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OPINION: Abulu, The Prophetic Madman, At Akure Summit

Published

1 month ago

November 2, 2025

By Festus Adedayo

I have read enough works on the phenomenon of sycophancy in politics to know that it is a democratic curse. Whenever I reflect on its curse on development, my mind hovers over a character called Abulu in Akure, Ondo State-born Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen (2015). A fictional book that got the shortlist of The Booker Prize, in it, four well-brought-up kids of same parents, in the city of Akure, where the tragic plot was set, capitalize on a parental lacuna of their father’s absence to manifest traits of truancy and tantrums of youth.

On one of those fishing expeditions, the truant children encounter Abulu, a madman gifted with prescient ability of prophetic pronouncements. All of a sudden, curses/prophecy waft off Abulu’s mouth. It was to Ikena, one of the brothers. Incidentally, for the ostensible reason of averting Abulu curse of its Omo awùsá – walnut pod-like splinter, last week, Southwest Nigerian leaders met for two days in Abulu’s Akure. On the table was a single agenda: to pursue regional integration and foster prosperity across the six states that make up Yorubaland. Ever since the passage of Obafemi Awolowo in 1987, a man the tribe vested with all the attributes of an ancestor, the tribe has orbited aimlessly without a rudder.

Awolowo himself acknowledged the shortcomings of his people — they were a sophisticated but self-warring tribe who needed an anchor. Like an Abulu curse, after Awo’s death, metaphorically, Yoruba returned to the centuries before him when inter-tribal wars like the Ijaiye, Ekitiparapo, Kiriji and allied wars were waged among themselves.

While unity was the overt reason for the Akure gathering, its integral but hidden essence was to garner support for the second term ambition of their son, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The summiteers never met to pressure Tinubu for foods on the table of their people but to sing his panegyrics like a self-serving griot. Already, like the local magician of the 1970/80s Nigeria, their son has almost expended all his talismanic wiles, pulling claps-inducing stunts to sustain himself in power. Realizing that the Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania stunt of banning political party leaders and jailing them to remain the numero-uno presidential candidate would spark off Armageddon in Nigeria, ours made a detour to Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci.

In his Prison Notes, Gramsci taught Tinubu the way to go. Gramsci’s main teaching is that, rather than the foolish coercion currently sparking hell in Tanzania, a leader could secretly maintain dominance of his people through subterfuge. Having arrested the hearts of governors without firing a single bullet, castrating political parties without any noticeable groan, getting a deranged drunk political ally to clear a political party path for him, and a pliable judge to render the dream of a viable opposition political party a mirage, the next shot to fire was to guard against an Olusegun Obasanjo political shame.

So, to Abulu’s Akure, the president’s appointees came. The unspoken intent of the summit was to clone an Awolowo cultic following for the president and probably recreate his mystique. Garlands and deodorizers hung in the sky. Speaker after speaker beatified what they called the Tinubu exploits of the last months. Even their host, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, in his moment of unprovoked sycophancy, pronounced that re-electing the president had become an executive order. Whatever that balderdash means. They all spoke of the need for Yoruba to speak with a unified voice.

If you ask me, that summit should have appropriately been themed Idíbèbèrè. If well articulated and postulated, the idíbèbèrè as a philosophy is sycophancy. Woven into a common adage, the Yoruba say, Omo eni kò ní í ṣe dí bèbèrè ká fi ilèkè sí dí omo elòmíràn. Literally, the saying means one’s child’s buttocks deserve the waist beads ahead of someone else’s, no matter how beautifully configured the other buttocks may be to securely hold the beads. As a philosophy, it does not brew dissent nor compromise.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spoken extensively on what kills democracies. In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, these two Harvard University political scientists drilled deep down into how elected leaders gradually subvert democracies. But they obviously didn’t reckon with sycophancy as a cancer strain that kills democracy.

So, I remember an event which took place about 15 years ago. We were all inside a politician’s office that torrid afternoon. My host was a man who had made good in his chosen career and had enough bucks to splash on politics. As at that time, he was angling to govern Oyo State and desired my professional communication experience. And there I was.

I return to the tale of 15 years ago. Politicians of all shades and colour were in a semi-festive mood. The atmosphere borrowed a leaf from the ancient saying that, at the fall of the elephant, diverse types of knives surface to pay obeisance to a naked flesh. Upstairs, occupying virtually all the chairs in the room, I belonged to that crowd seated like a congested mass of humanity. But the theatrics of the politicians had me gasping for breath. One of them walked up to our host, the man who would be governor.

As he stood before him, he flashed him a smile which instantly worked like a talisman. “Your Excellency,” he began, in adoration of a man who was neither excellent nor possessed a capacity to excel in his newfound quest to become governor. Then, he helped him adjust his cap, patented after Yoruba’s recent ancestor, Obafemi Awolowo’s. And from nowhere, the politician dropped the innocuous bombshell.

“Do you know that the way you tilted your cap was the same way Baba Layinka used to wear his cap?”

Baba Layinka was the affectionate and affable name given Chief Awolowo. During the 1959 federal election rallies in Lagos, chants of “Awolowo, Baba Layinka, yio se b’otiwi!” meaning, “Awolowo, the father of Layinka, he will keep his word!” rent the air. The man who would be governor grinned from ear to ear like a cow headed for the abattoir. That day, I knew the deadliness of sycophancy and the danger it portends for democratic governance. Though I encountered sycophancy in my stints with politicians, that day in Molete, I encountered it in its rawest form. My earlier stint in government, which weaned me off the prudery of theories of Nigerian politics, showed me that Nigerian politicians derive unspeakable joy, excitement and satisfaction from praises and flattery.

The good thing about the Yoruba is that their espousal of that genuflection to tribe philosophy of idíbèbèrè does not stop them from telling themselves hard, harsh truth. So they say, upon emerging from a house where they hitherto locked themselves, a mutual smile of two brothers equals self-deception while a frown approximates exchange of hurtful truth. This is what will necessitate the submissions underleaf. To begin with, permit me to dwell on three leaders at the summit and their perceptions of the Yoruba current reality.

Baba Reuben Fasoranti began his speech with obeisance to two ecumenical spirits — Oduduwa, Yoruba’s progenitor and, in his words, “in the wisdom of our Sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and in the hope of generations yet unborn.” He called on Yoruba to be blind to political parties but the ideals of the Yoruba nation. Bishop Ayo Ladigbolu told the summiteers the plain truth we have failed to appropriate since 1987 when Awolowo transited mortality for immortality. It is that, the race may never succeed in recreating another Awolowo.

Chief Bisi Akande’s was a departure from the two. Like a mail-boy, he literally bore a mail from his master and benefactor, the president. After boring the crowd with his prosaic “economy is being re-engineered through tax reform” bla-bla-bla, he proselytized on what he called “Quiet restructuring.” This was a man who, in a media interview on August 2020 signature of ‘see no evil do evil’ defence of the Muhammadu Buhari government, said he was not aware that APC wrote restructuring in its manifesto. Now when it is time to defend his master’s pot of soup, knowing that ‘restructuring’ is one electrifying byword that arrests the consciousness of an average southerner, it was time to appeal to base sentiments for votes.

Some hurtful realities need to be confronted. One is that — let us pardon the younger elements gathered for the summit — among the elders in Akure, who is/was an Awoist? Baba Fasoranti was and is; Femi Okurounmu was and is but Bisi Akande is a self-confessed NCNCer, otherwise known as demo in Yoruba First Republic politics. By his own account, he was brought into the UPN by Chief S.M. Afolabi. He still carries the gene of anti-progressivism in his blood. Secondly, since our president began his politics, where has anyone heard him mouth the name ‘Awolowo’ or pay him tribute? Tinubu’s lifelong ambition, like Olusegun Obasanjo’s, has always been for the Yoruba to erase the name ‘Awo’ from their lips and supplant it with theirs. They remind me of Awolowo’s account in his book about how S. L. Akintola had assured his wife, Faderera, at the coronation of Oba Sikiru Adetona on April 2, 1960, that in six months, she would never hear the name Awo in the western region. Didn’t Awo triumph over them?

As the summiteers prepared to leave Akure, did they hear the voice of Abulu? It may be hurtful but it is the truth: Unless the present government takes off its garment of excessive Yorubanization, either real or imagined, it is digging the Yoruba’s grave. This is more especially for those same “hope of generations yet unborn” whom Baba Fasoranti referenced.

Abulu’s curses may not stick on the Yoruba only if, after Tinubu’s exit from government, the race goes out of Nigeria into its mythic Oduduwa Republic. Otherwise, by 2031, the Yoruba will realize the essence of that ancient saying that, “ohun tí í tan ni egungun odun, omo Alagbaa nbo waf’ akara je’ko.” Broken into its chewable granular, the wisdom in the above Yoruba saying is that, during the Yoruba masquerade festive season, it is usually all sumptuous for children of the Chief Masquerade. However, off season, like everyone else, in contemporary argot, Alagbaa’s children would also “eat breakfast.”

When the Yoruba may have left Aso Rock in 2031, Tinubu stands the risk of becoming our own Aguiyi Ironsi and Odumegwu Ojukwu rolled into one. Recollect that the ostracism Igbo people suffer in the hands of the Nigerian state today is borne out of the Unification Decree Ironsi promulgated and Ojukwu’s preferencing of his people beyond a punishing Nigeria.

If that happens to the children of Oduduwa and Awolowo, by 2031, the rest of Nigeria would then exchange the Yoruba race the Igbo, on account of perceived Tinubu’s attempt to preference his Yoruba people against the rest of Nigeria. In reality though, that perceived preferencing by Tinubu is for his Lagos political acolytes who happen to be Yoruba. While Yoruba must put its house in order, it cannot discount association with other tribes. Right now, western Nigeria has nil federal presence, yet it has courted huge hatred from its ilk. Yoruba leaders can only move Yorubaland forward and ensure the success of Tinubu, not by the kind of rank sycophancy exhibited at that Akure summit, but by telling him the acrid truth that may foul up his tongue.

I can only call the attention of Mr. President to the saying of his people. When danger approaches you facewards, Yoruba say, shoot your shot; when it turns its backside, aim your shot; but when you find yourself all alone, reconsider your stand. Tinubu can still be the greatest president of Nigeria ever if he avoids the Pharisees and Sadducees of Yorubaland. They are the parasitic sycophants who shout, as the people of Tyre and Sidon shouted to King Herod Agrippa I, “This is the voice of a god, and not of a man!” But what happened to Agrippa?

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Out-of-school: Group To Enroll Adolescent Mothers In Bauchi

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2 hours ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

Women Child Youth Health and Education Initiative (WCY) with support from Malala Education Champion Network, have charted a way to enroll adolescent mothers to access education in Bauchi schools.

Rashida Mukaddas, the Executive Director, WCY stated this in Bauchi on Wednesday during a one-day planning and inception meeting with education stakeholders on Adolescent Mothers Education Access (AMEA) project of the organisation.

According to her, the project targeted three Local Government Areas of Bauchi, Misau and Katagum for implementation in the three years project.

She explained that all stakeholders in advancing education in the state would be engaged by the organisation to advocate for Girl-Child education.

The target, she added, was to ensure that as many as married adolescent mothers and girls were enrolled back in school in the state.

“Today marks an important step in our collective commitment to ensuring that every girl in Bauchi state, especially adolescent who are married, pregnant, or young mothers has the right, opportunity, and support to continue and complete her education.

“This project has been designed to address the real and persistent barriers that prevent too many adolescent mothers from returning to school or staying enrolled.

“It is to address the barriers preventing adolescent mothers from continuing and completing their education and adopting strategies that will create an enabling environment that safeguard girls’ rights to education while removing socio-cultural and economic obstacles,” said Mukaddas.

She further explained to the stakeholders that the success of the project depended on the strength of their collaboration, the alignment of their actions, and the commitments they forge toward the implementation of the project.

Also speaking, Mr Kamal Bello, the Project Officer of WCY, said that the collaboration of all the education stakeholders in the state with the organisation could ensure stronger enforcement of the Child Rights Law.

This, he said, could further ensure effective re-entry and retention policies for adolescent girls, increased community support for girls’ education and a Bauchi state where no girl was left behind because of marriage, pregnancy, or motherhood.

“It is observed that early marriage is one of the problems hindering girls’ access to education.

“This organisation is working toward ensuring that girls that have dropped out of school due to early marriage are re-enrolled back in school,” he said.

Education stakeholders present at the event included representatives from the state Ministry of Education, Justice, Budget and Economic Planning and Multilateral Coordination.

Others were representatives from International Federation of Women Lawyers, Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE), Bauchi state Agency for Mass Education, Civil Society Organization, Religious and Traditional institutions, among others.

They all welcomed and promised to support the project so as to ensure its effective implementation and achieve its set objectives in the state.

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OPINION: Fubara, Adeleke And The Survival Dance

Published

2 hours ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

By Israel Adebiyi

You should be aware by now that the dancing governor, Ademola Adeleke has danced his last dance in the colours of the Peoples Democratic Party. His counterpart in Rivers, Siminalayi Fubara has elected to follow some of his persecutors to the All Progressive Congress, after all “if you can’t beat them, you can join them.”
Politics in Nigeria has always been dramatic, but every now and then a pattern emerges that forces us to pause and think again about where our democracy is heading. This week on The Nation’s Pulse, that pattern is what I call the politics of survival. Two events in two different states have brought this into sharp focus. In both cases, sitting governors elected on the platform of the same party have found new homes elsewhere. Their decisions may look sudden, but they reveal deeper issues that have been growing under the surface for years.

In Rivers, Governor Siminalayi Fubara has crossed into the All Progressives Congress. In Osun, Governor Ademola Adeleke has moved to the Accord Party. These are not small shifts. These are moves by people at the top of their political careers, people who ordinarily should be the ones holding their parties together. When those at the highest levels start fleeing, it means the ground beneath them has become too shaky to stand on. It means something has broken.

A Yoruba proverb captures it perfectly: Iku to n pa oju gba eni, owe lo n pa fun ni. The death that visits your neighbour is sending you a message. The crisis that has engulfed the Peoples Democratic Party did not start today. It has been building like an untreated infection. Adeleke saw the signs early. He watched senior figures fight openly. He watched the party fail to resolve its zoning battles. He watched leaders undermine their own candidates. At some point, you begin to ask yourself a simple question: if this house collapses today, what happens to me? In Osun, where the competition between the two major parties has always been fierce, Adeleke was not going to sit back and become another casualty of a party that refused to heal itself. Survival became the most reasonable option.

His case makes sense when you consider the political temperature in Osun. This is a state where the opposition does not sleep. Every misstep is amplified. Every weakness is exploited. Adeleke has spent his time in office under constant scrutiny. Add that to the fact that the national structure of his party is wobbly, divided and uncertain about its future, and the move begins to look less like betrayal and more like self-preservation.

Rivers, however, tells a slightly different story. Fubara’s journey has been a long lesson in endurance. From the moment he emerged as governor, it became clear he was stepping into an environment loaded with expectations that had nothing to do with governance. His political godfather was not content with being a supporter. He wanted control. He wanted influence. He wanted obedience. Every decision was interpreted through the lens of loyalty. From the assembly crisis to the endless reconciliation meetings, to the barely hidden power struggles, Fubara spent more time fighting shadows than building the state he was elected to lead.

It soon became clear that he was governing through a maze of minefields. Those who should have been allies began to treat him like an accidental visitor in the Government House. The same legislators who were meant to be partners in governance suddenly became instruments of pressure. Orders came from places outside the official structure. Courtrooms turned into battlegrounds. At some point, even the national leadership of his party seemed unsure how to tame the situation. These storms did not come in seasons, they came in waves. One misunderstanding today. Another in two weeks. Another by the end of the month. Anyone watching closely could see that the governor was in a permanent state of emergency.

So when the winds started shifting again and lawmakers began to realign, those who understood the undercurrents knew exactly what was coming. Fubara knew too. A man can only take so much. After months of attacks, humiliations and attempts to cage his authority, the move to another party was not just political. It was personal. He had given the reconciliation process more chances than most would. He had swallowed more insults than any governor should. He had watched institutions bend and twist under the weight of private interests. In many ways, his defection is a declaration that he has finally chosen to protect himself.

But the bigger question is how we got here. How did two governors in two different parts of the country end up taking the same decision for different but related reasons? The answer goes back to the state of internal democracy in our parties. No party in Nigeria today fully practices the constitution it claims to follow. They have elaborate rules on paper but very loose habits in reality. They talk about fairness, but their primaries are often messy. They preach unity, but their caucuses are usually divided into rival camps. They call themselves democratic institutions, yet dissent is treated as disloyalty.

Political parties are supposed to be the engine rooms of democracy. They are the homes where ideas are debated, leaders are groomed, and future candidates are shaped. In Nigeria, they increasingly look like fighting arenas where the loudest voices drown out everyone else. When leaders ignore their own constitutions, the structure begins to crack. When factions begin to run parallel meetings, the foundation gets weaker. When decisions are forced down the throats of members, people begin making private plans for their future.

No governor wants to govern in chaos. No politician wants to be the last one standing in a sinking ship. This is why defections are becoming more common. A party that cannot manage itself cannot manage its members. And members who feel exposed will always look for safer ground.

But while these moves make sense for Adeleke and Fubara personally, the people they govern often become the ones left in confusion. Voters choose candidates partly because of party ideology, even if our ideologies are weak. They expect stability. They expect continuity. They expect that the mandate they gave will remain intact. So when a governor shifts political camp without prior consultation, the people feel blindsided. They begin to wonder whether their votes carry weight in a system where elected officials can switch platforms in the blink of an eye.

This is where the politics of survival becomes dangerous for democracy. If leaders keep prioritizing their personal safety over party stability, the system begins to lose coherence. Parties lose their identity. Elections lose their meaning. Governance becomes a game of musical chairs. Today you are here. Tomorrow you are there. Next week you may be somewhere else. The people become bystanders in a democracy that is supposed to revolve around them.

Rivers and Osun should serve as reminders that political parties need urgent restructuring. They need to rebuild trust internally. They need to enforce their constitutions consistently. They need to treat members as stakeholders, not spectators. When members feel protected, they stay. When they feel targeted, they run. This pattern will continue until parties learn the simple truth that power is not built by intimidation, but by inclusion.

There is also the question of what these defections mean for governance. When governors are dragged into endless party drama, service delivery suffers. Time that should be spent on roads, schools, hospitals, water projects and job creation ends up being spent in meetings, reconciliations and press briefings. Resources that should strengthen the state end up funding political battles. The public loses twice. First as witnesses to the drama. Then as victims of delayed or abandoned development.

In Rivers, the months of tension slowed down the government. Initiatives were stalled because the governor was busy trying to survive political ambush. In Osun, Adeleke had to juggle governance with internal fights in a crumbling party structure. Imagine what they could have achieved if they were not constantly looking over their shoulders.

Now, as both men settle into new political homes, the final question is whether these new homes will provide stability or merely temporary shelter. Nigeria’s politics teaches one consistent lesson. New alliances often come with new expectations. New platforms often come with new demands. And new godfathers often come with new conditions. Whether Adeleke and Fubara have truly found peace or simply bought time is something only time will tell.

But as citizens, what we must insist on is simple. The politics of survival should not become the politics of abandonment. Our leaders can fight for their political life, but they must not forget that they hold the people’s mandate. The hunger, poverty, insecurity and infrastructural decay that Nigerians face will not be solved by defection. It will be solved by steady leadership and functional governance.

The bigger lesson from Rivers and Osun is clear. If political parties in Nigeria continue on this path of disunity and internal sabotage, they will keep losing their brightest and most strategic figures. And if leaders keep running instead of reforming the system, then we will wake up one day to a democracy where the people are treated as an afterthought.

Governors may survive the storms. Parties may adjust to new alignments. But the people cannot keep paying the price. Nigeria deserves a democracy that works for the many, not the few. That is the real pulse of the nation.

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Human Rights Day: Stakeholders Call For More Campaigns Against GBV

Published

3 hours ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

Panel of discussants at an event to commemorate the International Human Rights Day, 2025 on Wednesday called for more campaigns against Gender-Based Violence, adding that it must start from the family.

The panel of discussants drawn from religious and community leaders, security agents, members of the civil society community, chiefs, etc, made the call in Benin in an event organised by Justice Development & Peace Centre (JDPC), Benin, in collaboration with Women Aid Collective (WACOL) with the theme: Multilevel Dialogue for Men, Women, Youth and Critical Take holders on the Prevention and Response to Gender-Based Violence (GBV).

The stakeholders, who said causes of GBV are enormous, called for more enlightenment and education in the family, community and the religious circle.

Security agents in the panel charged members of the public to report GBV cases to security agents regardless of the sex Involved, adding: “When GBV happens, it should be reported to the appropriate quarters. It doesn’t matter if the woman or the man is the victim. GBV perpetrators should not be covered up, they must be exposed. We are there to carry out the prosecution after carrying out the necessary investigation.”

Earlier in his opening remarks, Executive Director, JDPC, Rev. Fr. Benedicta Onwugbenu, lamented that (GBV) remains the most prevalent in the society yet hidden because of silence from victims.

According to him, GBV knows no age, gender or race, adding that “It affects people of all ages, whether man or woman, boy or girl.”

“It affects people from different backgrounds and communities, yet it remains hidden because of silence, stigma, and fear. Victims of GBV are suffering in silence.”

On her part, Programme Director, WACOL, Mrs. Francisca Nweke, who said “women are more affected, and that is why we are emphasising on them,” stressed “we are empowering Christian women and women leaders of culture for prevention and response to Gender-Based Violence in Nigeria through the strengthening of grassroots organisations.”