..Put your houses in order, Tinubu tells opposition parties

Amid growing accusations that President Bola Tinubu is behind the leadership crises plaguing various opposition parties and allegedly working toward a one-party state, the President has advised opposition parties to focus on putting their houses in order ahead of the 2027 general election.

President Tinubu, represented by Senate President Godswill Akpabio, made this call on Friday at the commissioning of the newly constructed Left-Hand Service Carriageway of the Outer Southern Expressway (OSEX) Stage II, from Ring Road 1 (Apo Junction) to Wasa Junction, in Abuja.

Earlier in his remarks, FCT Minister Nyesom Wike expressed appreciation to President Tinubu for his support and responded to mounting criticisms over the ₦39 billion spent on renovating the International Conference Centre (ICC) and renaming it after the President.

Addressing lingering concerns about the opposition’s dwindling influence, Tinubu reiterated his commitment to multiparty democracy as pledged during his Democracy Day address. He insisted that, as a member of another political party, he could not mediate in opposition disputes.

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“The opposition should put their houses together before the next election, so that nobody will accuse anybody of trying to stifle the opposition,” he said. “The President wants you to come together. If you cannot come together, the President cannot help you. This is politics. You’ll never unite if you continue to spread lies daily, condemning everything. Was Nigeria like this in 1960? Was Abuja like this three years ago?”

The President commended the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), under the leadership of Minister Nyesom Wike, for reactivating and completing abandoned infrastructure projects across the city.

“With the commissioning of this Left-Hand Service Carriageway, we are addressing a longstanding challenge. I commend the FCTA for completing projects with discipline, quality, and efficiency,” Tinubu stated.

In his speech, Wike argued that the President deserved the honour, having significantly contributed to the development of the Federal Capital Territory.

“As politicians, yes, we must criticize. But because you’re criticizing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t acknowledge progress. We are not flagging off; we are commissioning completed work,” Wike said.

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Responding to allegations of wasteful spending, Wike said: “Some people just lack good taste. The only thing in that building that wasn’t changed is the blockwork. Everything else in the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre is brand new.”

He dismissed claims that the renovation was unnecessary or politically motivated, saying: “If you love this country, you will not criticize this project. It’s not about wearing one pair of shoes or carrying a backpack. It’s about delivering value and building for the future.”

Taking a swipe at a media house that reportedly questioned the rationale behind naming the ICC after Tinubu, Wike said: “Somebody said it should have been named after the original builder. Nnamdi Azikiwe didn’t build the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport. Moshood Abiola didn’t build the stadium named after him. That argument doesn’t hold.”

He also challenged critics who referenced the original 1991 construction cost of ₦240 million: “What was the exchange rate then? What is it today in 2025? People must learn to analyze with context instead of criticizing.”
(Tribune)

Chairman, Edo State Parole Board, Hon. Justice Alero Edodo-Eruaga (rtd.), has called on inmates in the state to utilise the opportunity provided by the parole.

INFO DAILY reports that parole is a means through which the government, in line with the appropriate laws, provides an opportunity to inmates who were convicted for at least seven years and above, and have served one-third of their sentence years to be released, and inmates sentenced for life and have served at least ten years to to be released, after such inmates must have applied to the parole board and the necessary investigations and documentations must have been done.

INFO DAILY also reports that, however, the parole law exempts people convicted for treason, first degree murder, sexual offences, rape, etc from benefiting.

Speaking at a sensitization tour of inmates at the Benin and Oko Correctional centres, Edodo-Eruaga, said parole was the creation of Section 40 of the Correctional Service Act, 2019, adding that it’s aimed at rehabilitating and decongesting correctional centres across the country.

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Edodo-Eruaga, accompanied by other members of the board, however, warned inmates who are eligible for the parole to be honest and be of good behaviour, stressing that anyone who gives misleading information in his or her application would be disqualified.

“Good behaviour means the individual has not caused problems while in custody and has learned a trade to enable peaceful community reintegration,” she added.

The parole board chairman, who emphasized that parole aimed at rehabilitating and reintegrating the inmates into the society, declared that no one would be released into emptiness, that is, inmates to be released on parole must have something to contribute to the society in terms of trade, etc.

“This is why the parole will not just give anyone that opportunity. Such person must be of good behaviour, must have learnt a trade, so that when such inmate is released he will contribute to the society. The parole will not release anyone into emptiness. Such a person must have something to show that this is what I do that I can use to contribute to society,” she stressed.

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She also told the inmates that they would not just be released on parole, but a non-custodian officer would be assigned to them to follow up anyone released on parole.

Also speaking, Mr. Abraham Naibo, Programme Assistant of the Prisons Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), urged the inmates to capitalize on their stay at the correctional centre to learn a trade, pointing out that, it will be wrong for them to appear before the board without a learnt skill.

He said the skill learnt while serving their terms will form the ground they could start their lives when they are finally reintegrated into the society.

Mr. Naibo further admonished the inmates to always carry the officers of the Correctional Centres along on their day-to-day activities while still on Parole, adding that, such will enable them (officers) know how reformed they have been.

For the Controller of Corrections, Edo State, Sunday Oyakhire, represented by the Deputy Controller of Corrections, Ogbue Paul Agiliga, he appealed to the inmates to register for a skill, stressing that, it is going to be an added advantage for them to be qualified for the Parole programme.

Tunde Odesola

To the Westerner, land is one of the four factors of production, riding in the same vehicle with labour, capital and entrepreneurship. In the terminology of modern economics, land is a variable. A variable is inconsistent, like Nigerian politicians. Land is also a utility, like the Nigerian masses, used and dumped. Land is a means of profit. Prophets profit in Nigeria sinfully. Land is an asset…A broader definition adds technology and human capital to the four basic factors.

In Africa, land holds a spiritual significance beyond its role as a factor of production. Land’s ancient name is Earth. Land is the endless embroidered mat of brown and red soils, lying face-up to her celestial twin, Heaven, who gazes back with sun and moon for eyes.

Unlike Heaven’s big eyes, the sun and the moon, which watch over humans, every step taken by man on land ticks on the conscience of time. Land is ferocious karma. It never forgets. While Heaven symbolises the eyes that watch all human deeds, land is the judge that rewards benevolence and punishes malevolence. This is why the Yoruba revere land in these words, “Ilè ògéré, a fi oko yeri, alapo ika ti o n gbe ika mi, says Ifa scholar and Araba of Osogbo, Chief Ifayemi Elebuibon. Expatiating, Elebuibon states that ogere is a divine trap; a quicksand that caves in under the feet of evildoers, swallowing them up.

After creation, Man and every creature live in their respective habitats within the garden. Biblical and Quranic accounts say God made Man lord over all other creatures, urging him to multiply and subdue the earth. However, Prof. Wande Abimbola, Awise Agbaye, says that foreign religion believers are applying God’s injunction wrongly, noting that African religions, including Ifa worship, provide room for the mutual coexistence of all creatures. He explains that Western civilisation, aided by science and technology, has gravely polluted the earth.

The former vice chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University expounds, “Humans, animals, insects and trees should coexist. If we can’t coexist with nature, we will perish. There are 700 million vehicles worldwide, and there are 350 million of them in the US alone. If you sum up the acreage of roads in the US, it’s more than the size of New Jersey. We have intruded on nature, disrupted ecosystem balance, and killed countless organisms under the soil through construction.

“The injunctions by foreign religions, urging people to go into the world and subdue and multiply, are probably responsible for our wastefulness and population explosion. Where are the trees in Ibadan, Ikeja, Port Harcourt and Zaria? If we see an insect, we kill it. If we see a snake, we kill it.”

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But, how did the snake get its venom? Wait, I’ll tell you. Creation stories snake through cultures, shedding skins of meaning from culture to culture. In the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – the snake got its venom on Creation Day, before sneaking up on Man Adam and Woman Eve, to trick them out of Eden. Thereafter, the snake became cursed and haunted.

In African cosmology, however, the snake is not the Devil. Neither is it Satan who morphed into a serpent in Eden. The snake is not exiled from Paradise; it is a bona fide creature in creation, possessing the most beautiful skin of all, a shapely head and bespectacled eyes.

How did the snake get its venom? Elebuibon uncoils the tale, “In time past, the snake was called ‘okun ile’ – earthly rope, because it was used for tying objects like firewood. People carrying firewood from the bush dump their firewood on the ground at home, smashing the snake, crushing its spine,” Elebuibon explains.

“Then the snake consulted a babalawo named ‘Òkàn Wéré Wéré’, who divinated an Ifa verse, Òkànràn Òsá, for him. Snake was told to make a sacrifice of needles and worship his head. When Snake did as instructed, he became envenomed,” Elebuibon concludes. Man knows better now.

The life of the snake is not only a pot of venom and fangs. Globally, the snake kills far fewer people than the mosquito and war. According to BBC Wildlife Magazine, the snake ranks among the 10 deadliest animals to humans, including the hippopotamus, elephant, saltwater crocodile, ascaris roundworm, scorpion, assassin bug, freshwater snail, Man, and mosquito.

Indeed, Man should be grateful to the snake because it preys to protect balance in the ecosystem. Though its venom kills a very few, it saves millions who suffer from cancer, hypertension, blood disorders, etc via the medicines made from it. A paper titled, “Therapeutic potential of snake venom in cancer therapy: Current Perspectives,” published by the National Library of Science, USA, says, “Some substances found in the snake venom present a great potential as anti-tumour agents. In this review, we presented the main results of recent years of research involving the active compounds of snake venom that have anticancer activity.” The snake is not all about coiling and slithering, though scientists and engineers model robotic movement after its muscular geometry.

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The Idemili community of Anambra State comprises two local government councils called Idemili North and Idemili South. In Idemili, pythons are not cursed; they are consecrated. They slither around freely into homes on silent feet; never bruised, nor battered.

The Awise Agbaye says some Yoruba communities worship pythons in the olden days because they believed that the founder of a community, upon death, turned into a python in the afterlife, where he sits on a stool to welcome members of his clan who attained old age before dying.

Many African folklore songs extol the python. One of such songs is ‘Terena’, by Dele Ojo. Another is ‘Sirinkusi’, which belongs in Yoruba oral history. The theme of both songs includes love and respect, with a young man trying to prove his prowess to a love-struck lady.

In ‘Terena’, the young man tells the lady not to call him ‘Awe’, that is, ‘Mister’, but ‘Aba’, which is ‘Father’. The lady refuses and the young man takes her on a journey where he respectively turns into a python, tiger and water, but the lady doesn’t budge. It was when he turned into fire that she eventually called him father.

I will call President Bola Ahmed Tinubu father. I will call him a python, too. With the way he has traversed Nigeria’s political terrain since 1999, no other politician qualifies to be called the Father and Python of Nigerian politics. Tinubu, it was, who wrestled to the ground the Federal Government headed by General Muhammadu Buhari, to emerge President against all odds.

Tinubu is the wiliest politician in the history of Nigeria. And I fear for him, lest the trap set by the tortoise entraps the tortoise. I remember, the level-headed Tafawa Balewa faced opposition, the sage, Obafemi Awolowo, faced opposition, and the charismatic Zik of Africa faced opposition.

General Ibrahim Babangida, aka Maradona, was booted out of power. Though MKO Abiola rode on the back of popular support in 1993, he still faced opposition. And, before he died like a brief candle, General Ole, Sani Abacha, coerced Nigerians to support his self-perpetuation. Every Nigerian sang the name of Abacha. Those who didn’t sing fled the town before dawn.

Clearly, I remember, ‘Third Term’ agenda burnt the fingers of the hypocrite farmer in Ota after democracy returned to the country, even as the herdsman General fled to Katsina to enjoy his bounty in peace, two years ago.

Father Tinubu, the way everyone is falling to the anointing in Abuja is foreboding. I don’t know what will give, but something seems out of place and ready to give. Tinubu is the current father of Nigerian politics. I pray he lives longer than the ancient python. I wish he would stop deploying his massive muscles against opposition voices and his sons in Lagos, Rivers and elsewhere.

Though politicians cling to power when the nation gasps, the snake sheds its skin when it outgrows it. Though the snake strikes to protect its terrain, the politician steals to destroy his terrain. I pray Tinubu was the hissing snake that strikes corruption to death, and not the politician that kisses to steal.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

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