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OPINION: APC’s Slave-raiding Expeditions

Published

1 month ago

October 20, 2025

By Lasisi Olagunju

In mid-19th-century Ibadan, military expeditions under Balogun Ibikunle were so successful in slave-catching that by 1859, the city was gripped in the apprehension that it had harvested more slaves than it could control. Professor Bolanle Awe, citing missionary Hinderer’s Half-Yearly Report of Ibadan Station for that year, wrote that the oracle of Oke Badan had to intervene with a decree that Ibadan should desist from going to war for some time because there were “too many strange people in the town.”

People choke on their own success. If you doubt this, read Awe’s ‘Ajele System: A Study of Ibadan Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century’, published in December 1964. Power that eats with ten fingers, that feeds on endless acquisition will, sooner or later, find itself choking on its own gluttony.

At about the same period Ibadan trembled over the spectre of a slave insurrection, similar fears were roiling the American South. In May, 1939, distinguished professor of history, Harvey Wish (4 September, 1909 – 7 March, 1968), published his ‘The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1856’. In 1856, according to Wish, Stewart and Montgomery counties in Tennessee were gripped by panic. The combined slave population in those places stood at about 12,000 against 19,000 whites, but in many localities, the enslaved outnumbered their masters. In the iron districts along the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, eight to ten thousand slaves laboured in mines and furnaces under a handful of overseers. A house stuffed with captives soon loses peace especially when the enslaved start demanding rights. The fear that the captives in those American communities might rise became as real as the chains that bound them.

The twin anxieties of Ibadan and Tennessee of the 1850s should speak to today’s All Progressives Congress (APC), which seems to have embarked on its own form of political slave-raiding expeditions, capturing opposition governors, lawmakers, and chieftains in a frenzy of conquest. History teaches that those who live by conquest often reel in pains of indigestion. Ask Afonja of Ilorin. The slaves he encouraged to defect into his army proved his nemesis.

There is that Nigerian comedian who combs his bald head. He is there online feasting on APC’s defection binge. The jester’s conclusion is that by 2027, Nigeria’s epic contest will be between APC and APC, a scenario he says will burst the belly of the overfed. There is a limit to how much the human stomach can hold before it rebels against its own greed. All manner of gluttony, including the political, have their limits and dangers. What Tennessee feared in 1856 did, indeed, happen in some places. Read Harvey Wish.

The Yoruba have sweet street slangs. You’ve heard of curing madness with madness (“wèrè l’a fi nwo wèrè”). You’ve not heard of “ko were, ko were.” Packing all sorts into all sorts; orísirísi. The Yoruba word ‘were’ means madness or the mad themselves. In some contexts ‘were’ also means idiocy/idiot; stupid/stupidity. “Ko were, ko were” is what my village friends call men who go for anything in a skirt. It is also what the rapacious do with their molue: Forty-nine sitting, ninety-nine standing. The bus is “fully full”, yet, the driver and conductor still yell to the street to hop in: “Wolé! Enter! No change!” It is never enough until some cranial vessels yield to bursting.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: ‘Federal Highways of Horror’

Shakespeare’s Angelo says in ‘Measure for Measure’ that “we must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey…” We do that here. All our laws are scared and afraid of power. People break the law and dare the law to say something.

A tributary is a smaller river or stream that flows into a larger river or lake. River Oba is a tributary of the Osun River; it flows into it. The law says you can divorce River Oba, if you like, but you cannot give Oba’s child to Osun, your new husband. The powerful can snatch the wife of the weak, but he cannot snatch the child of the weak. Our constitution expressly forbids lawmakers from hopping from bed to bed, party to party, doing what common prostitutes do. Section 68(1)(g) of the constitution bars senators and Reps from contracting the syphilis of defection. Section 109(1)(g) prescribes the same taboo for lawmakers at the state level. Those two sections say if you insist on courting leprosy, you must be prepared to live in a leper colony, alone.

Our constitution says that a legislator who strays from the banner that bore him to victory must surrender his seat.

That law is dead here even when the exception to the rule is not present. The exception, the law says, is that defection is allowed only when there is a division within the legislator’s party or the party has merged with another. There is no division, there is no merger, yet lawmakers after lawmakers have changed parties like pants without consequences.

When is a democracy dead? It is dead when opposition sells itself to power. It is dead when law is dead, or whenever it is helpless; when rule of men replaces the rule of law; when government of men overthrows government of laws. Rule of men is a personal rule; it is what sits on the throne in an unaccountable society; a society in the mouth of dogs.

Aristotle wrote that “It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens.” American professor of Law, Paul Gowder, in the winter of 2018 wrote ‘Resisting the Rule of Men’. Gowder contrasts “the rule of men” to “the rule of law.” He says “I will say that we have ‘the rule of men’ or ‘personal rule’ when those who wield the power of the state are not obliged to give reasons to those over whom that power is being wielded—from the standpoint of the ruled, the rulers may simply act on their brute desires.” Is that not what politicians do when, with impunity, they cross the road and dash their husbands’ children to their more powerful, wealthy lover across the street? Yet, they say this is a democracy.

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“Democracy—What Is It?” Theodore M. Hart in a 1948 edition of The Georgia Review asked as he threw the question at a class of veterans. He got 32 answers. The last of the answers, he says, is the “farthest thing from a definition that could well be imagined.” This is it: “The right to defy a ruler, the right to believe in the right, the right to read the truth, the right to speak the truth, the sky free of destruction, the water free of danger, the trees, the earth, the house I live in, my friends and relatives, the school I go to, the church I attend – that’s Democracy.” It is a mouthful. Before that definition, there have been shorter ones that we won’t like to teach our kids here. One of them says ‘Democracy’ is “that no man should have more power than another.” Another says it is “a government in which the source of authority (political) must be and remain in the people and not in the ruler.” The opposite holds sway here. Ruling party politicians are the law; it is into their maximum ocean that all rivers must empty their waters.

Politicians, governors and lawmakers of all tendencies are massing into one party, the ruling party, like the forces of Julius Caesar whose feet are already in the Rubicon. There is also the perception that the judiciary is collapsing (or has collapsed) its structures into the ruling party.

It is futile as it is dangerous, self-destructive and self-destructing to seek to have a Kabiyesi presidency, a democracy without opposition. French philosopher, Montesquieu, in his Esprit des Lois, published in I748, wrote: “There would be an end of everything if one man or one body, whether of princes, nobles, or people exercised these three powers: that of making the laws, of executing the public resolutions, and of judging the cases of individuals.”

William Shakespeare in ‘Measure for Measure’ warns that possessing great power tempts one toward tyranny.

Shakespeare’s character, Isabella, tells power-drunk Angelo, deputy to the Duke of Vienna:

“O! it is excellent

To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.”

Now, what is the value and essence of a presidential power that cannot crush, enslave or imprison governors? Where is the value?

In George Orwell’s novel, ‘1984’ we are shown that the party’s omnipotence is not freedom but imprisonment. The story teller asks humanity to accept that the pursuit of total power, total control over thought, over history, and reality, traps power and the power wielder in perpetual manipulation.

But power is powerful; it never listens to reason. Ikem Osodi, Chinua Achebe’s radical character says in ‘Anthills of the Savannah’ that “The prime failure of rulers is to forget that they are human.” Are rulers really human? In Yoruba history and belief, they are ‘alase’ (executive) deputy of the gods. Before Achebe there was Lord Acton who famously said that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Someone said power, when unrestrained, imprisons its possessor in illusion.

It is not the fault of power that it extends and distends and stretches itself thin. It is because the world seductively craves the king’s dominance. So, let us not blame power; we should blame the people as they query the worth of freedom that bears no food. Because literature is life, it is there in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. There, we read in The Grand Inquisitor’s monologue, a story within a story: “For who can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands?” The Inquisitor informs the Lord that humanity had “taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him.” They will always follow Caesar because he alone has bread to distribute from north to south.

The devil is not a liar; if he is a liar, he won’t say the truth. And what is the truth? It is in the Inquisitor’s mouth, it is that seeing freedom and bread walking together is inconceivable; that no science will give the people bread “so long as they remain free.” Governors, senators, Reps – all have surrendered to the bread and butter of power. Automatic tickets, automatic victory at the polls, cheap victory over the people. What power is saying in silence is said loudly by Dostoevsky’s Inquisitor: “In the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us.’”

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FULL LIST: FG Lists Nigerian Veterans For Honours To Celebrate 100 Years Of Aviation Industry

Published

3 hours ago

November 30, 2025

Editor

The Federal Government of Nigeria has unveiled Nigerian veterans and distinguished aviators to be honoured for pioneering contributions that have shaped Nigeria’s aviation industry over the past century.

The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, announced the event in an X post on Saturday, describing the awardees as “icons whose vision and dedication laid the groundwork for Nigeria’s aviation success.”

He also shared photos of some of the honourees ahead of the event slated for Monday, December 1, 2025 at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre in Abuja.

According to him, the recognition is part of activities marking 100 years of aviation in Nigeria, tracing the sector’s evolution from colonial era to its present status as a critical contributor to the country’s economy.

“The first ever aircraft to land in Nigeria was in Kano in 1925. As a result, we are celebrating 100 years of aviation in Nigeria this year. On Monday, December 1, 2025, at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Center, Abuja, we shall celebrate this milestone with a number of performances and events, including honouring veterans of the aviation industry in the last 100 years. We are inviting all aviation stakeholders to the event,” he wrote.

Below are the list of some of the Nigerian veterans who have shaped the aviation industry, as shared by the Aviation Minister:

Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, founder of Okada Air.

Late Alhaji Ahmadu Dan kabo, founder of Kabo Air.

Capt Robert Hayes, Nigeria’s first certified pilot.

Chief Mbazulike Amechi, former Minister of Aviation and instrumental in establishing Nigerian Airways.

Chief Allen Ifechukwu Onyeama, Air Peace founder, promoted local content and invested in Nigerian youths’ training.

Dr Emmanuel Enekwechi, contributed to the aviation industry’s growth.

Capt. August Okpe, founder and CEO of Okpe Aviation Services, Nigeria’s first indigenous aviation engineering company.

Sen. Hadi Sirika, former Minister of Aviation, initiated policies like the national carrier launch.

Capt Rabiu Hamisu Yadudu, pioneered Nigeria’s aviation industry and transformed airports into world-class facilities.

Capt Ado Sanusi

Chief Wale Babalakin

Sir Joseph Arumemi

Olumuyiwa Bernard Aliu

Capt Dele Ore

Capt Wale Makinde

Capt Ibrahim Mshella

Capt Dapo Olumide

Ms Bimbo Sosina

Capt Benoni Briggs

Mrs Deola Olukunle

Dr Thomas Ogunbangbe

Capt Edward Boyo

Dr Gbenga Olowo

Elder Dr Soji Amusan

Engr Awogbemi Clement

Sen Musa Adede

Georg Eder MBA

Capt Prex Porbeni

Mrs Folashade Odutola

Dr Taiwo Afolabi OON

Capt Fola Adeola

Dr Seindemi Fadeni

Capt Chinyere Kali

Harold Demure

Akin Olateru

Mr George Urensi

Mrs Deola Yesufu

Engr Babatunde Obadofin

Dr Ayo Obilana

Capt Felix Iheanacho

Capt Peter Adenihun

Capt Jonathan Ibrahim

Pa Odeleye AC

Capt Toju Ogidi

Pa Abel Kalu Ukonu

News

Bishop Kukah Insists No Christian Genocide In Nigeria, Gives Reasons

Published

3 hours ago

November 30, 2025

Editor

The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese and Convener of the National Peace Committee (NPC), Most Rev. Matthew Kukah, has insisted that there’s no Christian genocide in Nigeria, explaining that number of people killed doesn’t amount to genocide.

Bishop Kukah stated this while presenting a paper at the 46th Supreme Convention of the Knights of St. Mulumba (KSM) in Kaduna.

His comments follow criticism that trailed reports quoting him as advising the international community against designating Nigeria as a “country of particular concern.”

The bishop explained that such labels could heighten tensions, fuel suspicion, and give room for criminal groups to exploit the situation, which would disrupt interfaith dialogue and cooperation with government.

Addressing figures circulated about alleged Christian killings in Nigeria, Kukah said he aligns with the Vatican Secretary of State, the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, and all Catholic bishops in the country.

He said, “They are saying that 1,200 churches are burnt in Nigeria every year, and I ask myself, in which Nigeria? Interestingly, nobody approached the Catholic Church to get accurate data. We do not know where these figures came from. All those talking about persecution, has anyone ever called to ask, ‘Bishop Kukah, what is the situation?’ The data being circulated cleverly avoids the Catholic Church because they know Catholics do not indulge in hearsay.”

On the use of the term genocide, he noted, “Genocide is not based on the number of people killed. You can kill 10 million people and it still won’t amount to genocide. The critical determinant is intent, whether the aim is to eliminate a group of people. So, you don’t determine genocide by numbers; you determine it by intention. We need to be more clinical in the issues we discuss.”

Kukah also challenged claims that Christians in Nigeria are being targeted. He said, “If you are a Christian in Nigeria and you say you are persecuted, my question is: how? At least 80% of educated Nigerians are Christians, and up to 85% of the Nigerian economy is controlled by Christians. With such figures, how can anyone say Christians are being persecuted?”

He linked many of the challenges faced by Christians to a lack of unity, stating, “The main problem is that Christians succumb to bullies. The day we decide to stand together, believing that an injury to one is an injury to all, these things will stop.”

He further warned against loosely labeling victims as martyrs. “Because someone is killed in a church, does that automatically make them a martyr? Whether you are killed while stealing someone’s yam or attacked by bandits, does that qualify as martyrdom? I am worried because we must think more deeply.”

Clarifying his earlier remarks, he added, “People say there is genocide in Nigeria. What I presented at the Vatican was a 1,270-page study on genocide in Nigeria and elsewhere. My argument is that it is not accurate to claim there is genocide or martyrdom in Nigeria.”

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OPINION] MOWAA: Unpleasant meal cooked for Benin from the outside (Two)

Published

5 hours ago

November 30, 2025

Editor

By Tony Erha

“Agha tot’ ikolo, t’ amen mie ede”; A Benin idiom holds sway that; “When the earthworm dominates a discussion, the rainfall would be all day long”. For the Museum of West Africa Art (MOWAA), whose skewed establishment had resurfaced about 2018, dominated global discourse and has reached a peak. Day in, day out, there is intense global indignation, bothering on an alleged swindling of the museum’s artefacts and huge accrued monies, which were under the care of the immediate-past governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, alongside some of his political and business associates, which many commentators presented to be a f monumental fraud. As already claimed, it could as well have been called MOWAA-gate!

This article, being the second and last stanza of the first, published two weeks ago, was predicated on the decimating crisis of MOWAA. A condensed recap of the said article was partly anchored on a lavish reportage by swamps of Nigerian and foreign press, which largely implicated the Obaseki’s government, as inept in the due processes of MOWAA’s setup. MOWAA is a charitable entity, which sprang up on global funding and other resources of the state government, whereupon a case of undue diligence was allegedly stressed on Obaseki and his government.

There is a threesome public inquiry, thus raising a gummy accusation of indecency, especially when the ex-governor Obaseki’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had been voted out by the All Progressives Congress (APC), with Senator Monday Okpebholo as the present governor. And the MOWAA-gate is getting messier as Governor Okpebholo and the state’s House of Assembly, the lawmaking arm, had each set up a probe panel. Disturbed that the MOWAA-gate is earning the nation a bad name, the National Assembly, from a far-away Abuja, the nation’s capital, also instituted another probe.

”The returned looted Benin artifacts, like other sacred art work of Benin provenance, are not just superficial or ornamental, but infused with the mystical command and supernatural energy of the Benin kingdom of great antique. The key to correctly identify, classify, and position the authentic totems, in time and space, lies in the Royal Benin Palace, under the power of the Oba of Benin”. Sampson Ebome, a lawyer and perceptive cultural activist, uttered, postulating further;

“In every other society as Japan, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Morocco etc., royalty holds a choice-place in preserving the unique cultural and corporate identity of the society and its governance. It is no co-incidence, therefore, that even in today’s Europe, there are about twelve statutory monarchs in its advanced democracies. Perhaps, the grave error of Godwin Obaseki’s administration was to proceed on the false logic that a concrete divergence existed between the government and the Benin kingdom, the very source and origin of the history, dialects, cultural identity and heritage of all the people of Edo State. To have persisted in this gargantuan ruse, an original artifice of the colonising powers of Europe, was always bound to be destabilising to the spiritual and socio-political equilibrium of the state”

In the state’s legislative’s probe, cans of worms are being revealed on MOWAA and the Reddisson Hotel construction, said to have been Obaseki’s conduit pipes. And there is intense firework by the contending parties. Chief Osaro Idah and some of the Oba’s palace chiefs have dragged MOWAA to the law court, a development which Oyiwola Afolabi SAN, MOWAA’s lawyer said had jeopardised the appearances of Godwin Obaseki, Osarodion Ogie (former Secretary to State Government) and other MOWAA’s executive at the House of Assembly summon.

“Even khiri-khiri keke udemwen idan ere ogbakhian”. “Fierce wrestling is a companion to violent thuds”. And the fight is now more forceful as no man will leave his leg for an opponent to grab. “Emwin na ma ru ese, to si itale emwen”, a Benin parlance for; “That which had been tardily or slyly done is bound to cause disaffection”. And so, the fight ranges whilst the onlookers are left to mock he that is already falling!

“Ovbi ekpen ere otolo ekpen ehae”. “Osayomore Joseph, the late music crooner and a soulmate, had often reminded me about the age-long Benin axiom; “It takes only the Cub – heir, to tickle the forehead of a Leopard. Instructively, HRM, Ewuare II, the revered Oba of Benin, with the Methuselah of wisdom at play, narrated the seizure of the artefactual ownership and benefaction, as he stoically alleged the undue conscription of his heir into the corporate board of Edo Museum of West Africa Art (EMOWAA) by ex-governor Obaseki. His son had also attested to that. The claim was also buttressed that EMOWAA was an inordinate scheme evolved by Obaseki and his associates to wrestle the returned looted artefacts and supplement payment from their foreign sources.

The Esans of Edo would say; “Ehun no ho obhiaha emoen, avava uwendin, ole odia”. “The sharp fart that disgraces the bride perches in-between her buttocks”. Once upon a time, Governor Okpebholo, on the heels of his final governorship declaration by the Supreme Court, which Obaseki and his protégé, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, the PDP candidate had dragged him through, was swayed by the of Senator Adams Oshiomhole insistence on the probe of Obaseki and his government. But Nyesom Wike, the flammable minister of Abuja, had dissuaded a pliable Okpebholo. But, Obaseki wasn’t mindful that he had escaped the expected probes, until he caused it with his usual foibles.

“Asua gha sua egile, oya danmwen ekpatu; eighi ye ebe gue egbe”. In a Benin folktale, it’s about the adventurous snail that crawls up the tree and soon crash to the ground, failing to cover itself from its hunters. The headstrong former governor, with the braggadocio of a ‘diaspora governor’, has taken the fight from ‘iya’ (valley) to ‘oke’ (mountain top). All we now see is the continuation of a “filaga filogo” (a street brawn with broken bottles and cudgels), now that ‘slappers and bone breakers’ fight wherever they meet in Europe and America. It is a bitter reminder of Obaseki’s heydays of masterminding the ‘Torgbas’ fighters’ gang that fought the APC’s ‘Tokpas’, which had earned him aliases like ‘Emanton’ (Iron Rod) and ‘Isakpana’ (the god of anger).

Whilst Nigerians and humankind watch the ‘filaga filogo’ and shame emanating from the Nigeria’s ‘heartbeat’ state, the very man who was called the ‘Wake and see Governor, may be laying down in the foreign climes the same landlines, that he laid on his home’s pathway that makes him to go into self-exile’.