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General Lagbaja: Rise, Deities Of Vengeance [OPINION]

Published

11 months ago

November 19, 2024

By Suyi Ayodele

“Generally, any of my children or wives can have access to my grave site to pray and or seek spiritual assistance.” This is the last paragraph of the Will of the late grandfather of human rights activism in Nigeria, Chief Gani Fawehinmi. The Will was dated December 19, 2008.

The late lawyer, a devout Muslim in his lifetime, believed that the dead can commune with the living. Hence, in his Will, he granted permission for his children and wives to seek spiritual assistance at his grave side. Modern-day religionists would call him names. But the man called Gani would not bulge. The paragraph preceding the quoted one has a curse embedded in it. Hear Fawehinmi again:

“I plead with all my children and wives not to resort to any form of court litigation over my Will. They should resolve amicably any dispute or controversy with themselves…. I have had enough of painful struggles and controversies in my lifetime, I should be allowed to rest in peace. If any child or wife breaches this passionate plea, he or she will reap my displeasure and wrath.”

Fawehinmi died on September 5, 2009, barely a year after he deposed to the Will. It has been over 15 years since the great man passed on. Nobody has heard about any rumble in his family over the Will. The people he left behind are aware of the efficacy of the curse the man imposed on any would-be ‘troubler of Israel’ in his family. They knew how fiery the man was when alive. They can then understand how terrible his “wrath” would be should anyone go against his last wish. That is a good example of a man who never forgot his tradition!

We are heavily metaphysical as Africans, and more importantly, as Yoruba. We have however, lost our sense of originality to Western culture. I am an advocate for cultural renaissance, any day. And my calling as a Christian remains unimpaired.

A senior pastor in my church once accused me of “venerating Ifa above Jesus.” He made the comment after reading one of my pieces on this page where I volunteered to be a diviner for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. I responded by asking him to allow Jesus, the ‘Author and Finisher of our faith’, to be the ultimate judge. No man holds the keys to the City of David in his hands. A lot of intimidation takes place in the name of the Gospel. Yet, the ones who brought the new religion to us hold on to their culture, undiluted!

We have abandoned what our forebears handed over to us. If all we do as Africans in terms of worship is all for the Devil, what is the fate of those who left this planet before Christianity and Islam were introduced to us? My family progenitor, the famous Baba Alaajole, the inimitable Òbomolè Bo Ogun (The one who worships deities, worships amulets, and venerates charms), was an acclaimed traditional paediatrician (Aremo). Many children were saved by what he had in his medicine pots! Is he in heaven or hell now because he did not know anything about Jesus? Or would he be covered by the “period of Grace”? Phew!

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I watched the funeral rites for the late Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. General Taoreed Abiodun Lagbaja, on the television last Friday. It was a colourful ceremony. The military razzmatazz was heavy. General Lagbaja deserved all the encomiums and military rites of passage accorded him. He died on November 5, 2024, at a very tender aga of 56. But he was buried like a nonagenarian. He should be happy where he is now. General Lagbaja’s funeral was a good one except that he was denied what would have made the event better, or the best for him. That is pitiful and sad!

A man is a product of his people, or his family. The late General Lagbaja was not an exception. He came from somewhere. He was a member of a family, a community and a society. His people in Ilobu town, Osun State, never believed and will never believe that the late military officer died a natural death. I don’t blame them. That is how we are wired as a people.

Age 56 is nothing among our people. A 56-year-old man is still a child. My older sister, Anti mi Idowu, called me her “kid brother” the other time. I smiled. I am closer to 60 than 50 but I am still a “kid brother” to her! Yes. It is true; a child is never old in the eyes of the parents. Anti mi Idowu, I was told, broke the rules in her Modern School to rush home to carry me hours after I arrived on this side of the planet. So, I remain her “kid brother” till Thy Kingdom come!

I also recall here that my father, Baba Daniel Falade, passed on at age 87 in January 1987. The news was broken to one of his great cousins, Yeye Ifábonmí Ipindogan, popularly known as Yeye Alaro (she was into tie and dye), was told, she reported: “this . The old woman, on hearing the news, said: “This child” eventually died of this emere (ogbanje) spirit that had afflicted him from birth! Yeye Alaro was right. Baba Falade was a child at 87 because the old woman’s first child, Baba Akinwumi, was almost the same age as Baba Falade! This is why Yeye Alaro believed that it was the Ogbanje spirit that ‘killed’ her cousin at 87!

If Ilobu people believe that General Lagbaja died too young at 56, they are right. If they hold the belief that Lagbaja’s death was not natural, nobody can fault them. That is why I believe that the Federal Government should have yielded to their demand to have the late General buried in Ilobu with all the traditional rites for a man suspected to have been cut short in life, performed!

It doesn’t matter anyone’s view, particularly, the ‘saint’ Christians and Muslims, who hold the belief that such practice is ‘fetish’. We must first get this right; every funeral ceremony is a rite, a ritual, if we all get the definitions of rite and ritual right. And, if the question is if I believe in traditional rites for a departed soul under the circumstances of the late General Lagbaja, my answer is an emphatic YES!

I was a freelance reporter with the defunct Sunday Diet Newspaper in 1997, when the late General Oladipo Diya and other top Yoruba Military officers were arrested by the expired Head of State, General Sani Abacha, for coup plotting. At our editorial meeting of December 22, 1997, conveyed by our Editor, Sheddy Ozoene, his deputy and head of our features desk, Ikechukwu Amaechi, was assigned to coordinate the magazine report of the arrests. I was assigned to cover General Diya while Yinka Oyebode, the current spokesman to Ekiti State governor, was assigned to cover General Tajudeen Olanrewaju.

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I arrived at Odogbolu very late in the night. I was fortunate to find a small drinking party at a joint. I joined the party despite their suspicion of me as a security agent. My head could manage a bottle or two then. I ordered a beer and sent three bottles of the brand they were managing to the table of a three ‘friendly’-looking party across. They looked at me and gestured thank you.

After a while, I moved to their table and explained my mission. I showed them.my identity card, a note on the letterhead of Diet Newspaper and my passport photograph. The life of a freelance journalist! Not enviable in any way! They believed me and helped me to secure accommodation in one dingy hotel, with a promise that one of them would come to take me round the town the following day.

The day broke and my friend showed up. We walked around the town. The first things I noticed were various pots of ritual items and palm fronds. I asked what happened just to be sure. My contact said they were rituals for the release of General Diya. Then I noticed four bigger ritual spots. What distinguished them was the presence of pèrègún shrubs. That must have been a big ritual based on my little knowledge of pèrègun and its uses. It is not a common element of your daily rituals!

My contact took me to the Alaye of Odogbolu. Kabiyesi was not willing to talk. But he, nevertheless, mentioned that Diya would come out alive. I was taken to the Anglican priest in town, then to one of the General’s classmates. We visited the General’s uncle, a blacksmith. He wore a melancholic posture. He told me nothing would happen to his nephew. He exuded confidence as he intoned that the kolanut will always be buried by the leaves (ewé ni ó ma si obì) and added that the gourd will break first before the water inside will spill (kèrègbè má fó kí omi iní è tó dànù). I understood him.

My contact finally took me to an old Baba’s house, where I saw what my people called èrù (fear). My contact told me in the English Language that the old man was behind all the rituals I saw earlier. I asked the old man if he believed in the efficacy of the rituals. He affirmed that. Then curiosity took over me. I pointed out that I saw pèrègún shrubs in town. The old man kept a straight face. I prodded further. Why pèrègún? The old man looked at me and asked if I knew what people used pèrègún for. I explained to him the little knowledge I had.

The old man said that the little I knew should guide me. Then he uttered the familiar words peculiar to pèrègún. He said: pèrègún will always outlive the deity (Pèrègún ló ma réhìn imalè)). He emphasised that General Diya would outlive all his traducers in the matter. The session closed. I thanked my contact and headed back to Lagos.

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Less than six months later, General Abacha expired on June 8, 1998. He was said to be doing the thing after eating an Adamic apple, when he answered ‘present sir’ before his maker! General Diya and others were released. The Odogbolu-born General passed on on March 26, 2023, in a way my people described as peaceful death (Ó fowó rorí kú). His people believed in the power of rituals. They performed rites before the various gods of the town. All the deities were given what they relish best. And General Diya survived the executioners’ bullets. How I wished they had allowed Ilobu to do the same for Lagbaja.

This is why the funeral of General Lagbaja without the input of his townsmen remains painful. God owns life. He alone determines when to take it. Nobody is contesting that. However, the Scripture also tells us that we should not be unmindful of the wiles of the devil because we wrestle against power and principalities, rulers of the darkness of this age and spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:11-12),

This is the belief Ilobu people have. That is why they requested that the late General Lagbaja be given to them to bury their own way. I don’t think that was too much of a request. The Federal Government and the Nigerian Army could still have had their colourful ceremony for the departed General in Ilobu as they did in Abuja.

A man belongs to his community. Lagbaja belonged to the Ilobu town. His placenta was buried in the town. They are his source; they know his origin. This is a case of the ancient divination, Ogbè Móhunfólóhun (Give unto a man what belongs to him). If indeed Lagbaja’s life was cut short by the wicked, his people had been denied the opportunity to call on the owners of the land to rise and avenge them. The sermon of ‘from-sand-we-come-and-unto-sand-we -return’ would not suffice here.

We need to have a reorientation about our culture, norms and world outlook. It is unfortunate that while those who brought Christianity to us never abandoned their own culture, we the converts threw away everything that is our heritage. The British brought the ancient throne from Edinburgh for the coronation of King Charles III. But in Ogbomosho of all ancient towns, we made the traditional ruler kneel before a pastor who placed his hand on the Oba’s head. Ogbomosho has in the last one year been moving from one needless crisis to the over the Imam of the town; a matter that should not concern the Oba! Unfortunately, nobody is asking what went wrong.

Take the case of Ikú Bàbá Yèyé, the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, for instance. Over two years after the passing of the foremost Yoruba traditional ruler, the throne has been empty! That is not just an embarrassment to the Oyo Alaafin people but the entire Yoruba Race and Black Africa. Why is the throne of Oranmiyan vacant? Why are the Oyo princes at one another’s throats? Why are we finding it difficult to do it the way it ought to be done so that it can be the way it should be?

Daily, we lose the last vestiges of the things our forebears left for us. Our women kneel completely to venerate their ‘daddies-in-the Lord but can hardly genuflect to greet their husbands. Pastors, Imams and other ‘spiritual godfathers’ keep brainwashing us and nobody is paying attention.

When I told some people that there are some altar calls, I would not respond to, they said I was not ‘broken’. How on earth would I allow any pastor to tell me to “use your two hands to hold your head and say, ‘my head, reject evil’”, and I would do so when I had witnessed that countless times at Baba Falade’s divination sessions?

What is the difference between a pastor asking me to touch the ground and touch my head and my late father asking his divination clients to touch the ground and touch their head and thank their destiny (Orí)?

Going by the tributes at General Lagbaja’s funeral, one can easily conclude that he was a great soldier, and a nice guy. I join my voice to thousands of others in wishing his family the fortitude to bear the loss.

But, more importantly to me, I wish Ilobu people home and in the Diaspora, divine vengeance on those they suspected were responsible for the demise of their kinsman. Even if cancer was the harbinger of that death, it must die. This should be its last act of heartlessness.

And for the departed soul, General Lagbaja, before you rest in peace, if indeed someone or a group of people were responsible for your ‘untimely’ departure, visit them in anger. When they walk in the day, let them be afraid. At night, let them hear footsteps. When they eat, may they not be satisfied and when they drink water, let their thirst not be assuaged. After that, Rest in Peace, Soldier Man!

News

Edo Gives Estate Developers Ultimatum To Register

Published

51 minutes ago

October 5, 2025

Editor

The Edo State Government on Friday issued a final two-week ultimatum to all estate developers operating within the state to register and obtain formal approval for their estate layout plans or face decisive enforcement actions.

The directive, announced by the Ministry of Physical Planning, Housing, Urban and Regional Development, aligns with the state’s ambitious urban renewal campaign under “Project Shine” and the 30-Year Benin City Master Plan.

According to a statement signed by the Functioning Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Arc. Kate A. Isokpunwu, this move follows a recent stakeholders’ engagement session, where the government emphasized the urgent need for compliance, sustainable development, and orderly urban growth.

“All estate layouts must be duly documented and regularized with the Ministry to align with the state’s long-term spatial and environmental objectives,” the statement said.

“From October 2025, the Ministry will begin a comprehensive enforcement operation targeting illegal developments, especially those encroaching on government-designated forest reserves and protected areas.

The statement further added that “Unapproved estate layouts will be sealed off, and violators prosecuted under existing laws. The government reiterated its zero-tolerance policy on unlawful developments, including land grabbing, unregulated construction, and distortion of urban planning frameworks.

“This measure is not punitive but corrective,” Arc. Isokpunwu stressed. “It is designed to ensure that development in Edo State remains sustainable, orderly, and consistent with our collective vision for a modern, well-planned city.”

The PS urged developers to visit the ministry without delay to complete the necessary registration and approval processes to avoid stiff sanctions.

News

Don Pushes For More University Funding

Published

59 minutes ago

October 5, 2025

Editor

The newly appointed Vice-Chancellor of Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma, Edo State, Prof. Eunice Omonzejie, has called on the Nigerian government, multinational agencies, and other stakeholders to collaborate in increasing investment in education to enhance the global relevance of Nigerian graduates.

Omonzejie made the call while receiving the national leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), led by its President, Olushola Oladoja, at the university’s premises in Ekpoma.

She emphasized that the country’s educational system requires urgent attention, from primary to tertiary levels.

News

OPINION: Iyaloja-General At Oba Of Benin’s Palace

Published

1 hour ago

October 5, 2025

Editor

Festus Adedayo

The earliest example of personal rule gone awry in the world was given in the biblical account of Eli, the prophet. Personal rule has become prevalent in Africa and other Third World countries. In the account, Eli was High Priest and Judge of Israel in the city of Shiloh. Kind-hearted to the troubled and oppressed, the prophet’s renown for kindness became weightier in the narrative of his comforting words to Hannah, one of the hitherto barren wives of Elkanah. When Hannah eventually gave birth to a son named Samuel, Eli extended his affable disposition to Samuel’s upbringing at the tabernacle. Powerful man of God that he was, Eli was however irredeemably lax in the upbringing of his two children, Hophni and Phinehas, who served as priests at the Tabernacle. The children were corrupt, wicked, greedy and morally bankrupt. They abused their father’s priestly office and authority at the sanctuary.

Hophni and Phinehas deployed their positions for personal gains and in the process, were embroiled in acts of adultery with women who served in the sanctuary. Again, whenever sacrificial offerings of meat were being offered to God, even before the fat was burned, Eli’s sons stormed the venue, forcefully appropriating the best portions of the meats for themselves. In Israel of the time, this was a profound contempt for God’s law and a grave sin. Eli’s rebuke of his sons was tepid and weak. In His wrath against this selfish use of personal rule, God’s judgment on Eli was fierce. Hophni and Phinehas were both killed in battle. When he heard the news, Eli fell headlong from his chair and died. Worse still, his lineage was forever de-linked from priestly reign.

Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal’s first president from 1960 to 1980, co-founder of the Negritude movement, poet and cultural theorist, gave an apt definition of personal rule. According to him, it “is not… the art of governing the State for the public welfare in the general framework of laws and regulations. It is (a) question of politician politics: the struggle… to place well oneself, one’s relatives, and one’s clients in the cursus honorum, that is, the race for (benefits)”.

Personal rule, otherwise known as presidential monarchy, is a plague in Africa. It is another variant of despotism. It operates where institutions are replaced with persons and systems with individuals. Arising from another plague called the Big Man syndrome, the state is ruled by a strong man who informally distributes offices to friends, relatives and associates, according to the dictates of his whims. The state is then informally captured by patronage and a distribution networks of spoils of office. Individuals who are not formally recognized take over the formal functions of the state. What we then have is widespread corruption, impunity and abuse. This leads to the atrophy of public institutions, thus severely limiting the ability of public officials to make policies in the general interest of the people.

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In Nigeria’s 65 years of self-rule, either under military or civilian, personal rule has been very prevalent. In it, government is run like a monarchy or, in the lingo of lawyers, as chattels personal. Personal rule has little or no demarcation of private and public domains, or even purses. Apart from giving official responsibilities to cronies and family members, being relative of the Big Man opens doors, vaults and commands attention.

The first publicly known instance of the familial brand of personal rule in Nigeria was under General Sani Abacha. Before him, little was known in the interface of the families of military despot leaders and the public. For instance, little was known about the excesses of families of Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Shagari or even Ibrahim Babangida. Under Abacha, however, familial impunity reigned. It came in the form of usage of Nigeria’s presidential aircraft by children of the military leader. On January 17, 1996, for instance, Ibrahim, son of the late despot, was on a jolly ride in the Nigerian Air Force presidential Falcon jet. He was headed to a party and private family engagement in Kano. Lagos being his departure, he was flying with 14 other friends, including his Yoruba girlfriend, Funmi; Bello, younger brother of Aliko Dangote and a wealthy young man called Dan Princewill. The jet was almost landing in Kano when it mysteriously exploded mid-air, swallowing all and their dreams.

Obasanjo was particularly loath to this deployment of public assets for personal use. So also were there no public examples of such deployment during Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan’s time in office. Perhaps taking a cue from their parents’ personal rule disposition, children of successive Nigerian presidents have made this a pastime. Deploying public asset and office for private advantage resurfaced in 2020. Late President Muhammadu Buhari’s daughter, Hanan, flew the presidential jet on a private photography trip to Bauchi State. By convention, only the president of Nigeria, the First Lady, Vice-President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Justice of Nigeria, ex-presidents and a presidential delegation are authorized to use the presidential jet. The convention does not grant the president any powers to transfer his right of usage of the presidential jet to any of his children.

Hanan had then recently graduated with a first-class in photography from Ravensbourne University, London. She was in Bauchi on the invitation of the Emir, Rilwanu Adamu, as special guest of honour. Photographs, which Nigerians considered presidential obscenities, showed Hanan disembarking from the presidential aircraft and being welcomed by Bauchi State government officials. The Buhari government justified Hanan’s action. Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, said the shameful act received the blessing of Buhari. Shehu turned logic and protocol on their head to accommodate this perverse usage of a common wealth.

Following in these footsteps, in October 2023, First Son, Seyi Tinubu, flew the presidential aircraft to attend polo games in Kano State. Before him, children, spouses of Nigerian leaders and top government officials who should have no business with the aircraft, had become forerunners of this aberration. This provoked the question: is this an endemic problem that should bother us as a people, or it is a mere frivolity that we have allowed to detain us overtime? Why do Nigerian public officials always fail to see the divide between the public and the private?

Of particular interest has been the two children of the current Nigerian president, Seyi and Folasade Tinubu-Ojo. In a May 4, 2025 piece I entitled Tinubu’s Ajantala son, I articulated how, if indeed all those democratic flowery words ascribed to the Nigerian president are not cosmetic, Seyi Tinubu must be a pain in the neck of his father, as he is to responsible parenting. I wrote, “In Nigeria’s history, I am not aware of any president’s child who has threatened public peace, public decency and the public space as Seyi. His name has come out in every socially distasteful national issue.” I also wrote further: “You will recollect that this same young man was one who, but for his father’s peremptory scold, would probably have been attending Executive Council meetings with ministers. Seyi has no precis in illicit behaviour, so much that he outperforms himself in irresponsible public acts. He is reputed to have nominated ministers and behaves in socially anomalous manner that baffles… He causes so much stir with his long convoys of glittering automobiles and is chaperoned to occasions by Nigerian security apparatuses.”

Around the time when he paid “official visits” to northern states early this year to donate billions of Naira to victims of Nigeria’s social malady, an allegation by the NANS President that Seyi ordered him tortured, beaten and his nude pictures taken for his voyeuristic pleasure took over the stratosphere. There are allegations that he will be put forth as the next governor of Lagos

The president’s daughter, Tinubu-Ojo, who christened herself ‘Iyaloja-General of Nigeria’ – whatever that means – is another sore thumb pointing at the evil of deploying personal rule for familial advantage. The eldest daughter of Nigeria’s president, from inception of her father’s presidency in 2023, Tinubu-Ojo has positioned herself as ‘godmother’ of Nigerian open-air markets. Immediately her father came into office, in a baffling manifestation of an inflated hubris, she was said to have updated her Twitter bio with the title, “First Daughter of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN)”. She thereafter sent tongues wagging when a viral video of hers, with Nigerian flags flying behind her, positioned her as addressing what looked like a national broadcast. It was seen as pointing at a desire to appropriate all the perks from her father’s presidency.

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Capitalizing on the low capacity to stick to rules that is Nigeria, Folasade catapulted herself from Lagos market headship where she made herself Iyaloja. That position was appropriated by her after the passage of Mama Abibatu Mogaji who occupied same position. After this, she then made herself the market godmother of the whole of Nigeria. She was apparently yielding to an earlier call for an Hobbesian flee after power by her father in that famous counsel, to “fight for it, grab it, snatch it and run with it.” Folasade has made a pastime of positioning her representatives in various markets across Nigeria. The ultimate aim, it is said, is to protect her personal financial interests. In a Nigeria where genuflection before public office is widespread and public officials are like god, the president’s daughter, with the panoply of power and wealth at her disposal, is dreaded and worshiped.

Edo State, it will seem, will prove a fatal limitation of this hubris. In 2024, Folasade was said to have begun an attempt to impose an “Iyaloja of Edo State markets” on the ancient city of Benin. Last Tuesday when she visited the palace of the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, the president’s daughter however met her match in the impregnable culture of the Edo people. She must have assumed that, like other states, Edo palace bows before ineptitude dressed in the garment of political power. Either out of stiff-necked resistance or inability to mentally penetrate, appreciate and understand the ancient culture of the Benin, the president’s daughter had continued in her imposition gambit which seems to have become a familial trait. At the palace, she told Oba Ewuare 11 that a Pastor Josephine Ivbazebule would be her surrogate for all markets in Edo State.

After she was done talking, the palace taught her a lesson with words that were harmless on the surface but lacerating in deed. Not only was she taught that she couldn’t recreate her power drunkenness in Edo, she was told in plain terms that the cultural and historical foundations of market leadership in Edo State were far different from what obtains elsewhere in the country. Speaking through an interpreter as he does whenever he considers it demeaning to exchange verbal reply with a guest, Oba Ewuare told Folasade that in Benin culture, market leadership is not a political creation nor is it an external imposition. It is the product of tradition and which is under the suzerainty of the Oba of Benin.

If Nigeria’s No 1 citizen is not embarrassed by the activities of his children, parents all over the world are. The Yoruba, deploring this grotty descent in character of the First Family, say when an elephant trumpets, its child should not, too. They also counsel that, if one’s barn posts a bountiful yam harvest, a wise man would cover it from prying eyes. Apart from the raw power to browbeat and be kowtowed to, as well as illicit funds and majesty associated with being the president’s children, Nigerians will be glad to harvest what these ones’ parents planted inside their skulls for national benefit. Certainly not the cunning that produces quick wealth and unearned advantage. Folasade Tinubu-Ojo could have attracted more umbrage from the people of Edo State for her audacity if not for the decency of the palace. Let the little darts from the Bini palace remind the president’s daughter that it is the over-ripe orange that invites throwing of stones at the mother tree.