Bawaye

A Yoruba officer walked up to Mr Oladipo Diya at the height of his 1997 crisis with his boss, Mr Sani Abacha. “Sir, what is happening?” The very senior officer looked away from the colonel and told him there was nothing. “Sir, did you say there is nothing?” The officer asked with a tone of rhetorics and switched to deep structure Yoruba. “Sir, ti owo ko ba se san mo, a a ka l’eri ni” (if you can no longer swing your arms, fold them on your head). The General looked away; the colonel left. That was on December 13, 1997. Nine days later, Diya fell from everything called power. He also lost his freedom – and almost his life. It was like a journalist who reportedly asked Mr Abubakar Tafawa Balewa at the Lagos airport what he would do with the political fire raging in the West. The prime minister reportedly looked around and declared: “Ikeja is part of the West and I can’t see any fire burning.” That was less than a month to the January 15, 1966 conflagration which consumed the leader who s...

 Political class and Conspiracy of Silence - Dr.Muiz Banire The security situation in Nigeria has become wholly intractable. What started as an isolated case of insurgency in some parts of Borno State has become a national malaise rapidly expanding and threatening the fragile fabric of the nation called Nigeria. The human losses at present have befuddled our capacity to take records and there is hardly an accurate account of people already consumed by the violence of the men of the gun. Thousands of lives have been snuffed out by Boko Haram bombs and guns in the northeastern parts of the country. Suddenly, the North-West caught the fever of banditry, which is operating in a most deadly fashion, leaving behind sorrow, tears and blood everywhere the unscrupulous young agents of death have chosen to carry out their nefarious businesses. Katsina State, the home state of the President, has not been spared the horrors of banditry, killing and kidnap. The volumes of death, maiming and rap...

  Sylvester Asoya  Richard-Mofe Damijo is one of Nollywood’s glamour boys. In some quarters, he is even regarded as the most relevant actor in Nigeria today.  Those who hold the view, defend their opinion from different fronts. According to them, Mofe-Damijo deserves his prime place in Nigeria’s movie industry for obvious reasons. For some, he has packaged himself the most when compared with his peers in the industry. Others however, point to more concrete realities like his carriage, professionalism, courage and charisma which they insist, are second to none.   But there are other things that paved the path to the actor’s successful acting career and the resounding approvals he receives from different corners of Nigeria and even beyond. RMD, as he is fondly called, continues to attract a lot of attention because he is always, and consciously too, in the limelight for good reasons.  Early in his career, he knew the importance of the media and the value of f...

Unfortunately,  Nigeria is a place where history is never consulted or cared about. Hence anyone can pontificate ad infinitum and expect to be applauded.  Such is the case of Dr. Rueben Abati. Many of us grew up respecting and seeing him as a beacon of what a true Nigerian should be like. Especially, during his Patitos Gang days. He was always espousing patriotic platitudes and very good in dropping poignant thought capsules, deemed essential for optimum national growth. But subsequent events and situations that involved him, outed him as the typical whited sepulchre.  He came down hard on Obi Cubana and the way the young man and his friends buried his mother, in the process, using appropriate words to situate most of  Nigeria's ills  on the activity at Oba. He was in such a hurry to crucify that young man, he either deliberately or ignorantly ascribed an older and  unrelated video of scantily dressed women cavorting in a lucre filled swimming pool as part ...

Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy, Daily Trust, 23rd July 2021 Yesterday, I saw a video clip of the Emir of Muri giving Fulani bandits a 30-day ultimatum to stop killing his people, banditry and kidnapping in his Emirate. If they do not stop, he threatened, he will order his people to start killing all Fulani on sight. This is another sign that the security forces are outside the equation. An audio clip has been circulating of a bandit leader called Turji who openly proclaimed that he is indeed a bandit who has killed soldiers on three occasions and his location is known to the security agencies. Rather than come to arrest him for his crimes, the police arrested a soft target, his father, because they are afraid of him. He then threatened the security agencies that he will continue to kidnap more people until his father is released. He kidnapped about 150 people in Shinkafi Local Government area, his father was released and he released the captives (See reports by Abdulaziz Abdulaziz...

  By Azuka Onwuka Last week, Mr Reno Omokri, former social media aide of erstwhile president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, reacted to a 2014 comment the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mr Nnamdi Kanu, made against Jonathan. In that comment, Kanu accused Jonathan of being weak, and said that his wife, Dame Patience Jonathan, was a stronger character. Someone looking for mischief republished the story as if it was a fresh comment, and many like Reno Omokri fell for it without asking questions. However, the interesting thing was that Omokri did not respond to Kanu. He responded to the entire Igbo ethnic group, saying all kinds of uncomplimentary things about them. This is the way most Nigerians react to things involving an Igbo: they usually leave the culprit and attack the whole Igbo ethnic group. When an Igbo speaks, it is the entire Igbo ethnic group that has spoken, but when a Yoruba, or Hausa or Ijaw or Tiv speaks, people usually respond to the individual involved.  Tha...

  By Sijibomi Ogundele   “Suji my son, you must follow me somewhere, I want to blow your mind and quadruple your vision”.  This was a message I got from my royal father, the Ooni of Ife, HRH Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, the Ojaja II. I had to leave everything I was doing, and make my way to Ibeju lekki Free Trade Zone where Dangote has not only transformed the skyline, but also changed the social and economic value of the location, making it the new Lagos for all industrial and commercial opportunities. It was a tedious experience traveling to a location that should ordinarily take us 40 minutes, but we had to spend 1 hour 30 minutes as a result of the unavoidable traffic on that route. However, I was stunned by the level of development that has unfolded in that area and I must appreciate the Lagos State government for the social and economic revolution of the Lekki Aja zone. I enjoyed the trip which was filled with different interesting scenes, one of such is the sight of ro...