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OPINION: Bisi Akande, Poverty And Ige’s Death

Published

1 year ago

February 11, 2025

Festus Adedayo

In her biography of Ayo Rosiji, one of the key politicians of Nigeria’s first republic, entitled Man With Vision, Australia-born historian, Nina Mba, citing a Holmes, called biographers “People who knead people.” In other words, biographers knead their subjects from raw flour into edible form. You then wonder what the late lecturer in the History department of the University of Lagos would have called autobiographers. Self-conjurers, perhaps. For, in the process of piecing together bits about themselves, those who write their life histories have been accused of selfishly adding together a mish-mash of two unrelated traditional soup recipes, (lúrú and sápá) falsifying realities and mis-painting the picture of truth. Last week, sidekick of the Nigerian president and former Chairman of the All Progressives Party, (APC) Chief Bisi Akande, chose to conjure the spirit of a dead dog. In a podcast interview with popular broadcaster, Edmund Obilo, which centered around his autobiography, My Paticipations, the 86-year old came under heavy shellacking on allegations of historical revisionism. The specifics were that he kneaded a wrong dough of history and made a wrong portrayal of himself. In that interview, Akande coasted home with a self portraiture as a man who sat by the edge of a smelly sewage but chose not to smell the rank odour of rot.

By the way, I passed Akande’s country-home, Ila-Orangun, Osun State, by about a week ago. I was on my way to the burial of the mother of Oba Adedokun Omoniyi Abolarin, the Orangun of Oke-Ila. You cannot fail to notice Akande’s house. Its arrogance and domineering spirit in the midst of abject poverty are worn on the mansion’s lapel. Architectured to sit imperially among natives’ poor houses, the mansion fittingly tells the story of a countryside-born boy made good. Don’t bother yourself with the architectural gaffe of such a mansion being surrounded with lock-up shops. It still doesn’t diminish the majesty you see in Akande’s home. Its outward finishing struck me as a repeat of same architecture of his house in Oluyole, Ibadan. Both bear similarities with the State Secretariat’s roofing and burnt brick finishing at Abere which I also saw. His government constructed the secretariat. So, when, in the Obilo interview, Akande kept referencing his retirement to his Ila country-home, planting pepper at his backyard and deliberately choosing not to live the posh life of a president’s consort in Abuja, do not be fooled to believe that the old man lives in less splendour.

Sorry, I digressed. Akande made two weighty assertions in his controversy-baiting interview. One is that the presidency under Olusegun Obasanjo allegedly killed Chief Bola Ige. The second was that the pan-Yoruba sociocultural group, Afenifere died with the assassination of the Attorney General of the Federation. As the Yoruba say of words in convoluted circumstances as this, they need to be surgically placed in their contexts (élá l’ọrọ ). In doing this, let me begin from Akande’s assertion on Afenifere’s purported death. There is no denying the fact that Chief Ige was the darling of Southwest Nigeria. At his death, the Yoruba lost its most valuable political leader who was famously referred to as Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s heir apparent. At campaign grounds, the evocative song sang to usher Ige into such arena was “Ige has arrived! Ige has arrived! Awolowo’s heir apparent has arrived!” (Ìgè dé, Ìgè dé o, Aróle Awolowo, Ìgè dé o!).

Ige was proud of his Yoruba heritage. He wasn’t one who prostrated on all fours to a cow for the sake of eating its protein. He never suffered fools gladly and belonged to the school of thought which says that every impulse a man strives to strangle broods in his mind and poisons him. So, he spoke his mind without caring whose ox was gored. A lawyer friend once told me of how Ige beckoned onto him and his friend at a public event and, in his usual lacerating words, tongue-lashed them for putting on other tribe’s cap, rather than the Yoruba’s. Though he spoke Hausa very fluently, having schooled in Kaduna, Ige took great pleasure in his mother tongue.

The truth however remains that the January 1999 D’Rovans hotel presidential primary election of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) which took place in Ibadan marked the beginning of the cracks in the wall of the AD and Afenifere. It has been alleged that Ige sponsored the creation of alternate sociocultural groups to get back at the so-called “Ijebu Mafia” who allegedly worked against his presidential aspiration. To that extent, Akande may be right that Ige saw the fractionalization of the original Afenifere. To however say that Afenifere died with Ige will be excessive hyperbole.

Again, after the death of Ige, there doesn’t seem to exist any group, apart from the two factions of the sociocultural group – either Chief Reuben Fasoranti or Ayo Adebanjo’s – who can surpass the duo in how they deify or factor in Yoruba’s recent ancestor, Chief Awolowo, in all they do. I am sure the man Chief Akande is his sidekick, Tinubu, in his closet or among his coterie of Yoruba hangers-on, gloats, like Obasanjo did in his autobiography, that the presidency which Awolowo couldn’t attain in his lifetime, was handed him on a platter. Since Tinubu became president, unless I missed it, I am yet to hear him pay tribute to Awolowo’s fabled sagacity in governance. I do not know if Bisi Akande, who is now mouthing Afenifere’s Catholicism, more than the Pope, has ever spoken to the president about this historical memory loss. It was good Obilo asked Akande if the Fasoranti who Tinubu visited in Akure as president wasn’t head of the same Afenifere he claimed was dead or if the members of the group Tinubu hosted in Aso Rock belonged to Ohanaeze Ndigbo. Such selective memory is said to be Akande’s stock-in-trade. When he engages in this kind of revisionism, his opponents remind us of his self-confession he made that he was never an Awoist until Chief SM Afolabi invited him to be a member of Awo’s Committee of Friends.

On the assassination of Ige in 2001, there is also no doubting the fact that the failure of the federal government to find the killers of this highly respected Nigerian is a blot on the Obasanjo government. On the list of assassins who possessed the raison d’être to kill Ige, the fact that the presidency ranks top is an unassailable fact. If you knew the awe with which Ige was held in Yorubaland, his resignation from the Obasanjo government would indeed have dented the Ota farmer’s second term presidential bid. However, with Ige’s obsession for his Yorubaness and the disdain and awe with which the north held an obsessive Yoruba in power at that time, Ige’s presidential aspiration could not have stopped Obasanjo’s second term bid. After all, even when the southwest refused to vote for him in the first term, Obasanjo still became president. If Akande was desirous of Ige’s killers being apprehended, why didn’t he factor in more theories on the assassination? For instance, could some persons, who nursed ambition to be Nigeria’s president someday, have stopped him, knowing that an Ige presidency in 2003 could put paid to their ambition? Yes, the theory of armed robbery has been eliminated due to the clinical planning of the assassination, but, is there any possibility that we cast our nets too narrowly?

It is of great importance for us to drill down further into Bisi Akande’s claim that the government headed by Senator Rashidi Ladoja, as Oyo State governor, demanded and got a nolle prosequi in the trial of alleged Ige murderers. Was it a deliberate attempt to play politics, attempt to even political score or share political banditry? Not only did Ladoja denounce this claim with facts, he went ahead to accuse Akande of a penchant for lying while threatening to drag Akande to court for defamation.

It should also be said that while Akande was enamoured of unraveling the killers of his mentor, Chief Ige, under his leadership and direction as governor of Osun State, his ‘boys’ supervised the impeachment of his deputy governor, Iyiola Omisore, allegedly so that the Ile-Ife-born politician could lose his immunity and be ready to face trial for the same murder. If I were Akande’s interviewer, I would have raised further question for his answer on what his government did to unravel the assassination, a few days before Ige’s murder, of an Osun State legislator, Odunayo Olagbaju. So, what moral right does he have to ask Obasanjo to find Ige’s killers when his own government equally looked the other way when Olagbaju was felled? In the interview, Akande made many other assertions on Ige’s death which should make the police ask him, instead of Ladoja, to come forward for interrogation so that the spirit of Bola Ige could get justice finally. He appeared to know more than he was telling the world, even by his own admission.

Let me go to another issue of importance in the Akande interview. Of recent, the power apparatchik that surrounds the Nigerian president must have discovered that the narrative that all his life, Bola Tinubu had wanted to become president, was flawed. At a meeting with some political operatives immediately after attending a Chatham House engagement in December, 2022, Tinubu was seen on video telling them that “Political power is not going to be served in a restaurant. They don’t serve it a la carte. At all cost, fight for it, grab it and run with it”. The vehemence with which then presidential aspirant Tinubu told these operatives of the cold-bloodedness of power had same cadence and grits with the vehemence with which a leopard pursues an impala. Tinubu sliced the words with his teeth with same clinical finish and precision with which the leopard slices the impala’s throat. So, when, a few weeks ago, some misguided fellows, without the president’s consent, impeached Mudashiru Obasa, erstwhile Lagos House Speaker who the Lagos Landlord installed by himself, they courted the wrath of a man who though shoulders the behemoth hunk of flesh of an elephant, is yet interested in the flesh of a grasshopper. Since 1999, Tinubu has held Lagos as a fief, his incisors tightened round the neck of the politics and economy of the state.

No political juggernaut in the Tinubu political clan had enough cognate sidekick ‘followership’ around the president to dissolve the above narrative in the minds of the world like Bisi Akande. Since they both left office as governors of Osun and Lagos in 2007, Akande has maintained his political ‘follow-follow’ role around Tinubu. He was the most qualified for the task. So, in the Obilo interview, Akande attempted to push a counter-narrative. Tinubu didn’t want to be president, he emphasized. There was a bedlam in the Tinubu camp when he told all the scroungers around him that he would not be contesting for the presidency, Akande said further. Pius Akinyelure attempted to convince him, yet he would not bulge. Akande then had to be enlisted to do the convincing. He then told Tinubu that his being Nigeria’s president was a clarion call which he must yield to. In other words, Tinubu was persuaded against his earlier wish to be Nigeria’s president.

But, as James Hadley Chase volunteered in one of his classics, a liar must have a very good memory. The interviewer then momentarily badged in. But, that same Tinubu told Nigerians it was his lifelong ambition to be Nigeria’s president? Obilo asked. In fact, at the famous but controversial Abeokuta campaign in June 2022 where it was believed he dared Muhammadu Buhari to do his worse, Tinubu actually told the world that he, the godfather, had come to take over a throne that rightly belonged to him. With that Emilokan pronouncement, Tinubu literally said he was tired of playing the second fiddle. When the interviewer confronted Akande with Tinubu’s claim of entitlement to the presidency, the Tinubu sidekick went into an incoherent waffle. With that Abeokuta speech whose summary was akin to “my feet are tired,” many of Tinubu’s followers have compared his audacity and self-entitlement mentality to the seat of Nigeria’s president to that of African-American rights activist, Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on the American Montgomery City Lines on December 1, 1955.

As it is with politicians who play the ostrich with verifiable facts, in the interview, Akande also attempted to muffle the facts of Buhari’s opposition to Tinubu’s presidency. In the Abeokuta declaration, it was obvious that the “they” Tinubu knocked for putting barriers before his ambition were Buhari, Godwin Emefiele and their accomplices. So, why was Akande attempting to potato a glaring fact that is negative to his party, the APC?

The final issue of concern in the Akande interview is his claim that only lazy Nigerians are hungry. While the interviewer squared up with him admirably over this claim, Akande’s fabled gambit of playing the ostrich sprang up here. He couldn’t see hunger in the land, he claimed. To be fair to the ex-APC chairman, he may not see hunger if his impoverished kinsmen in Ila-Orangun have found him too insulated from their existential plights, so much that going to him for help is a waste. None of his children, it is obvious, with his role as consort of the Villa, would feel the hunger in the land. So, how could he see hunger? Even when confronted with palpable cases of hunger under the government of a man he claimed was next good news after the so-called discovery of River Niger by Mungo Park in 1795, he still defiantly claimed that the pepper he allegedly planted at his backyard was the antidote to the impoverishment sown by the Tinubu government. If I may ask, why did Chief Akande ask the president to put his daughter in charge of dollar-denominated National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) and not ask that she heads Ogun Osun River Basin Authority so that she would plant “one grain of corn and reap a thousand cobs”?

All the above put together remind me that, in their daily fight for dominance and conquest, a fleeting nature of power and dominance exists among Nigerian politicians. It is the type of desperation found among the lion and a warthog. In Nigerian politics, there is an unending, constant and relentless struggle between preys and predators, with each seeking dominance and conquest. In doing this, politicians deploy worldly cunning to foist false narratives on the populace. Bisi Akande’s interview and a huge chunk of his autobiography are a further reinforcement of this frightening fight in the political wild.

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Court Orders SERAP To Pay DSS Operatives N100m For Defamation

Published

19 minutes ago

May 5, 2026

Editor

The High Court of the Federal Capital Territory has ordered a non-governmental organization, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, to pay N100 million as damaged to two operatives of the Department of the State Services, DSS, for unjustly defaming them in some publications.

The court also ordered SERAP to tender public apologies to the defamed officers,
Sarah John and Gabriel Ogundele, in two national newspapers, two television stations and its website.

Besides, the organization was also ordered to pay the two operatives N1 million as cost of litigation and 10 percent post-judgment interest annually on the judgment sum until it’s fully liquidated.

Justice Yusuf Halilu of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory gave the order on Tuesday while delivering judgment in a N5.5 billion defamation suit instituted against SERAP by the DSS operatives.

The judge found SERAP liable for unjustly defaming the two DSS operatives with allegations that they unlawfully invaded its Abuja office, harassed and intimidated its staff, in September 2024.

In the offending publication on its website and Twitter handle, SERAP alleged that the two operatives unlawfully invaded and occupied its office with sinister motives.

The judge held that the publication was in bad taste especially from an organization established to promote transparency and accountability, as nothing in the publication was found to be truthful.

The DSS staff had listed SERAP as 1st defendant in the suit marked CV/4547/2024. SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, was listed as the 2nd defendant.

In the suit, the claimants – Sarah John and Gabriel Ogundele – accused the two defendants of making false claims that they invaded SERAP’s Abuja office on September 9, 2024..

Counsel to the DSS, Oluwagbemileke Samuel Kehinde, had while adopting his final address in the mater urged the judge to grant all the reliefs sought by his client in the interest of justice.

He admitted that although the names of the two claimants were not mentioned in the defamation materials, they had however established substantial circumstances that they are the ones referred to in the published defamation article by SERAP on its website.

The counsel submitted that all ingredients of defamation have been clearly established and the offending publication referred to the two officials of the secret police.

However, SERAP, through its counsel, Victoria Bassey from Tayo Oyetibo, SAN, law firm, asked the court to dismiss the suit on the ground that the two claimants did not establish that they were the ones referred to in the alleged defamation materials.

She said that SERAP used “DSS officials” in the alleged offending publication, adding that the two claimants must establish that they are the ones referred to before their case can succeed.

Similar arguments were canvassed by Oluwatosin Adefioye who stood for the second defendant, adding that there was no dispute in the September 9, 2024 operation of DSS in SERAP’s office.

He said that since SERAP in the publication did not name any particular person, the claimants must plead special circumstances that they were the ones referred to as the DSS officials.

Besides, he said that there is no organization by name Department of State Services in law, hence, DSS cannot claim being defamed adding that the only entity known to law is National Security Agency.

The claimants had in the suit stated that the alleged false claim by SERAP has negatively impacted on their reputation.

The DSS also stated, in the statement of claim, that, in line with the agency’s practice of engaging with officials of non-governmental organisations operating in the FCT to establish a relationship with their new leadership, it directed the two officials – John and Ogunleye – to visit SERAP’s office and invite them for a familiarization meeting.

The claimants added that in carrying out the directive, John and Ogunleye paid a friendly visit to SERAP’s office at 18 Bamako Street, Wuse Zone 1, Abuja on September 9 and met with one Ruth, who upon being informed about the purpose of the visit, claimed that none of SERAP’s management staff was in the country and advised that a formal letter of invitation be written by the DSS.

John and Ogundele, who claimed that their interactions with Ruth were recorded, said before they immediately exited SERAP’s office, Ruth promised to inform her organisation’s management about the visit and volunteered a phone number – 08160537202.

They said it was surprising that, shortly after their visit, SERAP posted on its X (Twitter) handle – @SERAPNigeria – that officers of the DSS are presently unlawfully occupying its office.

The claimant added, “On the same day, the defendants also published a statement on SERAP’s website, which was widely reported by several media outfits, falsely alleging that some officers from the DSS, described as “a tall, large, dark-skinned woman” and “a slim, dark skinned man,” invaded their Abuja office and interrogated the staff of the first defendant (SERAP).

John and Ogundele stated that “due to the false statements published by the defendants, the DSS has been ridiculed and criticised by international agencies such as the Amnesty International and prominent members of the Nigerian society, such as Femi Falana (SAN)”.

“Due to the false statements published by the defendants, members of the public and the international community formed the opinion that the Federal Government is using the DSS to harass the defendants.”

They added that the defendants’ statements caused harm to their reputation because the staff and management of the DSS have formed the opinion that the claimants did not follow orders and carried out an unsanctioned operation and are therefore, incompetent and unprofessional.

The claimants therefore prayed the court for the following reliefs: “An order directing the defendants to tender an apology to the claimants via the first defendant’s (SERAP’s) website, X (twitter) handle, two national daily newspapers (Punch and Vanguard) and two national news television stations (Arise Television and Channels Television) for falsely accusing the claimants of unlawfully invading the first defendant’s office and interrogating the first defendant’s staff.

“An order directing the defendants to pay the claimants the sum of N5 billion as damages for the libellous statements published about the claimants.

“Interest on the sum of N5b at the rate of 10 percent per annum from the date of judgment until the judgment sum is realised or liquidated.

“An order directing the defendants to pay the claimants the sum of N50 million as costs of this action.”

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[OPINION] Tinubu: Borrowing Is Leprosy

Published

5 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Editor

By Suyi Ayodele

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3)

Nigeria has shifted from incurring debt as an instrument of policy to embracing it as a condition of survival. It is a dangerous evolution—made worse when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu appears to regard debt not as leprosy, but as ornament.

Greek philosopher, Plutarch (before AD50-after 120), wrote a piece titled: “That We Ought Not to Borrow.” What the old Greek philosopher said in the piece, published in Vol. X of the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Moralia, 1936 (Pg. 315-339), shows that borrowing is worse than leprosy in all ramifications. Plutarch’s piece summarises the Greeks’ attitude to borrowing.

Incidentally, every arguement he posted in the material aligns with the African’s philosophy of a borrower ending up a broke person. Our elders, right from the beginning of time, say: Àì l’ówó l’ówó kìí jé ká ní owó l’ówó (being broke makes one to be more broke).

They say this because the broke man goes a-borrowing and ends up using the little he has to service his debts thus ending up without money. A man without money is a sad man. That confirms the age-long axiom of he who goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.

President Tinubu, on Tuesday last week, at an engagement with all the movers and shakers of events from Plateau State, said to those critical about the rate of borrowing by his administration that “borrowing is not leprosy.” He added that whenever the occasion arose for him to borrow, he would not hesitate to do so.

Maybe we should allow Tinubu to speak: “If we have to borrow money, we will, because borrowing is not leprosy; we just have to work hard to be able to repay it.” To the President, going by these uttered words, what matters is the ability to pay. And to pay back the countless debts incurred by his administration, Nigeria and Nigerians must work hard.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Wetie, Òsá Eleye And 2027 Warnings

It is not what Tinubu said that worries me. My concern is the metaphor he deployed – “leprosy”. That is the worst of all contagious diseases. Anyone who contracts leprosy is usually isolated. Leprosaria, in ancient days, were built in the deep forest. This is why it is said that: A kìí kó ilé adétè sí ìgboro; inú igbó ni adétè ńgbé (no one builds the house of a leper in the city; lepers live in the forest).

The idea of the forest in this ancient saying itself depicts graphic metaphors of a pariah, isolation, and of an individual who lives with ultimate shame. So, when our President deployed that metaphor, its meaning goes beyond the theatrical message his audience thought they heard and clapped for. What Tinubu told his audience is that Nigeria had not borrowed to that level when it would become an isolated nation, a leprous entity that nobody would dare touch with a 10-feet pole! We may soon get there, anyway! Back to ancient Greek.

Ancient Greek philosophy never supports borrowing. Rather, it considers borrowing, which usually comes with heavy interest, as another form of servitude. The borrower, in the Greek mindset, is not just a slave to the lender; he is equally considered a weakling and one with the base of all moral values. Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers believed that a borrower, especially a reckless one, is an ‘unnatural and socially corrosive” individual. Any borrowing that imposes heavy interest on the borrower, they said, is ‘predatory.’ (See: “Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens,” by Paul Millett, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2022).

This is the summary of Plutarch’s work, where he argues that taking loans comes with its own degree of disgrace and leads to “a voluntary loss of freedom and a sign of folly.” A simple review of Plutarch’s essay says: “That We Ought Not to Borrow” (Greek: De vitando aere alieno) is a famous essay….that argues against debt, describing it as a form of slavery to lenders that causes stress and ruins financial freedom. Plutarch advises avoiding loans, whether rich or poor, arguing it is either unnecessary or impossible to repay.”

In an October 5, 2021, piece on this page with the title: “Buhari and the chronic debtor-wife of Osin”, I expressed worry at the rate at which the administration of General Muhammad Buhari was taking loans. I warned that Nigerians would be left in pain and sorrow at the end of the day. The introductory paragraph of the said article is worth repeating here:

“Permit me to call this Buhari regime Onígbèsè Aya Osin (The chronic debtor-wife of Osin). Osin is the Yoruba deity of royalty. According to the legend, Osin married a shameless woman who owed virtually everyone in the community. In our tradition, once a person’s behaviour is off the mark of our acceptable mores, norms and traditions, we give such a person a descriptive name. This wife’s reputation followed her everywhere she went. ‘Onigbese’ is the Yoruba word for chronic debtor; ‘Aya’ is wife. Her cognomen is an exercise in character portrayal. She is known as Onigbese Aya Osin, who buys pangolin without paying, and buys porcupine on credit. She sees the woman hawking a hedgehog; she runs after her empty-handed. She uses the money from antelope to pay for deer. Yet, she fries neither for her husband nor cooks for her concubine. Her first child is sold into slavery to service her debts; her lastborn is pawned off for her indebtedness. When she talks, she accuses her husband of not covering her shame whereas, she neither informs the husband nor takes permission from him before buying bush meat on credit.”

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Whatever we saw in the Buhari administration that informed the above has since paled into insignificance in the administration of Tinubu. This government borrows with reckless abandon! That is troubling. And unlike Buhari, who was decent about it, the current set of Onígbèsè in the Aso Rock Villa adds arrogance to the charade. This is why, when he had nothing more to tell us all, Tinubu said that our level of indebtedness had not reached the leprosy stage where no nation would want to touch us.

Whatever Tinubu said during the encounter, his spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, further amplified. In his criticism of the borrowing spree of this government, Peter Obi, the 2023 Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, said that “Borrowing is not only leprosy, but a killer cancer when it is borrowed for consumption and not production as it is in Nigeria today.” He further lamented the nation’s “Debt that is not tied to measurable economic value; debt that does not translate into jobs, growth, or improved living standards for the Nigerian people.”

Onanuga, responding to Obi, said that the opposition politician was “bringing up the same old arguments again with your sensationalist approach.” Like his master, Onanuga stressed that “…Every sovereign nation borrows money, and as President Tinubu correctly pointed out, borrowing is not a disease. If you really want to know, the government has been taking loans to pay for important infrastructure projects, not to spend on everyday things. The fact that we are getting money and have lenders who are willing to lend shows that our country is trustworthy and able to pay back the money.”

I read Onanuga’s position, and I wondered if ‘silence is no longer golden’, as we were told, especially when one does not have something intelligent to say! How can borrowing become an ornament that a government should wear like a medal, the way Onanuga deodorised it? So, if every nation of the world wants to lend us money, we should take all the loans with reckless abandon, the way the government, the ‘old activist’, is defending does? And, if we may ask: what are the “important infrastructure projects” Onanuga is talking about?

Do they include the $2.7 billion borrowed from the World Bank by this administration in 2023, part of which is the $700 million loan taken for adolescent girls’ secondary education that we have nothing to show for except the daily kidnapping of our school boys and girls up North? Or the preposterous $750 million loan for power sector recovery, only for the Aso Rock Villa to detach itself from the National Grid?

Can we also ask Onanuga if his “important infrastructure projects” for which this government took a World Bank loan of $4.25 billion in 2024, include the $1.57 billion loan to strengthen human capital, improve health for women and children, and build climate resilience, without anything to show for it? What about the $357 million, $57 million, and $86 million loans for rural road access and agricultural marketing projects, in a country where bandits, herdsmen and terrorists don’t allow farmers to go to their farms?

Is the 2025 World Bank loan of $2.695 billion, part of which $500 million was said to have been for education under the HOPE Education loan, or the $253 million and $247 million for NG-CARES, also part of Onanuga’s “important infrastructure projects?” What sort of awkward reasoning governs this nation?

Can someone please help tell those in power and their defenders that figures don’t lie! According to the Debt Management Office (DMO), Nigeria’s total public debt in 2015 was approximately N12.12 trillion to N12.6 trillion ($63–$64 billion). Various independent reports confirmed that figure, which is said to include both domestic and external debt stocks, representing the total liability at the time the administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan ended in May 2015.

But by December 31, 2023, according to the DMO, the nation’s total public debt was N97.34 trillion (US$108.23 billion). Again, the figure includes the external and domestic debt of the Federal Government, the 36 state governments, and the Federal Capital Territory.

Fast forward to the three-year-old administration of President Tinubu, Nigeria’s total public debt is projected to exceed N159 trillion (approx. $110 billion, “driven by a N68.32 trillion budget that relies heavily on borrowing. The government has allocated roughly ₦15.81 trillion for debt servicing (interest and fees) in 2026 alone, highlighting a severe debt service burden on the economy.”

Pray, what do you call a disease that makes a government spend over 80% of its revenue to service debt, if not ACUTE LEPROSY? What can be more cancerous than a government which borrows to satisfy the President’s fantasies at the expense of good living conditions for the citizenry? How do you describe a government which goes a-borrowing to finance its own budgets if not a leprous and cancerous government?

And since Onanuga has deliberately chosen not to understand why the government he defends has “lenders who are willing to lend” as he posted in response to Obi, I suggest, and very strongly too, that he takes a simple tutorial in Plutarch, who posits that “…the Persians regard lying as the second among wrong-doings and being in debt as the first; for lying is often practiced by debtors; but money-lenders lie more than debtors and cheat in their ledgers, when they write that they give so-and‑so much to so-and‑so, though they really give less…” This is why Onanuga and his ilk will be eternally wrong in their celebration of “lenders who are willing to lend.”

The Greek philosopher adds in the piece that, while he had “not declared war against the money-lenders”, he must point it out “to those who are ready to become borrowers how much disgrace and servility there is in the practice and that borrowing is an act of extreme folly and weakness.”

In concluding the piece, “That We Ought Not to Borrow”, Plutarch cautions thus: “Have you money? Do not borrow because you are not in need. Have you no money? Do not borrow, for you will not be able to pay….therefore in your own case do not heap up upon poverty, which has many attendant evils, the perplexities which arise from borrowing and owing, and do not deprive poverty of the only advantage which it possesses over wealth, namely freedom from care; since by doing so you will incur the derision of the proverb: I am unable to carry the goat, put the ox then upon me.” May the cosmos give us the grace to learn from ancient wisdom!

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OPINION: APC’s Politics Of Consensus

Published

17 hours ago

May 4, 2026

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

In a democracy, victory won through real elections brings enduring legitimacy. ‘On Your Mandate We Shall Stand’ was composed and sung for Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola because he submitted his ambition to a competitive process: he had a competent opponent, votes were cast, counted, and he won. The song, its defiance, and resilience followed that mandate because it was legitimate.

Those who chant similar slogans today may find themselves clutching empty matchboxes tomorrow if they continue to sidestep competitive elections. A democratic seat secured through elite manipulation and backroom agreement cannot command enduring popular support, especially when those same elites decide to take it back.

Nigeria today stands in the grip of what is called consensus politics; choosing candidates without the ‘trouble’ of voting. We are even scheming to elect a president next year without the inconvenience of election. Good luck to all of us.

At the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, the Norman king, William the Conqueror, defeated King Harold II and went on to become King of England. Historians note that the victory set off sweeping changes across the British Isles. They say by force of arms, William took the crown and went on to remake the Church, the palace, and the culture of England. They say he did more than change the English crown; his victory remade the English language through a deep infusion of Norman/Latin forms. The consequence is that more than 60 percent of English words now carry Latin parentage.

One such word is ‘consensus’, from the Latin ‘consentīre’—“to feel together”,

“to agree,” “to be in harmony,” “to concur.”

The rains started beating that word a long time ago. Language historians note that words which experienced long migration often shed their original sense of shared feeling and acquire more instrumental meanings. So it is with ‘consensus’ in today’s political usage.

Somewhere along its long journey from Latin to modern political speech, ‘consensus’ lost its warmth. The distortion of the word and its meaning is no longer abstract. In our usage today, ‘consensus’ no longer suggests a meeting of minds; it often signals a decision already made; an outcome proclaimed from above and affirmed below. A word that once implied a genuine convergence of minds now describes an order from the throne, delivered through courtiers.

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The parties—especially the ruling APC—have stretched and inverted the meaning of the word. In APC’s political dictionary, “consensus” increasingly reads as the will of the president, not the outcome of deliberation.

As we had it in Sani Abacha’s transition programme, we think any of today’s living parties that make it limping to the ballot in January 2027 should reach an ‘agreement’ and adopt one person as the consensus presidential candidate. That is how rich our imaginative thoughts are and how limitless our capacity for distortion of values is.

Within both party and polity, the president now embodies what Aristide R. Zolberg calls “the chief executive who is also the supreme legislator (the chief elector), and the ultimate arbiter of conflict.” Because the president is what he has always been, photo ops are staged as proof of order, while his name, cast as the final authority in the APC’s doctrine of “consensus”, is invoked to sanctify outcomes.

The APC set its neighbour’s hut on fire and rejoiced; now the blaze has caught its own roof. Across the states, the refrain is the same: the abuse of ‘consensus,’ with the president inserted into the process as decider-in-chief.

Oyo State offers a very sharp illustration. Some APC leaders, on Friday, announced Senator Sharafadeen Alli as the party’s “consensus” governorship candidate, invoking the president’s name. Within hours, former minister, Adebayo Adelabu, pushed back, also invoking the same presidency, and declaring that he remained in the race as the president’s “son”. When two rival claims lean on the same authority, what is presented as consensus begins to look like a contest of endorsements, not agreement.

Our fathers say the medicine must match the disease. Bí àrùn búburú bá wòlú, oògùn búburú la fi ńwò ó (When the affliction is severe, the remedy cannot be gentle). That may explain why the rhetoric of resistance has turned harsh. One does not need a keen ear to catch the crudity in what now issues from Oyo APC bigwigs. It is a stream of curses and abuse, imprecations without restraint. And one must ask: why?

Beyond Oyo, across Nigeria, north to south, we hear cries of plots to impose “consensus” candidates. How do you use the words ‘imposition’ and ‘consensus’ in the same sentence? Imposition comes from above; the other grows from below. ‘Imposition’ is force without consent. ‘Consensus’ is agreement without force. The two opposites appearing as companions presents a contradiction, and politics is autological, a self-defining oxymoron. You will likely agree with my linguistic choice if you believe the popular (but etymologically false joke) that “politics” comes from ‘poly’ (many) and ‘tics’ (blood-sucking parasites).

In Nasarawa, former Inspector-General of Police and APC governorship aspirant, Mohammed Adamu Abubakar, rejected any move towards “consensus,” insisting that only a direct primary could confer legitimacy. To him and others in the race, what is being dressed up as consensus is little more than unilateralism in softer language.

In Ondo, there are subdued objections to what the party may decide on Ondo South senatorial ticket. Aspirants for the Ondo East/Ondo West federal constituency have raised similar alarms, accusing party leaders of plotting to impose a candidate under the convenient cover of consensus. Their warning is simple: once choice is managed from above, internal democracy is already compromised.

In Yobe State, Senator Ibrahim Mohammed Bomai, Kashim Musa Tumsah, and Usman Alkali Baba—three APC governorship aspirants—have rejected the party’s endorsement of former Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Baba Malam Wali, as its “consensus” candidate for the 2027 election.

Bomai’s choice of words is telling. He described the “consensus” imposition as an affront to democratic principles. He warned against the steady replacement of popular choice with elite arrangement. No individual, he argued, regardless of past office or political influence, has the authority to determine the leadership of millions behind closed doors. Leadership, he insisted, must emerge through a process that is free, fair, and transparent—not one brokered in the name of “consensus.” Quoting him directly, he said: “We categorically reject this attempt to subvert due process. We reject the culture of imposition. We reject any scheme that undermines fairness, equity, and the democratic rights of our people.” Those words give voice to what dissatisfied but muted APC leaders and members in Kwara, Ogun and beyond are saying in uneasy, even fearful, silence.

Lagos, for now, appears to be the exception. The emergence of Dr Obafemi Hamzat as the APC governorship candidate quietly followed a process that bore the marks of consultation rather than imposition. Hamzat combines the fine qualities of a gentleman with humble erudition. In a field without a formidable opposition, his path to final victory looks smooth. Congratulations may therefore be in order.

Choice of candidates by consensus is good, cheap and safe if it comes with clean hands. Going far back into our beginning, we find that real consensus is not alien to the African political tradition. Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu (1931 – 2022), in his reflections on ‘Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics’, argues that decision-making in pre-colonial African societies was anchored in discussion and agreement rather than imposition.

He draws, for instance, on the words of Zambia’s founding father, Kenneth Kaunda, who observed that “in our original societies, we operated by consensus. An issue was talked out in solemn conclave until such time as agreement could be achieved.” Similarly, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, in 1961, noted that “the African concept of democracy is similar to that of the ancient Greeks, from whose language the word ‘democracy’ originated. To the Greeks, democracy meant simply “government by discussion among equals.” The people discussed, and when they reached an agreement, the result was a “people’s decision.” In African society, he said, the traditional method of conducting affairs is “by free discussion… the elders sit under the big trees and talk until they agree.”

Our politics has refused to benefit from that past of refined due process. There is no “people” in today’s decisions. And we expect today’s “consensus” arrangement to yield good governance. No. It will not. It can only produce a system that answers to kings, kingmakers, and the capos who guard their power.

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When a ruling party actively promotes “consensus” after weakening the opposition, it risks sliding toward a very bad form of authoritarianism. It also strips even its own members of the power to choose their candidates. As Kwasi Wiredu observed, both Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere defended systems that claimed consensus but, in practice, narrowed choice.

The Yoruba, watching what has become of this democracy in the hands of its custodians, would say: when a wise man cooks yams in a mad fashion, the discerning take theirs with sticks. That is àbọ̀ ọ̀rọ̀—half a word—and for the wise, it is enough.

What passes for consensus in Nigeria today therefore demands closer scrutiny. When outcomes are settled before conversations begin, when dissent is managed rather than engaged, and when unanimity is announced rather than negotiated, consensus ceases to be the product of dialogue; it becomes instead an instrument of control.

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” In politics, as William Shakespeare suggests, opposites often blur; good and evil do not always stand apart; they, in fact, reinforce each other. Bernard Crick, in ‘In Defence of Politics’ (1962), reminds us that politics thrives on contradiction, that it is “a creative compromise… a diverse unity.”

All dictionaries insist that “consensus” and ‘coercion’ are not the same. Our politicians, however, behave as though they are—indeed, as though one can be made to pass for the other. Once coercion learns to speak the language of consensus, it no longer needs to persuade; it only needs to declare. And declarations are fast, sweet and cheap.

But there are consequences.

Someone said “every cheap choice is a lost chance at joy.” The quest for easy victory is behind the current ‘consensus’ frenzy. But it may be the death of this democracy.

In Yoruba, some proverbs come as stories. Take this: “All the animals in the forest assembled and decided to make ìkokò (hyena) their asípa (secretary). Ikoko was happy to hear the news, but a short while later he burst into tears. Asked what the matter was, he replied that he was sad because he realised that perhaps they (his electors) might revisit the matter and reverse themselves.”

Professor Oyekan Owomoyela, from whom I got the proverb, explains what it says: “even in times of good fortune one should be mindful of the possibility of reversal.”

The moral is that those who donate victory cheaply through agreement can agree again to whimsically annul the victory without consequences.