By Suyi Ayodele

How should a king react to an in-your-face abuse by his son’s schoolmate? An altercation on a football field led to a physical engagement between two schoolboys: one a prince; the other sired by a poor farmer. The one who was farmer-born was dexterous in (eke) wrestling. He had the upper hand in the fight; threw the prince a couple of times and enjoyed himself, beating the hell out of him. Other friends stepped in and separated the combatants.

But it didn’t end there. The prince instantly became the butt of the jokes by the others on their way home. Most boys do that, you know.

The path to the community runs in front of the palace. The prince walked slowly and deliberately. But as soon as the boisterous group entered the palace precinct, the prince regained his mojo, his boldness and confidence. He hurled curses at his opponent, who remained calm, aware that the king was watching from the palace balcony, flanked by a few chiefs.

Sighting his father, the king, the prince did the unthinkable. He walked up to his opponent and uttered the following words in his Ekiti dialect: “Ayé ùba re hí a dáa (may it not be well with your father)! The son of the farmer stopped in his tracks. The party became silent. Kabiyesi and his chiefs heard the prince clearly. They waited in suspended breath to see what the other boy would do or say. They did not have to wait for a long time.

The boy looked up to Kabiyesi on the balcony, and at the prince. Then he pointed at the king and told the prince: “Sé òrúba re -mentioned the title of the king – kì mì o o, ayé rè hí a dáa (you see this your father I am looking at; it will not be well with him)!” Silence! What did the king do?

On hearing what the boy said, Kabiyesi first restrained his palace guards from acting. He ordered the children to be brought to the palace. He descended the stairs, followed by his chiefs and the palace griot chanting his praises. The king asked the two combatants to relay what happened. He got corroborations from the other students. Then he made his pronouncement.

The Oba asked a palace guard to get a cane. Done. He ordered two more guards to stretch out the prince, the naughty way rascals are stretched out for punishment. Then without counting, the king asked the palace guard holding the cane to do justice to the buttocks of the prince with the cane. He resisted the pleas from his chiefs.

The Olori, mother of the prince, dared not venture into the open space. Satisfied that enough strokes of the cane had been donated to the prince, Kabiyesi stopped the guard. He lectured the children on why they should not fight, and if they must, why they must never extend their vituperations to the parents of their opponents. Did the message sink? The prince in this story is a judge of a High Court of Justice today. The farmer’s son is a successful businessman and a big farmer too! Are they still friends? I will find out!

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The children prostrated. The son of the farmer offered apologies for what he said. Kabiyesi responded that he did the right thing by defending himself against the prince. He dismissed the party. The news travelled fast. The farmer gathered relations and the elders of his clan. They went back to the palace to beg the king. They brought gifts, farm produce to appease the Oba. Kabiyesi would have none of those.

The king insisted that the boy did no wrong by cursing back at the prince. He asked the farmer if he would be happy if his child had come back home to say that the prince cursed him (father) but he (child) could not retaliate because his opponent’s father was a king. The farmer answered in the negative. Kabiyesi said he would feel the same way if it had happened to the prince. Then he dropped the moral of the incident to wit: children must be trained so well so that if the parents looked back in their hereafter, they would be proud of the children’s conducts!

Children upbringing in Yoruba emphasises character (ìwà). From the cradle, children are moulded to be of good conduct (behaviour) and the pride of the family. A child is beautiful only if he has good character (ìwà lewà). Yoruba also categorise character. There is a type called ìwà abínibí (congenital character), which is hereditary or one that easily depicts a family a child comes from. If it is good, the family source can be identified; likewise, if it is otherwise.

There is also ìwà àtowádá (a character trait a child develops by himself). Modern sociologists trace this type of character to so many things with the influence of peer groups being the most visible culprit. No matter the fine upbringing a child had, if he gets involved in a negative peer group activity, such a child could derail.

Another category is iwa atúnraenibí (reenactment of one’s congenital character). A child with this type of character trait is rated as the best. This is the type of child who is conscious of his enviable background and takes steps to preserve the good name, the family pride and heritage.

He is the type that is always conscious that he cannot behave contrary to his solid upbringing. In this case, the name of the family counts, what others would say about him, and his background comes into play and thus, the child remains within acceptable boundaries. This, to a greater extent, births the saying: resemblance depicts ancestry (àbíjo làá mo ìran).

But a caveat here is necessary. That a child behaves badly or turns out to be a miserable, terrible adult does not mean that such a child was not nurtured very well. A parent can be lucky to have a child who combines ìwà abínibí and iwa atúnraenibí to produce the Yoruba ethos of Omoluabi. A society or group populated more by Omoluabi thrives. When that Yoruba primordial ethos is in short supply in any society or group, what you have is what the once dominant Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is experiencing at the moment.

Last week, two top leaders of the PDP in the South-West spoke about the present and future of the party. The two top figures share so many things in common. One is a prince. The other is a son of a clergyman. The two are separated in age by 10 years.

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The first is Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, a retired Brigadier-General, former Military Governor of Lagos State and former civilian governor of Osun State. His late father was the Olokuku of Okuku, Oba Moses Oyewole Oyinlola, who reigned between 1934 and 1960.

The second PDP leader is Ayodele Peter Fayose, a son of a preacher of the Gospel and was brought up in ‘the ways of the Lord and in His Vineyard!’ Fayose is phenomenal in politics. At two different times, he defeated two incumbent governors to clinch the governorship of Ekiti State.

In 2003, Fayose was a nobody. But through the instrumentality of ‘street credibility’, he led the PDP to victory in the governorship election, defeating the then Governor Adeniyi Adebayo of the defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) in 12 out of the 16 local government areas of the state.

While ‘street credibility’ brought Fayose to power, character could not sustain him. Within a short time in office, he plunged the state into unprecedented crises. He had dispensed with two deputy governors before the system got rid of him six months to the end of his first term. A state of emergency was declared in Ekiti State by General Olusegun Obasanjo, the then president and Fayose was parcelled out of the state like contraband goods.

Like the proverbial once-defeated ram, Fayose turned his misfortune to fortune, re-strategised and challenged his removal in the courts. Luckily, and just as many people believed that Obasanjo overreached himself, the court declared Fayose’s removal as invalid. That paved the way for him and having rebuilt the PDP in Ekiti, he again became the gubernatorial flag bearer of the party for the 2014 governorship election.

More like the 2003 election, Fayose’s opponent in the 2014 gubernatorial race was another soft target, a far more vulnerable target with lacklustre performance in office. Thus, it was a total political tsunami as Fayose routed the then Governor Kayode John Fayemi of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in all the 16 local government areas of the state.

Again, by the time Fayose signed off in 2018 as Ekiti State governor, he had little, or nothing left of him in terms of politics. He had wasted his goodwill so much that installing a ward councillor became a herculean task for him. His PDP performed so woefully in that election that one began to wonder if the party ever existed in the state. And that was the beginning of Fayose’s descent.

When a man falls, our elders counsel that he should look at all the factors responsible for the fall. That is not for Fayose. By the time another election came calling in 2022, Fayose had become Mr. Giwa, the legendary trader of our primary school New Oxford English Course (NOEC) textbook, openly supported the All Progressives Congress (APC) that defeated his deputy and PDP governorship candidate in the 2018 election, Professor Olusola Eleka.

Ironically, Fayose remains in the PDP. What he did in the 2022 Ekiti State gubernatorial election, he repeated in the 2023 presidential election by throwing his weight behind the candidature of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC against Atiku Abubakar of the PDP. Today, the PDP is on oxygen. Everyone who is a member of the PDP political family, except Fayose, is all over the place, looking for the cure for the party’s seeming terminal ailment.

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It is against this background that Oyinlola and Fayose spoke last week, assessing the fate that has befallen the PDP and how the party could get out of coma. This is where the character of the two personalities came to play.

I watched the video clips of the interviews where Oyinlola and Fayose featured. My reactions are predictable. One, there was nothing new that Fayose said. Besides, there is nothing he said in that interview that is not within his character portraiture. He couldn’t have acted otherwise. Who are his friends, by the way?

The only baffling thing is how Fayose, in bringing down the PDP, failed to realise that a knife which destroys its pouch invariably destroys its own home. Ever since Fayose started this journey of let-the-PDP-die-if-it-wants, I have not seen any gain that comes his way, politically. His camp keeps dwindling; his popularity keeps sinking; yet he feels destroying the party that gave him life is the best way to please the powers that be! In the last general election, all his former aides who contested lost woefully.

The gale of failure that hit his camp did not spare his own biological son, who contested the House of Representatives election and lost. Yet, the people in opposition that Fayose is selling the PDP to are not just in power and government, they have their children and running dogs fixed up in government as commissioners, members of the legislative arm and heads of choice statutory Boards!

How do we then describe an elder who eats his yesterday, his today and his tomorrow? My elders posit that the owner of the hut will not allow it to be demolished. Where is that wisdom in Fayose and his attitude of household enemy that he has turned himself to in the PDP?

If I were close to the one once hailed as Oshokomole, ebora to unje jollof rice (the deity that eats jollof rice) in recognition of his fabled ‘street credibility’ and mass mobilisation, I would advise him to walk the streets of Afao Ekiti, his hometown, to see the reaction of the people. Can he still amass the crowd of yesteryears in Ekiti today?

And coming to Oyinlola’s interview on the same misfortune of the PDP, it is not surprising that his message, his tone, his mien and candour while the interview lasted, are in sharp contrast to Fayose’s. A child who witnesses the setting of the yam barn, our elders say, cannot be mistaken while removing a tuber from the stack (omo tí a bí nínú ogbà kò ní si isu ogbà yo). You cannot be a prince, a retired General, an officer and gentleman, former military and civilian governor and lack decency in public engagement!

But my view of Oyinlola’s interview, his use of anecdotes, the folkloristic voyage to the deceitful game-hunting party and the weight of the tail of a crocodile and that of the lizard are more in the message Kabiyesi in the introductory story passed across when he adjudicated over the matter involving his son and the son of the farmer.

Character is the ornament on a man (ìwà ni èsó ènìyàn) is a saying of our elders. They have another one: Character is beauty (ìwà lewà). What informed the wisdom? This is what the prince and the son of a pastor displayed in their attitudes to their party, the PDP!

For many Nigerians, the dream of going to university often stalls at one major hurdle: JAMB UTME. Each year, students miss out on admission; some don’t meet the cut-off, others never get in despite passing, and a growing number are simply tired of the uncertainty. But there’s good news. A new generation of universities licensed by the National Universities Commission (NUC) are offering a different route, one that skips the JAMB UTME bottleneck.

These five NUC-approved institutions are changing the game by making university education more accessible, flexible, and aligned with real-world goals.

1. Miva Open University

Miva Open University is Nigeria’s first operational private open university that offers direct admission without JAMB UTME. Applicants need only five O’Level credits, including English and Mathematics, obtained in no more than two sittings. Miva is tech-driven, and courses are delivered via pre-recorded videos and PDFs via a learning management system online.

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With a flexible, remote learning model, Miva allows students to study from anywhere and at their own pace, ideal for those juggling work, family, or other commitments. Tuition fee starts at ₦150,000 per semester with no any additional cost; the tuition is affordable, and students graduate with career-ready skills in fields like tech, business, and management.

2. National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)

The National Open University of Nigeria is the country’s first open and distance learning institution. While JAMB UTME isn’t required, candidates must meet standard O’Level requirements and apply through the NOUN portal.

With a self-paced system and wide national reach, NOUN is a choice for those seeking flexibility.

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3. Iconic Open University

Iconic Open University is a new entrant in Nigeria’s open education space, offering flexible learning through a technology-driven model. Admission does not require JAMB UTME, though applicants must present valid O’Level results and meet other documentation requirements.

Designed for students seeking an alternative to traditional schooling, Iconic Open University provides a more personalised approach to higher education.

4. West Midlands Open University, Ibadan

Also licensed by the NUC, West Midlands Open University operates primarily online and accepts students without requiring JAMB UTME. With a focus on quality distance education, the institution allows students to complete their degree programmes remotely and on schedule.

Applicants must still meet O’Level standards and go through the school’s internal admission process.

5. Al-Muhibbah Open University, Abuja

Licensed in 2023, Al-Muhibbah Open University provides remote learning opportunities for a range of undergraduate courses. It offers admission without UTME, relying instead on O’Level performance and other standard entry requirements.

The university’s distance learning model offers flexibility and access, especially for students unable to attend traditional campus-based programmes.

What About JUPEB and IJMB?

Programmes like JUPEB and IJMB are well-known pathways to 200-level admission in some universities without JAMB. However, they often require 9 to 12 months of pre-university study, can be expensive, and do not guarantee automatic entry. Final admission still depends on performance and the university’s discretion.

The Road Ahead

The pressure to pass JAMB can leave many feeling stuck, but that no longer needs to be the case. These universities are offering students a chance to:

Begin their studies immediately
Learn flexibly and remotely
Graduate on time
Enter the workforce with confidence

Whether you’re trying again or just starting out, your university journey can begin without JAMB UTME. All you need is your O’Level result and the will to move forward.
(PUNCH)

Commuters and motorists were stranded at the Jattu junction on the Benin-Auchi-Okene Highway as hundreds of youths staged a protest over the gully erosion ravaging the community and the incessant kidnapping of their people.

A significant number of heavy-duty trucks, cars, motorcycles, and commuters were seen in long queues at the junction, with the police and other security personnel on the ground to maintain peace and ensure the protest was not hijacked by hoodlums.

The youths under the umbrella of Auchi Youth Council converged at the popular Jattu Junction with their placards, calling on the government to address their demands, saying they were tired of facing unnecessary hardship in their domain.

Speaking on behalf of the protesters, Chalaman Momoh said the protest was to draw the attention of government and relevant authorities to the gullies and incessant kidnapping in the community.

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He said, “We are here to cry out to the government on the issue of gully erosion that is ravaging our community. We have written to the government, and we have yet to get a response.

“We are also experiencing the issue of kidnapping every day. These kidnappers go into the homes of our people in the community and abduct them.

“So, we are here to show solidarity and we are calling on the government to come to Auchi and salvage the erosion menace as well as put an end to the incessant kidnapping of our people,” Momoh said.

Also speaking, the Coordinator, Edo Take It Back Movement, Hafiz Lawal, said no fewer than 15 persons in Auchi had been kidnapped with over N70m paid as ransom.

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Lawal, who is also the Coordinator of Coalition for Edo North Youths for Good Governance, listed the gully erosion sites as Utsokhwilli Gully, Water Tanker Road and Auchi-Igarra Road.

He added, “The demand we are placing before the government is that the erosion ravaging Auchi must be solved. The issue of insecurity with 15 persons from Auchi so far kidnapped calls for action.

“We are protesting to draw the attention of the government to the issue so that we can be rescued,” Lawal noted.