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[OPINION] 2027: Tinubu And The Snake

Published

2 months ago

June 13, 2025

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.”

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Pounding Yams On Stubborn Bald Heads

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.

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

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

X: @Tunde_Odesola

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FULL LIST: CAC Removes 247 Companies From Database, Urges Public To Disregard Them

Published

11 hours ago

August 17, 2025

Editor

The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has removed 247 companies from its database, declaring that they were never duly registered as limited liability companies.

The Commission announced the move in a notice posted on its official X handle on Friday, saying the purported incorporation of the affected companies was invalid.

According to the CAC, the Registration Certificates (RC) numbers allegedly linked to the companies had never been assigned to any entity.

It urged the public to disregard any claims suggesting that the delisted companies exist as legal persons.

Check full list here

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OPINION: You Be Terrorist, I No Be Terrorist!

Published

13 hours ago

August 17, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

When the weight of words spoken is weightier than whatever response it may attract, my people say Oro p’esi je. The English say such wordless period is an ineffable moment. In its literal rendition, perhaps saying it better than the English and more graphically too, the Yoruba say ‘word has killed response’. Even at the height of his musical wizardry, the dictatorship of the Nigerian military government killed appropriate response from Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. So, in one of his songs, Fela turned the wordlessness into musical rhapsody. With the declaration by a Canadian court on June 17, 2025 that the two leading Nigerian political parties, the PDP and APC, are terrorist organizations, the court declaration provokes similar wordlessness. What immediately jumps up one’s lips is Fela’s “Oro p’esi je o… rere run”.

In Nigerians’ faintest imagination, no one expected such extreme labeling from Canada. Certainly not from a temple of justice. While delivering judgment in an asylum case involving a Nigerian national, Douglas Egharevba, Justice Phuong Ngo upheld an earlier decision of the Canadian Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) which denied asylum to him. It cited Egharevba’s decade-long affiliation with the PDP and APC. Justice Ngo then affirmed that, under paragraph 34(1)(f) of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), “mere membership of an organization linked to terrorism or democratic subversion” could trigger inadmissibility of an applicant for asylum – even without proof of personal involvement.

Earlier court filings by Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness had submitted that the two Nigerian political parties were implicated in “political violence, democratic subversion, and electoral bloodshed” which were further buttressed, among other incidents, by the PDP’s alleged violent conducts in the 2003 state elections and 2004 local government polls. The minister cited widespread ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and the killing of opposition supporters in those elections. The IAD said its findings indicated that the two parties’ leadership benefited from the violence, didn’t see a need to stop it and that, under paragraph 34(1)(b.1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), such acts met Canada’s legal definition of subversion and terrorism.

Expectedly, both APC and PDP are blowing their tops. Fulminating, the PDP labeled the classification as “misinformed, biased, and lacking evidence,” and deserving outright dismissal by any right-thinking person. Its Deputy National Youth Leader, Timothy Osadolor, was quoted as saying this.

The APC, through its National Secretary, Ajibola Bashiru, in his characteristic gruff persona, chose to descend down a logical pitfall called ad hominem. Rather than the issue, persons accused of this argumentative pitfall attack persons. So, to Bashiru, the judge was “an ignoramus.” Thereafter, he queried the Canadian court’s jurisdiction to determine the status of a Nigerian recognised political party “not to talk of declaring it as a terrorist organisation… The so-called judgment was obviously delivered from a jaundiced perspective and within the narrow confines of determining eligibility for asylum by an applicant.” Lastly, Bashiru queried “some desperate and unpatriotic Nigerians” who seek greener pastures elsewhere, who he said “allow the name of the country to be brought to unpalatable commentary by racist judges on account of self contrived application for asylum.”

The Federal Government, too, in a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ spokesperson, Kimiebi Ebienfa, described the judgment as “baseless, reckless and an unacceptable interference in Nigeria’s internal affairs.”

Now, the issues are not as straightforward as the persons above saw them. At least three issues are implicated in the Canadian judge’s ruling and its subsequent analyses. One, as Bashiru alleged, is racism; second, the state of Nigeria’s electoral/party system and third, the social status of Nigerian citizenship. There is the need to decouple them. First, we should be clear about one fact and it is that, electoral violence is as old as Nigerian electoral system. Violence as icing on the cake of elections gained notoriety during independence and since then, elections in Nigeria have been characterized by high-scale electoral malpractices, violence, money politics, and deployment of ethno-religious divide as weapon of influencing votes. Since September 20, 1923 when the first election in Nigeria was held, Nigerian politicians have scaled up, from one election to the other, the patterns of electoral violence that have today resulted in an epidemic of political violence. Yesterday marked the 42nd bloodied anniversary of Second Republic’s political violence in the old Oyo and Ondo States. On Tuesday, August 16, 1983, all hell was let loose with multiple political killings in tow in Akure, Ilesa and other parts of the states.

In the April and May 2003 elections that Justice Ngo referenced, according to Human Rights Watch in its report entitled, ‘The Unacknowledged Violence,’ “more than 100 people were killed in election-related violence with many more injured.” The EU Election Observation Mission, (EUEOM) in its ‘Final Report on the National Assembly, Presidential, Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly Elections,’ also claimed to have recorded a total of 105 killings in pre-election violence in Nigeria. Continuing, the report claimed that, from publications in the Nigerian press, at least 70 incidents of election-related violence were reported between November 2006 and the middle of March 2007 in 20 of Nigeria’s 36 states. It claimed that the press report “may greatly underestimate the true scale of the problem” judging by a report of another international organization with a comprehensive conflict monitoring programme in Nigeria, which also claimed it recorded 280 reports of election-related deaths and more than 500 injuries over an eight-week period ending in mid-March of the year. Other Nigerian elections are no less better.

In terms of political assassinations, the Human Rights Watch report said that between November 1, 2006 and March 10, 2007, quoting the Nigerian press and other sources, “at least four assassinations and seven attempted assassinations of Nigerian politicians, party officials and other individuals who were directly linked to various electoral campaigns” occurred. It further reported that two most notorious murders involving PDP primaries occurred in mid-2006, and were in respect of PDP gubernatorial aspirants – Funsho Williams in Lagos State and Ayo Daramola in Ekiti State, both of whom were murdered in July and August 2006 respectively.

But, was Justice Ngo wrong to have described what happened in the 2003 electoral contest in Nigeria as terrorism? Scholars have attempted to define what exactly is terrorism. Charles Ruby, in his book, The Definition of Terrorism, (2003), citing Title 22 of the U.S. Code, defined terrorism as a “politically motivated violence perpetrated in a clandestine manner against noncombatants.”

If you critically assess the above definitions, viz a viz the level of atrocious political killings and violence that have happened in the last 26 years of democratic practice in Nigeria, it may be difficult to fault Justice Ngo’s labeling of Nigeria’s two topmost political parties as terrorists. The judge alluded to Egharevba’s failure to prove that there were no “political violence, democratic subversion, and electoral bloodshed” in the Nigerian two political parties which the asylum seeker claimed to have been a member of. With this, it is my considered opinion that, faulting the labeling of the political parties by the Canadian judge may sound very impassioned and derisive of prevailing facts.

Yet, the allegation of racism against Justice Ngo may be sustainable. Of a truth, Canada wears on its lapel the myth of a “peaceable kingdom”. This is generally as a result of its genial political culture when compared to Nigeria’s. While the country today has had a limited political terrorism experience when compared to other forms of political conflicts or even other countries of the world, its pedigree does not totally acquit it of violence, nor does it give it a total sainthood. All considered, it could be racist for the judge to abandon his country’s violent past while criminalizing Nigeria’s present. Though there is no recency to the reports of Canada’s involvement in violence, Micheal J. Kelly and Thomas H. Mitchell, in their “The Study of Internal Conflict in Canada: Problems and Prospects,” Conflict Quarterly, Vol. II no. 1 (1981) examined publications of the Canadian newspaper called Globe and Mail from 1965 to 1975 which identified 129 incidents of collective violence in Ontario. Also, Julian Sher, in her White Hoods: Canada’s Ku Klux Klan (1983) examined case studies of terrorist groups or groups using terrorist tactics which operated in Canada. The scholar used the activities of the FLQ, the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to peel Canada of any claim to a sainthood pedigree where terrorism is concerned. Whilst numerous terrorist events have occurred in Canada since 1981, the period between 1968 and 1974 is actually the point a glut of such incidents can be located.

When Bashiru now accused “some desperate and unpatriotic Nigerians” seeking greener pastures elsewhere of allowing “the name of the country to be brought to unpalatable commentary” through “self-contracted application for asylum,” he must have deliberately played the ostrich, apparently for political reasons. This must have blinded him from seeing the peculiar nature of Nigeria’s social crisis. Over the decades, at least in the last 26 years of the 4th Republic, both APC and PDP have literally socially and economically grounded this country. Many of the politicians in the ADC today are also complicit in this. Comfortable existence has become a mirage in Nigeria, yet politicians flaunt ill-gotten wealth. It is so bad that Nigerians desperately seek the citizenship of saner countries. Blaming Nigerians who seek bailouts from this socio-economic Gulag inflicted on them by Nigerian politicians will thus sound misplaced and self-centered.

The story of Egharevba in the hands of the Canadian judge is a replica of the aphorism of the “son” of an orange tree which invites multiple stoning and wood-beating from those who want to pluck it. If Nigeria had met his dreams of a place to live, I doubt if Egharevba would have openly disdained his country as this in the hands of a perceived racial judge and system. But come to think of it, this same “racist” Canada opens its arms wide to embrace thousands of Nigerians who possess legitimate papers!

In looking at the Canadian judge’s ruling, Nigeria should look inwards rather than outwards. First lesson to be learned is that, being a global village, not only is the rest of the world watching Nigeria with its binoculars, information about dissonances in our country are at the tip of the world’s fingers. Because they seek the consistent sanity of their countries, it is natural that countries of the world would want to guard against importation of social frictions into their territories. It was the lesson that same Canada was trying to pass across when it denied our Chief of Defence Staff visa last year.

Are Nigerian elections truly devoid of violence of the terrorism hue? The answer is No. As lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur; the facts speak for themselves. Our political parties have the notoriety of gangster violence pre, during and after elections. We shouldn’t be surprised if, very soon, a citizen is penalized, in a manner similar to Egharevba’s, over our country being where there are no consequences for negative actions. A country that reverses punishments and rules within few hours intervals, just because a street ally of the president is trapped in a criminal loop, cannot but receive the excoriation of a sane world.

Today, Nigeria is on the radar as a country where rule-breakers are garlanded. Rather than gripe and wail ceaselessly like a witch accused of killing her husband, we should rather embark on self-introspection because, in the words of Socrates, an unexamined life is not worth living. Another election season is coming. Will Canada and the world see a different Nigeria? If Fela were alive today, he probably would inflect his previous track and sing, “You be terrorist, I no be terrorist/Argument, argument, argue…” to explain this cacophony of denials between the APC, PDP and a Nigerian government which willingly leave the footpath and walk blindly in a maze of shrubs.

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5 Benefits Of WhatsApp Business App For Small Entrepreneurs

Published

13 hours ago

August 17, 2025

Editor

The WhatsApp business app was built to help small entrepreneurs. This app has tools designed to reduce your workload. You can sort, automate, and quickly respond to customer messages — this enables quick interactions. You can also set up a profile for your business and catalogs, whereby you list your products, the prices, and other information for easy browsing.

Here are the benefits of the WhatsApp business app for small entrepreneurs:

1. Business Profile
WhatsApp Business has a feature where you can create a profile for your business. Here, you would share every necessary information about your business, including email address, business description, phone number, website, and physical store address if available. This is a way you can create visibility for your work and get customers to discover you.

2. Smart Messaging Tools
The smart messaging tools in the WhatsApp business app allow you to save and reuse messages you often send to customers. You would be able to answer many common questions with this tool, ‘quick replies.’

Another one is ‘automated messages’, which are sent to your customers when you’re not available to give responses, so they know when to expect your reply. Also, you can create a greeting message to introduce your business to buyers.

3. Messaging Statistics
This feature, messaging statistics, allows business owners to review every metric behind the messages being sent, such as the successfully sent messages, the ones that have been read, just delivered, and so on.

4. WhatsApp Web
You can use the account you use to send and receive messages on your phone on other devices such as a laptop, tablet, or desktop. So you don’t have to worry when you’re out of the house; you can still be responding to your customers.

5. WhatsApp catalog
Catalogs are for you to showcase your products to customers so they can check what they want and order from you. You don’t need to send every product price and description individually.

Catalogs allow you to group everything, including product code and any other information. This feature saves time, no need for multiple questions on what your items look like and the price.