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Alaafin Owoade: Thy Bata Drum Is Sounding Too Loudly (2)

Published

5 months ago

May 16, 2025

Tunde Odesola

With three horizontal lines on each side of his mulatto cheeks complementing the three vertical lines on his forehead, the abaja tribal marks beautifying the face of Adejuyigbe Adefunmi were not sculpted in the heart of Yorubaland, they were incised in the United States of America, when the prince was eight days old.

His father, Oba Efuntola Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi I, who founded Oyotunji, an African village near Sheldon, Beaufort County, South Carolina, joined his ancestors on February 11, 2005, after living for seven decades and six years.

Oba Adefunmi I embarked on the journey to the great beyond after decades on the throne, bestowing a legacy of Yoruba cultural reawakening. His son and successor, Oba Adejuyigbe Adefunmi II, was the 19th among 23 children, all of whom were born to Efuntola in the polygamous family he ran in the US.

Tragically, the successor Oba Adefunmi II succumbed to multiple knife injuries inflicted by his elder sister, Akiba Kasale Meredith, 53, on Monday, July 29, 2024, after the village celebrated Sango festival the previous Saturday and Sunday.

But, in a viral video recorded years before his death, the 47-year-old Oba Adefunmi II, spoke with pride about the vision and enduring relevance of Oyotunji, saying, “Oyotunji African Village is one of its kind in North America today. It’s the only African village with a king, king’s wives, with chiefs, a school, a library and all of those good things. Oyotunji was configured to be a monastery of sorts for the reconfiguration, restoration, and, of course, researching our traditional African culture. We’re descendants of West Africa. Of course, as we know, people without a culture are lost.”

He continued, “The future of Oyotunji remains relevant in that we continue to educate, we continue to cater to all of those who are soul-searching, looking for their ancestors and who they are. By coming to Oyotunji, you can get a snapshot of how our ancestors lived before. You are going to get a splash of Africa in one day, from the cuisine to the dancing, the drumming, the atmosphere, and the heat from the sun is really reminiscent of Africa.

“Our gates are always open to people to come and we offer them spiritual services. We do not practice a religion, we practice a culture, and that’s why we want people to know about Oyotunji, and you can be a part of this culture.”

In an interview published in The PUNCH, on April 15, 2017, the young ruler of the village, which sits on 27 acres, said Oyotunji, over the years, had been sustained by God and the selfless commitment of villagers.

His words, “Our forefathers and mothers were the ones who pulled their small resources together to get the land and the rest was up to Eledumare. We had the men in the village who were the builders and the women in the village were the protectors of the village and the children were the future. There was no funding from the government, Africa or Europe. We utilised our African culture to create income, so Oyotunji became a tourist destination.”

On the origin of tribal marks in the community, the king explained, “The tribal marks began in Oyotunji in 1975. Each person in Oyotunji began to receive tribal marks. I received my ila oju (tribal marks) when I was eight days old, just before the isomo loruko (naming ceremony). Men and women receive them. However, today, it is not mandatory as it was. Now it is up to the parents and children if they want to receive them. Today, many adults are coming to us to receive tribal marks but I tell them we don’t do it when you are old because it is very painful.

“As a child, it is just like circumcision. It is the child’s first cut in the community. When you bleed, they put ewé (leaves) and àsè (traditional powder). When those things are put, they make you powerful. We chose to bear marks similar to the Oyo people because my father was so mystified by the Oyo Empire. I don’t think there has been an empire like that since and that is why he named the village after Oyo. As we know, Oyo was the political capital of the Yoruba people while Ile-Ife is the spiritual capital of the Yoruba race.”

Oba Adefunmi II also spoke about how his father became king. The title was not self-proclaimed, he emphasised, recalling that the people of Oyotunji made his father king in 1972 when they felt the village needed a leader.

“Some of our descendants were stolen and taken to America but my father always knew that he had royal blood. It was not until 1972 when the people of Oyotunji after 20 years of Yoruba culture development, realised that my father should become a king. My father did not make himself a king, he was just the builder and constructor. One day, the people woke up and decided to make him king…They told him to sit down and said that from that day, there was no more work for him and he would become the ruler of the village,” he said.

Explaining how Oyotunji drew its spiritual legitimacy from Ile-Ife, Oba Adefunmi II recalled his father’s visit to Nigeria in 1981 for the Orisa World Conference, and how Ooni Okunade Sijuwade made his father king.

Adefunmi said, “My father visited Ile-Ife on November 16, 1981 for the Orisa world conference held at the University of Ife. Meanwhile, Oyotunji had been in existence for about 11 years while the Yoruba culture movement had been in existence in North-America for about 20 years. Baba came to the conference and Oba Sijuwade was there.”

According to Adefunmi, Oba Sijuwade was impressed when his father showed pictures and slides of Oyotunji on a projector, saying this prompted the paramount ruler to invite his father, along with all the dignitaries that attended the conference, to a reception inside the palace.

“During the reception, he (Ooni) surprised my father by singling him out and he told his kingmakers to take him to the back (of the palace). (There,) my father said they sacrificed a goat to the Ada Oba Akogun (the sword), and the Ooni consecrated it by saying that from that day forward, he (Efuntola) would be the king of all the Yoruba in North America. This was the second coronation for my father. He then received his official status from the Source of the Yoruba kingdom. Baba came back to the United States with that and began to expand the royal family, the crowns, royal insignia, and the Yoruba culture, but this time with the spiritual backing of the source,” he said.

For any Yoruba king to fight over the control of Oyotunji is tantamount to the parable of ‘Eni ri n kan e’ – ‘someone who finds a prized jewel and is dying out of excitement over his find; what should the one that lost the jewel do?’

Oyotunji means ‘Oyo has risen again’. Its conception was the sole work of African-Americans inspired to retrace their ancestry. No Ooni or Alaafin supplied manpower nor contributed a dime to the creation of Oyotunji, thereby making any claim to the community by any traditional ruler an attempt to reap where they did not sow.

“Ko si gbe ru mi laafin” is an ancient proverb which validates the palace as a silo, where the poor drop choice foods and ware. But some Yoruba monarchs are changing this narrative. One such example is the Orangun of Oke-Ila, Oba Adedokun Abolarin, who built a school for indigent students. Another example is the new Owa Obokun of Ijesaland, Oba Adesuyi Haastrup, who has deployed his funds to the construction of roads within his domain and the sponsoring of 50 Ilesa youths to Nasarawa State for an agric empowerment programme.

Retired broadcaster and cousin to the kabiyesi, Folasade Odunlade, nee Haastrup, also said the Owa Obokun has given 1,000 indigent students in the community bursary awards.

“Baba o gbodo so wipe o di owo omo ohun lorun,” a father shall never seek help in the hands of his children in heaven. No matter how successful the child is, he’s the son of his father.

There’s no gainsaying the fact that Oyo played a prominent role in the protection of Yorubaland hundreds of years ago, but the place of Ile-Ife as ‘The Source’ is evergreen. When scholars speak about the Old Oyo Empire, they refer to it in the past, using the verb ‘was’ because it no longer exists. But Ile-Ife is past, present and continuous because it is the source of Yoruba.

After the fall of the Oyo Empire, Ibadan warriors also protected Yorubaland. Is it, therefore, right for the Olubadan to claim equality or supremacy over the Ooni? NO!

After Nigeria’s independence, Ibadan rose to become the political capital of the Western Region, while Lagos rose to become the commercial capital of the entire country, and later became more politically powerful than Ibadan from 1999. But, won’t it be childish for Ibadan and Lagos to bicker over who is greater when there are many issues confronting the Yoruba race?

In the Ogbori Elemoso epic by Lere Paimo, the antagonist, Elemoso, warns Soun Ogunlola, the protagonist, “O ma je ki awon ara Oyo o tan e?” – Don’t let Oyo people deceive you. This is a piece of advice for Alaafin. The Alaafin shouldn’t allow bad counsel to mislead him. He started well, he should not derail now. The Ooni too will find this counsel and the ‘agba ni n gba’ counsel invaluable because, truly, tolerance is the forte of the elderly.

The Awise Agbaye, Prof Wande Abimbola, said plans were afoot to settle the alleged bickering between the two prominent rulers, saying it was unnecessary.

In an interview with me, Abimbola said, “Yoruba elders shall look into it. We shall settle it. The Yoruba do not need such a quarrel. Ife is the source of Yoruba, and Oyo played a crucial role in the history of the Yoruba. So, both rulers should show respect to each other. We must find a middle ground for both respected kings to stand upon – a middle ground of honour and solidarity for us all.”

No Ooni in history ever wore tribal marks, though the ‘pele’ tribal marks are the commonest in Ife. ‘Abaja’ is the most common tribal mark among Oyo people. Therefore, if ‘onipele’ – the ‘pele’ tribal mark wearer – is angry, let the ‘alabaja’ hug him: The Alaafin and the Ooni should unite.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

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News

OPINION: Ofala: Glo And An Invite From Agbogidi

Published

7 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

‘Teacher of Light’ is the title of a biography of Chinua Achebe written by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Tijan Sallah. What does it mean to teach light? Or, rather, what is light? If you know what darkness does, you would know what light means and the value it holds.

“When the moon is shining, the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.” With that proverb and its moon metaphor, Chinua Achebe established himself as a true teacher of light. My muse pushed the proverb to my presence as I read through an invitation to me from the Obi of Onitsha asking that I be part of this year’s Ofala Festival. It occurred to me that moment that it is not only the moon that gives light; culture is an illuminator, it also gives light, especially to people like me who routinely forget how to dance to ancestral summons.

I had the very rare privilege of being honoured by the Nigerian Academy of Letters with its Honorary Fellowship in August this year. From the North to the South, only three Nigerians were so honoured: I was one; my brother, culture scholar and media icon, Jahman Anikulapo, was one; the deeply intellectual Obi of Onitsha, His Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe (Agbogidi), was the third, the biggest of us. At that ceremony, the Obi, who said he had looked forward to meeting me, met me, held me and has kept me close as a son.

So, his invite to the Ofala Festival came. The festival holds this week. I wish I could be there as the king’s guest; but wishes are not horses. Because the mountain here is blocking the view of the mountain over there, I cannot honour the invitation. So I prayed for the success of the festival. The Obi answered with a thunderous ‘Amen’.

Ofala? I checked and found that the word “Ofala” is an enduring offspring of the Igbo words ọfọ (authority) and ala (land). Ofala is history retold in performance; it is also culture renewed. It relives the Obi’s authority over the land and its people.

Ofala is Obi’s return from sacred silence. The festival celebrates royalty’s reborn, and the Ndichie’s renewal of loyalty to the king. In Iru Ofala and Azu Ofala, the king returns from ancestral presence to repossess his warriors with their red caps.

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Etymologists say the word ‘festival’ derives from the Latin ‘festum’. Anthropologists have followed the word through centuries and civilisations as its meaning evolved across cultures and disciplines. Émile Durkheim and James George Frazer were influential figures in early anthropology. Scholars, in summaries, say that to Durkheim and Frazer, festivals are communal expressions of belief and solidarity. They say that with festivals, people renew their social and spiritual bonds. In Ofala, we see that they are right.

Leo Frobenius, German ethnologist and archaeologist, was in Africa on multiple occasions between 1904 and 1935. In the 1910s, Frobenius observed festivals in diverse places; he documented them and saw in them vital celebrations of familial, tribal, and religious life deeply rooted in ancestral history and beliefs.

The German observed right. Ofala and similar festivals bind communities; they celebrate social cohesion and keep sacred traditions alive. They fuse communal history with spiritual renewal and survival. In them, the rhythm of everyday life comes alive.

Ofala has grown to attract great brands. Its major sponsor is telecoms giant, Globacom, which has been there since 2011. I have very solid people in Globacom, which makes me an envoy of its greenery and deepens my interest in everything, particularly, festivals in which the company is involved.

The Yoruba tell their children: When you behold greatness, honour it with reverence. Tí o bá ri olá, pón olá lé. That is what I am doing here. It is what Globacom’s long partnership with the Obi and Ofala does; an act of reverence to the greatness of the culture that birthed them.

From Lisabi in Abeokuta to Ojude Oba in Ijebu-Ode, and from Ofala in Onitsha to other vibrant festivals across the land, Globacom’s partnerships reflect a philosophy rooted in understanding that just as a zebra is defined by its stripes, a people are defined by their culture. In other words, a person without culture is like a zebra without stripes. Sustaining culture is sustaining the people.

That is what corporate sponsorship does to cultural events. Obi’s people say in a proverb, “Nku di na mba na-eghere mba nri (The firewood of a community cooks for that community).” Globacom’s firewood has kept the flame of the festivals it supports alive, warming the hearts of millions who gather yearly to honour tradition.

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To sponsor a festival is one thing; but to nurture its essence and future is another. Through resources and resourcefulness, community engagement, and cultural reverence, Globacom has redefined what corporate responsibility can mean. That is what I gleened from the firm. I agree with those words. Shakespeare writes in Hamlet that “The purpose of playing… is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.” The playwright suggests that the aim of acting and theater is to reflect reality, showing “virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.

By supporting these festivals, the company, Glo, holds up a mirror to our shared identity, allowing us to see ourselves, our beauty, our resilience, our history.

Globacom became a major sponsor of the Ofala Festival in 2011 and has sustained the sponsorship yearly since then. Fourteen years on, like the Ekwe and the Udu, two Igbo drums beating the same rhythm, the company’s unwavering support has demonstrated that corporate success and cultural preservation can walk (and work) together. I read this out and my friend, the Igbo man, chipped in: “Egbe bere, ugo bere” (let the kite perch and let the eagle perch). When business and tradition walk together, culture gains.

The Yoruba routinely remind us that it is when we walk in the rain that we know who truly walks with us. Companies get involved in arts and culture for various reasons. Some, like leeches, place their names beside great traditions so as to benefit from the greatness. But what I see with Glo here is much more than profit in cash and kind. I see a telecoms giant, wholly indigenous, that has chosen to walk tall with the ancestors, deploying its enormous muscle to connect the past and their history to the world of the modern. One word defines this; it is renewal.

The rich who spend on their people’s historical and cultural essence are not frivolous; neither are they stupid. It is patriotism; if you like, call it cultural nationalism. The wealth of culture, like all wealth, grows when shared.

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Cultural promotion yields dividends that confound account books. It stitches the torn fabric of community; it keeps the hearth of local enterprise burning, and rekindles pride in who we are and where we come from. It renews pride in our shared heritage. It makes us all richer.

If you do well the society notes and records all you do for posterity. The Alake and paramount ruler of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo said in 2017 that “Glo is number one in culture and support for the people. The company pioneered per second billing and others followed.” The Alake wrote that admirable testimonial eight years ago. The flag of patriotism is still there on the mountain top, flying.

In Ofala, the king dances the dance of joy of a fresh start. In the drumbeats and dance steps, the king delights that yam is harvested as proof of life, not of death. The beats retell a people’s story as told by the ancestors. A people are as strong as the stories they tell of themselves.

This weekend (Friday and Saturday), Onitsha will be draped in Globacom’s green, the colour of growth and renewal. Colour green in French is vert, the Italian call it verde, the Spanish, in Castilian voice, say it is verde. They all draw their source from the Latin word for green which is viridis, a word that denotes freshness and vitality. History is an endless rope. English words, verdant and viridian, have this same Roman ancestry. To viridis again belongs “a large family of other words that evoke vigor, growth, and life: virere (to be green, to be vigorous), vis (strength), vir (man, masculine singular), ver (spring), virga (stem, rod), perhaps even virtus (courage, virtue).” For those insights, check French professor of medieval history, Michel Pastoureau’s ‘Green: The History of a Color’ as translated by Jody Gladding.

Whenever I meet Globacom chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga Jr, I intend to ask him the specific reason he chose colour green for his giant.

I congratulate the Obi and Glo as the moon glows on Ofala. In the dance of that festival, drums speak, colours sing, and heritage dances. In perfect rhythm, the people breathe, act and rejoice as tradition bathes in innovation. With the moon shining brighter, Obi’s land is renewed this weekend. Congratulations, Agbogidi.

News

OPINION: ‘Federal Highways of Horror’

Published

8 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

You know where the latest anti-government journalists are in Lagos? Kirikiri. On a day that Nigerians were celebrating an additional spur of 100 kilometres to the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, the killjoys of Kirikiri struck. They took a happy, joyous people of 200 million on a gruelling, bumpy ride across the country. They ran painful stories of craters and potholes and headlined them: ‘Federal Highways of Horror.’

It is a miracle that our Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, has not pummeled the Lagos newspaper called Vanguard. It ran the bad stories. It is still unclear why the minister has not rebuked its owner and spanked its journalists for publishing what they were not supposed to publish. Not once, but twice, last week they allowed the devil to use them to tell stories of collapsed federal roads from the north to the south. Their stories portrayed hardworking Umahi as a failure in monumental proportions.

Those journalists, injected with an overdose of impudence, said they did an investigation. They painted a grim picture of federal highways across multiple Nigerian states suffering severe neglect. They said the neglect has made travel dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming. They wrote as if they were sent to pull down a house built by God.

In the South, they came up with a long list of bad roads. They said northern states shared the same story of pain. They described some roads as crater-filled horror scenes; some as barely passable, others as sites long abandoned by contractors. On the few ones harbouring contractors, the signs they displayed showed slow men at work.

It does not rain; it pours. Amid narratives of millions of bad federal roads, Umahi made himself professor last week. “I am a professor of Engineering,” he announced on national television. Professor Umahi? I pray he is not asked to name the king who blessed him with that chieftaincy title. Some Arise News television journalists, whose eyes lack lashes, forced him to make himself professor. They habitually tug at the hem of Umahi’s professorial gown. They pelt him with questions that should never be asked. They remind our working Minister of Works that a river that is not dirty does not hide its depth. Last week, they demanded the cost of federal roads per kilometre. Who does that? And, I am happy, Minister Umahi gave it back to them. He said they are illiterates. Yeah. Don’t they know that for our federal government, spirits decide the total costs of projects? If they were truly not illiterates, they would know that this government is a wholesale seller and buyer; it is too rich to do retail business measured with short tape rules and elementary school rulers.

Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, thought because he was governor and engineer he could join the talk and say that calculating the average cost per kilometre was possible in road construction. He was similarly told by our minister to shut up or he would be summoned to a debate on the very difficult mathematics of road construction. Umahi said he is Makinde’s senior in engineering. Senior Prefect Umahi described electrical electronics engineers as ‘technicians’ who must not speak on project costs.

Now, what we are told to hold as knowledge from Professor Umahi is that it is impossible to know how much a kilometre of road costs in Nigeria until such projects are completed. God is great. The World Bank must have missed that wisdom back in 1999 when it created the Road Costs Knowledge System (ROCKS), a database that calmly lists what it costs to build or fix a kilometre of road from Umahi’s village in Ebonyi to Makinde’s Ajia in Ibadan. A key feature of the World Bank’s ROCKS is its record of actual and estimated road work costs, clearly defined per kilometre and per square metre. Apparently, only in Nigeria do roads and their costs defy mathematics and logic.

In utter helplessness, we watch the roads and their costs stretch and shrink like chewing gum depending on whose fingers are working the calculator. While other countries classify their roads by type and cost per kilometre, we prefer a more spiritual approach – if you are an enemy, call it faith-based budgeting.

Clarity is the father of all openness. Why is it missing here? Again, that is not a question or a proverb that we must hear again from anyone, especially professional troublemakers called journalists. What is the problem of Nigerian journalists? Because their eyes have no skin, they query power. Where a cup is half-full, what our journalists see all their lives is a half-empty cup. They didn’t start today. They are historically insolent. What they do to this government, they did to even our ancestor, Lord Lugard, in 1913, one full year before Amalgamation. On 8 March, 1913, one rude journalist working with a newspaper called Lagos Weekly Record wrote that Lugard was a wicked, ruthless character, “a man whose walking stick is a pistol and whose thoughts by day and dreams at night are punitive expeditions and military patrols.”

And what was Lugard’s reaction to such attacks? He fought them with laws and knocks. At a point, he documented their impudence with a letter to his wife, Flora. In the letter, he bunched the journalist with all the other “educated native” who deserved no sympathy. He wrote about the native enemy of the state: “His loud and arrogant conceit are distasteful to me, his lack of natural dignity and of courtesy antagonise me.” Lugard’s biographer, Margery Perham, graciously remembered to put this in the book: ‘Lugard: The Years of Authority’ on page 585. If you can’t get Perham but are fortunate to get Jonathan Derrick’s ‘Africa, Empire and Fleet Street’, check the details there. They are on page 115.

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So, as Lugard, the creator of Nigeria rightly wrote, the Nigerian journalist is arrogant and lacks courtesy. Such are called alárífín in Yoruba. In the days of old, the crime of àrífín carried capital punishment. Aróbafín l’oba npa. But today’s journalists are lucky that they are in a republican democracy. Even then, someone should pay for their bad behaviour. The slap they get from ministers like Umahi is the first tranche of the cost of their bad manners.

What should the state do to the conceited who won’t let expressway contracts be awarded expressly in peace? I have a solution to their problem: Like the Vanguard, they should all be relocated to Kirikiri; all of them, from Lagos to Ibadan; from Ibadan to Lagos. And, if I had my way, I would tip off Umahi and all his harangued hardworking colleagues to award contracts this week for more cells for enemies of the president’s coastal elephant and other projects of renewal. Their new accommodation should enjoy maximum security. They deserve Kirikiri, Kirikiri deserves them.

What comes fast cannot be delayed again. It happened to cricket. Cricket set his wedding day and simultaneously asked his doctor to start preparing for child delivery. The contracts for a safe house for Nigerian journalists can be awarded today, or, latest tomorrow. There is no need for formalities. Exactly like the Coastal Road contract, this is another no for competitive bidding. We already know contractors with proven track records of expertise in casting beams and building cells. We select and hit the site digging. We can fix the contract cost after the job is done.

From this point, we see long shadows over the country; there is no clarity about important things government do. But, one day soon, like sun rays, clarity will force its way in; it is the father of openness.

Now, beyond the scaffold of satire, I wish I could just tear the mask and tell Minister Umahi that what we have today under his watch is road transportation without roads. And he is Minister of Works in charge of roads. It is a shame.

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In May this year (2025), I wrote ‘The shame of Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road.’ The first two paragraphs of the piece read:

“Mr Dele Alake represents Ekiti State in the Federal Executive Council. Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola represents Osun State in the Federal Executive Council. Mr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo represents Ondo State in the Federal Executive Council. All three of them are the president’s core men. Each time the council sits and approves federal roads for reconstruction in states other than theirs, what goes on in their minds? They are very powerful ministers but all federal roads that lead to their states are decrepit and abandoned. And they know. So, what is the problem?

“The Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road that links these ministers’ states to Lagos and to the North is the worst in Nigeria. Senate leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, is from Ekiti State. He belongs to the president’s inner caucus. Tough-talking PDP Senator Francis Fadahunsi represents Ife-Ijesa senatorial district. There are seven other senators and several Reps of APC and PDP from those three states. Has anyone heard them say or do anything to make that road well again? Do these people go home and how do they get home whenever they go home? Nigerians of all states lose lives and limbs on that road daily. Death by installments on the road is harrowing and it is a daily experience. It is a fitting tribute to the attention we pay to our people’s welfare.”

That was on May 12, 2025 (five months ago). If the road was “going, going” when I wrote that piece, it is gone now. Gone. An ex-senator told a columnist in May this year that N20 billion had been “released for repairs” of that road. In August 2025, Umahi announced the release of 30 percent of the contract sum. How much is the contract sum? Don’t even go there. If you go there, the minister will be angry. He will remind you that you are not a road professor. If you must ask any question at all, ask what has happened to what Umahi said was released, his 30 percent. Ask, because, nothing that is worth one kobo has happened on that road this year.

But the total collapse of the road did not come to me as a surprise. By the noon of May 12, 2025 when I published the article, one of the senators I called out in the piece called me.

“They have just read to me what you wrote.” He told me. Big men don’t read newspapers; newspapers are read to big men. Senator said he laughed at my naivety. He wondered why I was disturbing myself writing rubbish about a contract that may never be executed.

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“Do you think Nigeria can ever be better than it is? (Sé ìwo rò wípé Nigeria lè dára jù báyìí lo ni?)” He asked and proceeded to shame me with names, facts and figures all of which answered his question with a no. He said I should record and publish all he said. I laughed at the audacity of his directive. An orphan like me will never dare court a wound on the back.

Besides, I was taught early in life to make my eyes flexible enough for them to see the nose. That was the wisdom that eluded Partridge who claimed to know it all, and because he made that claim, he blocked his own opportunity to learn Ifá from the pigeon. ‘Mo m’Obàrà, mo m’Ofún,’ tí kò j e kí ẹyẹlé k’ àparò n’Ífá (I know Obàrà, I know Ofún’ made the pigeon not to teach Ifá to the partridge).

So, my pigeon listened attentively to the incantation from the hawk. This senator ended his long, windy speech with a submission that the Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road, and other federal roads in the South-West were decrepit and abandoned because the Works Minister “does not like hearing South-West at all.” I heard him and sighed.

When the outspoken gentleman spoke with me five months ago, he was a PDP senator. He has since moved to Dave Umahi’s party. Now, I wonder if he will still say what he said now that he is in APC.

Author and literary critic, Robert M. Wren (1928-1989), in 1982 wrote “The Last Bridge on ‘The Road’: Soyinka’s Rage and Compassion.” He tells us that in 1962, Wole Soyinka, in a Lagos Daily Express essay entitled ‘Bad Roads, Bad Users, Bad Deaths’ captured Nigeria’s enduring road crisis. Writing with outrage and in satire, Soyinka lamented the deadly state of the highways. He agonised over the state of the Lagos–Ibadan road (Mile 34); there was what he called “the death-trap at Ife”, and “the last bridge on Ikorodu Road.” Soyinka recalled and deplored a senator’s refusal to carry a crash victim with a spinal cord injury to Ibadan. More than six decades later, the roads are still bad, very bad; they still kill; senators are still cold-blooded; they still wonder why anyone bothers to care that the roads are bad.

News

Edo GIS Denies Report Of 17-year-old Purchasing 14 Hectares Of Land

Published

10 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

The Edo Geographic Information Systems (Edo GIS) has debunked reports circulating on social media that a 17-year-old boy purchased 14 hectares of land in Edo State and was subsequently denied a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) by Governor Monday Okpebholo.

In a statement released by the Director of Press, Tunde Egbiremonlen, the agency clarified that no such transaction exists in its records.

According to the statement, a 17-year-old is legally considered a minor and, as such, is not eligible to register land ownership under Edo State law.

“The Edo GIS system will automatically reject such applications due to age restrictions,” the statement read

“In the first place, a 17-year-old cannot apply for registration of land in Edo state because that age bracket is assumed to be a minor; the Edo GIS system will automatically reject the application.

“To compound the objective of the rumour-mongers, the peddlers of the story did not explain where in Edo state, such 14,000 hectares were purchased by the minor.

Egbiremonlen also pointed out inconsistencies in the viral report, noting that it failed to mention the specific location of the alleged 14 hectares and described the story as “deliberately mischievous and fabricated.”

He accused the originators of the false information of attempting to cause disaffection and blackmail the government, saying significant funds were spent to circulate the fake news.

Edo GIS urged the public to disregard the claims and remain vigilant against disinformation aimed at undermining the government’s credibility.