went in search of my uncle, Deacon Tunji Fayese, who lived on Lagos Island, to confess my sin. After listening to my story, he dressed up, and followed me home to the mainland.
My father was happy to see his younger brother. They had a sumptuous meal prepared by my mother. After eating, they retired to the living room, where uncle Fayese unmasked the masquerader. His closing remarks at the end of his intervention, “Booda mi, e je ki Tunde follow dream e,” meaning, “My brother, let Tunde follow his dream.”
“Tunde!” my father called out. “Sir!” I responded as though I was faraway in my room, but I was actually behind the door, eavesdropping. “When did you have time to study for all these subjects?” “I used my spare time in the university.” “Are you sure this is what you want to do? “Yes, it’s what I want to do, sir.” “How did you come about Imo State University?” “I don’t know, sir; that’s what I saw in my admission letter, sir,” I lied.
Then, he prayed for me.
It wasn’t the age of mobile phones. Phones then were big and immobile, running on tangling black wires. There was no information about IMSU anywhere. So, my father decided to go with me to Okigwe, which was not new to him, but which was an entirely new experience to me, who had never stepped foot out of the South-West since I was born.
The journey to Okigwe took forever. The fare was around N16. I enjoyed the roominess of the ‘The Young Shall Grow’ luxury bus, the stops at big roadside restaurants while my mind wandered about what lay ahead.
By the time we got to Okigwe, the sun had pulled down the curtain on the day and gone home into the clouds. We got accommodation in a hotel. The following morning, we headed to the campus, where we met an empty school, but got information about resumption, anyway. Lagos, here we come!
Upon the school’s resumption, I returned to Okigwe alone, via Owerri. At Owerri, it took a long time for the bus to Okigwe to fill up. By the time I arrived in Okigwe, it was dark again. I headed up to Okigwe police station, where I met an Igbo officer at the counter. I told him I wish to put up at the station till daybreak. He obliged me, pointing to a concrete slab, saying ‘if you fit manage am’. I was choiceless.
After a while, a man in mufti came to visit the officer on duty. They got talking. As he was about to leave, he asked his friend about me. The officer on duty told him in Igbo that I was a stranded Yoruba student. He told the policeman on duty to ask me if I wouldn’t mind to go and sleep in his house.
The officer on duty relayed the message to me. I said I wouldn’t mind. So, together, we left for his house. On the way to his house, I asked him where we could get cold repellent. He took me to a beer parlour and he knocked on the door but they had closed for the day. We went to his one-roomed house, a ramshackled stall made of rusty corrugated iron sheets.
“You’re from Lagos, I don’t know if you can sleep here.” I said it was fine. He vacated his spring bed that was without a mattress for me. Though I had been initiated into sleeping on spring bed at the University of Lagos by my uncle, egbon Laolu Adegbite, I would’ve preferred to sleep on bare floor than on iron spring. But I couldn’t tell my Good Samaritan so.
So, I slept on the spring while he slept on the bare floor. I couldn’t believe it. I slept with one eye open, wondering if this was the same Igbo land which a couple of friends had warned me to beware of its people.
The following day, I ate my first Igbo staple, okpa, with bread. My host ate his okpa with akamu (pap). I paid the food vendor. I thanked my host and left for the campus in a public bus.
At the Admin Block, where I had to pay some fees and do some paperwork, something instructive happened. I came before a registration officer, who was in high spirits. He greeted me in Igbo but I answered in English. He looked at me from head to toe, and asked in Igbo what my name was. “I don’t understand Igbo.” “You don’t understand Igbo!?” he thundered. “You jus dey enter school, yanga don already start!?”
To be continued
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
Twitter: @tunde_odesola
Yoruba rascals and Igbo idiots (1) – Tunde Odesola
Opinion
Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri
Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri
Recently, the singer David Adeleke was given a global stage to do whatever he wanted and deliver any message.
Sadly, Mr. Adeleke used the opportunity to speak in an American accent. Not only that, he used that American accent to talk down on Nigeria and tell the world not to invest in Nigeria because, as he put it, Nigeria’s “economy is in shambles”.
Coincidentally, a month after his faux pas, Kemi Badenoch, probably inspired by Davido, used her British accent to talk down Nigeria, calling us “a very poor country” where the police rob citizens.
But the interesting thing about her own case is that the next day, the BBC featured a panel of Conservative Party big shots, and one of them, Albie Amankona, a party chieftain from Chiswick, who is also a celebrity broadcaster, said, and this is a direct quote:
“If you are a Brexiteer, and you are saying we need to be expanding our global trade beyond the European Union, we want to be looking at emerging markets for growth, don’t slag off one of the fastest growing economies in Africa.”
Is it not strange that it took the BBC and a British politician to promote Nigeria as one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa?
And just when we thought it was all bad news, God gave us a breath of fresh air in the youthful Ademola Lookman, who used the global podium granted to him by his winning the 2024 African Footballer of the Year award to promote and project Nigeria and the Lukumi Yoruba language to the world.
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Wisdom is not by age. If not, Ademola Lookman, who is just twenty-seven, will not have displayed greater wisdom than David Adeleke, who is thirty-two, and Kemi Badenoch, at forty-four.
Mr. Lookman proved that the age of Methuselah has nothing to do with the wisdom of Solomon.
And it is not as though other ethnicities with global icons do not also project Nigeria. They do.
Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke Igbo on the podium of the WTO in Geneva. In terms of prestige, she is FAR above Lookman.
My campaign is not for the Lukumi Yoruba alone. It is for all sub-Saharan Black Africans to learn to speak their language and not use ability to speak English or another colonial language as a measure of intelligence.
Besides Lukumi Yoruba and Hausa, every other Nigerian language, including Fulfulde, is gradually dying out.
General Buhari is half Fulani and half Kanuri. Yet, he cannot speak either Fuifulde or Kanuri. But he speaks Hausa and English.
Fact-check me: In 2012, UNESCO declared Igbo an endangered language.
However, the Lukumi Yoruba are to be commended for their affirmative actions to advance their language and culture.
Let me give you an example. All six Governors of the Southwest bear full Lukumi names: Jide Sanwa-Olu, Seyi Makinde, Dapo Abiodun, Ademola Adeleke, Abiodun Oyebanji, and Orighomisan Aiyedatiwa.
No other zone in Nigeria has all its governors bearing ethnic Nigerian names as first and second names. They either bear Arabic or European names as first names or even first and second names.
If we truly want to be the Giant of Africa, we must take affirmative steps to preserve our language and culture so we can have children like Ademola Lookman.
Teach your language to your children before you teach them English. They will learn English at school. Being multilingual is scientifically proven to boost intelligence.
Fact-check me: In the U.S., Latino kids do not speak English until they start school. They learn Spanish as a first language.
Even if you relocate to the UK, the best you can be is British. You can never be English. And if your choice of Japa is the U.S., the highest you can be is an American citizen. You will never become a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant WASP.
Your power lies in balancing ancient and modern, Western and African, English (or other colonial languages) and your native tongue.
That is the way to reverse language erosion, like the Lukumi Yoruba.
Ademola Lookman showed Davido and Kemi Badenoch that wisdom is not by age – Omokri
Opinion
Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode
Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode
“I find it interesting that everyone defines me as a Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with my specific ethnic group. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram, where Islamism is. Being Yoruba is my true identity and I refuse to be lumped with the northern people of Nigeria who were our ethnic enemies, all in the name of being called a Nigerian”- @KemiBadenoch.
Dangerous rhetoric
Kemi Badenoch, MP, the leader of the British Conservative Party and Opposition in the @UKParliament, has refused to stop at just denigrating our country but has gone a step further by seeking to divide us on ethnic lines.
She claims that she never regarded herself as being a Nigerian but rather a Yoruba and that she never identified with the people from the Northern part of our country who she collectively describes as being “Boko Haram Islamists” and “terrorists”.
This is dangerous rhetoric coming from an impudent and ignorant foreign leader who knows nothing about our country, who does not know her place and who insists on stirring up a storm that she cannot contain and that may eventually consume her.
It is rather like saying that she identifies more with the English than she does with the Scots and the Welsh whom she regards as nothing more than homicidal and murderous barbarians that once waged war against her ethnic English compatriots!
All this coming from a young lady of colour that is a political leader in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural country that lays claim to being the epitome of decency and civilisation! What a strange and inexplicable contradiction this is.
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Her intentions are malevolent and insidious and her objective, outside of ridiculing and mocking us, is to divide us and bring us to our knees.
I am constrained to ask, what on earth happened to this creature in her youth and why does she hate Nigeria with such passion?
Did something happen to her when she lived here which she has kept secret?
Kemi Badenoch’s Hate for Nigeria – Femi Fani-Kayode
Opinion
The cockroach called Dele Farotimi (1)
The cockroach called Dele Farotimi (1)
Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, December 13, 2024)
The official name for cage fight is Mixed Martial Arts. Street fight, known as ‘ìjà ìgboro’ in Yoruba, is the bane of Ibadan people, says the panegyric of Oluyole, the city of brown roofs scattered among seven hills. MMA, I think, is organised street fighting.
But, long before MMA became a global combat sport in 2000, little devils of St Paul Anglican (Primary) School, Idi-Oro, Lagos, and Archbishop Aggey Memorial Secondary School, Mushin, Lagos, engaged in ‘ìjà ìgboro’, the progenitor of Mixed Martial Arts. Retrospectively, I’m guilty of being part of the little devils of both schools.
Because, instead of heeding the ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ injunction in the Holy Scriptures, to ‘inherit the kingdom of God’, what we did as little demons that we were was to add fuel to the embers of hostility smouldering among fellow students.
As soon as you noticed two students in a heated argument, instead of you to sue for peace, the naughty reaction was for you to grab some soil in clenched fists and spread your fists towards the two disputants, daring both pupils to slap one of the outstretched fists: ‘Ení bá lè jà, kó gbon!’
‘Ení bá lè jà, kó gbon!’ was a call to arms. To prove you’re a lionheart ready to fight, you slap the clenched fist open and watch its content pour out to the ground.
So, in a jiffy, you would see friends who were laughing a while ago, engage in a free-for-all instanter. Regrettably, I initiated some of such fights and participated in not a few. You probably can’t grow up in Mushin and be fainthearted.
Taliatu Mudashiru was my friend and classmate in Forms 1 and 2. Occasionally, when I didn’t get dropped off at school by my father, and I had to make it to school on my own, I first trek from our Awoyokun Street residence to Taliatu’s house on Adegboyega Street before both of us would head up to Akinade Ayodeji’s house two blocks away en route to school.
I thought I was stronger than Tali, as we fondly called him, or Pali Tutu (Wet Cardboard) – if the caller was a mischievous classmate – until one day when we disagreed during a break-time chatter involving other classmates.
A peacemaker stepped forward with clenched fists, chanting, ‘K’éyin lè jà, k’émi lé wò’ran, Èsù ta’po si,’ evoking Baba Devil himself. I slapped one of the fists; Tali slapped the other! ‘Ha, Tali ke? I go kill sombodi!’
Toe-to-toe, Tunde rained blows. Tit-for-tat, Tali responded. We upturned desks and seats as the brawl spiralled to the delight of cheering classmates. But it was short-lived as the break-time bell saved the day. We swore at each other but classmates begged us, like peacemakers, to save our punches and wait till after-school hours to throw them.
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After school, excited classmates such as Taliatu Olokodana, Akinade Ayodeji alias Kuruki, Hakeem Adigun alias Slate, Jide Oladimeji alias Agama; Kunle Adeyoju alias Iron Bender, Sunday Pedro Oshokai, Sanmi Okuwobi, Sule Mustapha alias Maito; Olalekan Egungbohun, Kazeem Osuolale alias Oju etc led Tali and me to ‘Ojú Olómo ò to’, an arena so named because no parent or guardian’s eyes ever got to see what happened there.
Only Lukmon Yusuff aka OC, Jide Ajose and Segun Majekodunmi would have separated us if they were around. For his good-naturedness, Jide got the nickname Unreasonable while Segun was called Brother because he belonged to the Deeper Life Church and Yusuff got nicknamed O.C. because of his effectiveness as a football defender.
The ‘Ojú Olómo ò to’ was the playground of a primary school that had closed for the day. Impish classmates sat around the edge of the big field, leaving Tali and I at the centre to unleash the devilry in us.
Tali, bigger and an inch taller, was hoping to use his weight to an advantage, grabbing at me but I knew if he slammed me he would feed me with sand, so I used my fists to keep him off.
We wrestled and boxed and kicked and clawed for God knows how long. There was no referee. There was no timeout. There were only ringside viewers who laughed and cheered every kick and blow and the sight of blood. Tali and I bled all over, spent and gasped for breath.
Then I threw a punch, it caught Tali right in the face, and he first went down in a squat, before flattening out on his back. I should have jumped on him and finished him off, but I was barely breathing. I just left him and I turned away to look for my bag and shoes.
The following day, Tali was looking for me on the assembly ground. He appeared proud of us. He shook hands with me vigorously and we hugged for a long period – like warriors after a pyrrhic victory. He earned my respect, I earned his. Tali probably thought I was a sportsman for not finishing him off when he blanked out, but little did he know that all that was on my mind when he fell was me getting home. I probably would’ve fallen too if the fight had lasted longer.
There are similarities between my fight with Tali and the ongoing fight between one of Nigeria’s heavyweight lawyers, Aare Afe Babalola and human rights activist and lawyer, Mr Dele Farotimi.
I know Nigeria is broken and needs fixing urgently. I know that to fix it, something has to give. I know Nigeria’s coconuts of corruption must be cracked on skulls and the water thereof used as atonement for the nation’s corruption.
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I see many coconuts. I also see the head of Babalola and that of Farotimi. I see other heads, too. But whose skull(s) would crack open the coconuts?
I see a poisonous cockroach encircled by a brood of chickens. Among the chickens is the breed called Supreme. There’s also a breed called Appeal and another breed called High. There’s yet another breed called SANyeri, a name symbolising the breed’s big gowns. The chickens thrust their heads forward, sharply looking right and left, watching intently, communicating in esoteric language. What shall we do to this irritant?
Yet, the cockroach is adamant in the valley of jeopardy, six legs gangling, two antennas roving; person wey wan don die jam person wey wan kill am.
Tali Vs. Tunde. Today, I can’t even remember what caused the disagreement that snowballed into our fight, but I can never forget the pain of the fight. I had thought I would make light work of Tali but I didn’t see his gallantry coming.
Although I’ve never met Baba Babalola, he comes across as a man of commendable philanthropy and frankness. It’s only frankness that could make him stand by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, in the 2023 presidential election when the elite of his tribe was queuing behind Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as ‘Shon of the Shoil’.
In the 2023 presidential election, I was neither BATified nor Atikulated just as I wasn’t Obidient. In some articles during the countdown to the election, I called for an overhaul of the 1999 Constitution before the conduct of the general elections, saying none of the presidential candidates would succeed as president if the Constitution wasn’t amended.
I also said there was no ideological difference among the All Progressives Congress, Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party. If they were different, Nigeria wouldn’t witness six House of Representatives members of the Labour Party defecting to the APC recently, despite LP’s promise of a new Nigeria. While I predict more defections in the coming days, those already defected include Tochukwu Okere (Imo), Daulyop Fom (Plateau), Donatus Matthew (Kaduna), Bassey Akiba (Cross River), Iyawe Esosa (Edo) and Fom Daniel Chollon (Plateau).
In my recommendations, I called for devolution of powers to the states, resource control, independent candidacy and patriotism by the generality of Nigerians for a new order.
And I’ve not repented from my belief that elected Nigerian politicians loot the treasury according to the amount of money available in it, not because one was more decent than the other or one party was better than the other.
This is why I find the anti-corruption campaign of 56-year-old lawyer and human rights activist, Dele Farotimi, assuring though I’m not going to touch the libel stuff just yet.
Although Farotimi is an LP member, his rhetoric resonates with equity, fairness and justice – cornerstones of democracy.
However, there are concave and convex perspectives on the Babalola-Farotimi issue. In secondary school, Physics was intriguing to me, though I found its abstraction intimidating and perplexing. It was in Physics that I learnt about convex and concave lenses. I was taught in secondary school that both lenses are used for correcting short-sightedness and long-sightedness.
Tali died a long time ago. May his soul rest in peace. Baba Afe Babalola is 11 years older than my father who died last March at 84. May the Lord grant Baba Babalola more years in good health, and may he see the end of this war.
To be continued.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @Tunde Odesola
X: @Tunde_Odesola
LinkedIn: @Tunde Odesola
The cockroach called Dele Farotimi (1)
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