By Lasisi Olagunju

Monday morning on the pulpit can be very surreal. Today’s lesson is from Camara Laye’s ‘A Dream of Africa’, a 1966 novel of prophecy, the black man and his future. A young man called Fatoman returns for a two-week vacation in Guinea after six years of exile in Paris. He returns to a country whose idea of mystery and power “are no longer to be found where they used to be”; a nation badly fissured by violent partisan politics.

Crestfallen, he goes to his goldsmith father who has lost his trade to wooden objects that lack spirits. Fatoman’s father gives him a sacred white ball of cowrie shells. Father tells son: “Put that inside your pillow-case tonight and ask God yourself to enlighten you about the future of our native land.”

Then he sleeps and in an all-night dream the young man finds himself in prison. He sees what eyes see but the mouth fears to utter. But no word is too big that a knife is needed to slice it. Fatoman wakes up the following morning and tells his father what he saw: “I saw a people in rags and tatters, a people starving to death, a people who lived in an immense courtyard surrounded by a high wall, a wall as high as the sky. In that prison, force was the only law; or rather I should say, there was no law at all. The people were punished and sentenced without trial. It was terrible, because those people were the people of Guinea, the people of Africa!”

Dreams are dangerous, especially when told to the winds. Camara Laye would later die in exile in 1980, another writer punished by history for seeing too much and saying too much. Writers have always been prophets; knowingly or unknowingly, their words often hit the bull’s eye beyond boundaries. The people in the dream are not merely Guineans. Looking at what democracy has done to us, I say they are Nigerians.

Everyone is in a cage built by democracy and democrats. The ruling party has cells for its various inmates. There is hardly any escaping the wall. The warders are the big boys; strong, scented soil men.

The ruling party and the opposition are a consortium of prisons where ambitions are either consummated or cremated. Watch the party primaries across all platforms that are permitted to live.

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Yet, the real war will be fought beyond party walls. Southern Nigeria is not prepared for a northern president so soon after Muhammadu Buhari’s eight years. This month and the next will test the tendons of this nation. The party called NDC fired the opening shot two days ago. At the weekend, it played the North-South game of thrones; it zoned the presidency to the South for four years only.

My Igbo friends spent the whole of the weekend celebrating the NDC decision. They thought and still think the NDC ticket is already Peter Obi’s. But the NDC belongs to an Ijaw man who acquired it for a purpose. Goodluck Jonathan is an Ijaw man. Watch him. He is consulting towards 2027. The NDC belongs to his brother, and all politics is local.

American journalist, Chris Matthews, wrote ‘All Politics Is Local’. He said he had the good fortune to be present in November 1989 as the Berlin Wall was being torn down. While there, he interviewed a young East German:

“What is freedom?” he asked the young man.

“Talking to you,” the East German said without pause. “Two weeks ago I couldn’t do it.”

To the ‘imprisoned’, talking to a journalist was the very definition of ‘freedom.’ But the same question was answered differently by several people the journalist interviewed.

So, because all politics is local, regime campaigners asked me to support President Bola Tinubu for re-election. I asked them to tell me why I should. They said it was because he was my brother. I asked them to ask my brother why his first term closed its eyes to the very bad roads to his brother’s state. They said bad roads were not enough to deny one’s daughter the blessing of bosomy beads. They invoked the idi bebere chant of waists and coral beads. They said they would not use my reason to decide where to cast their votes.

I told them that what I want from democracy is not necessarily what they want from it. That is why boys of the same mother do not contribute money to marry one wife.

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You cannot wax imperial and expect the street to hail you. Small matters matter as much as big things in politics. The one who attends to basic things about the people gets the basic attention from them. In the 1970s, one U.S. senator cultivated the image of being “every bit… solicitous…” For the sake of politics and power, with him, “no chore was too small… If you took out a pencil, he’d sharpen it.”

Tinubu started his presidency spending heavily on projects that pleased his friends’ fancy while neglecting the backyard of his poor relations. As road users groaned on broken federal roads in the South West, he committed unimaginably vast resources to his Coastal Road. I once called it a road from somewhere to nowhere. That is what the road means to people where I live and where I work. You cannot take all the money to the coast and expect applause from the hinterland. There is no monkey in Idanre again.

But two weeks ago, politics appeared to have given the strong man a change of heart. He presided over a meeting of his cabinet and awarded road contracts that may give the face of his regime a well-done political makeup. He remembered home.

Consider the geography of the approvals. Dualisation of the Ibadan–Ijebu-Ode Road, stretching 56 kilometres at a cost of N295 billion; the Osogbo–Akoda–Gbongan Road, 59.2 kilometres for N101 billion; and the Osogbo–Iwo–Ibadan Road. All in the South West. Other zones, East and North, got theirs. Like Thomas O’Neill, the 47th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tinubu is translating a national contest “to the local, retail level.”

Presidents do not need roads; they fly. Which is why we must thank the eagle for remembering creations without wings. We thank those around him who reminded him that those roads exist. We only plead that these awards do not end as weightless paper roads designed as vote-catchers. They will indeed be weightless if they are not done before the elections, or they are started and abandoned after the elections.

An epochal governorship election will hold in Osun State in August this year. The incumbent, Ademola Adeleke, is recontesting and remains deeply rooted on the ground. It will take more than federal might to uproot him. In Oyo State, the incumbent governor, Seyi Makinde, has the state firmly in his grip; he is reportedly eyeing the president’s seat. Both governors are widely celebrated as high performers who belong to opposition parties. For the president’s party to make real impact here, therefore, it must have real positive things to show the people. It is not too late to do so.

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Which is why the contracts came at the right time. So, on paper, Tinubu’s contract approvals are infrastructure decisions—big, bold and long overdue. But in substance, they form a carefully plotted map of political warfare. When a government suddenly remembers roads that years of power ignored, it is not governance speaking; it is politics, with timing as its loudest voice. It is the language of a second-term conversation, spoken in concrete and kilometres. Yet, we say thank you. But please, do the work beyond the announcement.

This moment will be read beyond asphalt and contracts. Would these last-minute contracts have been awarded if everyone had migrated into the president’s lair? Politicians often take for granted those they consider their property. Like dogs, they would sleep themselves into death were it not for the fleas of defeat that keep buzzing, threatening to bite.

So, we must keep flashing our voter cards as potential red cards. Sometimes, it works.

In December 1927, Catherine Mitchell Taliaferro asked, “To vote or not to vote?” She ended her piece with a warning that still resonates: “No one ever cleaned a house by deserting it to insects and vermin.”

Taliaferro’s warning was simple: democracies decay when citizens surrender the public space to predators. Nigeria now enters a season in which power will test institutions, friendships and even nerves. From now till January next year, the dreams in Nigeria’s nights will be of wars and rumours of wars.

But is it all gloom without hope of redemption? I go back to Camara Laye’s Fatoman who tells his father: “I also dreamed of a Lion, a great Black Lion, who saved us, who brought back prosperity to us, and who made all peoples his friends.”

A yet-to-be-identified student of the University of Benin was on Sunday evening shot dead by masked gunmen at the Ugbowo campus of the institution.

According to eyewitness accounts, the student was shot at close range inside his GLK Mercedes Benz, while two persons who were with him in the car sustained injuries. The masked gunmen fled the scene after carrying out the dastardly act.

The two other victims were said to have been rushed to the University of Benin Health Care center.

The victim had reportedly finished his exams in the Political Science department about an hour earlier before he met his tragic end.

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One student said, “They shot him at close range and there was no way he could have survived the attack. Two others who were in the vehicles were also injured and rushed school’s health care center.”

Operatives from the Ugbowo Divisional Police Headquarters were at the scene evacuating the remains of the victim.

The DPO of the Divisional Police Headquarters SP Emmanuel said it was still too sketchy and are yet to issue an official statement

By Tony Erha

Again, civil unrest has resumed in South Africa in April and May, 2026, as the country’s black youth population, kill and maim their African brothers, who are from countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Sudan and others. Property and businesses have been ruined through looting, physical damage and arson.

Another strange dimension to the deadly attacks is where South African women married to Nigerians and other immigrant Africans, have been attacked. The women had taken to the street protests in semi-nudity

This is not the first time the rampaging South African predominant black youth population had taken to the street, chanting dangerous slogans and armed with machetes, bottles, daggers, clubs, whips and other dangerous cudgels.

Since the beginning of the millennium, the violent protests, deaths and destructions had become a recurring decimal in the Nelson Mandela’s country.

In 2008, a major wave of violence resulted in at least 62 deaths and over 100,000 people displaced. In 2015, more attacks led to added deaths, bodily injuries and widespread looting of foreigner-owned shops. The incidents were said to have been sparked by economic hardship, unemployment and the impoverishment if the South African black majority that constitute about 85 of its headcount and the minority whites of a negligable population.

Apart from full-blown cases, there had been such isolated cases of attacks, deaths and destructions that are not recorded.For instance, in April 2004, following the death of Brenda Fassie, a 39 year old South African musical diva, some Nigerians were killed and others hunted in the country, as a result of the rumours that the cocaine overdose doctor said was the cause of her death, was supplied by some Nigerian hard drug agents.

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Similarly in 2007, when Lucky Dube, a South African Reggae music sensation, was shot dead, Nigerian immigrants were hiding from pillagers, who avenged it on Nigerians, as his killers. His actual attackers, who were after all South Africans, later confessed to killing him because they taught he was a Nigeria, and they did not know who he was until after seeing the news reports. The trio of Sifiso Mhlanga, Mbuti Mabe, and Julius Gxowa, were later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

South Africa’s recurring waves of xenophobic violence is often codenamed “Operation Dudula”. They are restless mobs that carry out mass deportation of undocumented migrants, stopping their access to healthcare, and raiding their businesses.

But,cl the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, reluctantly condemned the atrocious acts, as he was also accused by Julius Malema, the fiery South African opposition politician, who further accused him of double standard. Malema added that President Ramaphosa with his ruling party, has no genuine interest in stopping the attacks and serve deterrence to the offenders, because they didn’t want to lose the mass votes from the teeming youth in the South Africa general elections, holding soon.

But, the word ‘Xenophobia’ got its origin from ancient Greece, the south European nation, like many notions and words now globally used. Xenophobia is a societal misnomer, which has plagued many countries of the world. Although it is a Greek originating coinage, Xenophobic practices didn’t originate in ancient Greece, but is a timeless blight associated with human origins. Its origin is hardly traced to a country.

Instructibly, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, explicitly describes Xenophobia as a compound word of Greek origin, that emanated from ‘xenos’ (race) and ‘phobia’ (fear). It is the fear or dislike of people who are perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression that is based on the perception that a conflict exists between a group-within and an out-group.

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Wild xenophobic protests had been usual exchange in the past four decades, between Nigeria and Ghana, two rivalry West African countries, just as Ghanaians are currently carrying out such street protests against “surges of Nigerian migrants in their country”, with further accusation of “criminalities and economic domination by Nigerians”.

When each time, both countries carry out the xenophobic agitations, there are stereotype makeshift or handmade bags, with which expelled migrants cart away their belongings. To these days, the bags have become a derisive remark by both countries. In Nigeria, it is called “Ghana Must Go” and in Ghana “Nigeria Must Go”. No one seems to know the real origin of the bag.

Currently, Togo, a Francophone neighbour of Nigeria, is similarly protesting against the flood of Nigerian immigrants in their country.

In response to the South African violent attacks, Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ordered his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, for emergency response unit in South Africa. The Guardian of 7th May, 2026 quoted the minister as thus;

“I maintained that our government cannot stand by and watch the systematic harassment and humiliation of our nationals resident in SA as well as the extra-judicial killings of our people, and that the evacuation of our citizens who want to return home remains our government’s priority at this time.”

She furthered that the South African government expressed reservations for the recommended evacuation of Nigerians from the country, at their defence of exaggerated reportage of the same attacks, factually reported by some notable foreign media.

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This was not the first time Nigeria was taking diplomatic option to the continuous attacks on Nigerians. In September 2019, violence also swept through parts of Johannesburg and Pretoria again. The South African police figures cited by Reuters, said 12 people were killed, and hundreds of businesses looted and destroyed. Nigeria evacuated more than 500 of its citizens from South Africa. There were diplomatic crisis across Africa, with Nigeria temporarily boycotting the World Economic Forum on Africa hosted in Cape Town.

In all, the xenophobic or anti-immigrant deaths, attacks and protests, whether in South Africa, Ghana, Togo etc., have derogatory slogans and wakeup messages passed to Nigerians and their government, that they go back and rebuild their country and stay there, not scramble to go and spoil other countries that were built through hard labour and honesty. They are also mocked to have attitude change, where they will no longer get involved in crimes and lawlessness, in foreign lands.

When we were growing up, our parents would warn us to keep long distance from the children of parents, who were known as bad neighbours. And do we treated them as lepers from whom one can’t share food, drinks or nearness.

It’s interesting having the Nigeria’s Senate and House of Reps, the lower and upper chambers of the country’s legislative bodies, condemning South Africa over the untold deaths and persecutions of their countrymen and women, in their sittings. As if they were truly concerned. Some notable of the members even called for the take-over of South African companies and other economic assets in the country.

In another instance, a clergy of a new-generation church, based in South Africa, wailed that his church’s efifices were razed down. All counted their losses, regretting how Nigeria was supportive of the same South African blacks, when Nigeria helped them fight Apartheid and gave them independence. Their regrets had been that there were a Pharoah and Egyptians who did not know Joseph and the Israelites, just as a Ramaphosa and black South Africa youth who don’t know Olusegun Obasanjo and Nigerians.

To our lawmakers who feign love for Nigerians in South Africa, how many of such cheap deaths of Nigerian have they cared to save in the hundreds of thousands of deaths being lost to terrorist, jihadist and criminal attacks going on in the country? What reliefs have they given to the victims of unbridled corruption they concreted and their milking of poor Nigerians, through ostentatious indulgence as lawmakers, who supposedly make life meaningful to their electors?

Can they be absolved from the executive recklessness, blackmarket Judicial practices and the criminalities that arrest the soul of the country? Are South African blacks to be entirely blamed, when the children of our bad parents besiege foreign lands to manifest the filial responsibility?
Have we forgotten so soon how a gun dwell and killing festival shifted from South Africa to somewhere in Nigeria, when families members were gruesomely murdered in their homes and churches, over sour cocaine deals, and gun battles which started in South Africa and concluded in Nigeria?