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OPINION: APC’s Slave-raiding Expeditions

Published

2 months 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.’”

News

Edo Assembly Charges Contractor Handling Ekekhuan Road To Accelerate Work

Published

5 hours ago

December 15, 2025

Editor

The Edo State House of Assembly Special Ad-hoc Committee on Project Inspection has charged the contractor handling the Upper Ekehuan Road project to accelerate work to enable residents enjoy the dividends of democracy promised by Governor Monday Okpebholo.

Chairman of the committee, Hon. Addeh Isibor, said this during inspection at Upper Ekehuan Road in Igo Community, Ovia North East Local Government Area,

He said the inspection was part of the House’s continuous assessment of projects being executed by the Okpebholo administration across the state.

Hon. Isibor noted that although heavy rainfall posed challenges to full assessment of some sections of the road, the committee was impressed that the contractor remained on site despite the adverse weather conditions.

In his remarks, Hon. Kingsley Ugabi said the project reflected the governor’s sensitivity and compassion toward the people of the area, stressing that communities in Oredo East and Ovia North East were already witnessing tangible dividends of democracy.

Similarly, Hon. Donald Okogbe described the Upper Ekehuan Road as a major and legacy project for Edo State.

He commended the quality of the toll-bin works so far, while urging the contractor to significantly increase the pace of construction to meet public expectations.

Okogbe added that the committee had communicated its concerns to the Commissioner for Works, expressing confidence that discussions would lead to improved performance, as Edo people desire a project that is both durable and delivered on schedule.

Providing technical updates, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Projects, Engr. Phoebe Williams-Bello, disclosed that the 12.6-kilometre road has recorded over one kilometre of toll-bin construction on both sides, with about 850 metres of earthworks completed, noting that persistent rainfall has been the major constraint.

The Commissioner for Works, Hon. Felix Akhabue, assured that the ministry would intensify monitoring to ensure faster delivery.

He expressed optimism that with the onset of the dry season, construction activities would advance more rapidly.

The committee also inspected other ongoing projects, including Catholic Charismatic Renewal Road, Ugbihoko Quarters, Palace Road along Upper Mission Road, Ekiuwa–UNIBEN Road and Temboga Road, where contractors were commended for the quality and consistency of work so far.

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

Published

5 days 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.

News

OPINION: Fubara, Adeleke And The Survival Dance

Published

5 days 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.