Agitation for a sovereign Yoruba nation has taken a strident and emotional character among disparate set of people across the South Western Nigeria. Marginalized, traumatized, and thoroughly exploited Yoruba people are dreaming of a new homeland of fairness, equity, and justice.
Browsing: Distant Voices
Recently Gumi stirred up national uproar by some of his outlandish ideas about banditry, the Military and the tacit sympathy he has been nursing for the Fulani murderers. The whole social and commentariat space has been driven to a hysterical sense of utter disgust, anger and helplessness watching actor Gumi on stage as he draws our opprobrium.
For the past four years, I have been cursing Steve Bannon, arguably the architect and the most significant force behind the Donald Trump victory. Bannon grasped that in the digital age, political ideas must be draped over distinctive personalities to cut through the babel of electronic noises.
Hadi Sirika the Nigeria’s Aviation Minister is a dithering modern Pharaoh. His stubborn, over-bloated ego and his narrowness of the reality of the new normal is astonishing in its crudity. His ministerial remit gives him power to control any object that flies in the Nigerian sky.
Tolulope’s soul is being digitally replicated for the Oduduwa homeland dream. They now control the digital universe where they drop threats, revenge, and the balkanisation of a Nigeria they see as killer of destiny, glory, and talent.
They were out to hide behind the fictional power of law as lawmakers to subdue and humiliate Keyamo who himself is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). But thank goodness, Keyamo prized open the hidden shenanigans that daily occurs in the house for the public to see. And that for free!!!
Not known from any rich, social background. He has no known skill, competence, or credentials as a highflier to have qualified him for the kind of opulent lifestyle he daily displays on his Instagram and other social media platforms. What he has is just uniqueness and that mogul capacity to redefine the meaning of haute couture on a lavish, fairy scale.
After five years as leader of this embattled nation, the Boko Haram ongoing genocide against the Nigerian state has consistently exposed President Muhammadu Buhari’s gross incompetence, the incapability of our army, our strategic nakedness, our ahistorical understanding of a modern Nigerian society and worse, our disdain for truth.
By the time the combatants emerged from their trenches, casualties have filled the morgue. Chief HID Awolowo, of blessed memory, was the political maverick and a sure totem of awe, adulation, wisdom, tradition and the old Yorubanised orthodoxy of omoluabi who brokered a peace deal to bring together warring factions.
Adeniyi could not hide his passionate embrace of Adams and his rebellious cause. Akogun fits the bill of any hardcore rebel in and outside his different personas. As Akogun, as Araba, as Aba Saheed what flows through these different personas is nothing but rebellious rebuke both in his journalism,
The death of my townsman, Chief Richard Osuolale Akinjide, has been forcing two polarisations: those who saw nothing wrong with his judicial and political career, and those on the other hand who saw him as one of the legal outlaws who set the tone for the ongoing desecration of our temple of justice.
New Year’s Eve party in the leafy suburb of Borehamwood in hidden Hertsmere. I sat lazily on the sofa with a cup of warm bohea. Saheed Osupa, Alariwo of Afrika and Ayinla Omowura, a peerless hero of blessed memory, got me wriggling like a cut snake on the leather sofa. Many of us have driven from our little neck of the wood
President Muhammadu Buhari disappeared into thin air without trace. Malam Abba Kyari, the defacto ruler of a democracy-driven Nigeria also ran aground due to COVID-19 attack.
This week, Ibadan, my Ibadan, is celebrating its own “Ibadan Week”. And my home state is awash in cultural stimuli. A motherlode of cultural festival is serenading the iconic land of Oluyole. The celebration started on March 12, 2020 and will end on March 21, 2020.
On March 7, 2010, death in a rather speedy riddance took Dr. Stanley Nkwachukwu Macebuh to his final home. A painful final exit that prized open the memory of his years at The Guardian. Again, a painful final exit that flung open the intellectual door to his inimitable liberal pieces which gave The Guardian
The recent furore over the creation of Amotekun and the caliphate Fulani’s bull dog reaction to its existence is a clear demonstration of their unhidden agenda to keep south western Nigeria under perpetual captivity, slavery and domination
The Justice Ministry needs a better head than the current Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, especially in a nether Nigerian universe of shifting political, social and security paradigms. South West, my hometown, is now the epicenter of a new, explosive and racy geopolitical struggle between saints and sinners, war and peace, freedom and lockdown, wisdom and foolishness, good breeding and barbarism, tact and stupidity.
In spite of the revulsion and untidiness associated with cabal, we still accommodate and nurture it by successive administrations. During the government of President Umaru Yar’Adua, Information Minister, Dora Akunyili (deceased), accused the cabal who were making public comments on behalf of the President even when he did not say so. “These cabals should please stop heating up the system and allow President Yar’ Adua recover,” Akunyili said.
Critical voices are today emerging to launch one sortie or the other against President Muhammadu Buhari over the accusation that he heads a secretive cabal who are bent on holding him on the jugular. Can President Buhari be tethered to the whims and caprices including the sentiment of any Nigerian, living or dead, no matter how powerful? Can this President be remote-controlled by men-in-black who operate from the dark? Are we making wild presumption of the existence of this shadowy people? Is it right to accuse President Buhari of running a cabalocracy? Or are we, as a nation, becoming purveyors of heresies and fake news?
The two strands of philosophical conversations below were extracted from Prof. Tamunoemi Sokari David-West’s book, titled: “Philosophical Essays,” published in 1980. I am a proud possessor of Philosophical Essays first edition. It is one of the oldest books in my bookshelf. I bought my copy at Leventis Store in Lagos on August 8, 1980 for N4.50k!!! Prof. Tam David-West died on November 11, 2019 at the age of 83. I was vacationing in Ibadan when I heard of his death. Goodnight, the people’s philosopher. The timeless gem in your thought will remain the only “connectitude” to the labyrinthine philosophical anxieties of our cosmos. Sleep well and rest in peace.